Doctor Who: Tooth And Claw

Things I didn't like:

That it’s called Tooth And Claw instead of The Empire Of The Wolf.

It's on Earth again.

The Doctor strangely uses the alias "Dr James McCrimmon" instead of his usual "Doctor John Smith." More strangely, no-one calls him by this name for the rest of this episode - he's even dubbed "Sir Doctor of Tardis" at the end, not "Sir James McCrimmon of Tardis."

Having recently expressed pop-culture knowledge of Big Brother, Bear With Me, This Is Your Life and The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, the Doctor is now familiar with Ian Dury And The Blockheads and What’s The Story Balamory. When did he acquire all this pop-culture knowledge?

I reckon that, after the Time Lords all died, he got depressed, gave up saving people for a while, and slouched in front of the telly alot. He does now get "all the channels" on his TARDIS scanner screen which, to my knowledge, has never been referred to before.

The more modest dresses that Rose sorts through are more revealing than what she is already wearing.

The queen's 3 guards all drop unconscious from the drugged drink at the same second. Rose says they're not dead, so what became of them?

Woman screams in the precreds at the contents of the cage. Later she is revealed to have only screamed at... a man with black eyes.

The monks, we are told, turned from God, to serve... yes, a werewolf. I mean, just how? How on Earth is this supposed to have happened?

They shoot at the werewolf, but can't stop it. Then they see the bald guards outside, but can't think of any way to get through them, so they carry on shooting at the werewolf. Even the Queen forgets that she has a gun. What became of the bald guards?

They read the books, and learn about a comet that fell to Earth 300 years ago. Fortunately it's not any of the other comets that have landed, either in the show's history, or in real life.

They tell us that Albert secretly planned to use the woman he loved as werewolf bait after his death. I ask you. Once again, following this awfully-written series’ trend, Albert apparently didn’t know what his own plan was until after the viewer did.


The Doctor turns the moon's rays up to become more powerful. (shame he didn't think of that at first) The Doctor then turns the moon off. He also suspects Queen Victoria of being a werewolf, but doesn't turn the moon back on again.

The "we are not amused" sub-plot was utterly quaint.

Torchwood - undermining the original show, precedented only by the McGann movie's assertion that he's half-human.

The episode is all about a bad wolf, yet neither the Doctor nor Rose now even remembers the phrase.

One werewolf cell has survived through 300 years of generations, but only emerged in one descendant, although at the end they imply that the whole royal family might be werewolves, rather than just one of them.

Things I liked:

Well-directed, although the poor picture quality on this new series has returned the show to 405-line telerecording standard. There were 3 shots of the werewolf leaving the building that had so little colour signal left that they were literally black and white.

Tennant's own Scottish accent. (after McCoy's precedent, you have to wonder why he's not using it as stat.)

They save Queen Victoria, but lose her respect.

My list of things I didn't like is shorter, and weaker.

This was one of the modern series’ better scripts, but only because there was less in it. Most of the thin story is spent running away, apart from Rose who repeatedly stops to look at the werewolf and scream at it. A bit like the way the Slitheen in World War Three kept breaking off the chase to pose menacingly for the camera.

This was nowhere near as bad as usual, but still just a shadow of what once made the show great. If I hadn't seen all the other awful episodes preceding it, I would probably have liked it, apart from the innuendo line. Most of my problems with it are quite small compared with so much of last season, and therefore equatable with the original run.

And lots of Who has lots of small problems when you're looking for them. One of the biggest problems modern Who has made for itself, for me, is it's now very hard not to look for the inconsistencies, because if you let your guard down you usually get hit by so many of them. They have alot of work to do now before I can trust anything their characters say to remain true.

The bottom line:

"Oh my god, they're werewolves!" Rather sums up the airhead level the modern show is aiming for.