Archive: Doctor Who 2008

An archive of reviews of the 2008 series of British science-fiction programme Doctor Who.

UK TV

Review: Doctor Who – 4×5 – The Poison Sky

6 May 2008 Rob Buckley 7 Comments

Ah. Now that’s better. Finally, a decent two-parter and – miraculous though it might seem – one written by Helen Raynor at that.

After last week’s poorly paced but still reasonably good first part, I was expecting a lump of old rubbish for the second part, since that’s how it usually pans out. But hurroo, hurray, bar the occasional bit of dodgy dialogue, direction and acting, it was good.

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UK TV

Review: Doctor Who – 4×4 – The Sontaran Strategem

28 April 2008 Rob Buckley 22 Comments

Situation report
Saturday 26/04/08. 18.15hrs. 
New episode of Doctor Who about to start. Old enemy, the Sontarans, are about to appear for first time since slightly poor Colin Baker story The Two Doctors and an episode of Jim'll Fix It back in the 80s.

Very excited, despite having seen publicity photo of the Sontarans that makes them look like they've been designed by Mad magazine and Joel Schumacher. Not sure about appearance by Martha Jones either. Could be good. Could be bad.

But what's this? "Written by Helen Raynor"? Helen Raynor who wrote the uniformly bad Daleks in Manhattan and Evolution of the Daleks, as well two really dull episodes of Torchwood?

Abort! Abort! Pull out! We do not have sufficient caffeine to survive. Casualties will be heavy!

Anyone fancy going down the pub?

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UK TV

Review: Doctor Who – 4×1 – Partners in Crime

5 April 2008 Rob Buckley 20 Comments

Three firsts for Doctor Who this year:

  1. I’m reviewing the first episode sober. No, you haven’t entered the Twilight Zone. It’s true, it’s real, and it’s happening right now.
  2. It was actually cute of all things. Sure, Big Finish has done cute but this is the first time I can think of that the TV series has done cute.
  3. Russell T Davies wrote the opening episode and I liked it.

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