Since the Drama channel has started a run of Saturday triple bills I thought I'd start a re-watch from Season 2 onwards (I didn't feel the need to buy the BDs like I did for Eccles, Smith and Capaldi).
It becomes apparent very early on the RTD is largely repeating his Season 1 formula. We get a future Earth story with Cassandra making a return: The New Earth, an unmemorable affair that has a few amusing body-hopping scenes and some good Cat Nun makeup; then we get to meet a figure out of history: Tooth & Claw, featuring Queen Victoria, kung fu monks and an alien werewolf - it's my favourite episode of this series, not least because of its nods to The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes; next up is School Reunion, another mediocre story that stands out because of the return of Sarah-Jane Smith (and K9) which is even more poignant now that Lis Sladen is no longer with us; more historical fantasy with Madame de Pompadour in The Girl in the Fireplace which is much less effective watched now since Moffat reused several of the ideas that he premiered here in his own run; the first half of the season is rounded off with the two-parter Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel which began an RTD tradition of having mid-season two-parters featuring classic monsters in terrible stories and introduced the awful, stompy Cybus-men, probably the least interesting incarnation (inmetalation?) of these villains. By and large, a disappointing half season compared to Eccles' run and Tennant hasn't made much of an impact. Worse is to come in the second half of the season though...
I'll rate these stories as:
The New Earth 2.5/5
Tooth & Claw 4/5
School Reunion 3/5 (for Lis)
The Girl in the Fireplace 3/5
Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel 1.5/5
The Stolen Earth/Journey's End. Fairly typical of RTD's season finales in that it delivers mightily on the fanwank but has little going for it in terms of story and doesn't hold up to multiple viewings. The overload this time involves not only Davros and the Daleks but the return of all of the RTD era companions (and their families) as well as the surviving Torchwood team and the team from The Sarah Jane Adventures. It's always a pleasure to see Elizabeth Sladen and Bernard Cribbins but there's little for anyone to do and some of the performances aren't up to scratch (Freema Agyeman reaches her lowest point; I do wonder if replacing her with Catherine Tate affected her confidence). The writing is pretty sloppy - one wonders why Davros failed to pick up on the fact that Dalek Caan's prophecy that one of the Doctor's companions will die does rather suggest that his plan to kill all life in all universes might end up with a bit of an underwhelming outcome. 2.5/5
Midnight. It's a bit ironic that this was a last-minute replacement script by RTD as, for me at any rate, it's his best work on the series. The claustrophobia of having most of the action take place in a small shuttle set and the simplicity of the story work perfectly. Less is definitely more on this occasion. 5/5
Turn Left. I think I tend to rate this one less highly than most people do, probably because I was never entirely convinced by Catherine Tate and this is very much her episode. It has a fair stab at a Sliding Doors type story and it benefits from Cribbins. 4/5
Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead really brings home how far above his colleagues Moffat was when it came to writing DW. These episodes exciting, inventive, scary, full of rich character moments and possessing a depth that always eluded most of the other writers. This one begins (and ends) the saga of River Song, setting seeds that Moffat will follow up for years. Tennant is at his best here, playing the richness of the material rather than having to prop it up with face-pulling and hyperactivity. 5/5
The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky. The Sontarans have remembered they're supposed to be wee again, so that's good; Cribbins is in it, so that's good; and, um, that's about it. Freema Agyeman seems to have lost her ability to act since last we saw her and the plot is so feeble it should have been a 1-parter. 2/5
The Doctor's Daughter. Maybe RTD's worst script? The breaks-the-internet title is a complete cheat that's chucked away before the titles role; the Hath demonstrate why having aliens with immobile masks and who don't speak are a terrible idea (and how does a fishman drown when it has its own breathing apparatus?); the story is tedious. The one saving grace is Georgia Moffett who is way more fun to watch than Tate or Agyeman (who is admittedly terribly served in this story). 1/5
The Unicorn and the Wasp. Thankfully, a major step up in quality again with a fun story, sparky dialogue that namechecks lots of Agatha Christie novels, and a tremendous supporting cast that includes Christopher Benjamin who was so good in The Talons of Weng-Chiang, Fenella Woolgar as Agatha, and Felicity Kendal. 4/5
The Fires of Pompeii starts very well and makes good use of the standing sets from Rome, then there's Capaldi doing a comical role and the big-eyed Sibyllines (including Karen Gillan in her first Who part) but then it gets a bit rushed and the lava monsters are a bit weak. Really could have done with being a 2-parter to let it breathe. 3/5
Planet of the Ood. Really quite nasty stuff at times with the Ood slaves being horribly exploited and killed. It rattles along nicely and contains some fun foreshadowing for the series finale. This one actually seemed a bit better on re-watch than first time around. 3.5/5
The Sound of Drums/Last of the Timelords. I applaud the decision to finally have a fully-reincarnated Master who isn't just a second-rate copy of Roger Delgado and Alexandra Moen is a stunning Lucy Saxon but there's an awful lot wrong with this one. I mean, it's sly having Ann Widdecombe on endorsing an insane and evil Prime Minister in fiction rather than in real life (and oh! how Harold Saxon would be a refreshing change from our current regime) but that does mean we have to endure Ann Widdecombe for a few seconds, which is harsh on us all. The homunculus Doctor is a bit embarrassing, as is the Messiah Doctor and the idea that the whole world would oppose Saxon has pretty much now been disproved by real-world events. I might be slightly generous in giving this 2.5/5
And so that's Tennant's 2nd series over. It's a big improvement on his first with a full third of the episodes being excellent and only the Dalek two-parter being a real stinker. Again, Drama isn't showing the Christmas special so I'm on to Season Three ...
Partners in Crime is the silly little story that features the comical monsters the Adipose and reintroduces Catherine Tate as Donna. Meh. But, what's this? It's Bernard Cribbins being bloody wonderful and earning a whole extra star all on his own. 3/5
...Turns out you follow it with Blink, a genuine genre masterpiece that not only introduces nu-Who's most memorable returning monster it also stars Carey Mulligan who would be Oscar-nominated and who really shines here. 5/5
Utopia is a strange episode that seems to exist as a hook on which to hand its surprise reveal, There's nothing else remotely interesting about what passes for a story so the only other pleasures are the return of Captain Jack Harkness and Derek Jacobi's guest appearance, which is so good that you wish they'd stuck with his portrayal of the Master rather than go with John Simm. 3/5
Human Nature/The Family of Blood. It's stories like this that make it worth putting up with the run of mediocre to very poor stories before it. Indeed, this is exceptional drama by any standards, an inventive and multilayered script that shows several sides of the Doctor and allows Tennant to do more than just hyperactive showing off as well as allowing the excellent supporting cast to shine. Add in some creepy living scarecrows and you get a real winner.
5/5 and one of the highlights of the Tennant era. How do you follow that ...?
The Lazarus Experiment consists mainly of a run around the corridors pursued by a badly-dated cgi monster. Mark Gatiss is good as the human form of the monster and his scenes with Tennant are the episode's highlight. Freema seems to be struggling a bit.
42 consists mainly of a run around the corridors. Michelle Collins is a weak guest star. Considering that this was supposed to an innovative "real-time" episode the gimmick adds nothing at all, apart from the opportunity to see close-ups of some clocks. The device of being able to phone home to Freema's family is especially tiresome here.
The Lazarus Experiment 2.5/5 (for the Gatiss/Tennant scenes)
42 2/5
Gridlock is a set up without a story. The Doctor throws a lever, everything's okay. Why include the Macra when they're nothing like the Macra of the Troughton era?
Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks. Again, the "shopping list" is exciting - Daleks, 1930 New York, the Empire State Building - but the writing is horrible, particularly in the second episode with the awful, Dalek/Human hybrid thing. Why include the pig-men when we had a pig monster in Aliens of London just a couple of seasons before? Andrew Garfield makes no impression in a nothing role.
Gridlock 2.5/5
Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks 1.5/5
Concluding season two with Doomsday and we have the ultimate fanwank of Daleks v Cybermen, or Cybus-men at any rate. It's all very noisy, overfull of Rose's boring family and the long foreshadowed bit about this being the day Rose dies is another cheat. I liked it more the first time I saw it but not much at all this time.
Doomsday 2/5
And I'm glad that series is over. It was a disappointment at the time, considering how good Eccles' series had been, but it was much worse on re-watch with more than half of the episodes being poor or really poor. Tennant is easily the poorest of the nu-Who Doctors pre-Chibnall and I'm mostly finding him irritating.
As Drama aren't showing the Christmas specials it's on to season three ...
Smith and Jones is an okay episode, mainly filler apart from introducing the impossibly beautiful Freema Agyeman who equates herself well. We're also introduced to the rubbish Judoon, another of RTD's many failed attempts to create a monster we'll want to see again.
The Shakespeare Code. Ah, now this is more like it. Exactly what I want from nu-Who: an imaginative and exciting adventure, witty dialogue and supporting characters you wouldn't mind meeting again (in this case Dean Lennox Kelly's excellent Shakespeare). It's atmospherically done with effective cgi. Tennant is much better here with better material to work with. Loved it.
Smith and Jones 2.5/5
The Shakepeare Code 4.5/5
Oof! Love & Monsters. I think this still has the lowest AI score of any episode of nu-Who. I thought it was an okay change of pace at the time but re-watching it now I have to agree with the majority; it's really awful, embarrassing, and could be interpreted as quite insulting to fans. Fear Her ... is worse. It's really badly written, has a poor performance from the main child actor and the Olympics scenes are as bad as anything in the Chibnall era. That's quite a double bill. It's been very clear from this season that RTD is badly over-stretched developing Torchwood, which was also very poor. Army of Ghosts is the first half of the season finale, not very good in its own right, and seems to exist only to set up its cliffhanger which promises a Daleks v Cybermen second episode.
Love & Monsters 0/5
Fear Her 0/5
Army of Ghosts 1.5/5
Another triple bill. The Idiot's Lantern is one of the most disappointing nu Who episodes. The combination of a Gatiss script and the early days of television sounds delicious but nothing really works here. The script is uninteresting, the direction is flat and several performances, including Maureen Lipman as The Wire and Jamie Foreman as a bullying dad, are weak. The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit is a welcome return to form. Well-paced as a two-parter with plenty of scary bits.
The Idiot's Lantern 1.5/5
The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit 4/5