However, in terms of the positive things you say about the Easter special (and oh my goodness the Titanic abortion) YOU’RE WRONG YOU’RE WRONG YOU’RE WRONG YOU’RE WRONG YOU’RE WRONG. I hope that’s cleared that up.

But as an RTD episode this was, like the last Christmas special, deservingly okay. Compared to the ridiculous throw-up of every tasteless lump of bullshit that had been before that was the end of season 4, it was a graceful work of art.

And yes the magical negro was awful, and yes Colonel Mugabe holding a gun to Lee Evans’s head might as well not have actually happened, but otherwise it was a decent enough bit of Doctor Who that rested just on the right side of average.

Weirdest thing: I just looked up “Turn Left” – one of the very few genuinely good episodes of season 4 – and it turns out RTD wrote it. Funny old world, eh?

Shit like this annoys me – did so in Terminator 3 (plane reg #) and did here…

So let’s examine what’s happened here: you’ve watched a show that you knew you were going to hate and be infuriated by, because you hate and are infuriated by EVERY episode RTD writes, even the brilliant ones. You’d already vowed never to watch another RTD episode as long as you lived because you find them so hateful and infuriating. And yet now you appear to be angry at HIM because YOU chose to watch something that was absolutely CERTAIN to make you unhappy, even if it had been 10 times as good as it was, which was a middling episode with some shabby scripting and some good bits.

The similarity to Midnight was lazy, the flying bus was embarrassing, the bits of sub-Tolkien dialogue (“They are shining”) as toe-curling as ever and the last 5 minutes, as usual with Davies’ “big” episodes, were pretty dire, stumbling through several half-endings before finally settling on one.

The core story was perfectly decent sci-fi hokum about the metal stingrays creating wormholes and laying waste to planets. They weren’t trying to destroy the Earth (specifically) or the universe, they were just animals hunting for food. The progress of that story unfolded entirely reasonably – the Doctor thinks of a way to get the bus moving, and UNIT, with the Doctor’s help, manage to get the wormhole closed. They’ve managed to send Rose back in time and across dimensions before, so that’s hardly an outrage against logic.

I’d happily push Lee Evans into a volcano full of sharks and AIDS, but he was rather charming as the supernerd here – the Doc is like God to UNIT, so it’s hardly implausible to imagine a geeky scientist reacting to him like Obi-Wan Kenobi and showed up at the Norwich Sci-Fi And Comics Convention.

The Doctor’s attitude to Michelle Ryan’s character was entirely in keeping – he doesn’t want the heartache of another sidekick right now, but on reflection realises that on the grand scoreboard of existence, playing a crucial role in saving the entire planet probably scores more points than some petty thievery, and therefore spending the rest of her life in jail isn’t a very just reward.

The flies? They’re a PLOT DEVICE for Heaven’s sake, a means for there to be a spaceship there for the Doc to find something he could use to get the bus moving. Would you have preferred it if he’d somehow saved the bus with another miraculous function of the sonic screwdriver? And the flies had to die, because I somehow don’t think Earth is quite ready yet to accomodate giant walking insects. As you point out, the planet’s had a bit of a rough time lately with regard to aliens, and would be unlikely to behave very welcomingly.

If I’d been writing it I might have had the trigger-happy troops shoot them on the bus, but the way RTD did it at least had the benefit of leaving the Doctor with no reason to regard Colonel Magumbo or whatever her name was with suspicion, which hopefully opens up some possibilities for coming episodes and series.

As for the passengers, what do you want from a random collection of six people on a fricking bus? He’s already got a psychic and a genius thief with a backpack full of tools, anything else but plebs making up the numbers and it’s just ridiculous. And as far as chops and gravy goes… wow, you’re really not very good with ordinary people, are you? The Doctor got them thinking about normal things to keep them calm and occupied, because otherwise all they were good for was panicking and dying, as we were clearly shown by the driver.

The writing was unquestionably sloppy and full of silly, lazy, needless holes (Ryan’s escape being perhaps the most insulting one). Sadly that’s something RTD can’t be bothered to excise from his scripting a lot of the time, but then we’re just back to the fact that you hate him and shouldn’t be watching any of his episodes, because even when he really gets a hold of himself and writes a fantastic one you absolutely loathe it. Honestly, it’s like you walked into a bar and had a massive furious hissy fit that there were some drunk people there.

In summary, then: shut up, you curmudgeon.

So sorry about that. I’m an idiot.

And actually, you’re right anyway. It was pretty awful.

John; again, I can totally empathize with your position, it just didn’t hit me like that. It’s funny how people can agree on what they’re seeing, but react so differently. It even makes me look on Requiem for a Dream a bit more kindly. Glad I’m not a critic! :) I’d agree the script was probably atrocious, I guess it was what everybody else did with it that I liked. And come on, didn’t your heart warm a bit when you saw those bug-headed guys?