h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"I realise that, but wasn't there a comment about Smiths sticking together? Although I guess it is a common surname."

Mickey's line in Journey's End vaguely echoes a line from Sarah Jane at the end of School Reunion: "Sarah Jane Smith and Mickey Smith. You need a Smith on board." At least, that was what I thought of when I heard Mickey's line.

Yeah, I took it to be just the same surname, rather than relatives. Think they'd have mentined that if they were.

RTD just about redeemed himself for me.

The episode was good enough and we knew it was RTD clearing the decks abit.

Still find Catherine Tate/Donna very annoying. The persona she seems to have in her comedy and this overshadows her acting for me.

The throw-away question from the Dr to Gwen was just that a throw away humourous line from RTD but the fans are now having big discussions etc.

The Donna-Dr was doubly annoying unfortunately. Was the ring ever explained?

Very glad the Dr finally did what he should have done in Genesis of the Daleks and killed them off as much as he could. A shame RTD basically indicated it was still wrong but the Dr had regenerated in a time of war and therefore that's the reason he did it. And it wasn't a wholly Deus Ex Machina solution.

Is tehre now no-one on Earth who doesn't believe in aliens or probably heard soemthing of the Dr? Apart from Donna who's head will have to explode at somepoint because she must find otu something about the Dr at some point

I imagine that Rose will be rather disappointed though. She fell in love with a Doctor who travelled the universe in his Tardis and showed her incredible things. The one she got doesn´t have a Tardis, is able to age and has absorbed Donna´s bad personality traits.

Smith & Jones are quite popular aren't they? Mickey, Sarah Jane & Luke Smith and Harriet, Martha and Ianto Jones.

Deb

Don't forget John Smith and Mr Smith.

Sorry, dot, dot, dot but I can't believe you still sit on the side of the diminishing band of CT haters. The whole point of her doing this show was to do something different and she succeeded in spades.

There were no traces of her comedy characters even in the exchanges with DT. They were some of the highlights of the whole series - The mime from Ep1, the charades from the Agatha Christie episode, the Spaceman/Earthgirl exchange from Journey's End. All brilliant and a million miles from Lauren.

Then the really serious scenes from Pompeii where she asked him to save the family, the Ood where she hears the song of slavery, Turn Left where she deals with being a failure and finally knowing that she will never be with the Doctor again.

She was powerful, serious, heartbreaking and hilarious in equal measure. She was in fact the best companion of the new series by a country mile.

I get the impression that some fans just prefer the 'doe eyed aren't you lovely Doctor?' assistants instead of a sparky powerful brilliant woman like Donna. Its like Lalla Ward being the favourite Romana because she was cute and looked incredibly sexy in school uniform ..... oh okay then she was better than Mary Tamm!!!!!!!
SBE

I agree about CT.
I thought she was really good and I honestly don't understand how anyone can sit on the other side of the debate now. I thought at the start that CT was going to be the worst choice ever for a companion because I thought her comedy stuff (which I'm not a fan of) would seep through and undermine the whole thing, but I admit I have been proved totally wrong. CT is a very good "straight" actress and has also been lucky where Freema Ageman was not. I think the writing for Donna's character was actually much better than Martha. It goes to prove that the simple ideas are often the best. Donna being a temp and having to "prove herself" through the series, was far more interesting than Martha's "medical student" situation. (and also made the character more likely to be identified with by the audience.)

Sorry if that's a bit wordy, you know what I mean.

I liked Catherine Tate as an assistant, but I simply can't believe you found anything positive to say about the frankly abysmal Agatha Christie episode.

What? Even the ginger beer bit? That was funny!

Just in case anyone's interested in things like ratings, This week, Doctor Who was the highest rated programme on Television. For the first time ever. (At Christmas, even the incredible 13m rating was just beaten by EastEnders, which followed Who.)

And the Audience Appreciation Index (AI) figure was even more incredible, but to understand why, here's some background. They measure this by polling a random audience sample and asking them to rate the programmes they watched out of 10. These are then averaged out to give a score out of 100. Doctor Who rates fairly well, and this series has had the most consistently high scores, with Steven Moffat's two episodes both getting an incredible 89. Basically, this is about as high as you can expect for a high rating Saturday Night audience. If the audience is much smaller, then it's possible for dramas to get over 90 - Channel Five dramas like CSI and NCIS get >90 ratings when the audience is less than 1 million. Doctor Who itself got 94 for a BBC3 repeat recently. This is because those people who tune in are making an effort to see a favourite show, so they get higher AIs. But when the audience is huge, like this week's 9.4m, the AI tends to average out lower, and it's almost unheard of for such a programme to get higher than 89.

Tonight's episode got 91.

(As did last week's episode, but that had about 2m fewer viewers, so that was merely astonishing, not incredible like this week's).

I suspect RTD must be feeling fairly happy with the job he's done. He's gone from the pre-Rose 'Let's see what it's like' when many people thought it would never get an audience on Saturday Night, all the way to last Saturday, when it was, officially, The Best Thing Ever.

Something some of us have always believed. Now we know.

That's interesting.

Can't believe someone *didn't* like the Agatha Christie episode. Though it was so funny with all the book titles thrown inand things.

And CT's been great. Getting the serious stuff and funny stuff perfect.

I'll admit I didn't think it was the best end-of-season they've done, but it was still pretty good. Watched the 2nd half again last night and it was better 2nd time round. Think the half a\ regen threw me a bit.

Can't wait till Christmas though!!!!

>This week, Doctor Who was the highest rated programme on Television. For the first time ever.<

Quite right too.

I'll admit I wasn't over enamoured by CT being cast as the new companion, she won me over though. It's really sad that she won't remember any of it.

Thanks for the stats, Jim.

Yeah it is sad that it's all gone and she'll go back to being the annoying pre-Doc Donna. But at least her mum seems to see that she has to do better. And Wilf'll be there cheering her on.

I'd love to see a mention of her in a future episode - maybe she'll start a business. Something to indicate that she's starting to acheive her potential even without the Doctor's help.

Yes even though she´s a fictional character, I´d also like a follow up where we see she has done well

"'d love to see a mention of her in a future episode - maybe she'll start a business. Something to indicate that she's starting to acheive her potential even without the Doctor's help."

That would be a good idea.
Thanks for the stats Jim-incredible!

Well the fact that Donna will with one mention of the doctor suddenly have the knowledge of the Doc is surely going to be the resolution to a dire situation when the Doc is out of commission in the future.

Could have some great "do I have the right" stuff. Someone having to make a decision that will save the world but condemn Donna to death. Handled by Moffat it would be cool.

summerbayexile



Um, I don't hate her - one has to realise there are lots of people who think her comedy is lowest common denominator...I just do not think the part did her justice and as I really DO hate her comedy programme(hate the comedy *not* the person) that tarnished it a bit as the characterisations of dumb chav came through a little too much at times. One can see that, at the end, the story arc took that into account but the baggage from her previous stuff did not help. She is a good actress but the RTD stuff on the whole made too many people think of the, normally sarcastic, comedy stuff which pulled one out of seeing the Donna character.

Personally, I think she is a) rather good looking and b) an OK person in real life apart from her never seeing Star Wars(she's 40 fer gawd sake - harrumph) and she believes astrology is 'real'.

It echoes Harry H Corbett who used his near normal voice in Steptoe & Son and unfortunately when he went back to serious stage stuff people laughed. When I hear Catherine Tate intonate sometimes I cringe.



See above.



Um, every episode had some intonation of her 'comedy character' mainly due to the Donna characterisation which on one hand was as we saw her at the end and on the other hand more worldy wise than the Dr. Sometimes that was a little bit too much divergence in one character. Donna was supposed to haev grown during the series but she also stood up to and was the conscience of the Dr abit...a little polar sometimes.



Since you know the name of, what I presume is, the 'Am I bovvered' character you do not mind her 'comedy'.



I really did hate all the doey-eyed 'oh gosh aren't you great Dr' from the recent young companions and yet RTD seemed to think that only a 40year old woman would have the mettle not to fall in love with him. Rather insulting to young women really. Especially when Rose and Martha seemed to save the day all the time and showed how much spunk they had but still went all gooey over the doctor and then we had Donna who didn't go all gooey but nearly walked away a few times showing less spunk...very strange I always thought...but that RTD's writing. One has to remember he always wanted to be the Dr's companion rather than the Dr



Quite possibly.

I was under the impression that her head would explode or something similar if she remembered her time with the Dr and has the Dr/Donna. One would have to hope she saves the day before her head goes pop.