Right, I'm sorry the gaps between reviews is getting longer and longer. I'll do my best to make them more frequent. Which I know I said last time, but I'm saying it again.
The Girl in the Fireplace (**½)
So, we open with some aristocrat looking people under attack at some sort of ball. A clock on a mantlepiece is broken, and a man's telling a woman she should leave. And then she talks into the fireplace asking for the Doctor. It's a good teaser, because we've got no idea what's going on, but it seems whatever it is would be quite interesting.
3000 years later (so the caption says, though the story would later imply around 3300), and the Tardis lands on a deserted seeming ship. Mickey's more impressed than Rose, because this is the first time the poor lad's really had a go on the Tardis. He's also wearing a great t-shirt. The "Know Your Roots" one with the NES controller. And then, through a door, there's an 18th century fireplace. How odd. Looking through it, the Doctor finds himself talking to a little girl. From the 18th century. He then spins through the fireplace (mystery bookcase style) and ends up weeks later, though at night again. He lights a candle with the screwdriver, which is a new one on me. Some genuine tension builds as something in the room is ticking, but it's not the clock. I was actually quite absorbed as the Doctor looked under the bed. Then we see the ticking robot, and it's doing some strange doings. Not even the girl's poor acting diminishes the effect. Apparently the robot managed to break the clock without anyone noticing so he'll be the only ticking thing in the room. Which is a fairly clever thing. I mean yes, how the robot got in there and managed to break the clock without anyone noticing, and how the girl herself wouldn't notice the ticking coming from the wrong place, and why the robot ticks at all are all possible flaws. But it's still cleverish, breaking the clock so the ticks don't clash.
Anyway, the clockwork robot has a go at attacking the Doctor, but gets caught in the mantlepiece so the fireplace does a twirl back, after which the Doctor disables it by fire extinguishing it (or spaceship plasma fire extinguishing it). It teleports away nearby, and the Doctor tells Mickey and Rose not to go looking for it while he's away doing some fireplace investigations. But being a pair of dunces, they go and look for it anyway.
By the time the Doctor gets back, the girl's all grown up now. Still in her room at that moment in time though, helpfully. She's impressed to see him again, and snogs his face off. Erm, ok I suppose. He's a handsome guy. As you've probably gathered, I'm no big fan of Doctor romances, but I suppose it's a natural reaction on her part. Good thing it's the Tenth Doctor though. If Pat Troughton span round your fireplace and bothered you once a decade, you'd probably be a little more unnerved. Of course, once she's gone, the Doctor acts all delighted now he's realised who she is (Madame de Pompadour). I'm definitely not such a fan of that. He goes back to the ship to find Rose and Mickey gone and a white horse there.
While the Doctor was gone, Rose and Mickey found a camera with what we're meant to believe is a real eye in, and a human heart linked in to the ship and beating away. Rose says it's human anyway. How she'd know that for sure is anyone's guess.
The Doctor finds where the horse must have got into the ship through, and goes through some doors that lead to the palace garden/grounds (with no other horses in sight, I might add), where he ducks behind some garden furniture while Madame de Pompadour is wandering around talking with a friend. Not to put to fine a point on it, but her friend is black. In 18th century France. Maybe that's plausible, I don't know enough to comment. Rose and Mickey meanwhile find a sort of two-way mirror that looks into a room. The Doctor explains who she is, and also calls her one of the most accomplished women who ever lived. Again, I'm no expert, but that sounds like hyperbole to me. Especially as he knows far more Earth history than the few thousand years we're acquainted with.
Reinette (her nickname) is about to get attacked by another clockwork robot, so they jump through and freeze it. She tells it to tell what's going on, so it does. They're robots that have been trying to repair the ship, using bits of the crew even, and now they're jumping through time scanning her head. For mysterious reasons. Though if these robots are from the 51st century, why are they clockwork? I can understand their appearance, so that they blend in with the period, but being clockwork and ticking only draws more attention to them (especially at night), so they're not that way for the sake of blending in. So why, in the 51st century, have people built clockwork idiot robots who think it's alright to try fixing a ship by cutting up bits of the crew? It looks alright and seems interesting enough, but it's not standing up to much scrutiny. Anyway, after helpfully explaining what they're doing, the robot beams away. As if that wasn't Star Trek enough, the Doctor then does a mind meld with Reinette. I mean...what? I could be wrong, but I don't believe this is an ability the Doctor's had before. I also have to say, Sophia Myles' acting is bloody awful. It makes her odd flirting with him (once the mind meld goes two-way) into far more awkward a scene than it should be. And we know from Moffat's two-parter last time just what he means by "dance". Good grief.
Mickey and Rose meanwhile have been tranquilised and captured by the robots, then strapped down. Just after they wake up, the Doctor then turns up just in time, (pretending to be) drunk and looking like an idiot. And he proceeds to act like an idiot. He chatters on to the robots and gives away the plot that they're after Reinette's brain once she's 37 years old, same as the ship. Though if we take Earth years as an arbitrary measure, then would her brain have to be exactly the same age as the ship at the time? Down to the months, days, even seconds? The Doctor's right, these robots must be thick. He then tips some wine (which is actually "anti-oil", wherever he got that from and for all the sense it makes) over one of the robots, which stops its clockworkings, and pushes a lever on a nearby console to turn off the rest. Dare I say...silly things? Then he frees Rose and Mickey and gets about to trying to close down the time portals. Only they won't shut down, because one of the robots is still out in the field. Turns out this one has found the right place, so the lever flicks back (great, useful lever that) and the other robots come alive again and beam out. So what we have here is them not working while the plot needs them not to work, and them working again again as soon as they do need to. I'm starting to question whether Moffat really is that much better than RTD after all.
Next thing we see, Rose pays Reinette a visit at age 32 to warn her and suggests she try talking at the robots to hold them off. They chat away for quite a bit, but that's all that's worth mentioning. The rest is just romanticising over the Doctor, which I'm really not a fan of. And it isn't helped by Myles' terrible acting. Also, if it's the Tardis that makes all the language translation work and Rose is actually all the way back in 18th century France, then is the Tardis' influence going through the portal as well? Eh, whatever. Reinette then goes through into the ship of strange and hears some screams from one of the other time frames, so she goes back again.
Cut to 5 years later, and we're at the point of the pre-title teaser, with Reinette calling into the fireplace for the Doctor. He's having trouble getting through. She's eventually cornered in the middle of the ball by the robots. The solution to this? He comes crashing through the time portal window on the white horse. Which is why the story had it that the white horse came through the time portal then. That was useful of it. When introduced to the King of France, the Doctor acts unlikeably, and then he tells the robots how there's no getting back, so they fall down. The Doctor's trapped in Reinette's world now, and we have to endure some mawkish romance (and bad acting). This may have had some effect if we (or, at least, I) were able to engage with her character, but she's not really that interesting. However, as good luck would have it, she's had her fireplace moved with her, and happily that still works as a portal back due to the nonsense reason that it was offline at the time the mirror broke, so the link should be there. Meaning the time portal didn't go through to a place, but rather was tied to the physical object there. Which I would be tempted to condemn as silly, but it makes a sort of sense considering the double-sided fireplace being half in the ship the whole time. I guess. So, a quick sonic screwdrivering and a bang, and he can go back around. So he does.
The Doctor tells her to pack a bag and get ready to come with him (meddling with history more than I'd have thought advisable), briefly chats to Rose and Mickey, and does the switch thing again, only to find her dead by now. Left it a little bit too long there. Louis XV is there at the window watching her coffin leave, so he can do the bad acting in her place. She left the Doctor a letter, which he takes and leaves. Looking all sad he goes back to the Tardis, still not knowing why the ship was following her, and reads the letter. It's all romantic and sad, of course. And then that's pretty much the end. We see the outside of the ship and that it's called the SS Madame de Pompadour, hence explaining why the robots were after her. Which is a neat explanation. But it's a sad, slightly unfinished feeling ending. Which is not a criticism. A neat, happyish ending would have been all too easy, so it's nice that they didn't just go for that.
Even so, I'm not nearly as impressed by this episode as many seem to be. It has some clever ideas, but also enough silly things to give a Rusty script a run for its money. It also takes a lot of liberties with the character and nature of the Doctor. Worse still, Sophia Myles' acting is woefully bad. Wooden is far too kind. I found it impossible to care about her character by the end. The Doctor himself is also very unlikeable for the most part. She seems to fall in love with him merely because he's handsome and there every so often. There's much potential here and this could have been something great, but though many insist it is, I don't agree.
That zany screwdriver:
1. Blows up a spinning Christmas tree. Ho ho ho.
2. Scares off some Robot Santas. It's got itself a reputation now then.
3. Opens a great big secret door. Opens doors, closes plot holes.
4. Is used to threaten Cassandra's consciousness in Rose's body. A densely layered stupid thing is still a stupid thing.
5. Only the Doctor knows how to hold down the on button. Then it opens a smaller, unsecret door.
6. Makes a convenient ring thingy fall down.
7. It locks an old door. An old, Scottish door. Didn't have enough time to put porridge in the lock.
8. Fixes K9. But I won't begrudge it that.
9. Lights a candle. Sadly not a scented one to cover up the smell of bullshit.
10. Helps ascertain the continuing time portally nature of a fireplace.
(And not the Douglas Adams white mice either. 
) I guess a part of me always figured the non-Time Lord companions as more akin to pets than lovers.
