![\"smithlogo.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/www.zeusblog.tetrap.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/04\/smithlogo.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Nice. The new season opens without a pre-credit teaser, and straight into a slice of the new companion\u2019s life. As before. Thankfully, we\u2019re not woken by a honking alarm clock and Murray Gold\u2019s acid gerbil \u2018techno\u2019 soundtrack, but by something a little more real, a little more urban \u2013 some hippedy-hop.<\/p>\n
I like the opener; it introduces Martha\u2019s family deftly and in a light-hearted way, and with its sudden appearance of the Doctor sets up a time travel gag that the kids will love looking out for later in the episode. But my god, RTD\u2019s all about the cellphones, isn\u2019t he?<\/p>\n
So much of this story has been either publicised through advance images or, in the case of the Judoon, fierce fan rumour. Here we see the result and the bits missing \u2013 and it\u2019s pretty much as you\u2019d expect. Some lifting of Virgin Books moments (stranded on the moon in a hospital rather than Timewyrm: Revelations<\/em>\u2019 church<\/a>, but still\u2026); a bit of the absurd mingling in with the sinister (a blood-sucking alien \u2013 with a straw!); a plucky companion not screaming; a plucky Doctor verging on OTT and, in a movement surely to be repeated in playgrounds across the Commonwealth, shaking radiation out of his shoe \u2013 like you do; oh, and mention of Rose again. Sigh.<\/p>\n But as it goes, Smith and Jones<\/em> is fun and a great improvement on the smug and irritating New Earth<\/em>. Not only does this hospital have a gift shop, but it also has some wonderful alien foils \u2013 rhino Judge Dredds with marker pens (the name must surely be a portmanteau of \u2018Judge\u2019 and \u2018Goon\u2019). The Plasmavore story strand didn\u2019t work so well for me \u2013 I wondered later whether the villain of the piece might have avoided detection more easily by just borrowing a whiteboard marker from the nursing station desk; and having endured the novelty of an MRI scan myself the threat of its magnetic field seemed a little\u2026 overstated. Still quite enjoyable though, and with some wonderful effects and shots \u2013 the best laser beams in the series yet, and the Judoon spaceship landing sequence was just lovely. With some strong CGI behind it Doctor Who<\/em> has entered the age of the \u2018landing strut\u2019<\/a> sequence anew, but in a good way.<\/p>\n So then \u2013 a fun story, some minor scares for the kids, the new girl looks sensible and resourceful but is sufficiently Not Rose, and the Judoon came off a lot better than I\u2019d anticipated.<\/p>\n And a mention of Mister Saxon too. Who\u2019d have guessed?<\/p>\n PA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" the best laser beams in the series yet Continue reading
![church<\/a>, but still\u2026); a bit of the absurd mingling in with the sinister (a blood-sucking alien \u2013 with a straw!); a plucky companion not screaming; a plucky Doctor verging on OTT and, in a movement surely to be repeated in playgrounds across the Commonwealth, shaking radiation out of his shoe \u2013 like you do; oh, and mention of Rose again. Sigh.<\/p>\nBut as it goes, Smith and Jones<\/em> is fun and a great improvement on the smug and irritating New Earth<\/em>. Not only does this hospital have a gift shop, but it also has some wonderful alien foils \u2013 rhino Judge Dredds with marker pens (the name must surely be a portmanteau of \u2018Judge\u2019 and \u2018Goon\u2019). The Plasmavore story strand didn\u2019t work so well for me \u2013 I wondered later whether the villain of the piece might have avoided detection more easily by just borrowing a whiteboard marker from the nursing station desk; and having endured the novelty of an MRI scan myself the threat of its magnetic field seemed a little\u2026 overstated. Still quite enjoyable though, and with some wonderful effects and shots \u2013 the best laser beams in the series yet, and the Judoon spaceship landing sequence was just lovely. With some strong CGI behind it Doctor Who<\/em> has entered the age of the \u2018landing strut\u2019<\/a> sequence anew, but in a good way.<\/p>\nSo then \u2013 a fun story, some minor scares for the kids, the new girl looks sensible and resourceful but is sufficiently Not Rose, and the Judoon came off a lot better than I\u2019d anticipated.<\/p>\nAnd a mention of Mister Saxon too. Who\u2019d have guessed?<\/p>\nPA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"the best laser beams in the series yet Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-series-3-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeusblog.tetrap.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeusblog.tetrap.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeusblog.tetrap.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeusblog.tetrap.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeusblog.tetrap.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=75"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeusblog.tetrap.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeusblog.tetrap.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=75"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeusblog.tetrap.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=75"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeusblog.tetrap.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=75"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Image:Timewyrm_Revelation.jpg\"){kind=link}