But in all truth I didn't. Never mind eh? There's always next week.

i await Steven Moffat's reign. but i respect what RTD has done for the series.

As for the throwaway references, like tonight... does anyone REALLY believe that the percentage of gay/bi people vs heteros is 50%/50% (or higher) in favour of gay/bi? Because there'd be a much smaller global population if that WERE the case. The fact is, there are probably more heteros than homo/bi's - that's how it looks. As far as I know gay/bi people can't naturally reporoduce, so if there are 6 billion people on the planet, that's a LOT of straights. Yet RTD seems to want to portray in new Who the idea that there are gay/bi people in every walk of life, everywhere you go! This just isn't true... not because I have any feelings against gay/bi people, but I DO have strong feelings about proportional representation on TV. It's similar to the argument between Clint Eastwood vs Spike Lee - for all I know, Lee has a point that maybe black people were underrepresented in Clint's Iwo Jima (haven't seen them yet!) but Clint's point also stands: his movies were about the four soldiers who hoisted the flag in the iconic photo, so he wasn't focussed on the black soldiers. There's maybe a movie to be made about black soldiers at Iwo Jima - and apparently Lee is going to make it - but it wasn't the point of Clint's movie. Just as if RTD wants to push the idea that there will be more gay/bi people than straights in the future (which, if true, could only be supported by A LOT of surrogate parenting / cloning / lab birthing), maybe an established series about a Time Lord with over 60 years of backstory to keep up with isn't the place to push a gay agenda (which is CLEARLY what this is with RTD). If other writers can integrate the gay characters in a meaningful way into the plot, why the hell can't RTD, the man who wrote QUEER AS FOLK? And if you want a sci-fi show that's more gay than straight, either fuck off to TORCHWOOD or write in a decent reason why suddenly in the Who mythos there is someone gay or bi IN EVERY EPISODE?

Season 4 was looking so much more promising and mature, with all this stupid cramming-in-of-personal-agenda s backburnered for once. If Paul Cornell, who is a devout Christian, can avoid cramming in Narnia-like Christ allegories because of his faith, why can't RTD either integrate characters that are gay/bi (and therefore important and relevant to his life) into the plots in a meaningful way?

And for all those who keep insinuating that we "gay agenda" haters are all homophobes afraid of seeing gays onscreen - GROW THE FUCK UP. THEN FUCK OFF. I'm tired of explaining why I'm not being homophobic with this stance, but being pro-decent writing. Anyone who doesn't get where I'm coming from by this point is either fucking ridiculously thick or a fucking heterophobic bigot, hiding behind the PC stance of being anti-hetero and pro-gay/bi in order to justify their despicable hatred of heterosexuals.

Gay characters CAN be successfully integrated into new Who... just not by RTD, who doesn't know the difference between a narrative and a fucking soapbox.

It flew along, nicely paced. In tone, it was suitably creepy and kept the SF nonsense to a minimum. It was also Catherine Tate lite which helped if you're a Tater hater.

In tone, it reminded me of the Stephen King movie/story, The Mist. There is something contemptible about trapped human beings who turn on each other so willingly.

So well done to RTD. Superb effort, and 5 out of 5 from this fan. Shame you weren't writing this standard (which was definitely NOT aimed at kids) from the begining. If you had been, maybe people wouldn't have been so vocal about getting you off the show.

2) it borrowed a little heavily from the Twilight Zone episode "The Monsters on Maple Street" where it showed when the power goes out in an area the people themselves turn into monsters.

There's a place for gay sci-fi. But to take a show that traditionally didn't deal with sex AT ALL and turn it into the PC-fest it is now - let's face it, RTD probably DID like Who, but rather than try to convince the HEAT reading average audience in the UK to enjoy sci-fi Who as it was and should be, he HEAT-ised it to the point where the only thing his target audience give a shit about is "When's the fit Doctor bloke gonna fuck Donna then? Wot's a Dalek? Why's he just turn into some ovver bloke then? Pass me a kebab!" - basically, he's not turning the audience into Who fans, he's turning Who into a reality-TV 20th century trash culture-obsessed pale imitation of the lgorious show it could be. I'm hoping Moff can turn the downswing around... but let's face it, he has the mighty PC-and-minority-pleasing-obses sed BBC on his back. I don't think it'll EVER be as great as it could be. Because the RTD target audience will lap up medioicrity - after years of BIG BROTHER and EASTENDERS, they have no clue what great sci-fi is. I have friends who love TORCHWOOD, and genuinely believe it is the best sci-fi TV has to offer - but haven't heard of, or watched, BABYLON 5, FIREFLY, BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, LOST, SUPERNATURAL...

RTD's dumbing down TV, and using the gay agenda to get the PC Gestapo onside. Which is why the UK is the police state it clearly now is. If you love toeing the line, keep doin' that... I actualy enjoy having the freedom to think how I want to think, without having to be told how to by a shonky, soap-boxy narrative written by an activist instead of a writer.

Oh, and to the RTD apologists: he just got an OBE from the Queen. For services to drama. Further devaluing the worth of any kind of recognition from the Crown...

Well, the pacing suited the script, I think.

The ending was suitably vague, and felt a little rushed and not very climactic. But I still think it worked.

And the cast were supposed to be annoying, with all the shouting, not-listening-to-the-Doctor and the turning on each other. And I think it worked. When that stupid mother said at the end "I said it was her" and I found myself speaking out loud to the television (not something I usually do) 'Shut the fuck up, you cunt' I know the actress did a good job of making me hate her.

To say that the population today is perhaps 10% gay or bi, and then demand that be reflected in a show about time-travel, is frankly silly.

The show has already established (through the insipid Captain Jack) that by the 50th century, humans will shag anything regardless of gender.

Answer: it's A KIDS' SCI-FI SHOW!

So it's not so much the "more gay than is representational" (which does irk me) so much as the fact that Doctor Who is now as sexually charged AT ALL as it is - it used to be about aliens, mosnters and spaceships / time travel. The drama element needs to be there - but in pandering to the thick chav non-SF audience he inexplocably seems to worship RTD has turned a fantastic, intelligent SF show into a tawdry excuse to cram his own agenda (which is the under-representation of gay/bi people on TV in general) into a show that is completely unfit for that purpose. It just jars. The few times non-hetero sexuality has worked in the show, other people have written it. And if you go read TBs on stuff like the Agatha Christie episode, you won't find me complaining about the gay agenda WHEN IT IS DONE WELL AND INTEGRAL TO THE FUCKING PLOT!

Why is it so hard for everyone to understand that it's the WRITING that pisses me off, NOT THE CONTENT?!?!? I used to watch LEXX and FARSCAPE, for fuck's sake - where sex wasn't just hetero and homo, but went in many interesting directions!

Oh, and mooli_mooli mentioned THE SECOND COMING. I rewatched it last week - a classy drama, dodgy theologically but thematically and dramatically BRILLIANT - but the same cack-handed gay agenda preaching came into it: a big skinhead guy walks up to Eccleston after he is enlightened to the fact that he's the Second Coming. He rips a jumper off, to reveal a T-shirt that says GAY or QUEEN on it in pink (don't remember which) and says (I'm paraphrasing) "Do you have a problem with this? Because it says in YOUR book that you do!". Eccleston says "No, mate, fine wi' me", and the guy, slightly placated, goes and sits down.

Strangely, this didn't happen with any lesbians, nor a bestialists, any Muslims, Buddhists, Agnostics, Atheists, Satanists; there was distinct lack of people of Oriental descent in the series, when they number more than a third of the Earth's population...

Yeah, RTD loves proportional representation. But it's HIS version of it - not the real thing, where the proportions conform to those in real life. THAT'S the fucking agenda - RTD pushing the world as HE thinks it should be, not as it actually is.

I was gripped by the story this week thought all the cast did a good job.
I'm surprised by how much a knock on the wall scares me. Felt alot like the empty child.

Only thing that annoyed me this week was another RTD problem getting the cast to explain the plot for the thickies.
"she's learning"
she's repeating what your saying."

If the voyage of the damned had half of the tension of this episode then it would have been a masterpiece.

not that this has made me a RTD fan4life or anything like that, but this was a very solid episode with a VERY tight budget. ok, actors did their part as well (david tennant, don't ever go away. please.), but writing was almost flawless.

turning a budget restricted set and making it add up to the overall claustrophobia effect reminded me of the fog usage in the first silent hill game.

having a alien that requires no cgi, no prosthetics, no props and still menages to be all sorts of scary isn't very easy thing to do...

in fact I have pretty much only 2 complaints for this episode:

first one is that I actually hoped that the "alien" would turn out to be someone who's just trying to learn about us, and that the real villain of the story would be humans, angry mob that fails to listen to the voice of reason and ends up airlocking (heh... no pun intended...) that poor woman and whatever is it inside of her, leaving doctor shattered and disappointed in his beloved human race.

the second thing that bothered me is that phone donna is given in the spa at the beginning, when doctor is trying to get her to come along: really? I mean, REALLY?!?

I get it this was on low budget, but could they not do better then taking a handset and unplugging the cord?

REALLY?!?

oh, and as for people bitching about that "terrible and distracting" gay reference and how RTD is "gaying up" doctor who: for frak sake, people, give it a rest. this was not "captain jack" level of gay. it was more of a "blink and you'll miss it" thing.

I agree that in the Agatha Christie/Wasp episode, the gay guy did at least have a tangential relevance to the plot.

And correct me if I'm wrong, but we've had interspecies/bestiality sex on the show before, haven't we? With the freaky cat people in Gridlock? Wasn't there some human/cat mating going on in that? I only watched it once, thought it was a shit episode and never re-watched it, so forgive me if I've mis-remembered.

There have been many many things wrong with RTD's scripts in Doctor Who. Slitheen. Farts as humour. John Simm as the Master. The Christmas Bride. 20th century references popping up from here to the year 5 billion. Indeed, having homo-sapien life forms in the year 100 trillion. And so on.

Throwing in the occasional gay line or gay married couple is relatively minor, and in my opinion, not worth getting worked up about. There's plenty more to be annoyed about in the average RTD script.

The exception for me, is Torchwood (which is just badly written soft-porn for bisexuals with a welsh accent fetish).

on the other hand, rest of the viewers are relatively sane and consider it to be good, hence: teh controversy.

I wonder how many takes to synchronize her and Tennant? Doing the pi recitation must have been grueling alone.

Very tense episode. A terrifying examination of humanity not unlike Twelve Angry men.

Dr Who's material is more in passing while Shameless illustrates damn near every aspect and puts in context making it normal.

Lets face it though after some of the RTD Eps of late it certainly holds up and is clearly one of his better efforts.

Not shit but by no means superb. reasonable to fairly good.

The "resolution" and "explanation" are frankly best shoved to one side as RTD certainly did.

And BTW I couldn't give a fuck if that spcetruck was carrying an intergalactic gay pride march to space san francisco. Just make the characters and their actions BELIEVABLE. They jumped to almost random murderous rage far too easily & quickly here.

It took me years to find this out.

A few people have problems with it. They've explained themselves. Now just stop going on about it.

Please!

a)it rarely has anything to do with plot and is tantamount to wearing a big sign saying "LOOK!!! GAY PEOPLE!!"

b) For RTD episodes it has almost become parody, because he *has* to have something, somewhere, homosexual. You'll notice that no one really complained about it in the early series. c)It's become almost reverse homophobia. Like it's been thrown in to be considered 'edgy' for the sake of it and anyone who points it out (quite rightly) as pointless is ostracised as homophobic.

Now of course you could argue that the future has more enlightened times and sexuality is far more casually observed but there was no plot or character reason for RTD to make her a lesbian - did we learn about the sexuality of the other passengers - no ? We can automatically presume the husband and wife are heterosexual as they had a kid, but what about the professor and his muse, or the flight attendant - did we need to know their sexuality to advance the plot ? Of course not... RTD might as well have had the captain and the engineer in the cockpit embracing for no apparant reason but it would have brought nothing to the story.

This isn't about homophobia but how about introducing a gay character where their sexual preference actually furthers the plot - rather than appears like a token gesture or something crowbarred in for the sake of it. Or as has been the case in some of the stories he's written in a kind of Fast Show "Suits you sir" camp stereotype.

And lastly, you never heard Martha or any reference made about her being black to move the plot on so why highlight sexual preference agenda as an issue if it has nothing to do with furthering the story... any other debatably taboo subjects we'd like to subtly challenge on Who ?

Why can't bisexuals naturally reproduce? Moreover, you assume sexual orientation is some sort of genetic on/off switch that would naturally evolve out of the human gene pool, when in actuality it's something far more complex and deeply seated in both psychology and biology.

Anyway, did you notice how the Doctor didn't even bat an eye when Sky said "girlfriend"? Well that's how the audience should non-react as well.

Why don't you comment on how there were two black women on the cruise, while you're at it--that's statistically improbable, too, eh?

I couldn't care less that he's gay. Take my example in THE SECOND COMING: Why not have one of Eccleston's friends been gay, and have him broach it in a scene where, once established that Eccleston IS the Son of God, the gay friend is genuinely worried about what the Bible says about gays, then have a conversation with him about it? Why the clunky, sledgehammer-to-crack-a-nut scene with the skinhead, that is tonally out of step with the rest of the series?

And as for TORCHWOOD... were I a young gay guy who loved SF, I'm sure TORCHWOOD would be the biggest thing EVER. But it's shit. Badly, badly written shit. And it ain't the gay agenda making it shit: it's the adfolescent, plot-hole ridden, impressed-that-we're-like-cont roversial-YEAH! style of writing that reduces it to shit. The gay stuff in BUFFY was just there, and believable: people were just "Willow? Gay? Oh. Kinda expected that." And on it went. No fireworks, no swagger, no "Ooh aren't we great we've pissed off the Daily Mail readers" - it was just there. THAT is how to integrate gay/bi people into SF. As if they ARE NORMAL - which they are. RTD makes them seem abnormal by having any line referring to gay/bi people jump out at you like a scalded ape.

As for gay ghettos... Where I live, there are people who are fine with gay people, people who don't know how they feel, people who are not happy, and people who are downright hostile to gay people. I'm assuming (being straight) that if you are gay, you don't have some kind of psychic ability to tell who are the hostiles and who is okay with this. So knowing that there is something about you sexually that MIGHT drive some lunkhead to get violent with you about it, you'd keep quiet about it at work and go to gay clubs in the evening. In this day and age, in the larger cities like London and Manchester, being openly gay has no repercussion - and that's great: that's how it should be. But in the smaller towns, such as where I live, you don't see the gay community openly in mixed areas unless you go into a gay pub. I've yet to see openly gay kissing in a mixed pub round here. It's sad, but it is also THE WAY IT IS here.

So the gay ghetto thing people are going on about is this: in the smaller towns like mine, gay people keep themselves to themselves. It ain't the way it's supposed to be, but hey, we shouldn't have to pay for uni fees in England when the Scots get to go to uni for nothing off the taxes of the whole UK. Life sucks. It DOES need changing (the being safely, openly gay thing more than the uni) and soon. But it's more likely to happen if gay characters are treates like rounded, normal human beings with a purpose and a reason to be in the narrative (Moffat) than as a two-dimensional sex puppet with n motivations, no real reason to be there, and scenes that are so embarrassingly obviously just there to get Barrowman down to his pants so RTD can get all moist (THE LONG GAME - Trin-E and ZuZanna: "Where did you keep that gun?". Jack: "You don't wanna know.").

It's NOT ABOUT HATING GAYS, IT'S ABOUT HATING BAD WRITING AS DONE FROM A SOAPBOX, FUCKTARDS!

Still not hearing anyone refute this. RTD isn't interested in fair representation for EVERYONE: only for gay people. LEaving out all the "Buddhists, Atheists, Satanists, people of Oriental descent" etc. So he's picking the parts of political correctness that support what HE WANTS to be normalised on TV - and fuck everyone else.

That, people, is a fucking AGENDA.

Interesting... he wants everyone to view being gay as being normal and equal to being straight (fair enough) but doesn't mind putting in some utterly dumbs shit like the cat/human/kittens thing in GRIDLOCK (sheer fucking stupidity).

If anyone wants proof that RTD is dumbing down TV with new Who, GRIDLOCK just about does it. As does THE LONG GAME. And most of his other eps.

Oh, and I DID enjoy last night's Who. Tight, claustrophobic, scary, very well acted by Lesley Sharp - easily the best RTD script so far - but still taken out of the story by playing "spot the RTD gay reference". *sigh*

Jesus. All these rants are revealing a lot more about yourself than your realise: immature idiot with no girlfriend i.e someone with too much time on their hands.

... now that he had breasts...

... and this was YEARS before RTD came along...

I'm not saying people shouldn't voice their opinion on things. But once you have voiced it then we'll have heard it. So move the fuck on.

"BAD WRITING AS DONE FROM A SOAPBOX"

The whole gay debate thing is getting tired, and the reference was so minute it was hardly worth mentioning. It is a bit like a college drinking game though, as soon the characters were introduced we were immediately trying to figure out which one would be gay... My money was on the teenager. Ah well!

... by smell.

... now, THAT would REALLY be PC!!!!!

...in case you don't know about this bit from 1985... take a look:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v =60shMyabeMo

(fill in any gaps)

And for the love god, 90% of the kids watching last night even picked up on the "she" line. And they are never likely to either.

Kids don't care what gay or straight is, they don't care if you have two mums or two dads, they care about the next Wii game, or Xbox or when will there be Daleks? There was talk of Daleks, I want to see Daleks. That's all they give a shit about.

Is RTD pushing a gay agenda? Fuck NO! If he had an agenda, The Doctor would be gay, a companion would be gay, hey Sarah Jane never got married... maybe she...

Writers write what they know, RTD is gay, he writes from that angle. If you don't like it, then don't fucking watch it. No one is forcing you to, or raping your childhood here. For as long as I've been alive there have been gay and straight people, and I suspect that long after I'm gone there might be a few on each side as well.

In the grand scheme of things, for thirty years there was no reference to people being gay in Doctor Who (that I can remember), and that is more telling than occasionally making a gay character or tossing a gay reference in once in a while. I think it makes the show seem more real in a lot of ways, and considering the makeup of the industry that produces it, it shows we might be maturing a bit.

Finally people four little words - Grow The Fuck Up!

All I know, it worked for me. I was riveted. There was a much greater sense of fear and danger in this stand-alone than in the previous Library two-parter. (Don't get me wrong. Moffat made good again, but RTD ratcheted up the paranoia factor here big time.)Whatever they were dealing with wasn't just another alien but something unspeakable. The Shadows from Library were treated like a common menace, found everywhere else, but just in greater numbers at the Library.

The childish repetition served to crank up the feeling of menace and frustration. I think it's a credit to RTD that you as the viewer just want everybody to shut up so you figure out what's happening. And while the characters were board archetypes, there was some switches in expected behavior.

As for the claims of more RTD gay agenda...a few personal pronouns pulled people out of the episode? Forgetting the fact the exchange was actually quite funny (She said she needed some space so she moved to another galaxy!) it's not like the character then graphically discussed her sex life...or wait...maybe that's what people are peeved by! Two guys together is gross. Two women together is every man's fantasy. (Oy vey!)

I remember a time when if you were a boy over a certain age and you were still interested in Doctor Who AT ALL, much less a "nerd", the lads would take you outside and just give you a beating, nevermind the toys.

They would also probably be calling you a poof or a queer bent bastard while they were at it...

For thirty plus years the Doctor was this fey chap who dresses up and hangs about with a bunch of girls - all of whom he's "just chums" with.

RTD changed all that by making the Doctor a regular bloke: from the working-class Northern accent to the leather jacket, Eccleston came off as someone you could have a few pints at the pub with and talk about football and birds.

Old school wise, this reminded me of Edge of Destruction, the 3rd Hartnell story, where the TARDIS malfunctions and the crew go stir-crazy. Yes, it was budget-saving, but a very good idea to split the doctor-lite episode from the companion-lite episode. Series 4 - best series yet! BTW - anyone freeze-frame the beetley thing on Donna's back in the trailer? Creepy...

only problem is that I was eating while reading this. food all over keyboard, but it was totally worth it.

just as people said, x-files-lite.

laughed so hard when I realized just how much that virus in pilot resembles alien virus in fight the future/seasons after that.

and intro sequence is kinda jaw dropping. literally.

I actually thought about writing my review and sending it to herc, but

a) I figured that about 200 people have already done that and

b) I'm too damn lazy.

Though everything else seems fair game.

And I don't THINK the X-Files was the first show ever to put paranormal subjects on the small screen. *cough* Twighlight Zone *cough* Outer Limits and many, many others...