The Girl in the Fireplace
May 7th, 2006
Paul Hayes on this week's episode of Doctor Who (which I only saw in this evening's BBC3 repeat, having been sold a dummy by last night's change of timeslot):
[...] There was just so much to love – the story, the performances, the dialogue, and the knowledge that it’s the type of thing only Doctor Who could have done. Where else do you get a Lord of Time riding to the rescue of his 18th century French girlfriend on the back of a horse, crashing through a mirror on the other side of which is a 51st century spaceship.
I concur. The second season has been on a rising curve, quality-wise, and this was easily my favourite so far. The one flaw was that the story had to be told at breakneck pace in order to fit into 45 minutes. I know the producers feel they can't afford to go back to four/five/six episode stories like in the good old days, but it wouldn't kill them to use their allotted 13 episodes to deliver mostly two-parters so they could give their plots room to breathe?
That said, next week's episode is the start of a two-parter. With Cybermen, yet!
