Do you type this stuff whilst actually watching it?Your last two paragraphs are getting there, but come on, just describing it scene by scene is totally pointless.

How about when you review the Easter episode you make it spoiler free? Maybe try to describe why people would or would not want to watch it without ruining it for them? Or alternatively just put a link to the screenplay and one line saying whether you liked it or not.

I saw the opening scene a while back as it was shown on the BBC during Children in Need. and I had a problem with Morrisey's bravado during his introduction as to me he seemed egotistical. Having seen it now, I think that was actually the intension.

Some of the effects were pretty poor (speeding up and down on the ropes and things, the CG machine)

Anyway this sort of thing is beside the point. This is Doctor Who. I was watching it with my little boy and he was scared silly, and both of our jaws dropped when the Cyber King made its appearance (Surely it should have been a Cyber Queen?!)

http://tinyurl.com/tttwh o

Did the Cyberking remind anyone of the Megasmith from Path of Neo?

http://www.zshare.net/video/53 27078359df1ba3/

The problem though with it as a stand alone title is that while it works for Episode 1, Sidious isn't perceived as being an immediate threat. That falls to the Trade Federation and Darth Maul. Yes, Sidious is behind everything but the other Star Wars titles are pretty straight forward...In The Empire Strikes Back you see the Empire...uh...striking back. You see the clones attacking, you see the Sith getting their revenge and A New Hope rising.

While The Phantom Menace works for Episode I, it works better as an overall title for the prequels.

Anyways, Doctor Who...you know a part of me was hoping that Morrisey would have actually have been playing the first Doctor in his life before we first see the Doctor as an old man.

Ditto the Time War. I don't EVER want to see this on anything other than a cinema screen, with the kind of budget LOTR got. So it needs to stay offscreen.... where it is BETTER.

First up, that shite RTD thintg of giving us an interesting title... and pissing it down the drain in five minutes of it starting. THE DOCTOR'S DAUGHTER... a shitty clone warrior from the Doctor's DNA, albeit with the possible ability to regenerate. As cute as Georgia Moffet is, that episode was crap. Badly thought out (if everything had lasted only a week, why all the extremely old rooms, weapons, clothing etc? Why young people and old people mixed?) and shoddily put together (why was Martha in there again, except for the weepy scene with the Hath dying - the Beeb bludgeoning us with politically correct blather AGAIN), this was a waste of a half-decent plot possibility.

THAT SEASON 4 REGEN-THAT-WASN'T - How shite was THAT?!? Not only is there now some half-arsed Tennant mortal clone running around in Rose's universe - not that it mattered, since by the end of the STOLEN EARTH Rose had been robbed of any kind of charisma, attitude or point whatsoever - not even a shadow of the Rose in S1 - but we have to believe that a dead hand in some jar can regrow a Time Lord. Oh, and then the TARDIS tows the Earth back home, after the whole "a Companion will die!" prophecy given by the insane Dalek Caan is COMPLETELY ignored. Absolute bollocks.

Then that POSEIDON ADVENTURE IN SPACE mess, which if you substituted the Host for bad guy henchmen and the spaceship for a boat isn't even a fucking SF adventure - RTD wasn't even trying any more at that point. Still enough power to beam Mr Copper and the Doctor down to Earth, but nmot enough to save Astrid's pattern IN THE SAME FUCKING TELEPORTER?!? To the talkbacker above who said RTD writes plot-holes you can drive a semi through: I think he's written plot-holes that you'd be able to fit a planet through. He's a great ideas man - big, epic, audacious ideas that would be AWESOME done right - but by the time he's finished cramming in his PC agendas, his half-arsed characterisation, his wholly-ripped-off-from-other-S F-stuff ideas and his try-to-please-everyone-but-end -up-pleasing-no-one attitude, you end up with a rushed, over-bloated CGI mess that just hints at the greatness DOCTOR WHO could be but then slathers it in shite.

See you, RTD. Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out. And make way for Moffat - a REAL fucking storyteller, whose plotting puts the show before anything else.

Jump forward into the realms of RTD's THE NEXT DOCTOR, however, and a black Martha clone called Rosita is running around London in the Victorian era doing all manner of unladylike (or so t6he Victorians would have thought) things, and no-one bats an eyelid.

THIS is the problem with new Who. When it honestly ackowledges how it REALLY was in the past - as in HUMAN NATURE - it can drag those old prejudices out into the light of 21st century morality and show it for the shallow, bigoted crap that it is. We can look at how Martha was spoken to in HUMAN NATURE and be disgusted - and it reminds us that this should never happen again. Good work. But what does glossing over these past ignorances (as RTD's Victorian special did) actually do? "Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it" goes a famous quote by someone I've momentarily forgotten. RTD's PC agenda is, by pretending that these things never happened, only doomed to brining on their resurgence.

Ditto for the BBC's MERLIN, which seems to think it's perfectly historically valid to have a black serving girl as Gwenevere. All very well and good, but wasn't King Arthur's story set around the time (or jjust after) of the Roman occupation of England? So the tensions leading up to the First Crusade against the Moors were in full flow... so wouldn't a black girl in an English kingdom in first century England actually be suspected of spying for the Moors, and possibly imprisoned or hanged?

BBC, if you want to prove you have the bollocks to HONESTLY tackle bigotry and discrimination, do a series on the life of the Prophet of Islam, Mohammed (PBUH) or do the story of Malcolm X, but cast a white guy as Maclom himself. Anything rather than the tired old trope of getting all up in the face of passive-aggressive white middle-England, as you always predicatably fucking do.

Shit title. We KNEW RTD would welch out on the promise of that deal, so instead of being something awesome like the very first incarnation of the Doctor, or some parallel universe Doctor, it's an amnesiac who accidentally got imprinted with info. Plus that fugue state bollocks. All complet3e crap, and completely unsatisfying.

The CYBERMEN - once conquerors of the known universe, now only good for smashing through windows and doors, and for that great clomp-clomp noise they make. And apparently, in the thousands of years they have been conquering people, Dervla Kirwan is the first strong-willed human they have ever met. Stronger than Yvonne Hartman, RTD? Or have you forgotten your own fucking season finale from Season 2? SHITE!

And if a human is THAT strong willed, how the fuck do they withstand Cyber-transplantation anyway? Why not just cut out the part of the brain that registers defiance, or boost the area that registers submission? SHENANIGANS!!!

And the Cyber-King - which should have been Cyber-QUEEN, or are the Cybermen now so fucking stupid that they can't tell male from female?

And the unexplained death ray Mercy can throw from her headset - yet more RTD bollocks, throwing in some SFX get-out-of-plothole-free card because he can't figure out a logical, 9integral-to-the-plot way of ending a scene. Dumbest thing since Dobby the Time Elf suddenly turned into Jesus in the third season finale.

Absolutely wasted. WALLACE & GROMIT was several hundred percent better, even if only for the ALIENS homage at the end. Fantastic fun!

Only four shit specials to go, then RTD is done. Gone the way of JNT...

PLEEEEEASE bring in an EDIT function for these Talkbacks! PLEEEEEEEASE!!!

I think any Time War onscreen would have to tackle something too epic to show onscreen. How exactly do you visually portray something as weird as a war being fought that involves warping reality AND time, from beginning to end? And the Nightmare Child sounds like Galactus... great in a comic but potentialy dumb-looking onscreen.

Nah, I'd rather not see it onscreen - too abstract an idea to be effectively visualised well enough. Surprisingly, one of the things I loved about the much-maligned David Lynch DUNE was how inventive the visuals were - the shields that Feyd and Paul wore when fighting with the daggers at the end, for example. Sure, it was confusing, but there's been nothing like it since, visually or narratively.

All in all after the hate last years super camp extravaganza garnered I felt RTD proved he listens to people and tries to give people what they want, an untampered with Davros and a almost old style new who Xmas special, bring on the wall, er I mean new episodes.

Oh and as usual Spud is wrong etc, etc, x

But seriously - you DIDN'T find the plotholes to be distracting enough to make this whole shenanigan awful? I swear, sometimes I think you might be the kind of guy who ENJOYS the complexities and multi-layered plotting of, say, POWER RANGERS.

Bring on the Moffat!

How do you KNOW you'll enjoy the next Doctor Who program before you've even seen it?

If you're taking the time to post on an AICN TB, you'll already be the kind of person for whom the SF/fantasy genre is a significant part of their life and/or choice of entertainment. You always have something to say about the episode you've watched - such as thinking that there was an interesting twist in this year's special - so you clearly understand how to clearly criticise something, whether good or bad. You're intelligent, eurdite, polite. Not to mention civilised. And then you end by contradicting all that by saying you KNOW you'll enjoy the next episode. Maybe it's me nitpicking, but how do you KNOW you'll enjoy it? I mean, I enjoy some parts of every episode, and htis year was no exception - though dumb-looking, at least the Cyber-Monkeys were original, and the whole Next Doctor thing was interesting until the dumb-ass let-down revelation of what was REALLY going on, but still - both interesting concepts to begin with. Do you mean that you will always find SOMETHING to enjoy in that given episode? Or do you watch these episodes so determined to enjoy them that you cloud your ability to dispassionately judge and/or criticise them as a piece of entertainment?

Talkbacks are effectively a tool for the global viewers of entertainment to be their own critics - to let everyone know what they think. To post on a talkback just to tell everyone that they are all moaning minnies for no reason, then to say you already know you'll enjoy the next episode - despite not having seen it! - seems to be at best incongruous, and at worst downright nonsensical. You can't hold a position where you8 criticise others for being critical, when clearly you have no intention of being objectively critical yourself - you may as well chant "you're all wrong, nah-nah nah-nah nah" whilst sticking your fingers in your ears.

That said, I hope you DO enjoy PLANET OF THE DEAD - I hope we ALL do. I only post these negative posts when something that promises to be as cool as a title like THE NEXT DOCTOR suggests turns out to be an SFX CGI encrusted turd, as this episode did.

Great introduction, wonderful to see two great actors bouncing off each other. Any one with any sense knew he wasn't really the next doctor but it was enjoyable finding out how and why he was the way he was(If that makes any sense)

Spud Mc Spuds criticisms are all fair and valid and the part of the special that really makes you incredulous was the ending. Why do the Cyber men suddnely all blow up? why does she blow up? It may be Christmas but It's not bloody Panto.
Wallace and Gromit had some great scences and seemed to feel a bit rushed and lacked a large cast that would have made a real who dunnit possible. you can't have a who dunnit with only 1 character.

So apart from that a damn fine episode of Doctor who and pretty good Wallace and Gromit.

Oh and Torchwood is festering in the hole RTD left it in. Long may it rot.

It was great, if you didn't like it, then don't watch it anymore..nuff said.

As for Wallace and Gromit...it was Wallace and Gromit. Of course it was going to be excellent.

I really don't understand what some of you are complaining about! I'm not a RTD fan AT ALL - the guy has written some terrible episodes during his time but this was good, solid entertaining television. Sure there were plotholes but I sat transfixed throughout the entire episode, and loved Morrisey's take on The Doctor. Tennant gave another great performance (as he always does!) and there was SO much to enjoy here! The explanation about 'The Next Doctor' was also great and I actually let out a sigh of relief when it came (as I thought RTD was going to give us one of his typically stupid explanations).

This was perfect Christmas television and was, by far, the second best of the Christmas Doctor Whos (with last year's being the worst by far and Tennant's first after his regeneration being the best).

If you really hated it so much, I feel sorry for you. You should just stick to Coronation Street and Eastenders. Leave Doctor Who to those of us who have a little warmth left in our hearts and the capacity to enjoy something without shouting 'Plot hole!' at it every ten minutes.

Last's years Xmas special may have been as camp as a window but it did entertain me for most of it's runtime. This year's episode felt a little soulless to me. And like others have said before me – How come the Cybermen have become such rubbish villains in new-Who?

I hope the Doctor gets a companion for next year's specials. Even if it's a short-term one. The show has more life to it when the Doc has someone.

Now unless anything unforeseen happens I will return to review "Planet of the Dead" at Easter.

That's more like it. Fun, funny, sweet and stylish. All at once. And containing a reference to the original Adam West 'Batman' film to boot.

Well it would be neat if he went on one or two adventures, then got ditched.

PREDICTION: Tennant's Doctor will expire via tripping over a brick.

WISHLIST for the real Next Doctor... Nesbitt is my #1 choice. Paterson Joseph would be good too. I love the idea of the Doctor being regenerated as a person of color or a woman. If it's a woman Dawn French would be fine, hell, Jennifer Saunders would rock too. I'd LOVE to see Jane Horrocks (Bubble from AbFab) as the Doctor or at least as Romana if and when she returns.

COMPANIONS: Change it up. I don't want to see another female unless it's River Song. The Master should still be in some detention hold in the bowels of the TARDIS. He'd have made a great anti-companion. Give us a robot. maybe some twist on K9. Give us an alien picked up along the way. How about some well known historical figure that disappeared and fill in their mysterious gaps.

And let us see some more of the geography within the TARDIS

That said... It might look as if the Beeb are too busy trying to cast ethnically rather than by talent if they cast Paterson Joseph. Anyone familiar with his little stint in new Who (he was the contestant who beat Rose at the futuristic Weakest Link on the Game Station in "The Long Game", I believe) or on the Beeb's recent SURVIVORS will see that he's a very limited actor: either using his bug-eyed startled face, or his whispering, blank face for pretty much his entire repertoire. You know those actors who look EXACTLY the same whatever emoitions they're portraying? That's Paterson Joseph. Contrast that with Chiwetel Ejiofor, who plays so differently in LOVE ACTUALLY, KINKY BOOTS and SERENITY (to name but a few) and you'll see Chi has range, he has depth, he can play wildly different extremes of emotion - from extremely controlled and calm (SERENITY) to the driven Det Mitchell in INSIDE MAN, and all the roles inbetween - Chiwetel is your man for the role. Tennant, as gloriously fun as he is to watch as the Doctor, has certain tics and idiosyncrasies he uses to the point of overkill - his overpronunciation, his adding "YAH!" on the end of every important line, his un-nerving habit of showing us his tonsils every time he yells - but he has energy, boundless amounts of manic energy, which work well for the role of the Doctor. A plank that has two very distinct and very wooden acting faces is not a good choice for arguably one of the best roles on the BBC - and Paterson Joseph is that plank. He's nowhere near as good an actor as you need in that role.

Now the argumewnt about black people in period episodes of Doctor Who... the BBC can't have its cake AND eat it. Do you show, historically, how backward and ridiculous it was to have such prejudices in the past, by showing people's ingnorance and racism - then take the chance to have that character prove that such steretyping is ridiculous by behaving bravely, intelligently and morally? Or do you sweep it under the carpet, have black people running around in periods of British history where clearly black people were heavily persecuted and suppressed, and risk forgetting the lessons we should have learned from the past - that such bigotry and racism is WRONG? How does pretending that there was no racism in the Victorian era help the fight to prevent racism in the modern era? And - more sinisterly - where does such revisionism end? Ask a Jew if they think it's a good idea to pretend the Holocaust never happened. You'd likely meet a level of indignance and anger you'd be very unused to - and rightly so: the very idea is abhorrent. So why is rewriting history for a kids' program, that very much impacts upon the thinking of its young viewers, NOT considered ot be abhorrent?

It's so disgusting, the level of hypocrisy the BBC exists at, and I just wish the whole damn corporation would grow some balls and decide which side if the fence it REALLY sits on. It's a bit rich to insist there's nothing wrong with recasting Queen Guinevere (in MERLIN) as a black serving girl, while at the same time bleating at how inappropriate it is in this day and age to have white actors playing Othello on stage. Exactly why is this different?!?

Ah, hell. I'd be happy if Tom Chambers got the gig. Fuck it - why not?

After all if we can accept the conceit of a time traveller why can't we accept him taking people of all colours back in time?, to accept one and not the other seems ood to me.

That said, if you're going to have a Companion of a certain ethnicity in the TARDIS (and there's absolutely NOTHING wrong with that - why would there be?) then you have to accept that in certain less intelligent and less honourable times in England's history, a person of said ethnicity would have been treated offensively. It's the truth, and just because it's disgusting and offensive doesn't make it any less true. If you're going to pretend that a black woman could run around in Victorian England doing what most white men would do - basically doing what the next Doctor was doing - then at least acknowledge that in that time, it was unusual enough to draw significant attention. Pretending that the past was completely different to what is REALLY was is doing new Who a grave disservice - because apart from being an SF show, the main thing new Who is, is a HISTORY show.

It's just politically correct nonsense that, left unchecked, just allows white bigotry and racism against non-whites to flourish and be affirmed by the positive discrimination that this is indicative of, and which runs endemically through the entire Beeb output like a vein of festering hypocrisy. It's not just ignorant, it's dangerous, and it's wrong - and it gives REAL racists and bigots ammunition that would be denied to them if the Beeb could just actually listen to people with fucking intelligence (Paul Cornell for instance) and not just listen to those whose views and lifestyle suit the Beeb's predilection for minority box-ticking about actual creative development (Russel the T, take a bow).

as you can tell, this irks me more than just a little... But thanks for the comeback, Smashing, and hope you have a great New Year :D

Oh, and there has to be a Doctor=Jesus parallel somewhere in there. Cannot WAIT for the reign of the Grand Moff!

I'd actually expect them to explain why Paterson Joseph's Doctor looks like two other characters we've seen in WHO already.

There is a precedent-in Star Trek people have been known to play two or three bit parts before getting a name role, and Martha was a redshirt on WHO before she was Martha.