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Thanks people!

As odd as it sounds – coming from us at least – there were a few incidents that reminded us of classic Who and offered a glimmer of hope that things might have gotten better.

They were few and far between but it’s only fair that we list them. This shouldn’t take too long…

Dalek – The Doctor Gets Scared
This was genius! The reintroduction of the Daleks in series one of new Who, needed to tick so many boxes that it was always going to be difficult.

The job of introducing them to a new, younger audience was never going to be straightforward, things have moved on since the sixties. The Daleks seemingly hadn’t though, their design remained resolutely the same as always. Lights on the head, an eye stalk and plungers and egg whisks for weapons.

It was going to be tricky conveying the menace and power a Dalek held, when they still looked like this.

So with an unchanged design what was needed was a bit of the old acting! Which is what Christopher Eccleston gave us. In spades!

Thanks to Eccleston’s mad, scrambling fear at coming face to face with just one Dalek, the kids – who, this was all new to remember – were going to be under no illusions; Daleks are evil!

Blink – Easter Eggs!
Everybody loves Blink. Everybody. Ask them their reasons for loving it and we’ve no doubt they’ll say it’s the Weeping Angels.

Now as good a villain as they are, they’re not the reason it rocks so hard. No, it’s the easter eggs that solidify this storyline.

Those easter eggs are so neatly tied together and underpin the episode so well, that – as mad as it might sound – you often don’t really notice their criticality to the plot!

Another reason for the success of Blink is Sally Sparrow (played by Carey Mulligan), she more than makes up for the absence of The Doctor and thanks to her it never feels like we’re being short changed.

You see the reason why The Doctor and Martha appear in it so infrequently is that, in order to save the pennies, this episode was filmed simultaneously with another one (Human Nature). Cutting costs on a flagship show? It could only be the BBC!

Blink won the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form and Carey Mulligan received the Constellation Award for Best Female Performance in a 2007 Science Fiction Television Episode. Both awards were thoroughly deserved.

The Doctor’s Daughter – The Seven Day War
Now this was very neat, very neat indeed. Two warring factions engaged in a never ending struggle that neither side can remember the reason for.

The two sides have been going at it for generations and it’s only thanks to Donna’s mathematical genius – which also enabled her to pick up the Dewey Decimal system in two days, ho hum – that The Doctor works out exactly what’s been going on.

You see this never ending, ever lasting war has in reality – thanks to cloning and accelerated growth – has only been going on for seven days. Brilliant!

Silence In The Library – River Song, Echoes Of The Future
This is River Song, by all accounts you’ll be seeing more of her.

That little book she’s reading from? That’s her diary, a diary that looks more than a little like the TARDIS. Here’s a closer peek.

You see the implication here is that River Song has already met The Doctor, although as The Doctor can’t remember this having happened we can only assume that she’s met a future regeneration. How cool is that?

It’s a lovely little twist and we must admit that we’re amazed it hadn’t happened sooner.

Rise Of The Cybermen – Rose Tyler (In A Maid’s Outfit)
Phwoar! We know it’s bringing the tone down but come on. This is fantastic stuff, Rose, dressed like a maid! Knick-knack-noo!

Let’s leave it there shall we?

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!

As episodes go it was stupid, the premise was flawed and it was altogether hokey but you know what else it was? It was fun.

There was plenty of running around in corridors and we didn’t particularly feel for anyone but it wasn’t mired in any kind of pathetic attempt at a story arc.

If Moffatt keeps his side of the bargain and follows this sort of blueprint then Doctor Who will once again be fantastic!

The single biggest issue wasn’t with the design of the villains, which on the whole was decent. Nor was it with the sets, which although unimaginative were at least a lot more solid than the classic show’s.

No, it was neither of these things that ruined Russell T Davies vision of Who, it was the writing.

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again, Russell T Davies can do drama but he can’t do sci-fi and he certainly can’t write believable dialogue. Do you want some proof? Ok, read this:

Dalek: You propose an alliance?

Cybermen: This is correct.

Dalek: Request denied.

Still with us? You’ve got to agree that’s an appalling interchange that is neither grammatically correct – a proposal is not a request – nor neccesary! If the Daleks are going to tear the Cybermen a new arsehole, you’d imagine they wouldn’t feel the need to announce it.

It gets worse though, feast your eyes on the response to the denied request, the Cybermen go on a deleting spree:

Cybermen: Hostile elements will be deleted.

Dalek: Exterminate!

Yawn. A couple of Cybermen get offed by a Dalek.

Cybermen: Open visual link. Daleks be warned you have declared war upon the Cybermen.

That’s a fair line. The Cybermen are rational, thinking creatures, offering the Daleks a way out of any conflict with a fairly assertive statement. However given their response, the Daleks seem to think they’re The Rock and they’re at WrestleMania XXVII.

Dalek: This is not war this is pest control.

Christ. Please stop. Alas, the smack talk continues.

Cybermen: We have five million Cybermen, how many are you?

Dalek: Four.

Cybermen: You would destroy the Cybermen with four Daleks?

Dalek: We would destroy the Cybermen with one Dalek.

Why don’t you then?

I’ve saved the best for last though. Without doubt what follows is the single worst piece of dialogue ever conceived. It totally pisses over everything that the Daleks are supposed to be and in the delivery of the sort of line you’d expect Arnie to be using in 1986, destroys any sense of menace that they ever had.

Ready?

Dalek: You are superior in only one respect.

Cybermen: What is that?

Dalek: You are better at dying! Raise communications barrier!

How pathetic is that? That’s not the sort of things the Daleks would do. Surely?

Can you imagine a war film with Hitler and Churchill where they use that dialogue? No. Neither can we. Pathetic.

As a special treat here’s a clip – from YouTube – of the entire exchange. Watch it if you feel brave enough.

You were warned…