Attention Americans! This thread is for discussion of the first episode of the new series of Doctor Who, which came out in the UK on 15th of this month, and will likely not be released in the US until after the DVDs are on sale over here. Should you wish to maintain your sense of suprise, I suggest you go and discuss your several million American TV shows that come out in your United States on average a million years before we are permitted to view them in these benighted islands. (Tell me, what’s happening on I Love Lucy at the moment? We’re just getting the third episode, and I must say it’s quite amusing!)
So, the new series! Personally, I was dissapointed. The plot seemed silly and full of holes (such as: how did the antibiotic cure spread from plague-zombie to plague-zombie once they had been cured by the disinfectant? Wouldn’t the cured zombies just have been reinfected? Why didn’t Cassandra use her psychic jumpy-thing to explore the hospital before Rose’s arrival? I thought the plague-zombies didn’t have brains? etc., etc.) and I thought that the whole thing smacked of a stupid joke- something that seems to be a common weakness in scripts by Russel T. Davies. For example, the Slitheen farting thing in Series 1, and now- well, “New New York”? Why don’t you go and crib off some other, better writers more? Plus that whole awful, gratutious, continuous “chav” references thing. I’m so glad that early 21-st century slang will survive unchanged for several billion years. *
On that note: The design and so forth also seemed to be somewhat unimaginative. Once again, as on Platform 1 in series 1, we see that in the future, people will wear- boring, one-colour versions of modern clothes. Hmm. The cat-people were okay, and the zombies and Chip were pretty damned good (plus, I must say, the Intensive Care Unit was SCARY!) but on the whole I thought it was little dull.
However- Zoe Wanamaker as Cassandra was, once again, FANTASTIC, and I thought that the bodily-possession thing (along with great performances by the possessed) was one of the few good and original ideas in the script. It also let us see Rose kissing Tennant, YAY! Mind you, her otherwise fantastic characterisation (like that little bit with jumping from Rose to the Doc, with both refusing to open the door unless they were, in turn, possessed) was, I felt, undone by her bizarre and nonsencisal last-minute change of heart. So- her host body is dying and, rather than jump to one of the many lying around (including an immortal, two-hearted, dishy timelord) she instead- wait for it- undergoes a deathbed conversion, and suddenly reverses all her previous character decisions! Humph.
Still, it’s Doctor Who, and I can’t complain too much, because I still loved it! 
There were lots of little touches (the Duke of Manhattan, Cassandra’s delight at being once more three-dimensional, etc., etc.) that make up (a little) for the silliness of the core script.
Please feel free to tear me apart.
*Ming you, the whole “Character interrupting a rude word by accidentally completing it” made me laugh, plus it was a clever way of avoiding offence. “So I guess I could say you’re talking out of your ar-”“CEASE!”