Enough of all this spiel, let’s get on with the curious case of Void material…

In Doomsday we discover that anyone that’s been in the Void gets covered in Void Material. The longer you’re in, the more gets stuck to you. Simple. How do you detect if you have any of this Void material on you though?

Well the only way to detect Void material is by the use of a complex series of detectors that unravel all the tightly knotted dimensions of space that surround the target and count the number of positive hits from the particles of Void material as they struggle to return to their own dimension.

Either that or just put on a pair of cheap 3D glasses.

This is yet another example of Davies’ piss-poor writing for Doctor Who and his lack of imagination. He just goes for a very cheap and unsatisfying gimmick that runs the length of the show until the disappointing reveal at the end.

It’s as if we’re supposed to sit there watching The Doctor running about in 3D specs and think that it’s just The Doctor being all whacky and out-there.

The problem with that is that we always know that if The Doctor is doing something whacky and out-there, sooner or later it’s going to become a plot point. It never actually is The Doctor being a little eccentric, every time he does it, it’s being done with a higher – albeit entirely unfathomable – purpose.

Remember when he used to eat Jelly Babies? There was no particular reason for that other than plain old eccentricity.

Davies just can’t help himself though, he has top go for some goofy nonsense that he thinks is funny over something that just might possibly have some basis in actual science. Why do we let him away with this shit?

This isn’t the only issue we have with the concept of Void material. The very mention of Void material makes us cringe, it makes absolutely no sense! Void – when used as a noun, as it is in this case – means an empty space, material is the substance or substances of which a thing is made or composed. Consequently Void material is an oxymoron.

We have to doubt that Davies intended for it to be an amusing oxymoronic pun – like, pretty ugly or organised chaos – he just used it because – undoubtedly in his usual over enthusiastic, adjective strewn manner – he thought it was clever, witty, dangerous, imaginative, sexy, mysterious, etc. etc.

To make matters worse though The Doctor calls Void material; Void stuff. It’s the usual terrible inverted snobbery that is often displayed in these situations; when Davies is trying to present a piss-poor idea as a high brow scientific notion. If The Doctor needs to simplify it for us; it must be complex!

After a perfunctory and deeply unsatisfying explanation of what Void material is, we are then told that anything that travels through the Void becomes tainted with Void material – in this case that’s the Daleks, Cybermen, Rose and The Doctor – and that this Void material acts as a magnet drawing everything covered in it back to the Void, should the void become exposed through a rift or some such.

Which as luck would have it they have the technology to create. All of which ultimately means that there’s a very simple way to rid the Earth of the Cybermen and Daleks! Open the rift and Bob’s your uncle back to the Void the Daleks and Cybermen go. Huzzah!

Unfortunately in order to create tension where none exists, there has to be a catch. In this case it’s that Rose and The Doctor are also covered in Void stuff! Oh no. What will happen when they open the rift? Well, as ever, Russell T Davies has stitched it all up in a tight, well written bundle, so you needn’t worry about it.

They used two mega-strong magnetic clamps – that just happened to be lying around – to anchor themselves to the walls. Deus ex machina for the win!