One thing that “Steven Moffat Doctor Who” seems to do well is to stay away from big crazy storylines, but focus instead on the smaller scary ideas. And here’s one of them. After all, we have a monster that takes your worst fear, and then feeds on your faith that would normally carry you through.

We don’t get to see what’s in the Doctors room, but it’s possible that whatever he saw, helped to drive him to taking his companions back to earth. I have to admit, I didn’t see this emotional ending coming. I want to say they’ll be back in the season finale… They must be? Right?

So. What would be in your room?

I’m not sure what to say.

It wasn’t exactly good was it?

What did we get?

Quarter of an hour into it, we get the best Captain Jack moment. The conversation between Danes and was the sort of nice moment we needed more weeks ago.

Well. The CIA, were almost useful. They almost go all CTU on us. They are almost fantastic. They then get blown up. Dear Russell T Davies, by blowing up Q you killed one of your more interesting characters.

Whilst we’re at it. Esther was possibly the most developed character. She was interesting. She also got dead. Seriously… You then made Rex immortal!!! Why??!?

Thinking about it. How is he immortal? Please don’t say it has something to do with Jacks blood?

On the subject of the closing scenes at the funeral, why I’m surprised at the lack of emotion? Watching it again tonight, I was reminded of the funeral scene at the end of a classic Doctor Who… Even that was more emotional then this “epic ending”.

Look… It’s been nice. Maybe some Torchwood is better then no Torchwood… But I’m going to go and watch The Children of Earth now…

Last week we had the creepy but fairly standard fair of Night Terrors. This week we get something… A little different.

It starts of with a standard idea; an alien planet, with an alien virus. Both ideas in this case, twisted. A virus that would only kill the Doctor – giving us what could well be this years equalivant of a Doctor lite episode? With the action concentrating on Amy Pond – but with Rory being given some of the best scenes.

The alien planet with the dual time streams, is the driving force of the episode supplying the emotional force behind the plot. The second time stream giving us two Amy Ponds, giving us an older jaded hurt Amy, and giving Arther Divil possibly his best scene in Doctor Who:

“I do not want to travel with you”

Some emotional chats later… We have the two Amy’s together with Rory racing back to the Tardis. A scene giving us some heart stopping moments with young Amy collapsing, and Rorys choice…

“You’re turning me into you”

A simple and possibly cheaper episode, giving us a reminder of how dark and manipulative the Doctor is, and Rorys anger with him…

Well that sucks… It sounds like it went mad between this and the last episode. May have been interesting to watch…

The thing is. It’s two months later. Things have changed, and it feels like a different story, set in the same universe. Rex and Q are in charge of the CIA, Jack and Esther are hiding, and Gwen’s stealing drugs.

Then scary child killer turns up, and offers information… Question. Why did it take so long to get here?

Sadly it feels like we missed an story or two. Or at least a conversation or two, it just felt like I missed something every know and then.

Let’s talk it up for a moment. The scenes in the small Welsh kitchen while questioning Danes, it almost felt like Torchwood.

In fact. While I’m at it. Why did we spend so long in America?

Because this was better. It felt like there was a plot… That there was a story which was going somewhere. And it ends next week…

Should we take bets on who dies next week?

“Please save me from the monsters”

Creepy. Moody. And a little bit creepy again.

And alot of creepy investigation… stuff…

Shame it kinda took a while to get to the good stuff. Alot seemed to happen in the last 10 / 15 ish minutes. Gentle pacing problems maybe?

Mark Gatiss is very good at writing very much standard Doctor Who stories, and this is one of them. Theres not much plot, really. Its not well explained, but it was good creepy fun. But I can imagine 8 year old Doctor Who fans, and their struggling Dads loving it.

“Tick Tock

Goes the Clock

Even for the Doctor”

Do we keep watching because it can’t get any worse?

Well we get to see the guy from last week as an old man… But it seems that he’s not to blame… This is episode 8 for crying out loud! Get on with it!!

Talking about getting on with it, it seems that even Gwen was struggling to comprehend why last weeks episode existed.

We get some explanation… But its sooo dull!!! For some reason, even the non-CIA attack bored me.

Rubbish. Dull.
Then we get Q. Actually an interesting character! He actually seems to almost command the respect of the other characters! On the subject of the other characters – they’re likeable!!! Where have they been hidden? Shame we’ve not had a decent chance to get to know these new characters? A bit more time would have made the reveal of a mole a bit more interesting.

We also get some decent tech! Well a brief view of Jacks wrist strap in action anyway…

On the subject of Jack. He chose to keep secrets, have a sulk, and seem to spend a proportion of the episode being fairly useless. I can’t help but feel that Q (at least based on this episode), filled the position of lead character at points better then Jack.

So what do we get? An interesting character. A bored Jack, and Gwen being chucked back to Wales – mostly because Jack didn’t say anything.

I suppose we’re getting to the good stuff… Maybe.. Just such a shame Jack is being rubbish…
2 more episodes left… Will Rex settle on a personalty? Will we find out why Gwens family were kidnapped? Will Gwen stay in one country? Will Jack be useful?

Will the story get good?

Wow, now wasn’t this fun…

If not a little bit odd.

Kinda glad I’m a fan, else I’m not sure how accessible this would have been. Saying that, the episode did manage the great trick of kinda explaining itself as it went along, so maybe the non casual viewer would have been ok with it.

Some gorgeous moments from the episode include:

• “Shut up Hitler”
• The doctor facing down Hitler! “The English are coming”. Great stuff!
• “Shut up Dad, I’m focusing on a dress size”

I Loved the idea of a time lord assassin fighting the Doctor. Yes we’ve has The Master… This is a different level of crazy. If “A Good Man Goes to War”, was the birth of Melody Pond, the brain washed assassin, then “Lets Kill Hitler”, is the birth of Riversong.

How much of a treat is the Tardis voice interface scene? For just a moment… I could have sworn Steve Moffat pulled of a spoiler free coup – and we would have Billie Piper back for a moment. Didn’t have her back, but nothing wrong with little Miss Fish Fingers and Custard.

Rule 1: The Doctor lies.

Let’s face it. Hitlers barely in it. Let’s face it not much really happens. And at the end of the day, the Tesselecta is just a massive plot device used to explain some of the madness, and make it clear that the Doctor knows he is due to die…

…doesn’t mean it wasn’t all a damn fine watch…

Yey!

We get our first flashback of the series… Nooooo… It’s really dull!!!

Why are we presented with all of this now? Why couldn’t the flashbacks have been taking place over the last few episodes? Why is this all been presented to us now? If nothing else having all of this presented at once made the whole thing feel rather obvious.

Well it’s kinda slow…

But at least we have our first monster moment, our first ‘doctor’ reference, as well as another monster reference. With that in mind, having the Trickster behind all of this would make sense.

Look let’s have some positives. The Captain Jack / Gwen stuff was decent, but it should have come sooner in the series.

I’m waiting for someone to post a three minute version of the episode on YouTube. That would be an improvement over this.

So yeah… Rubbish!

The end of the last weeks we were given what looked like an excellent preview of tonights episode. It made tonights episode look amazing.

We get to tonights episode… and for the first 20 minutes… We get nothing.

Again.

Then 3 treats.

Then for some reason. Captain Jack becomes useful. He somehow shifts himself from what ever miracle day show that was featured at the end of last weeks, to stalking the Ghostbusters girlfriend. At this point we get the epsiodes first treat. A sensible mature conversation between two old men of the sci-fi universe discussing the nature of “the system”.

The action is switched back to the camp in America, following Rex and Esther as a series of wrong choices lead to Rex being tortured in an amazingly intense scene, quickly followed between THAT fight between Esther and Colin Maloney – That finger / eye move! Great stuff!

The third treat… THAT explosion! Good Stuff.

Kudos also needs to be given to John Shiban, the writer of tonights episode. For including a steady theme throughout the episode, of the difference between the middlemen of this world – and those who say no. So arguably the best of the series so far. Shame we had to sit through the first half of the episode to get to the good stuff… again.

“”Torchwood’s gone – its just a name these days”

Well. The Good.

We’re back in the good old UK.

The bad news. It didn’t stay in the UK… or lets face it – Wales.

I cant help but think this just helps to remind how much I miss the “Welsh Torchwood”. On one side we seem to have – what look liked fairly big budget drama, on the other side – we had people talking under the nice American sunshine.

For the first 35 minutes or so anyway. Ar least the action seemed to pick up again towards the end. It seems to be a staple of this series to only be interesting during the last half of the episode.

Well lets face it. It might be getting interesting. Sure they brought the doctor in, just to get rid of her – but did anyone really care?

Hopefully its set up for it to get better next week.

So a mixed bag. Again. but hey. Doctor Who is coming back