UK TV

The block-viewing of Doctor Who continues again (interspersed with Top Gear and Australia’s Next Top Model) and we’ve now reached the end of series three.

Yet more notes on the episodes. Do you agree or disagree? And have you seen the episodes recently enough that your memory isn’t cheating? – because it does, you know…

• The first half of the series is nearly unwatchable. Oh my. In my wife’s words, “This must have been why I stopped watching the Martha episodes”. Although…
• The Shakespeare Code was quite good, even though it makes Gareth Roberts look like a one-trick pony in retrospect, thanks to The Unicorn and the Wasp – he’s clearly not, if you’ve seen/read his other stuff, particularly on The Sarah Jane Adventures, so that’s unfortunate
• If you even try to watch Daleks in Manhattan and Evolution of the Daleks more than once, you need locking up. I’m closing the cell door on myself right now because I clearly can’t be trusted to learn from experience…
• The Human Nature/Family of Blood two-parter is great in almost every respect, although the first part is too much set-up for part two to be truly perfect. I wish every story ended with the Doctor being mentally nasty to the bad guys like that
• Blink makes even less sense watching it the second time round and has more holes in it than that house, after it’s had a brick lobbed through the front window. But, it’s still very good
• Despite what everyone says, the Master trilogy is magnificent, and Last of the Time Lords‘s deus ex machina resurrection is still disappointing, even if you can buy Stu_N’s master plan explanation
• Bless her, at least Sweet FA was trying to act in series three