Sorry to start off on a rather maudlin note, but it becomes increasingly hard not to measure the passage of time by certain personal landmarks in this way after a while. I still remember the run-up to the 20th anniversary – the Five Doctors and the Andrew Skilleter Radio Times cover and the Radio Times special that my Dad bought.

I don’t really remember the 25th – I ducked in and out of Doctor Who over the Sixth and Seventh Doctor eras. I never took to poor Colin at the time but came back for Sylv’s first series. I remember being utterly non-plussed by whichever story I first saw of his, but was utterly disgusted when Delta and the Bannermen was trailed with a picture of Sylvester and Ken Dodd gurning violently – and took the next two years off.

I also remember reading of The Dark Dimension (scripts floating around on the internet show it to be absolutely dreadful) in Doctor Who Magazines and TV Zones, DWBs and Starbursts while standing at the magazine shelves in WH Smiths – and reading about its cancellation. Other 15-year-olds furtively bought pornography; I furtively bought sci-fi mags (though I later went on to furtively buy pornography and sci-fi mags).

35. Did anything happen? Not that I can remember. 40. Ah, the new series announcement. Was it really the best part of ten years ago? I had a different job; lived in a different house, with a different girl. How time flies. I was so excited I texted my brother when I was driving home from work (I know, I know) and then listened, annoyed, to some piss-taking announcement on BBC Radio 1.

If anything specific happened at 45 I don’t remember it. And now 50. 50 fucking years. I literally can’t believe it. But its coming does excite me. The fanboy feeling that – even though it’s elusive and fleeting – reminds me why I love Doctor Who, even now.

I haven’t been excited by a TV show’s anniversary for 20 years. But the prospect of what The Grand Moff promises will be every fanwanky dream come true is mouth-watering indeed. I don’t dare to voice my hopes for an anniversary story that I hope throws sense and good taste out of the window. And I thoroughly expect all the trimmings too. A Multi-Doctor Big Finish story; DWM getting in the big guns for a round of joint interviews; special BBC1 trails throughout the year; a nice Radio Times cover story; a massive contention (not that I’d go, of course). The works.

In what is like the first batch of Christmas adverts you see on the TV (or advent hymns if you’re more traditional) the 50th anniversary has been teased with this wonderful trailer from Babelfish; genius amateur editor and a man who has gone well beyond the call of duty in producing delicious morsels on Doctor Who video fun. It;s his tribute to the show and a visual nod to every TV story, spin-off and continuity thing. A phenomenal effort – and one that stirs the same part of me that awaited The Five Doctors, over 30 years ago.

I still remember the trailer for the second series that showed immediately after the Christmas Day special – and being very excited by it. Was that excitement warranted? Well, that’s what we’re here to find out.

Like last time, when we looked at Season One of the new Doctor Who series, I’ll be asking the Geek Clique (a bunch of (largely) demographically-similar fans, you can probably guess which demographics) for their views and ratings of Tennant’s first series.

If you missed it last time I asked them – in an investigation of whether my 33-33-33 good-bad-indifferent rule was about right – which episodes they liked. Just that. No marks out of ten or caveats. I also asked them for their comments on what they thought worked and why.

The Tenth Doctor, Rose, Mickey, Sarah-Jane, K9, Cybermen, the Absorbaloff. Alons-y!

Series 2

For me this is probably the weakest of the series of NuWho, though Series Six is running it very close. I never really warmed to the Tenth Doctor, though I could appreciate Tennant’s acting abilities. I found him rather self-satisfied, shouty and saddled with an awful accent. As one of the Geel Clique says, he’s a twat. His relationship with Rose brought out the worst in them – they were hard to warm to and I was glad to see the back of the whingy, clingy, often cruel Rose by the end of the series.

I don’t rate many of the stories either. It has one out-and-out classic in The Girl In The Fireplace, an episode that’s funny, touching, clever, scary and weird by turn and an episode that really built up its emotional pay-off, rather than just having someone cry while Murray Gold wanks away in the background. Oh, it’s ‘drunk Doctor’ scene is possibly the worst in the entire series, but we’ll ignore that.

I also voted for School Reunion, an episode that I’d describe, favourably, as ‘nice’. It’s oh-so-slight and Anthony Head would have Graham Crowden frowning and thinking ‘that’s a bit much’ but it has Sarah-Jane and K9 and some funny lines.

I really liked a lot of elements in The Impossible Planet and Satan Pit but it didn’t feel like the sum of its parts. It came across as a bit jumbled, like it had been clumsily rewritten but I thought it genuinely chilling in parts – “Don’t turn around” a classic moment – and boasted a strong cast. Best of all, Gabriel Woolf was in it.

NB. I forgot to vote for Girl In the Fireplace so bumped it up by one

And that was it for me. Tooth and Claw was a decent runaround, but that was it. The Idiot’s Lantern seemed like a nice idea and looked a treat but was the first in a series of forgettable Gatiss scripts that just don’t really come off.

I thought New Earth possibly the worst in the new series run and the Cybermen two-parter an absolute bodge of the brilliant Spare Parts audio play, with perhaps the worst single performance of the new series from Trigger off of Only Fools and Horses.

Fear Her is a complete waste of time and a bizarre fluff of the ‘suburban horror’ meme and the final two-parter a bemusing car crash of elements, characters, monsters and plot lines. I’m informed that half of the Geek Clique literally shit themselves with sadness when Rose went through the wall, though, so what do I know?

What else? Ah, yes. Love and Monsters. This is an intriguing little creation but it seems like it’s wandered in from a different series. It’s an episode about Doctor Who fans. Weird. But pretty good, on the whole.

The Geek Clique awarded this series just 35 votes. Assuming the same amount of people vote on each series that places Series 2 as last in the Clique’s affections – with a series an average of just 3.5 to Series One’s 58.

Anyway, as for my 33-33-33 (good, indifferent, bad) split, here goes:

-School Reunion, Girl in the Fireplace, The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit
-Tooth and Claw, Love and Monsters
-New Earth, Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel, The Idiot’s Lantern, Fear Her, Army of Ghosts/Doomsday

That’s seven duffers out of 13, which is not a great hit rate and blows my mathematical wibbling out of the water.

Read what the Geek Clique made of the individual episodes, the Doctor-Rose-Mickey dynamic and the series as a whole below. And do let us know what you think about Series 2, both with comments and the poll at the bottom.

New Earth

New Earth continues the nuWho tradition of dreadful opening nights. Like many of RTD’s stories it has a grab bag of elements that sound exciting but have narrative reason to be together (nuns – who are cats, zombies, the Return of Cassandra, the Face of Boe again, etcetera). This one sounds like it was hindered by Davies rewriting the story in response to something Moffat said (Davies “invents interesting characters, then melts them”) and decided to give the story a happy ending. Instead of creating a scenario where Doctor has to kill the experimental subjects and the Face of Boe actually dies, tying in thematically with Cassandra’s death, he grafted on a happy ending, which is bollocks. Cassandra’s acceptance of her own mortality is completely out of keeping with everything the audience knows of the character, and the scenes in which the experimental subjects are cured by the application of the Sisters of Plenitude’s medicines raising the question of why the Sisters were using the subjects for experimentation, if their diseases were so easily curable.

New Earth was an unforgiveably poor start to the season, squandering the goodwill engendered by the Christmas Invasion: after tCI, I was really excited to see the new Doctor and instead what I get is a whiny, arrogant manchild and his simpering girlfriend parading their dysfunctional codependency in front of a load of cats. And then you get Tooth and Claw…

Tooth and Claw

I’m not sure what the point of ‘Tooth and Claw’ was. Rose and the Doctor start to become smug and obnoxious with their cliquey jokes. The monks that Bic razors forgot are just bizarre (wouldn’t pretending to be y’know normal monks be less conspicuous). And the idea of the telescope as a werewolf trap is just stupid – it’s possibly the least useful weapon forever as it only works in one narrow scenario.

School Reunion

School Reunion is a funny one too. because Lis Sladen + K9 are in it it’s quite enjoyable – but I feel that’s skewing the balance in favour of this story, which is wholly forgettable shorn of its USP.

I quite like the Anthonystewartheadites. I’m not sure they’d be worth much without Anthony Stewart Head being smarmy and evil but their shtick of being obsessive self improvers has the basics for a classic Who baddy. And bat wings are cool. Also Mickey is good in this.

Looking back on all this, there are lots of episodes which have great elements which don’t add up to a great episode. School reunion being the best case – I’ve not idea how a show could be shit with Anthony Head, Sarah Jane (this was the first time she came back and it was brilliant) K9 and scary aliens posing as teachers, but somehow it was.

Other than the bits with Sarah and K-9, ‘School Reunion’ is just a bit boring. It also cements how nasty the Doctor and Rose are when Mickey realises that he’s relegated to the role of the tin dog. I’m also not entirely happy with the attempt to retrofit the type of relationship the Doctor has with Rose onto Sarah. And Rose is obnoxious to poor old Sarah Jane. It’s a shame the monsters didn’t eat her. Oh, and Anthony Head is in it! Yay! But he overacts terribly. Boo.

The Girl in the Fireplace

The Girl in the Fireplace is a story I enjoy, but which loses something whenever it’s rewatched. The creepy ship and the clockwork men turn out to have the most banal rationale behing their actions imaginable, and we’re supposed to think that’s clever!

I’ve never quite understood the love for Girl in the Time Traveller’s Wife, being more struck by the fact that Noel Clarke was going to get screwed over by bad planning again.

Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel

The Rise of the Cybermen two-parter was weak plot-wise, and suffered from the inclusion of an unnecessary and boring alt-earth runaround, but there were some great set-pieces in it and the art deco look of the cybermen along with with their FX-assisted stomping brought to the fore their mechanical, soulless, and cold-hearted nature. Combine this with the conversion scenes at Battersea Power Station and there was a real sense that humanity was at risk there.

The Idiot’s Lantern

I’ve never understood the antipathy to Idiot’s Lantern – a smashing episode with a fun baddie, an entertaining plot and a drunken cameraman.

The Idiot’s Lantern would be ok were it not for the nonsense about the gay son calling out his evil fifties reactionary father. Gattiss can’t do emotional stuff at all and in this instance it drowned the plot. Oh and the Tenth Doctor was at his shouty-twat worst.

The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit

I really liked the Impossible planet, dunno why there’s the hate for that one. But I suspect it was mainly the supporting actors who were really damn good.

Love and Monsters

I really like Love and Monsters: it was brave and interesting, and about time to try something different. The biggest weakness, ironically, is the Doctor and Rose: they’re absolute bastards: it’s impossible to believe that people are so likely to worship the Doctor when he’s simply not the Doctor we all grew up worshipping. He’s a twat.

Love & Monsters is easily my favourite episode of the new series. It’s not doing what Doctor Who should do at all, but it stands as the one place when RTD really let rip and brought the keen vision of Queer as Folk to bear on geek culture. It’s dark, misanthropic and near the knuckle, but it’s also honest.

Fear Her

Fear Her was a fine little story, completely inconsequential and daft, but well suited to 45 minutes and a welcome change from the universe being under threat again.

So many Nu Who stories have so utterly forgettable and lacking in effort you wonder if they wonder have been better off just going with 8 episodes a year.

Fear Her should have been a nice creepy little story about something horrible living on a quiet suburban street, and I thought that the tenth Doctor was more sympathetic than usual in that one, but the abusive parent stuff felt tacked on, the guff about the Olympics seemed fairly typical of RTD’s inability to let stories with contemporary settings speak for themselves, and Huw Edwards is unbearable at the best of times and made an even bigger tit of himself than usual here.

Army of Goasts/Doomsday

The finale was magnificent, second only among New DW in the heartstring-tugging stakes to Eccleston’s last story. It was a comic book story brought to life, completely believable and utterly enthralling. And the dramatic tone shift in the final 15 seconds give an impression of a show runner at the very top of his game – amazingly confident, wonderfully subversive and pitch perfect in judging cliffhangers.

The final two parter was great at the time, and the end of was fantastic, and I certainly got a lump in my throat. But the elegance of the end was spoiled by the fact that the relationship was soured for me earlier on in the year.

Bad Wolf Bay is the moment that cemented the show in the affections of the nation, if not ours. It sealed the deal for the gurls and wimmin, who were absolutely crucial to what RTD was trying to do with show. That moment with the wall is and will be the moment that gets replayed on The Greatest TV Moments Ever clip shows from now till doomsday.

Rose and the Doctor

As strange as it is to apply the concept to fictional characters the Tenth Doctor and Rose really brought out the worst in each other. Co-dependent, mutually admiring and callous about all the characters around them except for when called upon to demonstrate their “compassion” for our admiration.

I really didn’t like the Ten n’ Rose dynamic, which spoiled a lot of stories in S2. I never liked that while I felt there was a co-dependency between Nine and Rose that made it a-OK, there was just something deeply unpleasant about the dynamic between the two of them in Season Two.

It’s a shame that I can hardly watch Tennant now. Watching him through the filter of the last few specials means that it’s difficult not to shout “emo twat” at the screen whenever he’s on and being moody.

[Rose} went from being a sweet, normal person to a clingy cypher. Watching them again, the shift in characterisation from seasons 1 to 2 is actually quite jarring. It spoils what could have been fun episodes and turns bad episodes into something awful. The fact the season has more of the latter than the former any way doesn't exactly help.

Season 2

Aside from the werewolf one, the sarah jane one and the madam de pompadour one this is probably the second weakest series so far.

Season 2, for me, is a lot less coherent than Season 1. I know there's a lot of reasons for that - Rose's change in leaving dates, the replacement of Ecclestone - but, for me, the heart and soul of the issue seems to be the writing. I think RTD was caught out by the success of the s1 (as were we all) and rapidly fell into a trap of just writing for his life. The treadmill of actually getting the thing produced overtook the writing; this would become more and more noticeable throughout the rest of the new series and really underlines the importance of having either a seperate head writer and showrunner/producer or a larger writing staff.

Looking back it's really hard to miss how lazy a lot of the plot and characterisation choices were and the faint air of desperation that hung about it as RTD realised he had a hit on his hand but hadn't really thought about what to do next. After the Tooth and Claw through Girl in the Fireplace run which had some of the best action and best jokes in the new series it was all thrown away by a lot of badly plotted runabouts with cod emotion thrown in. Also I'm struggling to think of a genuine real scare in this series - I liked some of the stuff from the Ood two parter at the time but it was all rather thrown away by the creature in the pit turning out to be a heavy metal cover circa 1982. Still all that said it was phenomenally successful and Tennant has become "The Doctor" to a generation in a way that Eccleston and Smith (both of whom I vastly prefer) haven't so it must have been doing something right. Either that or the majority of Britain is thick and deluded.

There are some phenomenally weak stories in this season, looking at them again. I never watched New Earth, the Cyberman two-parter or Fear Her again they were so awful. But I've very little desire to see any of them again, bar the brilliant Girl in the Fireplace.

Doctor Who has never been better than it was in 2005-2006. And, sadly, I doubt it will be as good for years to come.

Vote for your favourite stories of Doctor Who - season two

This is something I’ve come to believe particularly since the advent of the new series, which can send me in raptures, fury or a doze over three consecutive weeks.

Distance and nostalgia lends the classic series a different aura. It’s more difficult to critically assess because it’s more familiar, but you also need to bear in mind that some of it was intended to be broadcast exactly once.

There are periods of the series where lack of cash or instability among the production team clearly show and there are certain peculiarities of the era that you need to bear in mind.

With the new series, by which I mean since 2005, there are a whole new set of considerations, but budget isn’t really one of them. Nor can it be argued that these new episodes have not been made in a DVD, Youtube and Sky+ era.

Certain rumours suggest that, once again (as of 2011), Doctor Who is again beset by production difficulties. But let’s forget about that. For now this is all about season one.

I bring my own prejudices and preferences to the new series, so I thought I’d ask a gang of friends to bring their own set of prejudices to the news series. There’s a good mix of people. People who dislike much of the news series. People ambivalent to much of it. People who love it pretty much unreservedly. People who enjoyed Russell T Davies’ take on the series, but not Moffatt’s and vice versa.

Some watch with their other half; some with the kids. Some love the old series and will always be loyal to it; some are unimpressed by it/ambivalent to it or believe the new iteration vastly superior to the new.

There is one common strand: We were all Doctor Who fans prior to the new series starting.

I asked them which new episodes they actually liked. No ratings, no reviews, no caveats. Just which ones they liked.

We’re starting with season one (or season 27 if you prefer); something that seems like a long time ago now. Eccleston, Billie, RTD, Slitheen, Daleks, Autons, Reapers, Keith Boak.

Are you my mummy? Run for your life! Do you wanna come with me?

Oh yes, we were willin’.

Season one – results

NB. The ones in bold are my selections

An unsurprising winner is The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, by far the stand-out story of the first year for me – and the start of fandom’s erstwhile love affair with the Moff. Be careful what you wish for, eh?

Second is Dalek, an oddity in the new series for me. Rob Shearman really does inject something back into the Daleks though, with a number of iconic scenes and a lovely prologue where the DOctor comes face-to-face with an Invasion-era Cyberman head. Why Shearman has not written again for the series is a mystery to me.

Third is The Unquiet Dead, Mark Gatiss’ only decent story by my reckoning. It was a clear nod to the glory days of Holmes and Hinchcliffe, the kind of story that has disappeared from the new series for some reason, and a good effort at that. Who’s first effort of the new series of doing frightening – surely the very raison d’etre of Who – does a very good job indeed.

Fourth was the end of season two-parter, Bad Wolf and Parting of the Ways. Watching Bad Wolf recently I thought it very good, but the second part has so many elements that became emblematic of everything I disliked about the new series. It’s ‘chips and work’ mise-en-scene, its ‘love saves the day’ conclusion and its deification of Rose, a character I never really cared for, even though Billie Piper was great.

Rose, The End of the World and Father’s Day got six votes each. The first two are interesting for me, as they’re both very clearly RTD scripts. I hated the former – and I don’t believe it would have received many votes at all if not the first of the new series – but I thought End of the World witty, touching and exciting.

Father’s Day is another first series oddity – one not without its problems but one that brought a bit of a New Adventures tone to the new series, something I was bound to enjoy.

Boom Town is next, an episode that is fun and then fascinating and then utterly fucking awful in its three acts, for me. Aliens of London/World War Three – a spiritual cousin to Rose – and The Long Game, a story I’d charitably refer to as filler get one vote each.

As for my 30-30-30 (good; forgettable; shit) notion, I can split them as follows:

Not one of the Christmas specials has been much good by my reckoning, the first one and the one with Gambon in were OK; most have been utterly awful.

I did not really look forward to the Doctor Who Christmas special this year; mainly because I never think they’re up to much but partly because I found myself tiring of Who over the year. All of a sudden fatigue set in and I wasn’t really bothered any more. But, because it’s Doctor Who and I’ll never truly dislike it, I tuned it.

So did I find a succulent turkey – or was it overcooked sprouts all the way.

Caves

It was nice to see Matt Smith again

The reproducing, sentient trees were a nice idea.

The sets and all the period detail were impeccable.

Like most fans I appreciate the nods to the past – something that seems increasingly nice when faced with the possibility of a reboot film series.

Nice to see Amy and Rory again.

Like the tree monsters.

Twins

I know it’s Christmas and I know expectations are low and I know these specials are kind of duty bound to be stupidly Christmassy, but for fuck’s sake.

I just didn’t care and I didn’t believe it and I didn’t like it. About half an hour before it actually happened I’d guessed, no, feared, that the Power of Motherhood was going to save the day. Just like a kiss saved the day and love saved day and hope saved the day again and again and again over the last couple of years.

RTD shrugged, made Tennant cry and just fell back on some MacGuffin when he’d written himself into a corner; Moffat just relies on schmaltz. It’s usually done in a clever way – and in a way that’s possible to overlook for a while.

But it happens so frequently that it’s impossible to ignore – and deeply tiresome. And predictable. And rather cheap and cynical.

Because at Christmas Moffat gets a bit of a bye. Perhaps he should be allowed his indulgence once a year, like we are when we stuff our face for a day. God knows the man is busy enough, what with his 15 series that he showruns.

But what I’m left with is a story that almost feels like a waste of my time. I’m sure lots of people enjoy it and would shout humbug at me. But judging these Xmas specials on the same basis we judge the usual episodes show them up badly.

Something else that creeps into these recent Xmas episodes is a Moffat-patented wackiness; last year a shark-drawn sleigh, this year a forest-possesed Edwardian mother piloting a golf ball through the time vortex.

What can we expect next year, I wonder? A TARDIS disguised as a polar bear running trough Albert Square? A Timelord that’s regenerated into a reindeer with a nose made of strange matter? A flying penguin powered by faith and ridden by John Masefield?

I suppose I should mention Bill Bailey and Claire Skinner and Alexander Armstrong and Arabella Weir. I didn’t care. Neither did I care for the emotional manipulation that struck a rather dubious tone, in my opinion. Once again, death has no sting. What does this say to kids about their nature of life and death? Either way it’s damn lazy and cynical.

It’s incredible how quickly Moffat’s take on Doctor Who seems staid, overfamiliar and out of ideas. And I don’t take ay pleasure from saying it. Just as I don’t take any pleasure from watching it, much as it pains me to admit.

Promising eh? Well, that depends on your point of view. It was on telly again recently so I watched it for the first time in years.

Caves

Eccleston – This is one of Eccleston’s best episodes: baffled, worried, flirtatious, playful – the Ninth Doctor is believable and Doctorish here, shorn of much of the goonish mugging from several other stories.

Jack – Jack works really well here as a cheeky, boys-own hero – albeit a randy bi hero – flirting with the robot Trinny and Susannah. His is by far the best bit of the games.

Gamestation – A nice concept that is done pretty well; nicely satirical reveal and a little dig at television trends that were pretty new at that point.

The Controller – A disturbing sci-fi element

Bad Wolf – The creeping realisation that Bad Wolf has been following the TARDIS team around time and space is atmospheric, sinister and well-played.

Daleks – Doing that they do best, the Daleks are cunning puppet-masters here and much more interesting than they subsequently were in any NuWho appearances. And a gigantic Dalek fleet and the ship interiors are a real treat for fans.

Dialogue – RTD at his best. “You have got to be kidding’; Jack’s stiff, ‘bear with me’ – all amusing.

100 years of Hell – The Doctor comes face-to-face with the ramifications of his actions

Direction – There’s some really nice, off-the-wall stuff here; lots of close-ups, unusual angles, tracking shots. The reveal of the Daleks is particularly well done.

The next time trailer – action, threat, revelation, questions… surely they weren’t going to fuck this up?

Twins

The speech – Should’ve been Doc Nine’s defining speech but I don’t think it works

The music – Not too bad on the whole but any dramatic action sequences are not scored well

Paterson Joseph – A very good actor saddled with a quite appalling accent

This is a shame, because I found it very funny – if a tad OTT from time to time – and represented, to some degree, my feelings on NuWho: I like some of it; I hate some of it but I’ll keep watching it because, well, because it’s Doctor Who.

There was quite a loyal following, mainly consisting of some of the most insane people in fandom, and a smattering of content that suggested something of an inside track.

It was also something of an antidote to the rather boring BBC-Big Finish-DWM-uberfan hierarchy that spends most of its time telling us how great the new series and Torchwood are.

In my own personal tribute, I’ll probably be ripping off the ‘amusingly titled screenshots’ thing he used to do. In the meantime here’s one of the animations he did, which kinda sums up the entire blog.

Among the wonderful actors the shows was blessed with was William Russell, aka Ian Chesterton. His readings of Target novelisations are probably the best, for my money, and he again shows here quite how wonderful he is, in a short recorded for the DVD release of The Crusades.

The headline for this vid is ‘William Russell Returns to the Role of Ian Chesterton after 34 Years’. By my money, given that it was recorded a couple of years ago, that should read something like 47 years unless I’m missing something.

Anyway, here’s Russell, looking incredible for a man in his mid-80s.

Happy birthday, Chesterfield.

There are a few things of interest here: McGann’s reading is very still, very focussed – but there’s an odd distance to him too. It’s very alien, very Doctorish and rather more unsettling than his rather more excitable portrayal in the utterly appalling TV movie.

There’s a flash of the excitable Eighth Doctor when McGann is told to be more excitable – and it;s recognisable from his sole TV portrayal and Big Finish efforts, which I’ve never really warmed to.

What’s also noticeable is the script he’s reading, a lot of which will be familiar to anyone who’s had the misfortune to come across the Leekey Bible – Philip Segal’s manual for the Universal/BBC that, thankfully, never was.

To borrow an epithet from Tom Baker, Id call it undiluted whippet shit. It’s hard to listen to and McGann does well not to start laughing out loud at how terrible the whole thing is.

The Master is the Doctor’s brother; the Doctor is half-human, borne of an earth woman and a Gallifreyan adventurer called Ulysses. It’s a car crash of a dozen hackneyed sources with a few Doctor Who references thrown in for good measure.

That McGann got through the audition is one thing; that he still wanted the part is scarcely believable.

A new Doctor Who film? Those fans who might conceivably have watched The Twin Dilemma when originally broadcast may recall a few other Doctor Who films supposedly in the pipeline through the decades.

Tom’s Doctor Who meets Scratchman, written by himself and Ian Marter, starring Vincent Price and funded by crumpled £1 notes mailed to Tom from keen fans.

The ones suggested in the very early 90s that would star Donald Sutherland and feature a rapping TARDIS perhaps (I defaced the images of Sutherland in anger) or the more recent Tennant-and-Piper rumours.

Then there was the TVM. Well, they got McGann pretty much right, but the rest was an absolute mess – a more fitting example you could not find of what happens when people who don’t understand or care for Doctor Who make Doctor Who.

Today has brought with it the news that Harry Potter director David Yates will helm a new Hollywood film featuring a strange character called Doctor Who (never heard of him) that will reboot the series and stick two fingers up at 50 years of canon.

Quite why these rumours have come to light again – about two years after they were first mooted and repeated today with historic quotes – is not clear. Are BBC Worldwide trying to kickstart the project? Has a bored hack in search of an article dug up an old story? Or has someone sniffed that something is actually happening on this front?

We’ll wait and see. For now let’s look at the claims Yates made about his new film. In a move that could not have alienated the show’s fanbase more if he’s threatened to cast Vin Diesel, Yates claims that the film will be “starting from scratch”.

Why on Earth would you do that? The show has the most malleable format in the genre, perhaps all TV. You can change the lead cast without ditching anything. This is something that has happened innumerable times over the show’s history.

If Yates wants a good example of how to kick off a new series – or new interpretation – he need only look to Rose, a terrible episode but a great example of kickstarting something new without abandoning all the good stuff.

It’s an important reminder that we’ve had people at the helm who cared about the show – we know that RTD kiboshed stuff like a female Doctor, a Young Doctor Who series on CBBC and more; and that even Tennant was very protective of what the show did and didn’t do.

It’s impossible to image Moffat taking the show into taboo territory too. We’ve been lucky that since the reboot – and in the good old days – we had people who looked after the show as best they could.

Unfortunately, Worldwide is a financial entity and must surely be scenting hard cash and, conceivably, a billion-quid money-spinner like Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter over a multi-film series that would make the TV show look like A Fix With Sontarans in comparison.

That’s presumably the thinking behind recruiting a director with no apparent understanding of Doctor Who whose looking to recruit a writer with no apparent understanding of Doctor Who.

Yates pays tribute to Davies and Moffat’s visions – and in the same breath announces that he’s going to trash it all. Where’s the logic to that?

He also says Doctor Who “needs quite a radical transformation to take it into a bigger arena”. Does it? Isn’t the exact point of the show – its appeal and its essence and its very artron energy – that it’s a quaint little British show? Certainly it does epic storylines and its format and tone is elastic but it’s always recognisably the same.

RTD and Moff clearly understand this and fandom has largely taken to their series. Perhaps it didn’t need older fans, but the likes of the two show-runners are fans after all.

The show doesn’t necessarily need a fan to take it to the big screen – or a Brit. But I feel sure that it would be a better product for it – and we have two people who can wield an enormous amount of power in the TV and media world, not to mention people like Neil Gaiman, Stephen Fry and Mark Gatiss who are steeped in the show and are professionals in their own right.

Alas, if what we read is to be believed then Yates directing makes perfect sense in the eyes of BBC Worldwide. They won’t give two flying figs if the Doctor carries a gun, shags a busty American and has a time capsule voiced by Mos Def (actually, I like Mos Def, that could work) if it brings in the bucks.

What would this do for the TV show? Undoubtedly, if successful, it would kill it off. How could you have a TV series and a film series running in parallel that directly contradict one another? The film idea dovetails with the growing suspicion that Who might bow out on the small screen shortly after the 50-year anniversary. Torchwood, in all likelihood is gone. The Sarah-Jane Adventures are sadly no more. Confidential is canned. In a very short space of time Doctor Who has been whittled away to the main show, and there are increasing ructions over production, money and quality in the mothership.

All told then, I don’t really see an upside to the film. We’ve had six largely enjoyable seasons of NuWho that has given repeated, respectful nods backwards. It’s all about to be usurped by a new film series that chucks it all in the bin.

The two films we have are cute curios, but they’re hardly high quality. The abandoned film projects all looked awful. The TVM was dreadful. Yet the BBC appears to have learned nothing.

Doctor Who doesn’t need a film. If it’s coming to an end as a going concern on TV the natural development is to segue into a ‘specials’ format. Canon or the heritage aren’t the issue I have with a new film. I simply fear it would be bloody awful – and history has plenty of warnings when it comes to big screen Who.

It’s seven years since this was made, which make it the difference between An Unearthly Child and Spearhead From Space – or Planet of the Spiders and Castrovalva. Or Survival and the TVM. Or… well, you get the idea.

It doesn’t seem that long ago, but Doctor Who has clearly changed enormously since then. As it was on telly I thought I’d watch it and makes some notes.

What’s extraordinary is just how much the last two seasons have cast off so many RTD-era tropes – it feels like a radically different series now; much more assured; much more certain about its own identity and tone.

Whether that’s a good thing is debatable, but Aliens of London seems extremely uneven. Its tone jumps about quite a lot – broad farce, almost pantomime, on minute and drama the next and sci-fi the next.

Ecclestone suffers the most here. His Doctor is not merely eccentric or weird or even childish. He actually seems simple. It undermines the character and just makes the whole seem bizarre.

Tennant and Smith seemed to nail their Doctor immediately, as did McGann. Only McCoy seemed as out of sort – in this first series as the Doctor – as Eccles does here.

Overall, this is a story that’s unrecognisable from the last two or three series of Who – certainly the Moffat/SMith era. There are a lot of things about the latest series that I didn’t like, but I’m grateful that the series moved away from how low rent the likes of Aliens of London is.

Eccleston seems to be spend most of this episode behaving as if the Doctor is actually a bit retarded. The collision of the script, the direction and Eccleston’s clear discomfort doing ‘whacky’ acting make for a grisly spectacle.

Mickey = Mickey is just a gibbering moron in this episode – and in the majority of the series. He falls over; he mugs; he squeals. And then we’re meant to feel sorry for him when he complains about Rose leaving. It doesn’t work because Mickey is less believable than a cartoon character.

Jackie – Jackie is worse drawn and less realistic than a Carry On film character. See above.

Murray Gold cannot do any action music whatsoever. Any scenes that involve running, guns, spaceships or fighting seem to conjure up music that would seem out of place in the pilot of The Sarah-Jane Adventures.

Chav culture – It’s incredible how rooted all of this is in a very mid-noughties idiom. It’s like Doctor Who set within Little Britain or Gavin & Stacey. It feels incredibly dated and also very cheap; Doctor Wo done on a BBC3 budget.

Farting aliens – Occasionally this is funny; occasionally it’s even a little sinister. Mainly it’s just annoying.

Stupid – It’s remarkable just how stupid the whole thing is. Downing Street has banks of computers that have RED ALERT flashing on them? The army follow The Doctor because he says ‘Defence Pattern Delta’ to them (which seems to involve running quite slowly down a corridor)? Harriet Jones is actually still banging on about her local hospital even after a UFO has crashed in the Thames.

The cliffhanger – it just seems to go on for ages. On and on and on with three separate scenes convening in almost exactly the same way. There’s almost a moment of dramatic tension here with the various reveals, but it drags on for long it doesn’t really work.