And so another series of Doctor Who begins thanks to the magic of the Internet and bit torrent software! Spoilerphobes beware, because I consider information up to and including this premiere episode to be fair game!

How much you enjoy the fourth series premiere of Doctor Who will in large part, I suspect, depend upon your level of tolerance for the show being almost exclusively for laughs. I’m just schizophrenic enough to admit that my tolerance level is pretty high, even though my greatest joy comes from Who at its most emo. So far my fondest memories of the current series involve crying my eyes out over the separation of Rose Tyler and the Doctor at the end of Series 2. See, I actually enjoy crying, particularly if it’s motivated by something as safe as a television program.

Nonetheless, I recognize that a lot of hardcore old school Who fans (perhaps the saddest group people on the planet, and a group to which I was one of the proudest and most fanatical members when I was younger and dumber) will have a lot of axes to grind here.

For one thing, there’s Catherine Tate. I like Catherine Tate, and, following the initial shock over the announcement last Summer that she would be joining David Tennant full-time for the entire fourth series, I applauded loudly. It seemed like an audacious move, and one which would surely shake up the status quo, a development which might well be needed at this point in the show’s 21st century incarnation. Nonetheless, I had hopes that Donna would bring a level of vitality (if not outright aggression) to her performance which would markedly contrast with the swooning mooniness which tended to dominate both Billie Piper in Series 2 and Freema Agyeman in Series 3. Mind you, I liked both Piper and Agyeman, but Billie’s chemistry with Christopher Eccleston in Series 1 was simply not matched later, and Freema, whilst making the best of things, still got saddled with the burden of pining after the Doctor.

I know I said that I prefer emo Who, and that’s true, but I don’t mean that I want to watch the girls embarrassing themselves for 13 episodes at a stretch over why doesn’t the Doctor luuuv them? When Christopher Eccleston kissed Billie Piper in “The Parting of the Ways,” I cheered because they stopped swanning about and got to it. On the other hand, Martha’s neediness and clinginess simply got old quickly.

Which takes us back to “Partners In Crime.” I’m very happy to see that Russell T Davies has decided to face the dilemma more or less head on by having the Doctor make it fairly clear that he’d rather not have any more traveling companions falling in love with him. This led to the episode’s biggest laugh, also, with Donna misunderstanding the Doctor’s desire for a mate with a need to mate and responding with utter horror at the prospect of having sex with someone she still thinks is kind of a creepy alien, at least in a sexual context. I’m sure many Who fans breathed a sigh of relief over that. I’m not one of them, necessarily, mind you. I don’t have a problem conceptually with the Doctor having a sex life. I just don’t want him to have to be fending off his companion episode after episode all series long.

Unfortunately, for all of my hope that Catherine Tate would bring a unique vitality to the show, she seemed surprisingly to be playing catch up here, never quite popping out of the background to claim the show as her own. That probably shouldn’t be too surprising, as Doctor Who remains a bit removed from what I presume is her acting comfort zone, Doctor Who being a bit removed from the tonal landscape represented by The Catherine Tate Show. Still, it was a bit of a letdown, I’ll admit, even as I willingly cross my fingers and hope for the best next week.

I’ve always thought that Russell T Davies’s strength as a Who writer lay in his ability to create interesting characters and have them bounce off each other rather than in his skill at laying out a complex or at least well-engineered science fiction plot. Fortunately, much of the point of “Partners In Crime” was in bringing the Doctor and Donna back together and letting them make a go of it. Unfortunately, it still took far too much time to actually bring them together. Having them constantly missing each other was amusing, but, really, we’ve only got 13 episodes, LET’S GO! I’m that eager to see them working directly off each other.

Also, as I pretty much started to say a couple of paragraphs ago, once they finally reunited, I’m not sure that Donna made a very good case for herself as a new companion. I really think that if this is going to work, then the scripts are going to have to give Catherine Tate more opportunities to stretch her dramatic muscles a bit. Davies’s script relied primarily on comedy this time, and it all felt just a bit strained, surprisingly. Little bits like Donna lashing out at the Doctor for leaving them vulnerable to danger were more off-putting than endearing, and even the best bit, the extended mime during which the two time travelers reacquainted through several layers of glass on opposite sides of a room, completely oblivious to the fact that the episode’s villains were completely aware of them and had stopped what they were doing in order to watch incredulously, went on just a bit too long.

As for the villains, there’s not much to say. Sara Lancashire did a perfectly workmanlike job as Miss Foster, but the main interest in her comes primarily from the somewhat middling mystery of her sonic pen. On the other hand, the adipose babies were beyond adorable, and one can’t help but hope that we might see them again. I think there’s real potential for the lil’ fatties to become Who’s 21st century Tribbles. They also led to one of Donna’s finer bits, the moment when she appreciated the fact that the Doctor wasn’t going to destroy them the way that he destroyed all the spider babies the last time they’d gotten together. It was a cute callback.

Lastly, I want to just say a little bit about the “surprise” at the end of the episode. That was a stunner. I knew that it was coming, although I remain more or less unspoiled about the circumstances, yet I never thought we’d get a taste of it so early on. One area in which I’ve long hoped Who would pick up the slack is in establishing a series long arc. Before Series 1, it had been announced that Davies was going to emulate the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Big Bad model for his storytelling. That’s not really happened so far. For the most part, we got the repitition of “Bad Wolf” in Series 1, which really never went anywhere, the infrequent references to Torchwood in Series 2, which, again, didn’t really amount to anything before the finale anyway, and the admittedly more involving references to Mr. Saxon in Series 3. In all likelihood, Series 4 may well follow the same model, but I’d really like to see them Buffyize the storytelling a bit more, weaving the Big Bad in and about more consistently, perhaps, letting us know who they are and what they want early on.

One last thought on the surprise appearance of Rose. Watching it again after the surprise had worn off, it’s really quite chilling, particularly in the way that Billie looks right into the camera at us. The foreboding is palpable. Whoever would have thought that Rose Tyler’s return would turn out to be a Very Bad Thing? Kudos for Russell T Davies for managing to bring a whole new flavor to the Rose Tyler experience for this. That’s really well done!

Some final little bits:

• I love the new theme song and the somewhat less orchestral score this time. The increased use of organ was a nice touch and gave the whole thing a sort of 70s vibe that was welcome.
• It really is nice to note that David Tennant is now really, really ensconced in the role now. I like the idea of long-term Doctors, and until now there’s just been too much of a sense of transience around the new series, between Christopher Eccleston’s short tenure and the fact that BBC actors simply cannot be contracted for years at a time in the way that American actors routinely are, leading to the constant speculation on exactly when or if David Tennant will resign the role. That’s still happening, of course, and will undoubtedly continue, but there’s still no arguing with three full series and something like at least 7 specials (including all of the Christmas episodes and next year’s pseudoseason of occasional specials. He has established himself in a way that no actor has since the last incarnation of the program, and that’s nice to see now.
• I noticed that the timing of the credits was a little off, with Tennant’s name appearing earlier than usual; I wonder if this is to account for an increase in the number of pre-title names later in the series when Freema Agyeman comes back.
• A hat box! She’s bringing a hat box onto the TARDIS, in case she needs a hat! Comedy gold!
• Weird little bit of framing during the shot of Donna heading off to drop her mum’s keys in the bin. The extra playing the police man in the red vest is so close to her and so prominent in the shot that I thought for sure he was heading toward her. I wonder if the production team was really happy with that shot.
• One more thought on the music; wasn’t that amazing when the Doomsday theme popped up toward the end of the episode, accompanying the enigmatic appearance by you-know-who?

So that’s it for me. Now tell me all about how wrong I am!

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