shawThings.net : a collection of shaw things ...

Rose returns home for the first time since she began her journeys with the Doctor. The Doctor has told her she's only been away 12 hours, but naturally he hasn't got it quite right, so when she arrives home and her Mum is overwhelmed and Rose sees all the missing persons flyers, she doesn't understand. Then the Doctor bursts in and apologises, it's not 12 hours, but 12 months.

An entertaining romp through history with some pretty scary ghosts. The Doctor meets a depressed Charles Dickens who's wondering if he's wasted his life. Some marvelous conversations ensue about which of his books the Doctor liked and those he didn't think much of. We see Rose enthralled with the idea of a Christmas past and her shock at a servant earning 8 pounds a year - a year! - and she would have been happy with six.

The Doctor take Rose billions of years into the future to witness the death of the Earth (thus The End of the World).

Lady Cassandra is a marvellous comment on the culture of thinness taken to the extreme: a wafer thin suspended skin with a face. Genius.

The story wasn't that great, but I liked the mix of aliens (eg. an evolved tree).

The new series of Doctor Who returned to TV in Australia last night after a long hiatus. It's a wonderful mix of old and new. The single episode format was a little disappointing, but the production quality has been boosted. Too early to make a call on the writing, but the first episode, Rose, was pretty good.