Considering the total triumph of his previous script, "The Empty Child", I was expecting quite a bit from Stephen Moffat's contribution to David Tennant's debut season. Sadly, the story is a textbook example of style over substance.

The design is gorgeous. The spaceship generally looks pretty good, managing a Red Dwarf-esque run-down look without seeming too cheap, and the design of the clockwork robots is excellent. The BBC's standards mean that 18th Century France was always going to look good, and the whole thing's well-filmed by Euros Lyn (easily the most impressive director of the new series). The only real duff note struck by the production values is the rather incongruous CGI as The Doctor crashes though the mirror, on horseback. However, the direction is overall very solid, notably in the scenes in the younger Reinette's bedroom.

The script is where the real problem is... far too much of it hinges on technobabble and coincidence. We're never really given a convincing reason why the androids decide to go after her brain - the ship is named after her, and we're left to assume that their feeble robot minds consider this enough. It's rather unclear why the ship can't move to within range of another suitable brain, but instead run enough energy through the ship to maintain all the windows to various points in her life. Considering the whole play made about the stupid, logical androids, it's something of a clever but utterly illogical method of finding a component (surely with considerably less resources expended they could just make the windows appear somewhere that simply has the mechanical components?). Quite how organic matter can be grafted to machinery and still function is another question entirely (and why the parts of random crew members were enough for the rest, but they need Reinette's brain), though one that's not quite so glaring as to ask why the androids weren't programmed not to massacre the crew and wire bits of them into the ship. While it's nice to have a story using some scope and having the action take place concurrently in two different time zones, the idea was already used in "Mawdryn Undead", with an actual explanation and everything.

David Tennant's performance also isn't quite as steady here, which really doesn't help. He's very good in the more serious scenes, such as promising Reinette he'll protect her, adding just the right measure of bravado, or at the end when he's learnt of Reinette's fate. But in several scenes (when preventing the robots from taking apart Mickey and Rose, and when The Doctor first meets the King) he overdoes it, making The Doctor a blustering git - not aided by some diabolical dialogue. A line like "You're Mr thick thick thickety thickface from Thicktown, Thickania. And so's your dad" couldn't be pulled off by John Hurt, but the smug delivery robs The Doctor of much sympathy. His glib "Yeah? Well I'm the Lord of Time" just about works on paper, but aimed at the harmless Louis it sounds a lot like the Third Doctor bullying some luckless innocent.

He does manage the scenes with the adult Reinette, which walk a tightrope of touching and vomit-inducing, fairly well, though considering Sophia Myles is Tennant's other half (Ahhh, Who in the heat era...), their chemistry probably isn't quite as good as you might expect. Tennant has generally been excellent apart from when the gets immodest... Being a little egotistical has always been one of The Doctor's traits (especially for the Third and Sixth Doctors), but Tennant isn't terribly good at doing it without sounding like he deserves a bit of a smack, and it contrasts badly with the other traits of the incarnation, who's generally a sweet little guy. The result is you find yourself largely siding with comedy patsy Mickey, as The Doctor and Rose have become quite a smug, insular pair.

Tennant and Myles do hold the interest, which is great, as apart from a few tenuous concepts, The Doctor's relationship with Reinette is well-handled, and speaking as someone who always thought the Fourth Doctor and Second Romana had whatever passed as a relationship for Time Lords (not necessarily fucking, but then not necessarily no fucking), I do think he's just the kind of woman he'd find fascinating. There really isn't anyone else in it, with Rose and Mickey required to do little other than hag around, and Louis only existing to make The Doctor look dynamic.

This one seems to have gone down very well in most quarters, and it does pass 45 minutes well enough, but I personally found it to be rather frustrating. One more draft to clear up some of the muddier plot elements, and the script could have matched the design and the performances, and it could have been the equal of "The Empty Child", at least. So many good ideas wasted...

Review written: 29/05/2006