To prevent spoilers I’ll add my thoughts to the second post.
That was bloody awesome! Up until Donna joined Rose I think that was the best Doctor Who episode I’ve seen. Seeing what would happen without the Doctor (+ Donna) and how the world would cope. The characters were fantastic, the acting superb. The emotions sure took a beating! The part where the foreign family left the house on the back of a military truck was one of the most gut wrenching moments on the series.
I think this episode really showed the gulf between Catherine Tate and Billie Piper too, and I loved Rose when she was the companion.
The end was good too, if a little quick. TBH, I don’t really understand the deal with the beetle and the women. It just seemed a device to set up the next few episodes. I can live with that though.
The next episode looks pretty sweet too, it looks like they’re throwing in the kitchen sink for good measure. A two-parter for sure.
Not a bad episode, completely different to last week’s similarly themed minus one major character episode.
They managed to work in a nice sense of end of the world gloom into the one episode, it was a nice series recap to see the Earth struggle where the Doctor had so easily triumphed. It probably made the whole thing seem a little rushed though.
Tate strayed a little into shouting mode, but was otherwise as good as she’s been the rest of the series. Rose wasn’t as bad as I braced myself for, I suppose that’s because the good Doctor wasn’t there for her to gush over.
And of course, too much to wait for in the next episode 
No sign of you know who but there’s that odd looking Dalek for everyone who hasn’t seen the sneak preview pictures of next week’s bad guys.
My telly has been on the blink (my aerial is now pointing in totally the wrong direction) so I had to wait till after the showing to see it on iPlayer.
Awesome, just awesome. Stellar performances from Catherine Tate (she had to play the pre-Doctor shouty Donna to be consistent as well as the more thoughtful post-Doctor one), her mum, and Cribbins.
The reveal at the end was spine-tinglingly good - “Bad Wolf”. My god, but they killed Sarah-Jane, Gwen and Ianto!
If RTD can pull this three-parter off in the way that it has started (and people who’ve seen the next episode think that he may well have) than I’ll doff my cap to the man. Just ruddy brilliant.
Rose! But the other-universe Torchwood operative Rose. Calm, composed, brutal and compassionate.
I’ll accept that explanation for Tate’s performance 
I couldn’t give a toss about the Torchwood team normally. But I was still moved when Rose looked up at the burning sky, that the Doctor had taken with a probe and remarked that the Torchwood guys had died to do the same.
Was that the coolest cliffhanger they’ve done or what? As soon as she said “Bad Wolf” I started cackling madly.
Not bad for an “It’s a Not-So Wonderful Life” episode. Though I would rather have had the Doctor regenerate into a not so great personality rather than dying straight up since it would have given the story a bit more of a punch. I suspect that it was an attack on the Doctor and Donna rather than just a coincidental run in but I suppose we’ll have to wait for next week to find out.
Also I think the Daleks are just going to be pawns in this whole thing. The real villain is going to be some other classic foe (but don’t ask me to single anyone out; it’s just a hunch given that they’re being played up too much in the preview).
That was edge-of-my-seat exciting!
RTD’s episodes do tend to be somewhat absurdly epic in their scope, and this is no exception, so I hope he doesn’t muff it with some lame ending.
I think that was the best episode this season! Why, oh **why **do we have to wait another week? I wanna next week’s episode now!
I’ll be watching it again, but Rose sounded like she came back to this universe for dental surgery and the Novocaine hadn’t quite worn off.
Oh my god you’re right! I wondered what was going on with her voice when she was talking and that must be it.
I thought this was a great episode, even though the plot device of the odd creature was a bit contrived (but then what isn’t in sci-fi?). Parallel world stories always interest me, and picturing the UK without London was pretty nightmarish - see? We are the most important part of the country.
The next episode looks great, even if it does appear to be a reunion for pretty much every character featured so far in nu-Who. I agree with whoever said in another thread that wheeling out the Daleks as a villain is getting a bit tired given that they’ve been killed off, what, about five times now? (and those are just the ones I can remember.)
Still, I’ll be there front row centre for next week.
Props to Bernard Cribbens - his performance made me cry.
I noticed that too, and it was really distracting me from the awesome.
I haven’t watched any Torchwood yet - I was going to save it for after this series of Doctor Who is over so I have something to watch - but the trailer for next week is making me wonder if I should spend this week watching four episodes a day so that I know what’s going on. Agh.
I’m having a hard time imagining how there’s going to be any time for meaningful character interaction in the next two episodes, since there are so many people coming back and it looks like there’s going to be an awful lot of running around while epic stuff happens.
As revealed in Doctor Who Confidential…
Davros!
Some interesting spoiler images.
I’m sure that when Billie Piper looks at her chipmunks cheeks in the mirror, she believes she’s over weight.
However
Someone should tell her that that’s just the structure of her skull and that dieting will only make that same skull protrude even more.
Ms Piper was not looking healthy in this episode.
She’s getting paid a lot of money to take her kit off on camera for her other show, I would guess that that’s her motivation for losing weight rather than any eating disorder.
She looked perfectly healthy in the Doctor Who Confidential interview, it seems that the DW makeup artist made her look a lot more gaunt than she is in real life.
I didn’t think she was looking too skinny, just in no way a convincing teenager any more, what age is she supposed to be in the show?
A great episode overall, sets up the last two episodes in fine style.
Looking forward to the return of Davros. Although not the Daleks as I feel they have been used in too many series finales.
I was a bit puzzled at one point as to why the Earth was not run by the Master without the Doctor, bit my eldest daughter pointed out that without the Doctor the Master would not have returned.
So…when they mentioned Sarah Jane dying along with some teenage kids - was that the cast of Sarah Jane and Friends?
The Doctor, the other times he died, didn’t need to have time to prepare, did he? I thought I remembered Tom Baker getting thrown off the Empire State Building. I’m sure someone here can give us the exact maximum time he could have possibly had to “get ready”.
Yes! I even asked the little woman if Rose’s speech had always sounded so…massive massive buckteeth. I don’t remember that from previously, but it’s been a while since I’ve seen Rose in anything.
Oh yeah. I’d gotten my Donna-Martha-Donna timeline screwed up and had thought that the whole “work camps” evilness came from The Master. Nope, just regular human crappiness.
Awesome episode. The new Who just keeps impressing.
-Joe
Giant radio telescope actually, IIRC. And I also recall that the first episode of the next season had a plot line that it was a particularly traumatic regeneration.
That said I can fan wank in a dozen reasons why the Doctor couldn’t regenerate and ignore the statement that the person made (presumably if his chest cavity is being occupied by a slab of concrete it would pose a problem, for example). As I stated before letting him regenerate and not be the same helpful, friendly Doctor afterward might have been a more effective way to go but harder to fit into an hour.