The Girl in the Fireplace

Everything came together to perfection in this episode - the best ever. The chemistry between Sophia Myles and David Tennant was electric and the Murray Gold's music caught its poignancy to perfection. The costumes were sumptuous and there was just enough menace to keep kids behind the sofa now and again, and certainly will stop them looking under their beds at night. And a great one to put before next week's Cybermen as a complete foil to it. It went a long way to explaining a lot of the Doctor's motivation as a character in a variety of other situations. If this episode doesn't win some kind of award, I will eat my sonic screwdriver.

This episode is the reason for me to watch the dr. Who series again. Really, after the famous (and me being 6 years old) 70's Tom Baker dr. Who , I hardly took interest in watching the series again. Every time I was disappointed. But this episode/season stroke me. It think it was even much better than the 70's best episode. The music is great, the story is wonderful, David Tennant and the other characters make this the best dr Who so far :) So after re-looking all of the 2006 episodes I can only say that to me this series is the most catching series until now. I'm really looking forward 2 what's to come :)

The story lines are so great, the music is beautiful and finally, the characters are chosen perfectly.

David Tennant just gets better and better! A fantastic episode, definitely the best from this series so far. It was great to see the Doctor connect on an emotional level with someone else other than Rose. By the end I really believed in the relationship he had built with Madame de Pompadour, who was portrayed to perfection by Sophia Myles. Very cleverly written, and I love the way the Doctor is becoming more human (if that makes sense) every time we see him. As well as being visually dazzling, this episode plucked at the heartstrings on a deeper level than previous episodes have. I also thought that the enemies in this episode were some of the most frightening I've seen in the past series and this. I've never really been into sci-fi fantasy, but I am proud to admit Doctor Who has converted me! Keep it up BBC!

The best Doctor Who episode I've seen. Although there are some major plot discrepancies and they could probably explain the clockwork droids a little more, this episode really hit it right home.

I could watch it over and over again and feel this weird tingly sensation after. And what gorgeous music. Kudos to the music guy...whoever you are.

This episode did not have too much visual effects and action so I thought it was going to be rather plain but I was astounded as to how the emotional part of the story really carries it through the end. Writer Steven Moffatt penned a wonderful script and the contrast between Mickey/Rose's more colloquial, modern speech and Reinette's flowy poetic period piece was beautiful.

We've always seen the Doctor as some sort of superhuman being but this episode really emphasizes on his humanity. It puts his feelings on the line and I like how the audience got a glimpse of him when Reinette read his mind. One question though: How come she had that ability? The ending always gets me choked up and teary...damn that sweet sweet music *sob*! But for all the space age action (well of course being a sci-fi series), it's such a fresh change to see Doctor Who in 18th century France.

Ah...the end.

During the original run of Doctor Who, the mere idea of any kind of romance between the Doctor and his companions was deemed ridiculous (although we know that he had a family at one point, what with Susan calling him "grandfather" and all). The new series, on the other hand, has a lot of fun with the main character's attitude (or lack thereof) towards the opposite sex: by the admission of writer Steven Moffat, his episode The Doctor Dances was, starting with the title, a blatant sexual metaphor, and it's only fitting that his third Who script deal with the unthinkable - the Doctor in love.

Having solved the Krillitane mess, the Time Lord, Rose and Mickey end up on a spaceship in the 51st century that, weirdly enough, contains bits of the 18th century, specifically the life of French noblewoman Madame de Pompadour (Sophia Myles). The Doctor communicates with her at various points in her life through a fireplace, and a bond forms between the two. Unfortunately, time is running out, and the Doctor needs to figure out how he can save her from the attack of clockwork "monsters".

Touching, poetic and magical, The Girl in the Fireplace continues the fairy tale motif present in Moffat's previous scripts, explicitly borrowing from C.S. Lewis to concoct a truly timeless and tragic love story between the dark future and the brightly lit, stunningly executed past. Whereas previous episodes were meant to establish Tennant as the new Doctor, this story sees him go beyond that and play a wide range of emotions alongside the equally superb Myles, who is the real heart of this beautiful tale. Not that the romantic feel gets in the way of some traditional Doctor Who silliness - no other show would probably get away with a brilliantly daft shot of a horse on a spaceship.