I thought it was okay, rather than bad. Maybe that's because I compared it to Roberts' previous effort - The Shakespeare Code. You know the one where the Doctor and his companion go back in time, meet a famous writer, portrayed as a genuis, and keep referencing the works that they haven't done yet, and use the writers mindset to help defeat the winged baddie? At least this time, it wasn't as subtle as a brick, Christie was portrayed a lot more realistically than Shakespeare, and there were a couple of jokes in there. Not enough to label it as a comedy (and like VTT, I laughed once, same sort of time).

Roberts seemed to suggest that Christie's longevity, and book sales was proof that she was a good writer, which almost encapsulates the shallowness of New Who. Don't forget had Shakespeare quoting JK Rowling in the last series.

It just seems that RTD knows that The Doctor can travel back in time, so we have to go to the past. Now, in the old series, (Hartnell era apart, which was about using the historicals to educate), when the series went back, they went back to events, to times, not to people. And when they went to people, rather than times, it was an unmitigated disaster (Timelash, anyone), or it was kept short, and essential to the plot (The King's Demons). The likes of Talons Of Weng Chiang and Pyramids Of Mars worked, because there was no personality. If RTD had commissioned Roberts to write The Visitation, it would have been all about Samuel Pepys.

Using major historical characters is hard, because they have to be written well, played by convincing actos, and used realistically in terms of the plot. RTD has to use Queen Victora (badly), Roberts uses Shakespeare knuckle-chewingly badly. Only The Unquiet Dead and those stories written by Cornell and Moffatt have have dealt with the past well. TUD because Simon Callow is the biggest Dickens fan alive and a perfectionist, and Cornell and Moffatt because they've either avoided the Cult of Personality or used a minor character from history. Oh, and they're fucking great writers who understand the show.

Oh, and after their best performances so far last week, Tennant and Tate his lows for their respective characters.