Review - Love & Monsters

The Doctor and Rose are virtually absent in the first of the now traditional "Doctor Light" episodes, Love & Monsters.

Season 2, Episode 10 - Love & Monsters

This episode is an odd one. The concept is actually quite sound, giving us some insight into those people The Doctor has touched and how they cope after he's gone. Not everyone is as impacted by him as companions are, but an impact he surely has. How does one go on after finding out there are aliens out there? Apparently one forms a support group.

When Elton Pope has a run in with The Doctor, he begins to realise many events in his life are somehow connected to this strange man and his blue box, including the mysterious death of his mother. Seeking out others with similar stories, he comes to form the hideously named London Investigation 'N' Detective Agency (LINDA) to find some answers. After a while the group focuses more on their friendship than finding The Doctor. It is at this point that the mysterious Victor Kennedy arrives to refocus their efforts.

Stylish and in no way shifty.

As Victor teaches the group new skills and gives them access to useful information to aid in their task, members start to disappear. Victor explains it away and everyone seems fairly quick to accept his stories. In fact, they seem to accept him into their midst far too readily. I'm a bit iffy about that bit. I try to explain it away to myself that these people are maybe not all the sharpest tools in the shed.

Elton is put to work getting close to Jackie Tyler in hopes of finding out more about Rose and The Doctor. Victor  reveals that Rose's Torchwood files were corrupted by a Bad Wolf virus, neatly explaining why they don't recognise her in the next story, and referencing two different season arc stories. In fact, this episode also contains the first reference to Mr Saxon, meaning it actually mentions three season arcs.

He's reading a story about a Crack in the Universe at Lake Silencio on Trenzalore

In the end, it is Elton's blunderous attempts at getting close to Jackie that save his life, with The Doctor and Rose showing up in the nick of time in order for Rose to give him a telling off. Victor, now revealed to be an... *sigh* ... Abzorbaloff, having absorbed the rest of LINDA, is attacking Elton when they arrive, and sets about trying to absorb The Doctor. The absorbed members of LINDA rebel against the Abzorbaloff, holding it's body back and giving away the secret of its defeat.

As the creature melts away, The Doctor sets up the ruination of the whole episode by saving the face of Elton's girlfriend Ursula on a paving stone. This in itself is not a huge issue, but someone decided it was a good idea to make a blow-job joke at this point. Totally unnecessary In-Who-Endo, especially considering the whole episode has its roots in competition on a kids TV show. If there's some sick-minded individual out there who wants to imagine what Elton and Ursula do for sexy-times, let them work it out for themselves. Nothing needed to be said about it. Without that line, this episode would have been interesting if slightly unremarkable. The fact that it is one of the last things we are left with drags this down so much it's not even funny.

5/10

Can we fix it?

A lot has been said about the fact that the monster for this episode was designed by a kid. In my opinion, the concept of the Abzorbaloff (if not it's name) is quite a sound one. It's actually quite scary to think of being absorbed into another creature and to maintain sentience for some time stuck on it's skin. No, I'm all for the monster here, although perhaps with a name change. 

Many people complain about the lack of Doctor and Rose, but again, this concept is sound. As I said, it's interesting to think about the people whose lives The Doctor touches as he whirls on through. We got a taste of it in the Season 1 opener Rose and seeing more of it is never a bad thing.

I think what irks me about this episode as a whole is the general unquestioning nature of the members of LINDA and the fact that Victor also begins absorbing them far too early. It's not really clear how frequently he needs to "feed", but I'd have thought he'd keep the LINDA members around as long as they were useful.

With this in mind, I'd have a little more dissent amongst the investigators before they started disappearing. Perhaps have one or two unrelated people go missing before that. A janitor, for example. The group could flag the disappearances with Victor, who offers to investigate them himself while the others stay on The Doctor. One of the group does some digging on the disappearances and takes this info to Victor who asks if they've shared it with the rest of the group. When they say they haven't, they then become the first of LINDA to be absorbed. Things start getting harder for the group and private complaints are met with more disappearances. This would then culminate in the mass walkout.

If we also remove that horrendous bit of sexual innuendo at the end, then I think all the loose ends would be tied up.

Review - The Time Of The Doctor

Matt Smith bows out as The Doctor in this years much awaited Christmas Special, The Time Of The Doctor.

Christmas Special 2013 - The Time Of The Doctor

First up, a quick apology for the almost one month delay in getting this up, but my original no-fixes review went up a while ago on Geek-O-Rama.net and it really did take a lot of thought to figure out how to fix this one. But on to the review.

Oh my good God. I'm so glad I didn't watch this immediately, it would have spoiled my Christmas buzz. This was not only a total shambles of a story that packed in a whole bunch of unnecessary sexual innuendo, but it revisited almost every reference from Smith's tenure that annoys me. Ordinarily this is where I would say, "but it was all worth it for the twenty seconds of Peter Capaldi at the end", but seriously, it wasn't.

To start with, the relationship between The Doctor and Clara continues to be confused, with her confirmation she "fancied him" whilst bringing The Doctor in as a fake boyfriend despite him originally getting the wrong end of the stick and pretty much saying he'd be up for the real deal. I must say I am hoping for a dramatic reduction in this sort of thing with Capaldi as Twelve. It's just so boring.

The In-Who-Endos fly thick and fast in the opening minutes. I mean, what was the deal with the hologram clothes? The concept of being nude in church is an interesting one, being bare before God and so forth, but with no explanation, and in combination with Tasha Lem's alter-shaped bed, I'm left assuming that it's just there to poke fun at religion by sexualising it.

*Deftly avoids joke abut Holy of Holies*

It's not the first time I've sensed this kind of jab at organised religion in a Moffat story, either. Previous appearances such as The Time of Angels / Flesh and Stone and A Good Man Goes To War saw The Church as largely Anglican, and the prominence of openly gay couple The Fat One and The Thin One was either a reference to the already evolving Anglican Church (female ministers etc) or just a cheap gay joke. With Moffat it's hard to tell. Now we see The Church as being somehow related to a very Catholic sounding Papal Mainframe.

We also saw a big slab of Hunka Hunka Burning Doc with The Doctor and Tasha Lem. Their sexual banter was so overt that I found myself waiting for the reveal that she was somehow a regenerated River Song. When did The Doctor have the time to develop this kind of long-term sexual relationship with a woman who wasn't River? It clearly wasn't as Eleven, so was Ten putting it about even more than we realised? It was all so unnecessary though. None of it added to the story one iota, and the flash of naked Matt Smith at the start seemed pure fan-service.

 

It was as if a million fan-girls cried out in pleasure.

Again, we have a case of Too Many Monsters, although it did seem to make some sense as to why they were there. I worried when the teaser came out because it was cut in a way that made it seem the whole thing was a set-up, much like the Pandorica plot-line. The teasers also had me face-palming at the return of the Silence, but again, in context they were relevant. I actually liked the idea that they were professional confessors, but after a second thought, It doesn't make much sense because half the point of confession is the act of confession, so even if you are getting some kind of post-hypnotic suggestion of penance, you're losing all the psychological benefits of confession by forgetting that you've actually done it. I was also quite upset for the Sontarins, who seem to have been relegated to comic relief. Don't get me wrong, Strax is a great character and pulls off comic relief well, but to make all Sontarins appear inept and stupid is a real shame.

 

One of the most fearsome military forces in the universe. No, seriously.

The episode just seemed a ham-fisted attempt to tie all of Eleven's season arcs into one grand overarching plot. Unfortunately instead of a mind-blowing climax to everything we've seen the past four years, all we got was a self-referential mish-mash with no real direction beyond tying up all of the loose ends. But you know what? Sometimes loose ends are a good thing. Case in point, the only thing that wasn't resolved was the return of Gallifrey. In a way I am looking forward to that being The Doctor's main objective moving forward. I hope it can be left unresolved for a long time, much like the holy scriptures in Monkey.

The whole thing just seemed to drag, and when I wasn't groaning because of some fresh innuendo or the reappearance of those thrice-damned Weeping Angels, I was checking to see how much longer it had to go. By the time we got to see the regeneration, I was over it. Capaldi's final line was a classic though.

 

Can you fly this thing?

I won't be rushing out to watch this one again.

4/10

Can we fix it?

I'm really struggling to see how we can fix this without a ground-up re-write. The entire episode seemed geared towards cramming in as many references to Eleven's tenure as possible, which sadly left little room for an actual story.

The bare bones of the episode, the Timelords calling through the crack, is a solid premise, but it just wasn't effectively played out. Many elements seem to have been included purely to fit with the existing prophesy, making for a rather jumbled scenario.

My main beef with the basic premise is the concept of the "Truth Field", which seems to me to be something an advanced race like the Timelords would have little trouble bypassing. I mean every man and his dog can recognize psychic paper now, so surely The Doctor wouldn't be susceptible to something like that. It seems to really only be there to fulfil the conditions of the prophesy. If it had to stay for that reason, at least have it that the Timelords knew The Doctor could still lie in a Truth Field but were using it to screen out "lesser" life forms.

And in the end, even though the Truth Field covers the bit of the prophesy that states, "when no living thing can speak falsely" it fails to address the next bit, specifically, "or fail to answer." The Doctor fails to answer for 300 years. Hell, he fails to answer at all, in the end. I really thought the prophesy was referring to the events of The Name of The Doctor where he was being forced to speak his name, and would have considered the matter resolved at that point.

The connection to The Silence could have been better too. Madame Kovarian should have featured, possibly as a subordinate to Tasha Lem who argues with her about how to handle the situation. Kovarian ultimately takes a group of followers and time travels to attempt to kill The Doctor. This removes the need for Lem's Faith Change, which felt really forced in.

The Papal Mainframe could also remain a neutral party maintaining the lockout of the planet, meaning the small incursions faced by The Doctor actually make sense as small groups penetrate the defenses. This also removes the need for the stupid human Daleks, which were an idiotic idea in Asylum of the Daleks, and completely unnecessary here.

With a tighter opening and none of the sexual innuendo, we can move to the actual siege quicker and then spend more time on the individual conflicts rather than an 80s style montage. This would lead up to the final battle after Lem is killed by the Daleks rather than assimilated.

It still wouldn't be great, but most of the major issues would be gone and it'd feel less forced. 

Review - The Girl in the Fireplace

The Doctor learns how to "dance" with the first in a long line of female historical figures in The Girl in the Fireplace.

Season 2, Episode 4 - The Girl in the Fireplace

Yo Dawg! I heard you like time travel, so I put some more time travel into your time travel show. This episode makes extra special use of time travel. The idea of one participant in the story taking the long road whilst the other skips ahead is very interesting. Of course the episode is apparently loosely based on The Time Traveller's Wife, so we cant award too many points for that. We do get more touches of the culture shock theme, with Reinette having that same "left behind" experience. She handles it much better than Rose or Sarah Jane though.

We skip between a space ship in the far future that's been repaired using bits of its crew, and pre-revolutionary France. I liked the way the characters were split between the timelines. It gave Rose and Mickey a chance to prove themselves without The Doctor. This opportunity could have been exploited a lot more than it was though, as the episode was squarely focussed on The Doctor, almost the complete opposite of The Companion Show featuring The Doctor. Strangely this is almost as bad as focusing on the Companion more than The Doctor. There really does need to be a good balance.

You stay here. I've got to sort someone out.

THING!

Sort something out.

Our main monster is the Clockwork Robots, who again fit the mould of advance slowly and be creepy. They work in this story though, despite no explanation of why they are made of clockwork. I mean a teleport, no matter how short-range, must require a power source beyond mere clockwork.

As if the French aristocracy wasn't creepy enough.

The whole episode is pure Hunka hunka burning Doc though. Reinette jumps The Doctor's bones with little more than two brief meetings when she was a little girl and a five minute conversation under her belt. Moffat keeps the dance metaphor going strongly in this story, dropping a very strong implication that The Doctor and Reinette had sex.

The relationship is solidly written though, and for whatever reason I can accept this sexualisation of The Doctor more than any other instance in the show. Perhaps this is a testament to Moffat's writing. I can believe that this girl successfully got through the layers and seduced The Doctor through a combination of her natural charm and his innate need to protect. 

Not to mention being face-meltingly hot.

The pacing of this episode is spot on. The short-range teleports combined with the nature of the time windows and the Clockwork Men's mission means they can be easily fended off with little fear of them returning until much later. This gives us little bursts of action amongst the talking and flirting. It was nice to see Rose get her comeuppance though. At least she had Mickey as a fall-back.

The climax of the episode was great, with The Doctor not only risking all and stranding himself in the past (albeit with a smoking hot lover) but doing so by riding in on a white charger. Not the only fairy tale parallel in this episode, but definitely the coolest.

Of course there couldn't be a happily ever after in this situation. What we did get was perfect though.

I've just got something in my eye... Again.

Despite the whole episode being pretty much all about The Doctor falling in love and someone falling in love with him, I enjoyed it. Removing this episode from the context of ongoing instances of Hunka hunka burning Doc, it works as that one time a girl managed to turn his head. It is significantly diminished by all the other times it happens (or is implied to happen) though.

Still, a very watchable episode, with much more of an historical feel about it despite its quite solid sci-fi core.

8/10

Can we fix it?

I'm sure many would be expecting me to demand less Doctor love here, but in all honesty in the context of this episode, I'm fine with it. All of the bits with The Doctor and Reinette are great. But when you look past that the rest seems a tad light on. 

I feel if we had a bit more meat on the bones of the Rose and Mickey side of this story, we could have found out more about how the ship and its attendant robots got into the state they did.

The way I see it, the ship originally only had a small group of maintenance droids. These robots cannibalised themselves for parts first, replacing higher tech systems used in repairs to the ship with hastily manufactured clockwork facsimiles. Having used up their own parts, they turned on the crew, replacing their bits with clockwork too. A nice Tin Man parallel to go with some of the other fairy tale stuff in this episode. The clockwork is clearly a unique design, with The Doctor fawning all over it. That could be the reason why. 

This information could be revealed to Mickey and Rose through Mickey using his awesome computer hacking skills to unearth fragments of video logs from the Captain. This makes the Rose and Mickey section a bit more than wandering the halls waiting for The Doctor to get back so that they can tell him things they've seen and let him figure it out.

These recordings could also hint that the reason the crew couldn't fight the Clockwork Men off or order them to not use them as spares was because they only respond directly to the mission computer. This would be there as an early clue for the audience who realise they only respond to Reinette. When The Doctor finds out he of course puts two and two together without having to interrogate the Clockworks to get it.

We could even go so far as to hint that the original problem with the ship was limited just to the mission computer, and that the repairs made by the droids were purely to create the time windows. They cannibalised the ship to create the time windows, and cannibalised the crew to keep the ship running.

We can still leave the name of the ship as a mystery, but I think this fleshes the ship side of the story out a bit and gives Rose and Mickey something more to do.

Review - New Earth

Back into the swing of things again with the new Doctor, this time taking a trip far into the future to meet an old enemy on New Earth.

Season 2, Episode 1 - New Earth

We get very early hints at the villain in the form of the spiders from The End of the World. Just to be safe we're also given a verbal reminder by The Doctor talking about Earth burning. Of course this leads to a very early reveal of Cassandra and her new attendant, Chip.

Of course this early reveal is a bit of a fake-out, because whilst Cassandra is up to no good, she is clearly not the main issue here.

The Sisters of Plenitude were a solid set of Agent Goons, set up nicely as the sort of villains that think they're doing good. Of course there are all sorts of subtle moral questions at play here, and it's funny because I can sort of sympathise with the Sisters here. I suppose it depends on how you feel about things like cloning and animal testing.

It's a perfect excuse to see Angry Doctor though.

I like how they worked in an explanation on how the clones can communicate. It may have been a bit half baked, but it was worked in naturally and didn't really need to be expanded any further. The clones themselves were yet another "move forward slowly and menacingly" Zombie-like type of Monster Goon. 

Grrrr! Arrrrgh!

The Doctor's eventual solution seemed a little glossed over and was rather simple. I get why the disease would be instantly transferred on touch, but why was the cure also transferred? The cure liquid was somehow strong enough for the residual amounts transferred by the brush of a hand to be effective on those heavily infected clones, but used on the patients it took days to work? Hmmmmm.

Cassandra's ability to disembody and possess a new body was similarly glossed over. Was that a side-effect of the Psycho Graft? Why didn't she just possess a Sister and get the info she needed that way? I suppose inhabiting a non-human body would probably have been distasteful for her. Didn't stop her possessing The Doctor though.

A good chunk of this episode was devoted to re-establishing The Doctor as a love interest for Rose. It seemed they had decided by about mid-Season-1 that the relationship was platonic (apart from that bizarre kiss cure at the end of The Parting of the Ways) but now he's looking younger and hotter, seems Rose is back on the Hunka hunka burning Doc train. First we see poor Mickey getting played again:

"I love you."

"See ya."

Then we've got all of Cassandra's teasing and In-Who-Endo when she possesses The Doctor. Of course Cadsandra herself gets in on the action:

To be fair, if you'd been a flap of skin for a few hundred years,
you'd probably jump whomever was handy.

The Doctor's reaction to it is a weak, "I've still got it." Now that's a classic line and was played well. Sadly it doesn't fit The Doctor at all. There is clearly a strong push to make this relationship romantic from early on.

Cassandra's end this time around was much better though, much more Doctor-like than Nine's murder through inaction. It was a good way to end the episode. Not quite enough to fully salvage it though. Ultimately there wasn't much to this episode beyond setting up the Doctor / Rose romance. I could really take or leave this one.

5/10

Can we fix it?

Of course the first thing I'd do here is ease up on the romance. The subtle hint with Rose not reciprocating Mickey's "I love you" was enough. All of Cassandra's teasing and The Doctor's reaction to the kiss can go. The kiss is fine, but The Doctor should push Rose away and be all, "What the hell are you doing?" This behavior from Rose should be as much of a clue something has happened to her as her not caring about the clones.

I'd add a bit more explanation to how The Doctor's cure worked. This would involve a bit of an expansion to the explanation of how the clones work. Essentially the clones are infected with everything and their modified immune systems are producing huge amounts of antibodies for all their diseases. In order to ensure the clones stay sick (and continue producing antibodies) they all have one specially designed cancer that somehow draws the antibodies into special tumours around the clones' necks and faces, where they are syphoned off by the Sisters of Plenitude to give to patients.

The Doctor determines that curing this "keystone cancer" will allow the clones' immune systems to distribute the antibodies and cure them. After some thinking and tinkering and mixing of cures, the overall solution plays out the same way with The Doctor adding a line about how the cure will be taken up and replicated by the clones and excreted from the skin once the tumours are no longer collecting it, meaning it can be passed on by touch. Once their immune systems have destroyed all of their multitude of illnesses they return to normal.

Just a little extra depth to make the ending easier to swallow. It'd still not be a favourite, but they can't all be, can they?

Review - The Doctor Dances

The Empty Child drew me in and put me on the edge of my seat, and now it's time for a good, hard, emotional kick to the guts with the story's conclusion, The Doctor Dances.

Season 1, Episode 10 - The Doctor Dances

The dialogue between Jack, Rose and The Doctor is a particular highlight. Say what you (or I) will about Steven Moffat as show runner, the man can write great dialogue. We learn a lot about Jack and get some interesting hints at the Time Agency. Jack really had a lot of potential as an ongoing companion. Again, I didn't watch Torchwood, but Jack was a lot of fun when he showed up in Doctor Who, and I think he set a nice dynamic with The Doctor and Rose.

"Well, I've got a banana and, in a pinch, you could put up some shelves."

The In-Who-Endo continues this episode with Mr Lloyd exposed as "having it off" with the butcher, Algie is confirmed as gay and we have The Doctor's revelation of humanity's future pan-sexuality. Taken in isolation, this story is almost entirely about sexual tolerance. Not only do we have the aforementioned In-Who-Endos which juxtapose each other through how the same behaviour is tolerated across time periods, but Nancy's status as a teenage single mother and the apparent social pressure to lie about it was the cause of a lot of the trouble.

Using the euphemism of Dancing was a good choice, as it keeps the show family friendly whilst at the same time subtly introducing that theme of acceptance and inclusiveness to all audiences. As great as this message is to get out there, it doesn't need to happen all the time, Steven. I'm going to look at this episode in isolation of the future occurrences and not judge it harshly because of the In-Who-Endo.

Not Safe For Work

There's a lot of interplay between Jack and The Doctor about the Sonic, and the general consensus is that it's a fairly useless tool. Of course that's from the perspective if it being a weapon, which is fine. The Screwdriver itself is a bit inconstant throughout this story. We saw it being used as a scanner and to open locks in The Empty Child, but in this episode, whilst it can seemingly be used to reattach barbed wire (apparently by growing it), The Doctor can't use it to cut through the window bars, instead having to try to create a "resonance pattern" in the concrete.

The creepiness keeps coming, as does the witty banter, but this episode is injected with a healthy dose of heart-wrenching drama too. Florence Hoath's performance as Nancy is fantastic, and she is a huge part of the reason that this is the first (of many) Doctor Who episodes to bring a tear to my eye. The penultimate scene was masterfully crafted, with the performances, music and effects all working together to hit me right in my sense of parental protectiveness.

I've just got something in my eye.

This is yet another classic. The story as a whole is second to Dalek only because it doesn't have Daleks. Everybody loves Daleks.

10/10

Can we fix it?

As I said, there's a lot of sexual innuendo in this episode, but I'll ignore the future trend and look at that as the theme of this episode. If I was going to focus on anything here it would be the use of the Sonic Screwdriver. I'd have liked to see The Doctor explain that he was trying to create that resonance pattern in the concrete because it would be quicker than trying to cut through the bars. I'd also have liked to see the Sonic reattach the barbed wire by fusing or welding it together, rather than the wire regrowing to fill the gap. One looks like science, the other looks like magic. It's best we stay away from magic.

Either way, these are just nit-picking, and I'm happy to ignore them because the episode didn't really give me time to focus on them.

In-Who-Endo

What is with all the sexual innuendo on Doctor Who? Even taking out the Companion love and the other Hunka hunka burning Doc situations we're still left with quite a few instances of sexual innuendo ranging from fairly innocent to Carry On.

I would watch the hell out of this

Is this, as others have often said, a sign of the changing times, or is it an unnecessary inclusion in what is supposed to be a family program? Am I being prudish in my annoyance at the sex references? I worry I may be, but allow me to explain myself.

First up, I'm not saying Doctor Who needs to be 100% kid friendly. I quite enjoy when I see a masterfully crafted adult joke included in something that kids could watch and totally miss. There's a bunch of things I used to watch as a kid that going back as an adult I noticed contained some delightful gems that just flew straight over my younger self's head. However I do feel that many if not all of these innuendos are gratuitous or laboured. And why does all this innuendo seem to contain so many gay references?

A great example is in The Unicorn and The Wasp when The Doctor and Agatha Christie interview suspects. One them, Roger Eddison lies about their whereabouts because he was having it off with Davenport, one of the male servants. We know this because we are shown a long and blatant shot of Roger leading Davenport off into the woods. This in itself wouldn't that much of an issue if it was a major plot point. Instead it seems to boil down to, "look, they had gay people then too, but they had to lie about it!" which I feel is actually rather patronising.

It's not the gayness that annoys me, because even visualising the scene with Davenport replaced with a scullery maid, it still seems clumsy. Perhaps it's the lingering nature of the flashback, or perhaps it's just that the tryst adds nothing to the story. The 45 minute format is already constraining without wasting screen time like this.

Another major In-Who-Endo that had me palming face was during A Good Man Goes to War when Madame Vastra delivers the line, "I don't know why you put up with me," to Jenny before lashing out with her hyper-long tongue for a quite horrendous lesbian joke. Don't get me wrong, I love Vastra and Jenny, but that was just so over the top it hurt. It's like if that quip was made before a gay male character was shown to press a button from three feet away with a thrust of his hips, or save the day by sucking a golf ball through a garden hose.

By contrast the references to their relationship made in The Snowmen and it's prelude webisodes were much better. Rather than forcing in a crude sex joke, they played with the reactions of others by juxtaposing them with the frankness and normalcy with which Vastra treats the relationship. I particularly liked the line:

I resent your implication of impropriety. We are married.

Witty without being gratuitous and delivered wonderfully. Absolutely spot on for that kind of thing.

Many of River's flirtations with The Doctor are borderline too. She can get away with much of it because she's supposed to be a bit of a Vamp, but references to handcuffs are pushing things a bit for me. Jack Harkness' broad sexual appetites are an interesting commentary on the loosening of sexual morals and were not too gratuitously played (in Doctor Who at least), except for the time he implied fantasising about being the meat in a Doctor sandwich. These references are subtle and amusing, but are they necessary?

Can we fix it?

This is one of those tough ones, simply because it's hard to tell what's being included to make some kind of statement, and what's being included just because of changing degrees of normalcy. Some of the gay references in particular are subtle enough that if it wasn't for the gratuitous ones putting me on my guard, I likely wouldn't notice them. I seem to remember a passing reference to a same-sex wedding in (I think) The Power of Three which I probably wouldn't recall even that vaguely if I hadn't already been put in the frame of mind that whenever homosexuality is mentioned on the show I immediately think, "Not again."

I think those references don't need "fixing". Homosexual relationships should be represented in the same way as heterosexual ones. It's a sign of the times that we can now replace a straight couple with a gay one with little to no impact on the plot. The Fat One and The Thin One from A Good Man Goes to War are a reasonable (although not perfect) example. They could have been any kind of couple, but were a gay couple. Their sexuality was fairly inconsequential. The execution of that is another story, as they were rather clichéd gay guys, they were constantly reminding us they were married, and I had the sneaking suspicion they were some kind of political commentary, especially considering their connection to the Anglican Church.

That said, if the fact that a character's sexuality isn't integral to the plot, why mention it at all? I'm not a Torchwood fan (only seen one episode), but I imagine when Jack has more screen time his sexuality becomes just another character trait. His charm and willingness to crack on to anything is a tool writers could use to further the plot (again, I don't know if they did or not though). Roger and Davenport though? Not so much, in my opinion.

So if they were set on having Roger be gay and for The Doctor to instantly realise that was the reason behind his (quite obvious) lie during questioning, then the wandering off into the woods scene could have been a bit more subtle. The Doctor and Donna had already noticed his flirtations with Davenport earlier in the episode, so perhaps a glance at Davenport through the window during questioning would be enough, or a brief shot of them walking together as flashback before the Doctor gets a knowing look and moves things along.

A better solution (apart from cutting it altogether) would be if Roger's lie kept The Doctor and Agatha focused on him instead of the real killer until eventually they uncover his deception and switch focus. If it was only Donna who noticed Roger's interactions with Davenport earlier and she was busy investigating the house during questioning, she could be the one to explain it to The Doctor after he had wasted time trying to solve that little mystery. This would allow The Doctor to be seen as fallible, something which is desperately needed more and more these days.

So that was pretty rambling and convoluted, but what I'm getting at is that overt sex jokes are tacky and don't need to appear in a family show like Doctor Who. Forcing gay relationships into episodes is equally tacky, as it reeks of political posturing; showing how hip and PC the writers are. Sexual equality is important in shows that are accessible to younger audiences, as it helps to normalise all types of people and relationships. Overcompensation isn't helpful though, as it can make it seem like a joke of some kind.

So, if the writers are making someone gay, they need to ask themselves, "why does the audience need to know?" If their sexuality affects the plot, make sure it's in a significant way. If it doesn't, reference to their sexuality may not be required at all. If they want to include a sex joke (which shouldn't be very often), make it short and subtle. It should sail far over younger viewers heads and only be enough to cause adults to share a knowing look.

In the meantime, I look forward to a new Companion:

Ooooh, Matron!