Why would it give you goothebumpth?

Oh, and excellent news about Dervla Kirwan appearing in the forthcoming Xmas special. Quite apart from being as hot as a stoker's shovel, she's one of my ex-customers. I had to sort out the plumbing in her flat in Chelsea.

That's the most wishful euphemism ever posted on OTF, isn't it?`

Oh, and a PM for your good self, PG.

PG, you really should just amend that anecdote to "I once had to sort out her plumbing", and leave it at that.

Or "I once had to clean her pipes".

"I once had my hand right up her S-bend"?

No, best to stop now.

Yeah, y'see it was precisely to try and forestall that sort of sniggering and smutmongering that I related it in such a deadpan fashion. In fact I actually had to give her boiler a proper going-over, but announcing that (a) just invites crude raillery and (b) leaves me with a paralysing sense of yearning for what might have been. Nobody wins.

Replied, Phoebs.

Cheers.

And you make that sound like crude raillery is wrong.

Anyway, there were things I didn't like about it but I thought it was much better than last year's.

I thought the Davros(rocking the Oedipus look rather well)/Doctor conversation was a great primer for kids in ethical subjectivism.

*lights touchpaper and leaves*

I have to agree, Yoss, that I'm still at a loss to work out what the Osterhagen key plot device was actually for, other than to give Martha somewhere to go for a bit. And did she really need to go home first?

I was really disappointed when first Martha and then the Hiding In The Tumble Dryer crew with their equally underwhelming Warp Star plot non-device were summoned effortlessly to Dalek HQ. Couldn't Jack just have said something bold about how the Daleks should be surprised to see him and that he and his mates were clearly therefore more than a match for them? Why pointlessly wave around a prop from Men in Black?

Seriously, though. That whole Osterhagen key. It was superfluous last week and what did having it around achieve this week? Why does Martha have to have her own, personal lengthily set-up then momentarily dismissed non-threat? Sarah Jane and Jack at least got their's sorted out from start to finish in about ninety seconds.

See I don't mind those sorts of false leads, at least there was a purpose to what she was doing, and if it came to naught then hey, life's like that sometimes. You're right though, the story didn't need Martha there at all. Much like the whole of series three.

I don't normally make a habit of cross-posting between different boards, but I'm making an exception here as we're having similar discussions on both:

In terms of the story itself and the drama therein, I thought it was much better than last year's. Bleach as Davros was a million times better and more interesting than Simm as Master, and there was nothing like as crap as everyone-chanting-the-doctor's-name-at-once.

In respect of the incidentals, there was much that wasn't right though. Firstly, playing fast and loose with the whole regenerative thing I wasn't comfortable with, and the second doctor / doctor-Donna stuff. It sort of worked in terms of the dramatic flow of the story (though why, incidentally, did the daleks remove the tardis from its lock when they knew there was someone still inside? They weren't to know Donna didn't know how to fly it) but it all seemed "a bit dr who" as BusStop on 40percent puts it. Though as bat more diplomatically notes, Davies tinkers a bit too much with the cogency and internal consistency that sci-fi needs. Moffat's scripts have been tighter in that respect, which is why I remain hopeful for future series, though he hasn't yet hat to write a ratings-busting season finale.

So yeah, then those last twenty minutes, was that supposed to be all sad and heart-string tugging? Just it was just a bit naff, really. The Donna story, yeah whatever - again it sort of worked but it was just a shoulder-shrugging end. (And was that mind-wiping supposed to be the death of which Caan spoke? It was the opposite of Forest of the Dead, where they made all that fuss about River Song living even though she plainly didn't, this time they had a whole series-worth of hullaballoo about Donna's sticky end only for her to live. Fair enough, I suppose.)

But the Rose thing was worse. First you've got this now useless spare doctor who shouldn't be, and you've got Rose back but Billie obviously doesn't want to do it full time again, so Davies puts in this little solution that sorts his problems but makes no sense. Firstly, there's no reason Rose needs to go back to the other reality anyway, she only slipped into it by mistake last time the two were open, what possible harm can it do for her to slip back through this time? But then, she's more or less press-ganged into cohabitation with the Tennant she obviously doesn't want, and there's no way of making it seem right, but instead of thinking oh how sad or oh that's nice you just thinkg Ewwww, you're snogging the wrong bloke you little tart.

Still in future years when the real Tennant-doctor has long since regenerated and moved onto better things, he'll still be able to come back with a guest appearance, they'll be both Rose and a half-time-lord Tennant can pop up again to join the a doctor next time the walls of reality are falling apart.

Ooh, I think far too many people are being far too harsh about tonight. I was in pieces when Rose was back on the beach at Bad Wolf Bay, with her "human" Doctor, who could lean across and say "I love you", which the real Doctor knew he could never do. Very Highlander.

I haven't the time nor the inclination to go through all the posts with a fine toothed comb, but I thought last night's episode it was all good, cracking fun. The trick is not to approach all that stuff as if it was Shakespeare and accept it as it was intended: lively, knockabout, all-over-the-shop gubbins that probably didn't make much sense if you looked too closely at it with the stern, clinical attitude of a headmaster.

It had its flaws, god, yes (Freema Agyeman, bless her, has all the dramatic force and subtlety of a Tesco checkout girl), but then my enjoyment of it was purely determined by looking at it at as a singular 60 minutes of entertainment. I'm not much of a Doctor Who aficionado and perhaps that's why I've enjoyed it all (with reservations, obviously) without the slightly proprietal feelings that true Who fanatics on here have done. The more affection you have for a television series (and its history), the more hurt and pissed off you get when the standards you expect aren't reached or that some episodes just don't measure up to the era of Baker, Davison or Hartnell, or that some plots have holes big enough to drive a milk float through.

That baggage I don't deal with because I don't really care about it or feel it has enough relevance to get all hot and bothered about. It's entertainment, pure and simple, and whatever Russell T. Davies's own flaws are towards writing and plot structure are, well, to be honest, they're secondary to the fact that he's resurrected an staple of Saturday Night viewing with a huge amount of aplomb and no little sense of fun. It ain't Harold Pinter and wasn't meant to be.

It's got miserable gits like me watching Saturday evening telly again, and even had me looking forward to it. That's a good job done.

Back to crappy, wanky audition-based shit shows with Andrew Lloyd-Webber's smug, punchable features smirking at me, I suppose.