[Ronnie Rowlands]

I'm not sure about the "RTD's greatest hits" approach to last night's episode. As I said, it seemed to be cramming too much in, at the expense of narrative clarity.

We hadhe most frightful round of "mashing the keyboard" shots tonight. Soon as the panic started they were all thundering away on their keyboards. The best example being the "former Prime Minister" who went for the two digit random-prodding approach.

I just watched it again and the episode was blown open a little more, some bits clearer, some narrative errors that bugged me.

I think the story was shaping up nicely up until the 'Bees are disappearing' part, but after that it mostly went to pot story wise. I did like the explanation of the 'Indigo Project', and it being taken from the Sontarans, but Martha somehow ending up at home was again, very very weird and confusing. The scene where Rose walks away from that explosion without flinching reminded me of Sylvester McCoy doing the same in 1988's 'The Greatest Show in the Galaxy. I liked the 2 mystery strands that started. First, 'I'm sorry for your loss", and "The Osterhagen key" was also odd, but my fear is that it's going to turn out to be some giant reset button that will lazily conclude and fix the story, like last year's disappointing finale. The scenes with Davros were brilliant, I liked the music that went with it and they provided some good, quiet and haunting intervals, although they were much too short. On a second viewing, I liked what Dalek Caan became, but the explanation for getting into the 'Timelocked' time war being "yet he managed it" really spoilt it for me, it was just so lazy. The line "you know nothing of any human and that will be your downfall" was very cliched, I felt.

A couple of major goofs here. How were any of the televisions working without satellites? Perhaps the Daleks took them, but that's very unlikely. I would have liked to have seen more of the scientific effects of having the whole freaking planet moved. For example, the tide going crazy without the moon. Also, how the hell can planets be kept that close together without them all bumping into eachother or going wild from eachother's gravitational pulls? And finally, the end. Rose had been carrying a big, fuck off gun around with her all the way through this episode, why didn't she have it at the end to blow the Dalek to sky-high kingdom-come-bollocks-and-gone?

Again, too much continuity. It was the pandering to the fans that ballsed up Doctor Who in the 80s. Why oh why is it happening again?

Pah. This really isn't very good at all. Again, I am deathly scared of next week's finale being resolved with the proverbial 'reset-button'. I'm praying it isn't.