Doctor Who

Warning – this post contains spoilers concerning the ending of series “three” of the “New” BBC Doctor Who series with David Tennant and Freema Agyeman. Do not read on if you haven’t watched it and don’t want key details being given away.

What a big disapppointment – David Tennant is a brilliant actor, but the writers of Doctor Who do not seem to be given him the oppunitity to shine through: the plots are weak and things aren’t as good as they should be. To illustrate this, I’ll cover the last three episodes:
* “Utopia” was a good episode, but if they had kept Derek Jacobi as the Master it would have been perfect. John Simm is just too young to be The Master. The Master is meant to be The Doctor’s equal (if not his superior) but he just can’t give off that “air” of superiority needed for the role.
* The Master’s behaviour also isn’t in keeping with the established character: the “old master” wouldn’t have kept the Jones family alive (especially not working on a ship with him and in contact with each other as they’ll pose a potential threat), he’ll destroy them as soon as he could. I’m not going to even touch on The Master’s “immaturity” in the episodes: dancing, cracking jokes etc etc… Just not “Master Like”
* Plot hole: It was “shown” that the TARDIS-made Paradox machine was essential to prevent a Paradox caused by the “future humans” destroying themselves in the past. However, that would only be necessary if the human race entirely was eliminated (they were just decimated: I did like that they did use the old meaning of decimate to get rid of one tenth of the population). As long as there was a “breeding pair” of humans left surviving to repopulate the universe to the level shown in Utopia in the year one trillion there would be no paradox.
* Inconsistency: In an old episode, the TARDIS is described as being “isomorphically controlled” (i.e. it is keyed to The Doctor’s biometrics and hence can only be controlled by him). How did The Master take control of the TARDIS, but The Doctor couldn’t use The Master’s laser screwdriver (which was also “isomorphically controlled”).
* The whole 2 parter was very drawn out and slow paced (too many “music scenes” and flash backs) – it needed to be a bit more faster paced.
* Getting rid of Martha: Boo! She was quite good, but I just wish she didn’t have to save The Doctor so much.
* The Doctor hooked in to the Psychic Energy of people of Earth and managed to reverse age himself? Hmmm…
* And how come The Doctor, already over 900 years old, aged physically so much within 100 years?
* And how come ageing him a further 900 years (making him over 1900 years old) shrunk him down to a foot high?
* And since when could Time Lords “decide” whether or not to regenerate?

The writers should have made The Master a lot more serious, older and “wiser” (I always see The Master as being superior to The Doctor with his only downfall being that he thinks nobody can stop him due to his superiority).

Please please please BBC, come up with some convincing baddies in the new series (but no “new mutated animal” type ones: the “Blink” episode was extremely good baddy wise) and please please please keep things consistent, maybe more non-Earth based stuff and a bit more frightening.