Love & Monsters

In a season that has bee populated by shoddiness - often good ideas are either poorly executed or laden with useless plot gratuities that have become so ho hum lately or the character of Rose is just annoying - this one is more like a little science fiction romantic comedy that just happens to feature the Doctor and Rose and could easily be viewed and enjoyed without ever seeing any other episode of the series ever again.

The plot concerns a guy who becomes very interested in this mysterious figure the Doctor and hooks up with a club devoted to the same pursuit that he meets online. The club is filled with the same kind of awkward but friendly types and their discussions of the Doctor eventually morph into pot luck dinners and a cute, silly little rock band that does ELO covers - until a mysterious fellow shows up and commandeers the group in order to find more out about the Doctor.

Marc Warren is sweet and goofy as Elton and Peter Kay is nicely over the top as the mysterious guy who takes over. It's very light entertainment, but nonetheless touching and funny . . . and out of left field, really. It's nice to see that in this season of retreads and by-the-numbers half thought out junk that writer Russell T. Davies could take a moment to try something a little different for a change.

Series two of the new Doctor Who could well be one of the very best television series ever to appear on British television. I really mean that; I'm not just some raving fan. Love And Monsters was to DW what Revolution #9 is to the Beatles and will draw polarised reactions. Me, I applaud its originality, its zest, its supreme cleverness, and the fact that it was fresh, funny, satirical and wise. Peter Kay, truly proving that 'all planets have a north' was fantastic, as were the rest of the cast. But we've come to expect that from this series now, standards have been set so high. I suggest anyone who disliked this episode should expand the boundaries of their mind - there is really is an incredible world out there, just as the script said.

Oh come on! I've been watching Doctor Who since I was five years old (30 years ago) and I've never seen an episode quite as funny as this one (not even the one with Bertie Basset in it). Don't take it so seriously, it was a totally played for laughs, self-mocking episode. Chasing the monster backwards and forwards across the screen at the start of the episode was straight out of Scooby Doo or classic Laurel & Hardy. Peter Kays human costume was a parody of the eccentric costumes earlier incarnations of the Doctor had worn (Ecclestone and Tennant look just too plain by comparison), and his Abzorbaloff costume harked back to the days when Doctor Who monsters were obviously just men in rubber suits (although I admit the kid who designed it couldn't have realised that, but then he did want it to be the size of a bus). Peter Kay didn't even bother trying to disguise his voice and if anything sounded even more northern as the monster. The soundtrack was great (I love ELO) and the blow job joke at the end had me in stitches. All in all the funniest Doctor Who episode ever, and a fantastic bit of light relief for between "The Satan Pit" and the next few episodes.

I lived in england at the cool age of 13 and watched jonathon pertwee cavort with characters who looked like they were glitterock backup singers with mild disbelief...

...But as a young adult in the early 80s I fell in love with the weird insouciance of the Tom Baker era, followed by a mild rooting interest in Peter Davison, further declining until Ecclestone and Tennant revived the franchise for the new millennium...

Back in the 80s the local PBS station KTEH helped fill me in on the doings of the good doctors that preceded Baker and I grew to appreciate Pertwee, and his nemesis The Master... good times...There were also some very well constructed plots/story arcs (the planet pirates, for example) which would take many episodes to resolve But enough of my fanboy credentials

This is an art film episode of Dr Who as told from the the view of the red shirted star trek crewman who will probably perish on the plant's surface.

It is a unique take on the normally unseen collateral damage these great events and adventures have upon the incidental characters. This teleplay looks at the effect on those who are merely aware and interested in the Doctor. It's probably the very first PoMo dr treatment apart from Comic Relief, etc.

This is Rosencrantz and Guildenstern with a handycam and it has that same unsettling realism that the more recent Dr Who episodes have had, and such as were found in some of the 'Historical' Pertwee and Baker episodes that were set in Medieval and Cavalier times in which some technologically advanced being attempted to subvert the flow of history for their advantage.

If this is from the guy with his hands on the franchise then I cheer for the revival of one of the most thoughtful TV scifi series of all time.

I actually really enjoyed the first 3/4 of this episode. That was, until the monster is revealed and the rest of the episode becomes disturbingly bad.