The Guardian seem to think it's his mother as well

So did I. It seems to be a straight 50/50 split between those who liked it and those who didn't.



Interesting. I never actually thought of that one. I assumed it was Donna as she only showed herself to Wilf and The Doctor and because she's half-Timelord so would've regenerated. Although, if it was her (or his mother) it seems odd that he wouldn't have wispered her name or something when he recognised her. For him not to must mean she's definitely due to return in either series 5 or the christmas special. She wasn't intergral to the plot of The End Of Time so she must be there as a marker to have at least one tangable link between the 10th and 11th Doctors through the series.

Sylvia was also in the same shot.

I'm not sure what the shot was supposed to convey, given that:



Yes, Julia Gardner has confirmed that Claire Bloom was playing the Doctor's mother.

It kind of goes back to what Zoe was saying previously about RTD turning things into a soap opera. Thank heavens he didn't say "Mother" or anything (although "Are you my Mummy?" may have been amusing), but without that confirmation, it's all a bit nebulous as to who the mystery woman was. All we can really read into it, from what we saw on the screen, was that she was obviously someone significant from the Doctor's past.

It could be argued, though, that without a small element of that it wouldn't have drawn in its mainstream audience on a Saturday night.


It's easy to forget what a big risk it was for the BBC to bring the show back. To RTD's credit, the show is now established again and able to go away and comeback again in the future. Someone else might well have screwed it up and it wouldn't have got past the second series. That it's going to have its 5th series start in the Spring is no small feat, especially in the sci-fi/fantasy genre, and like him or not it seems churlish not to recognise RTD's part in that.

No. I refuse to accept her as Romana. In my mind, Romana is just as lovely as she was when I was 11 years old.

I think she is the Gallifreyan chief Nanny, and 'The Master' & 'The Doctor' are nicknames she gave them in the Nursery, when they were the 'Time Lord Babies'.

I now have visions of a Doctor Who spin-off that's halfway between Muppet Babies and Blackadder 2.

I don't think anyone's saying that he hasn't accomplished something great with Doctor Who; he has, and all credit to him and others who have worked hard to make it the hit that it is. But personally, I have never found his stories to be that engaging, mainly because of his concentrating more on character than plot. As you say, a lot of people do like his stuff, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't breathe a sigh of relief as the end credits rolled.

I'm not necessarily knocking him for those elements of his writing; having more character interaction has certainly been a part in New Who's popularity, and given the show a heart the original series rarely had, but it can be overdone.

Personally, I'm not sure what the point of Claire Bloom's character was, other than RTD does so like to have his prophets milling around spouting random lines to raise the stakes.

Sadly, he rarely delivers on what they are saying.

Rose is told she is going to die - she doesn't.

"One will die" was the mantra from Dalek Cann throughout Journey's End, and although Donna got a mind wipe, technically no one actually died (I wanted a corpse, damn you!).

Then you have The Woman, feeding Wilf odd pieces of information that don't really have much bearing on what follows.

Given that we knew Tennant was leaving, given that we knew the series was going to continue with Matt Smith, and given that we therefore knew that the Doctor clearly wasn't going to die, what was the point of having a character walking around saying he could still be saved?

If The Woman was the Doctor's mother, trying to protect her son, surely naming her as such would give the character way more significance, but as it was she just ended up being Random Woman making cryptic statements.

Perhaps RTD just wanted to put something in that fans would argue and bicker over for the rest of time!

I just hope it's an end to psychic/oracle/prophecy ladies staring into middle distance repeating tired warnings about things coming, burning or dying. I really thought it was just taking the piss having that guy in Planet of the Dead saying his wife's always been a bit psychic. What purpose have they ever served? They just say something ominous over and over that's bloody obvious rather than chilling just as a bit of filler. I can't imagine anyone saying their favourite bit of the episode was when the old henna-tattoo biddy started nattering on about future guff.

I don't think anyone is diminishing RTD's achievement in getting the show back on screen, and creating some great moments and characters. However, I don't buy him as a storyteller, for many of the reasons mentioned above and some truly awful scripts, and I don't like his 'soapy' (for want of a better word) tendencies.

My childhood Doctor (McCoy) had a lovely relationship with Ace (my hero) that was emotional without being mawkish - though I know I may be on my own in considering that 'vintage' Doctor Who!

My main criticisms would be; the poor storylines, bad choice of writers (with a few very notable exceptions), numerous weak characters, tendency to tie everything to present day London, extended families for companions, very narrow view and scope of a very rich story heritage, lack of good SF ideas, repetitive story arcs and series finales, over-reliance on the reset button (and lack of follow-through as Raven says), unnecessary bad CGI (in the place of story) and Captain Jack.

But that's all very negative. The reason I've been being a bit negative is probably because I thought the specials (all of them) were generally very weak. If they'd been great I'd probably be listing all the things I loved about the series since its return...

Moffat's amazing stories, Ecclestone and Tennant, wonderfully moving moments (the Doctor and Rose's 1st goodbye), genuine thrills and surprises, flashes of great dialogue and humour often generated from character interaction, pretty much the whole of series two, Ace Mk II, Tennant's glasses and the pleasure of having real, quality family entertainment back on a Saturday night (and on Christmas Day)

For all that I'm very grateful, and far from alone. My Mum (nearly 60) has been watching since she was 13 and sometimes she watches with her head in her hands and we slag it off for half an hour on the phone, and other times she's scared, overjoyed or moved by a really brilliant piece of TV - but she's always glad to have Doctor Who on telly again.

I'd go along with that, with the possible exception of The Waters of Mars (which I'm still trying to work out whether I like or not!).

I think both the series as a whole and Doctor No. Ten would have been better served by a regular full length series with him regenerating at the end of it (when you look at all the Who related projects Tennant has done this year, the screen time wasn't far off a full run come the end).

Christmas just isn't the right time for such a heavy, and in some ways, complicated story.

Having said that though, I don't generally have a problem with most of RTD's writing.

He has certainly written some very good stories for New Who (Parting of the Ways, Tooth and Claw, Love and Monsters, Doomsday, The Runaway Bride and Midnight) and some more of his light-weight ones have been pretty good fun as well (Smith and Jones and Partners in Crime, for example).

Of course, there have been some clunkers as well, (Yes World War III, I'm most definitely looking at you), but I'm generally happy for him to keep turning out fair such as the above and for the more meaty stories to be left to the likes of Rob Sherman, Steven Moffat and Paul Cornell etc.

As for the other writers SSG mentioned in his earlier post, yes, Helen Raynor created a real stinker with her Dalek two-parter, but she did go a good way to redeeming herself with the Sontaran story last year (even if the resolve was another McGuffin).

Also, in defence of Gareth Roberts, he have been writing good Who stories for the best part of two decades now, and whilst his TV stories thus far haven't been of the highest calibre, the stories he has turned out for the Sarah-Jane Adventures have been pretty good, and he is slated to write another next year.

Certainly. RTD isn't the worst writer on Who, and his tenure on the show isn't anywhere near as bad as others (I'm pointing a finger at those who wrote Colin Baker's stories.)Although I do think, apart from Midnight, his episodes generally range from awful to okay, but never great.

I think the thing he handled worse than anything is Rose after Series 2. Personally I had no problem with Rose until she continued to be mentioned in Series 3, and her return in Series 4 in particular. Now it's hard for me to watch episodes with her in them.

I myself cried at Tennants last episode a little bit more than I'd like to admit, but that's more because I've been a big fan of Tennant in the role than because of the quality of the writing, which wasn't terrible, but nothing amazing.

I don't think I've been able to take RTD too seriously after he left me with the image of a man getting a blowjob off a paving slab.

Well that whole episode is just terrible in every sense of the word.

It really is.

It's Doctor Who's Marmite episode, personally I like it.

Marc Warren is great and it's a good bit of fun.

I hated 'Boom Town' and 'Fear her' more. Absolute bores of episodes.

At least 'Love and Monsters' had an amusing performance by Marc Warren.

God yes, and you can throw the Long Game in there as well.

Oooh oooh, good game:

Best (regardless of writer):

The Empty Child
The Doctor Dances
New Earth
The Girl in the Fireplace
The Idiot's Lantern
Doomsday
The Christmas Invasion
Human Nature
The Family of Blood
Blink
The Sound of Drums and Last of the Timelords (Simm's contributions)
The Fires of Pompeii
Silence in the Library
Forest of the Dead
Turn Left (sort of)

Worst:
The Long Game
Bad Wolf
Love and Monsters
The Shakespeare Code
Daleks in Manhattan
Evolution of the Daleks
The Lazarus Experiment
42 (mid-series 3 was dire)
Voyage of the Damned
The Sontaran Stratagem
The Poison Sky
The Doctor's Daughter

The rest were mediocre to quite good.

Quite pleased to see there were more I really liked than really hated - hooray! I love Doctor Who after all!

I have to say, what I disliked most about RTD's stories was the way that he just cannot seem to write a proper ending to save his life. Instead it's a case of "a wizard did it" and some magical fairy dust waving macguffin hitting the big reset button and resolving everything in an instant.

Moffat has definitely been the consistantly best writer for Doctor Who. It's the depth and intelligence of his scripts that makes me so happy he's now the showrunner and writing 6 (yay!) episodes for Series 5.

Add to that Cornell (hopefully) and Neil Gaiman is apparently writing an episode.

Gatiss has written 2 good ones in the past too (Idiots Lantern and the Dickens episode).


My favourites were the Empty Child 2-parter, Blink, Fires of Pompeii, Human Nature 2-parter, Silence in the Library 2-parter, Girl in the fireplace, fathers day, Blink, Doomsday, and Waters of Mars.

Worst for me were Boom Town, fear her, The Doctor's daughter, Long game, Bad wolf (except for the end with Eccleston's rant at the daleks) and the Daleks in new york.

Rest I thought were alright/good.

I'm struggling to remember any episodes that I outright hated, though Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks and Gods and Monsters leap out at me as particularly bad ones. Maybe it's because I grew up without Doctor Who so haven't the same emotional connection that others do, but I've never been invested in the show enough to take the really bad episodes to heart or remember them much beyond the actual viewing. I have no problem naming the ones I loved, though, which is pretty much Zoe's list but without The Christmas Invasion and Turn Left.

I was being generous on those two.

It's not that I think they're bad, it's just that I have no firm memory of them. The only thing I remember about The Christmas Invasion is that I found the decision to have The Doctor be unconscious for the majority of it somewhat questionable, even though Tennant did shine once he woke up.

Although that same decision to have The Doctor not appear in most of the episode is one of the things that made Blink so good. Strange innit?

I think that's why I liked it so much, once he woke up he was brilliant, I really fell in love with him straight away.

Possible Series Five Writers.

I had heard that Gaiman wasn't going to write for the series, but going by the above it sounds as though that is still a possibility. Would be good if he did, his Babylon 5 episode was great (baring the Penn and Teller sub-plot that was forced upon him).

My favourite episodes, in broadcast order, would be:

Father's Day
The Empty Child
The Parting of the Ways
Tooth and Claw
School Reunion
The Girl in the Fireplace
The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit
Love and Monsters
Doomsday
The Runaway Bride
Human Nature/The Family of Blood
Blink
Utopia
Forest of the Dead
Midnight
The Stolen Earth/Journey's End

And the worst:

Aliens of London/World War Three
The Long Game
Boom Town
Fear Her
Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks
The Lazarus Experiment
The Sound of Drums/The Last of the Time Lords
Voyage of the Damned

With the rest falling somewhere in-between.

I'd say that the difference is due to the structures of those episodes, rather than the absence of The Doctor, but also that there is a crucial difference between him not appearing much in an episode and him being unconscious. In The Christmas invasion every time you see him he is unconscious and it just highlighted how little energy the rest of the cast were bringing to the plot. His appearances were a constant reminder of what was missing and you want him to wake up to inject some life into the show (which he does and he rescues what is, in my opinion, an otherwise moribund episode).

Blink benefited from having Sally Sparrow, an engaging character trying to fathom out an interesting mystery, so The Doctor's appearances, rather than reminding us what was missing, acted as nice little surprises dotted throughout the episode that also served to remind the audience what was at stake.

Oh I wasn't pointing fingers at anyone. It was a general observation from what I'd read in various places. There just seemed to be an air of dismissing Tennant's (and RTD's) run over the last 4 years on the basis of one episode. Just me running forward with my guilded shield of defense.

Got you talking, though.




Unless it's a marker for a future appearance in the upcoming series or christmas special then it would actually be a Moffat thing rather than RTD. While he's tied up things from his era he's sewn a little something for the next one, hense The Doctor not saying anything.

Maybe.

I wouldn't rule out a future appearance of the character (The Master has ended up inside the Time Lock, and I can't see that lasting, so if he gets out I guess anyone will be able to), but I'm pretty certain that The Woman wasn't added at Moffat's request.

I'm a complete sap, so while I agree that a lot of the last two shows were lacking a tight plot, I still got very involved in the emotions of saying goodbye to Tennant's Doctor. I don't mind an episode that deals with relationships more than plot - I think both types of episodes have their place in the Whoverse.

My absolute favourite episodes have been a lot of the ones already mentioned (Blink being the absolute highlight for me) and I love the well-plotted mysteries, but ultimately I enjoyed watching the End of Time and got all sad at the end when he was saying his goodbyes. I'm also a cheese-fiend, so having little vignettes of each of the major players in the tenth Doctor's time show up made me happy to say hello to them again. The thing I liked most about the last episode was that it was almost completely a two-hander by Tennant and Cribbins, who play wonderfully against each other and created some beautifully poignant moments. Cribbins really made me emotional quite a few times.

In all, I was fine with the episode and I'm really looking forward to the new series. Even if I can't lust over Ten-Inch any more. *sad*

Absolutely. And to think Cribbins could've been The Doctor himself at one point. Makes me wonder if he had been who else would've played those last scenes with David Tennant so well.

The writers for series five have been confirmed in the new issue of Doctor Who magazine.

Lead writer Steven Moffat will write six of the thirteen episodes. He will be joined by Chris Chibnall who is writing two episodes and Mark Gatiss, Toby Whithouse, Gareth Roberts, Richard Curtis and Simon Nye all writing one episode each.

Sounds good, most of them have written for Who previously too.

Interesting to see what Nye will do though as He's only ever done sitcoms previously!

I really hope one of the writer's episodes isn't just Blackadder: Back & Forth.

Apparently he's doing an episode about

Van Gogh. It was speculated before that he'd write blackadder into an episode but it's doubtful

Was that the issue with the free sonic screwdriver?

Awww. No Neil Gaiman? Gutted.

Good to see Toby Whithouse contributing. Especially if he is on Being Human form

Oh yes, he wrote the Sarah Jane episode in Tennant's first series too.

Or even School Reunion form!

Heeheehee, the Doctor's facebook.. (Linked as it's a big picture).

http://www.holymoly.com/sites/default/file...cebook-page.jpg

Love the album names and friends list too.

And the Master's! http://fc09.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2009/363...llish_Gnome.jpg

^ I do like Trumpton style Sam Tyler being one of The Master's friends.



I may have been slightly harsh in my criticism of The End Of Time having watched it again more closely over the last couple of days. It's more thought out than I realised. Still a bit patchy in part 1 and not quite tight enough towards the end of part 2, but otherwise I'm happier with the episodes after watching them again than I was initially.

A new thought on the appearance of The Doctor's mother, if it was her. It could be that RTD did write that he acknowledged her verbally but David Tennant may have chose to act it internally rather than say it out loud.

I finally saw the teaser for next season and it looks brilliant to me, the casual Who viewer who hasn't watched the last two series properly.

New Who companion, Amy Pond, is a kissogram.

The Daily Mail will love that . . .

Ha, She's got it, she flaunts it. Didn't realise 'Kissograms' were still about.

The minds of the Daily Mail and Cotton-wool parents will implode.

You think she's in a position of power and respect, with a good job; but actually she's one step up from a stripper! Got you!

Something else for the more 'traditional' Doc Who fans to moan about, that having a Kissogram means their "Show is going to the gutter" Like they did with Captain Jack when he first turned up

It's a pretty twee gutter

But deceptively spacious . . .