S3E09: The Family Of Blood

Baines is an instant-classic villain and he's a schoolboy. I prefer a villain that you can look in the eyes so it's a good thing that bodysnatching aliens are also very easy on the F/X budget.

The tears on the schoolboys' faces as they machine-gunned the advancing enemy put a lump in my throat and Daughter Of Mine (a little girl with a red balloon) daring them to shoot her was sinfully good!

David Tennant will look like Bill Nighy when he's older.

Five epilogue scenes?! The Return Of The King has a lot to answer for.

"He still visits my sister once a year, every year. I wonder if one day he might forgive her. But there she is - can you see? He trapped her inside a mirror. Every mirror. If ever you look at your reflection and see something move behind you, just for a second, that's her. That's always her."

So it wasn't The Doctor's usual ingenuity that saved the day but the sacrifice of a human, John Smith. We saw the fulfilled life that He wasn't going to get to live any more and how much He didn't want to let it go. The Doctor dished out vengeful punishments like the lord of time and space that He really is - not the man that ran and hid at the beginning of the story because it was the most compassionate solution for all concerned. I was speechless - if you don't count saying "this is so good!" every two minutes - and Alice needed a tissue. That was great television.