The Ninth Doctor, Rose Tyler and Jack Harkness take a break from their time travelling escapades to go on holiday in Cardiff and then... nothing else happens. Like, at all. Why Cardiff, for starters? Obviously it's where the show is filmed and this episode meant that they didn't have to go through the trouble of making it look like an alien planet for a change, but it's all pretty random from a narrative point of view. The story isn't that great either, and not only because the Slitheen weren't even that interesting the first time round. Don't get us wrong, Blon Fel-Fotch is an interesting character but there was never really a sense that she'd actually achieve world domination, was there? It kind of makes the entire plot pretty irrelevant, when you don't believe that the enemy presents any sort of actual threat. Maybe that was the point, though. Were the audience supposed to feel sorry that she'd just had her umpteenth plan to destroy the human race thwarted? It all got a bit confusing when the Doctor took her out for a date and then she got turned into an egg at the end of the episode which was... Inspiring? Confusing? All of the above? You decide. And as for Mickey the tin dog Smith, well... He really shouldn't have bothered catching that train, should he?
Dan Butler is the Doctor Who Editor at WhatCulture.com. When he isn't writing his own articles or editing other people's, he can be found trawling the internet for gifs of Steven Moffat laughing. Contact him via dan.butler@whatculture.co.uk.
