The departure of Billie Piper led to the need of a new assistant for the Doctor, so who did they get to replace this attractive girl from modern day London? Freema Agyeman Another attractive girl from modern day London... sigh...
The beginning of this series is the Christmas special The Runaway Bride wherein The Doctor, with the help of Catherine Tate defeats a giant spider monster. The series then starts proper with Smith and Jones where the Doctor meets Martha Jones, his new companion in a hospital on the moon with Rhino Men called the Judoon who are like space police... it's not anywhere near as cool as it sounds. They then travel to the past and meet William Shakespeare in The Shakespeare Code where they defeat aliens and learn the power of words. Then its off back to New Earth for Gridlock where they get stuck in a traffic jam... it sucks, but in the midst of it all The Face of Boe gave the Doctor a glimpse of his future, saying "you are not alone". Then our heroes are off to 30s New York for Daleks In Manhattan/Evolution Of The Daleks where a Dalek merges with a human and it sucks... oh and there's a musical number... because when you think Doctor Who you think musical number... Following that nonsense the Doctor takes Martha home only to get mixed up in an adventure with a bad CGI Mark Gatiss monster in The Lazarus Experiment. They then head to a spaceship that was heading towards a living sun in 42 an episode unfortunately similar in design to the devil episodes from the previous series. The Doctor then takes Martha to the past where he turns himself human and lives as a school teacher and falls in love with Jessica Hynes in Human Nature/The Family Of Blood and its actually really good. Then it's a Doctor-lite episode Blink about a young woman who must return the Doctor's TARDIS to him whilst trying not to get killed by The Weeping Angels, statues that move when you're not looking at them. Then we head towards the finale three parter Utopia/The Sound Of Drums/Last Of The Time Lords in the first part The Doctor, Martha and a returned Captain Jack go to the end of the universe and meet a group of people who want to make it to Utopia with the help of Proffesor Yana, whose name turns out to be an acronym for You Are Not Alone... which is dumb, he turns out to be the Master, one of The Doctor's deadliest foes, turned into a human in the same way The Doctor was earlier this series; he regenerates into John Simm and steals the TARDIS leaving our heroes trapped at the end of the universe, but not before The Doctor makes it so he can only go to earth. Thanks to Jack's chekov's wrist watch they can time travel back to earth, where they discover the Master is the prime minister, who unleashes and army of creatures called Toclafene, who are actually the humans who went to Utopia twisted to the Master's ends, and he takes over the world and turns the Doctor into and old man and later Dobby. Martha travels the world telling people to think about The Doctor and this somehow fixes him, the Master's wife then shoots him and he refuses to regenerate, so he can defeat the Doctor. They then Superman end it and reverse time so the Master never took over, Martha leaves, The Doctor burns the Master's body and then his ring falls in an obvious Flash Gordon reference. The end.
David Tennant continued to shine as The Doctor despite some of the dross he was given to work with in this series, He deserves particular credit for Human Nature/Family Of Blood for giving quite a moving performance.
Freema Agyeman made history as the Doctor's only black companion to date. She's also shit. Martha just spends the whole time making goo goo eyes at the Doctor and whining because he doesn't notice her. Its boring and not remotely compelling.
John Simm as the Master is great, although once again the script is not his friend, having to dance to the scissor sisters and often act like a bit of an idiot. That said he gives a performance that surpasses the bad script and still manages to be entertaining and fairly intimidating throughout... except for when he's dancing of course...
My favourite adventure this series was Blink partly because its a clever, scary story, partly because it made a Doctor-lite episode work, but mainly because it invented the phrase wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff...
My least favourite adventure was The Daleks In Manhattan/Evolution Of The Daleks for just being generally awful.
In short this series is the worst one since the revival (not counting the specials, I'll get to them). It started badly, picked up a bit in the middle and ended with them making it so nothing happened, meaning there are absolutely no consequences and no lessons to be learned. It sucks.
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