"You Wouldn't Want To Worship Me. I'd Make A Very Bad God"

So said the Ninth Doctor, Christopher Eccleston, to Margaret Slitheen when, on entering the Tardis she was in awe of the whole thing and how wonderful it was. Well, now we are starting to know what he meant.

A slightly bizarre ending to "The Family Of Blood", and a very dark one too. I think I remember reading somewhere that another rumour on The-Master-Or-Not ending was that Mr Saxon would actually turn out NOT to be The Master but some kind of Really-Bad-Guy future incarnation of The Doctor of way into the future. This may well prove to be right based on what we saw in this two-part story.

But it's just a little tricky to get your head around it all. So here goes: The Doctor and Martha at the start are apparently escaping from The Family Of Blood as we see a laser shot. The Doctor sees they can follow him anywhere through time and space so feels it might be better to hide somewhere as a human because that way they could not trace him. He hopes too that they did not see Martha's face. This is what we saw in the "Human Nature" episode, and you would be quite sensible to conclude that this was some kind of rare enemy that The Doctor really WAS afraid of. Even more scary than the Daleks and Cybermen - those two must be like wimps in comparison to the mighty FAMILY! So this is what we take through episode 8 until the conclusion of that where they find him - the Human 'him' that is.

Through we go then to the "Family Of Blood" episode where the Quest For The Watch is on. We assume, and are made to believe, that if John Smith can find the watch before The Family then he can turn back into The Doctor (and miraculously regain his internal biology!). He can then know what to do, will not be afraid any more of this previously terrifying enemy (whose fear factor will have miraculously gone for him), and can then fight them all off and Save The Day Once More (Hurrah Hurrah!)

Ah, but no. It's all turned on its head! Turns out that the reason The Doctor wanted to hide is that he wanted to spare The Family their Ultimate Punishment (which they all got in the end anyway!). He wanted to show them mercy by pretending he had disappeared and so they would, in the end, just die off "like mayflies" with Punishment Not Administered. Kind of like dying of Old Age when on Death Row I suppose.

Well, I think I've analysed it enough from An Adult Point Of View which of course is completely wrong in a programme made for children (Gee, we adults spoil the whole thing, eh!).

While watching "The Family Of Blood" on Saturday night I found myself thinking two things. Firstly, that this was yet another two-parter where the second of the two parts was something of a let-down when compared to the first part. They've all been that way actually right back to Eccleston days. Part 1 full of great things, Part 2 The Doctor cleans up and makes the drama of Part 1 look like it needn't have happened. Secondly, what a rather LAME ending it WAS! I mean, The Doctor tricks The Family pretending he's still John Smith gives them the Fake Watch then falls around the place pressing a few buttons, they then fall for this little charade and the end result of this is that something that could have been done by anyone at any time happens and End-Of-Story. I mean, come ON! If all it takes to blow up a ship like that is to press a few buttons In The Wrong Way, then it ain't much of a ship, IS IT? And I think we deserved a better ending than THAT!!

Speaking of Lame Endings, it gets me thinking of previous two-parters and how they ended in comparison to this:-

DALEKS IN MANHATTAN / EVOLUTION OF THE DALEKS --> This actually wasn't a bad ending at all except that by rights The Doctor should have been dead with such a huge bolt of lightning going all the way through his body from SUCH a big storm as we were told it was

ARMY OF GHOSTS / DOOMSDAY (Series 2) --> Utterly superb of course since it was the end of Series 2 and the dramatic departure of Rose. But since it WAS the end-of-series, you would expect it to be good!

IMPOSSIBLE PLANET / SATAN PIT (Series 2) --> Many people criticised this story, but I really loved it as a whole. But it has to be said that it made NO SENSE AT ALL that Rose could shoot out the window of the rocket with a bolt gun and not have the WHOLE CREW sucked out together. Seat belts holding them in? Yeah, right, and isn't space a .... VACUUM??!!

RISE OF THE CYBERMEN / AGE OF STEEL (Series 2) --> Got to be one of the dumbest endings of a Doctor Who story, as good as the rest of the story was up until that ending. OK, Mickey hacks the computer, gets the code 'somehow' (was the Binary 9 enough of a clue?), sends it to Rose's phone, The Doctor then conveniently has a point to plunge Rose's phone into (remember, an ORDINARY MOBILE PHONE!), sticks it in there and hey presto he causes chaos with the Cybermen. And blows up the factory too while we're at it. Talk about something outta nothing!! And a stupid ending to an otherwise great story.

BAD WOLF / PARTING OF THE WAYS (Series 1) --> Was again full of drama being the end of the series and end of Doctor Who #9. Rose, Mickey and the car breakdown crane yank open the Tardis's innards (the time vortex) which then goes into Rose's mind and makes her some kind of Mega-God-Of-Time and able to do what she wants - killing, turning to dust, bringing back to life etc. Did I like that one? Yes and no. It provided the way forward for the regeneration though in a somewhat bizarre way, and wouldn't the time vortex have fried Rose's brain a whole lot sooner? I mean, if it made the Doc do a regen so quickly then why was Rose virtually unhurt? Ah, because The Doctor sucked it all out! Hmm .... OK then.

EMPTY CHILD / DOCTOR DANCES --> One of my real favourites over these three series. And yes, I even liked the ending. Yes, it is plausible that these nanogenes could, intelligent as they were, recognise the parent DNA and change all things back and then the newly-enlightened nanogenes could certainly then put the rest of the gasmask-people back to normal. So that was a good story. BUT I'm not sure about how ol' Captain Jack managed to hook up with the Tardis and escape just before his ship exploded. Well, a small thing and I won't worry too much about it. It just DID, alright?

ALIENS OF LONDON / WORLD WAR THREE --> The Slitheens went from being big and fearsome in part one to floppy and just a bit pathetic in part 2. Fine when they were done in CGI, silly otherwise. Their hands were just too darn BIG! And OK, so Mickey and The Doc hacked their way into the Royal Navy computer to launch the missile and somehow managed to stop it getting intercepted. Gee, that Mickey sure learns fast! I mean, just HOW DID HE stop it being intercepted. Again, a small detail. I don't know if I'd be that scared of a Slitheen - big pot-bellies, oversized ridiculous hands that you could probably pull off if you tugged hard enough and slow-moving (but NOT so slow in CGI!!). So a good part two? Yes, but a little too condensed for my liking.

So if you look at these opinions of mine you can probably see a trend forming. Two-part Doctor Who stories are kind of running out of steam. They could probably fit a whole two-parter into one whole hour I reckon. That was another thing I was thinking on Saturday night - how it was really a one-and-a-half-parter.

Back to the present then. So we've seen a darker side to Doctor Who that will, no doubt, climax in the end of the Series in some way. Now I'm not so sure that Mr Saxon IS The Master after all but is some kind of evil alter-ego which has found its way back to meet The Doctor in present time to confront him to stop him in his tracks. A bit like that if Mr Saxon won, there would ne no chance he could be stopped in the future. OR, in a Terminator kind of way, he has come from the future to prevent the future from happening (if you see what I mean).

Next week is one of those Doctor-light episodes so I don't think I'll bother writing about that. But surely I'll come up with something to entertain you (and myself) with!

Before I sign off, I want to say just HOW GOOD WAS THE CHARACTER OF JEREMY BAINES!! A really SUPERB PERFORMANCE by the actor involved, Harry Lloyd! Oh, and I discovered, to my amusement, that the girl who played the character of the Daughter Of Mine (red balloon girl) is in fact a Canadian ice skater!

See ya next time then, Time Lords!