(725) Smith and Jones

These new series are going fast. It only seems like five minutes that I was watching Rose and here I am watching the first story to feature Martha. After saying goodbye to Rose and briefly saying hello to Donna, we get introduced to Martha Jones and for a moment I just wanted to stat things up. Between the Christmas Special and todays episode just 96 days had past and that that is the shortest gap between stories since seasons 5 & 6 back in the late 1960’s and it’s the sixth shortest in the shows history. Having thought that the previous series wasn’t as strong as it could have been, this is the first one where the people writing for the show knew what sort of Doctor they were writing for and this shows. Like Rose, this has to introduce Martha and that means that there is a family to introduce as well. It really doesn’t take long for Martha to show why she’s better than Rose. Even her family is better than the Tyler’s.

The Doctor and Martha seem to hit it off straight away and it’s a different dynamic than there was between the Doctor and Rose. The romance is reigned in a lot with these two. There is a nice explanation given by Martha where she says she has a cousin that worked in Canary Wharf and this gets around how the two look the same.

The monster of the week is a Rhino looking race called The Judoon. They look really good and their first appearance is one of the highlights of the episode because to see them marching along the service of the moon isn’t something that could only work on new Doctor Who. The Judoon are basically policeman and it’s a great idea from RTD and I know they appear in future stories but this will always be their best appearance. They show their power in just towering over people and they work well in the story. The cool thing that takes place in this episode is the hospital that the Doctor and Martha are on is taken and placed on the Moon. That is a great idea and the visual effects help make it look really good.

Anne Reid returns to the show after appearing in The Curse of Fenric and in this she plays a blood sucking alien calling herself Florence Finnegan. She gets her blood by using a straw which was a source of irritation to many but I just thought that it was a really amusing way and it sort of doesn’t make the how blood sucking thing seem as terrifying as it would normally be. The Judoon are after her but she’s disguised as a human and she sucks the Doctor’s blood and is discovered by the Judoon so she basically trips herself up.

This is the series where the Saxon story arc begins and its not until the end of the episode where Saxon gets his first mention. It’s a blink and you miss it but at this time of the show, we had all got use to listening out for any mention of Saxon or Torchwood or Bad Wolf. Saxon got mentioned in the Christmas Special but the mentions are now goings to be far more frequent. I think that this is the strongest series opener that we have had. Rose was good just because we were glad to have it back and New Earth wasn’t very good really but this was the one which got it spot on and I am even more excited about this series.