The Girl in the Fireplace
Perfect.
1"Must be a spatio-temporal hyperlink."
"What's that?"
"No idea. Just made it up. Didn't want to say magic door." — The Doctor and Mickey
"What's that?"
"No idea. Just made it up. Didn't want to say magic door." — The Doctor and Mickey
Andy
May 8th, 2006 at 12:49 am
I see why you were so quick. Surely this is below the required word limit, although I can’t disagree with your review. The action, the jokes, the concept of the ship with all those time windows open, the sad ending.
andy
May 8th, 2006 at 12:55 am
I’m predicting a mid-season slump for this show, if only because it’s impossible for all the episodes to be as good as the ones at the start of this season. I thought last week’s was the best a doctor could get, but this was better than that. You can’t keep making each episode better than the last. You can’t. It’s madness!
Tom
May 8th, 2006 at 1:03 am
I realise this is in direct violation of certain past policies. However, my quest was over, and I thought I should let people know.
Having pondered for a while, I would have liked it if we’d gotten to see the Doctor and Reinette dance… but in another way, not seeing that helped make their relationship seem even more fleeting.
Andy
May 8th, 2006 at 1:43 am
The preview at the end of last week’s episode was off-putting. I refuse to watch anymore.
Hopefully nobody was troubled by Hazel’s newbie questions about changing the outside of the TARDIS and what not.
Tom
May 8th, 2006 at 1:50 am
I loved having someone ask why the TARDIS doesn’t change appearance. It’s such an easy question to answer. “It’s broken.”
How was the preview for next week off-putting? In a good or bad way? I thought it seemed pretty cool. Not beautiful and romantic, but you couldn’t have that every week. I think it’s time we got a little more action and a little less lovey dovey for a while.
Jack
May 8th, 2006 at 2:55 am
Surely he meant off-putting in the sense that it ruined the mood. I hate having my teariness interrupted by a “next week” thing.
Andy
May 8th, 2006 at 2:56 am
I don’t like previews in general and I didn’t like the preview for The Girl in the Fireplace in particular. I felt it misrepresented the episode and showed it in a poor light.
Jack
May 8th, 2006 at 2:58 am
I’ve never understood that newbie question about the TARDIS though. Surely a complete newb would have no reasons to suspect it the TARDIS exterior could change.
Jack
May 8th, 2006 at 3:03 am
I agree with that. Frankly, almost all the Doctor Who previews suck. They should do away with them.
Tom
May 8th, 2006 at 3:20 am
I partially agree with you about the previews. In a way, I’d rather they were at the end of the credits — but then, the first thing you’d get at the end of a sad/happy/fun episode would be the continuity announcer saying “Wasn’t that nice? Jamie Oliver is on BBC2 now eating Italian people.” At least this way, your mood is broken by something vaguely relevant.
The ideal scenario would involve clean music, but we won’t get that until the DVDs.
Shannon
May 8th, 2006 at 11:41 am
I agree wholeheartedly with this review. I can’t think of a better Who episode. Not speaking for the old ones of course, but I think it was the best I’ve seen. That’s even taking into consideration the lack of John Barrowman. My, that woman was gorgeous! And the doctor in love.. ouchies goes the heartstrings…
“Arthur?!”“Good name for a horse”“No, you’re not keeping the horse”“I let you keep Mickey!”
Shannon
May 8th, 2006 at 11:43 am
The other thing is though, as they said in confidential, this is the kind of woman the doctor would settle down with/fall in love with if he were ever going to. That is, the supremely well educated, refined, well mannered, composed, dignified, intelligent type. In other words, Rose hasn’t got a hope. Basically any thoughts of Rose and the Doctor having anything sigficant, romantic or otherwise, is almost completely dashed. She just seems stupid now by comparison. Charming, but a ditz. So clearly not his type.
Tom
May 8th, 2006 at 12:40 pm
I’m glad that we’re all in agreement. A one-word review takes a lot of justifying! That was an awesome line too. There was pretty much an awesome line every minute. It sickens me how talented some people are. I don’t think there’s ever really been a Doctor Who like this before, but it’s because of episodes like this that I always loved it. And I know that doesn’t make sense.
Rose is a pretty smart cookie. Definitely not as educated or cultured, but quite clever. And she shares the Doctor’s adventurous spirit, which Reinette might well have, but we can’t be certain. There’s something to be said for having a philosophical equal as well as an intellectual equal.
But yeah, Rose has to do something awesome to register on his radar again, perhaps.
Tom
May 8th, 2006 at 1:03 pm
Next Week. Just thought I’d share.
Andy
May 9th, 2006 at 2:45 am
A doctor who sticker book?!? Kill me now so that I may die happy.
I couldn’t resist looking up reviews which didn’t like this perfect episode. I shan’t expose you to them due to their Frequent Misuse of Punctation and Strong Grammar.
The criticisms were: it was nice concept spoiled by a weak plot and a silly ending; the horse was a stupid idea but David Tennant had good chemistry with it; the Doctor shouldn’t have a romance; the Doctor shouldn’t get drunk; the Doctor is stupid for not using the Tardis to save Reinette; the Doctor knows how to dance so why did he say he couldn’t; awful technobabble; Rose and Mickey should have had more focus; and so on.
One review ends with the sentence: “but at the end I felt so cheated that I had to go and watch Genesis of the Daleks to cheer myself up…”
I know there’s an infinite amount of opinions on the web but I hoped that this was something for everyone.
Andy
May 9th, 2006 at 2:57 am
The reviewer at the top of this page talks about a niggling unsatisfaction. She says “I think I was expecting a bit more fantasy romance and less science fiction”, which is what I was expecting from the preview last week. The episode is mostly sci-fi with some France, rather than all France with a spaceship. Previews give me a false impression about the episode and spoil it or reveal spoilers and uhh, spoil it. I prefer to know nothing about the episode than anything. It’s not a big issue; it’s just one that niggles at me too.
Tom
May 9th, 2006 at 12:05 pm
False impressions aren’t always bad, though, surely? Can’t it sometimes be awesome to expect on thing and then have the whole episode spin on its axis and become something new and unexpected?
Surely the reviewer who talked about Tennant’s horse chemistry must have been taking the piss.
‘Genesis of the Daleks’ is a good story but its excessive padding makes it yet another casualty of the ill-judged 6 25-minute episode format.
Tom
May 10th, 2006 at 12:57 am
Of course, after this episode, we are now hit with the beginning of Doctor / Reinette fan fiction. Have a look through del.icio.us’s doctorwho tag for some amusing examples. Probably. I haven’t read them, I’m at work and it could be dangerous.
Gareth
May 14th, 2007 at 11:28 am
I disagree, and the review at Androzani.com sums my reasons up nicely, by charming coincidence.
Tom
May 14th, 2007 at 6:49 pm
Gosh! You really, really disagree. For what it’s worth, I feel like you over-estimate the amount of love the Doctor is getting in this story. I think the tragedy is supposed to be that the Doctor and Reinette don’t even get a romance, not that they have one and that it’s too brief. Would you dislike it as much if you thought it was a story about the Doctor almost getting a new companion and not a love story?
But if you don’t like “I’m not winding you up” then it might be best just to agree to disagree!