DR WHO

There was another two parter where the tardis lands on an alien planet, hovering on the edge of a black whole against like totally the entire laws of physics. Some humans had a base on it – staffed entirely by vaguely familiar actors like her out of Secrets and Lies and him out of Casualty etc. It turns out that the main boss from Doom or something I trapped in the centre of the planet and wants to escape – which it tries to do by possessing him form casualty and writing all over him with a felt tip pen. Also there are some squid faced alien slaves who are also handy for possessing type purposes. There is running around in a corridor! There is crawling down an air vent! There is implausible resolution where him from Casualty is sucked out of a hole in a space ship and everyone else is just fine etc and so on. This one starts out quite well and is properly spooky in parts but then goes a bit rubbish at the end. Also there is a bit where the boss from Doom tells Billie that she is going to DIE!!! Gasp – he must have read that bit in the Radio Times about her leaving at the end of the series.

After that there was an annoying jokey episode about a group of internet nerds who are obsessed with the Dr and meet up all the time – what can that possibly be all about? Main nerd is played by shifty looking Marc Warren out of Hustle and about three million other things. Peter Kay also pops up as an evil alien (with a northern accent – I wish they had rolled out the “lots of planets have a north” line again) who was designed by a nine year old and it kind of shows. Shifty Marc defeats the alien by snapping his magic stick – the Staff of Hasty Plot Resolution, as I like to call it. It turns out that Shifty Marc saw the doctor once when he was a kid and Dr Who was solving a Sapphire and Steel sounding 70s mystery. Hmm well lots of people seemed to like this one but I thought it was kind of irritating – also highly reminiscent of similar “jokey” episodes from X Files and Buffy. Next week looks like it might be good though – some kid traps people in crayon drawings or some such.