Well, I have to confess that I just totally loved this one.

Loved the whole running joke about Shakespeare nicking lines of dialogue quoted by the Doctor and the Doctor's responses when he did. "You can't it's someone's else's", "You can have that one!".

Loved the little bit of Martha/Doctor ship and the whole naming of Rose thing - "That's a name that just keeps me fighting!" <waffy sigh> And just enjoying Martha generally. I love her wide-eyed, throwing herself into the void thing she has going, where she's just so full on excited to be on this great adventure and loving every minute of it.

It didn't hurt that Shakespeare was pretty hot. <g> And the witches were enjoyable villains.

Also, lots of fun one liners and humour throughout - I a lot. I thought the "57 academics" line was hysterical. I just about broke a rib laughing at that.

A couple of small quibbles where the historical niceties. The tavern maid put the Doctor and Martha into the same room for the night? I don't think so! And it was strange that no one paid any attention to Martha walking down the street, dressed as scandalously as she was for the time. But those are very minor things and certainly didn't detract from my enjoyment.

Definitely one of my favourites. What did everyone else think?

LabRat

Oh, yeah, that 57 academics line was hilarious! And, like you, I also loved the running gags with lines from plays.

And I'm liking Martha more the more I see of her - and also liking that we're not getting the old 'goodbye old companion, hello new' with the Doctor behaving as if the old one never existed. That did irritate me in the past.

Incidentally, for any FoLCs who are also DW fans and are on LiveJournal, there's a community for us: DW Converts . It's a members-only community, so you'll have to wait for Julie or me to approve your application - but that'll only be until we see the email. Come and join us and chat about DW and Torchwood!


Wendy

Oh yes. I adored that episode. And I especially loved the various play line jokes. Very lovely

And Martha is turning out to be completely awesome. I do love her lots. Though I'm not quite ready to put the metaphorical pen to the paper and try writing her...don't think I could do her justice (not to mention that I've still got a lot of Doctor/Rose left in me)

I loved it too. Would go as far as to say it's my favourite Ten episode (and I did over in dw_converts).

I'm already starting to like the idea of Ten/Martha. (Blasphemy!!)

Saw this in a room with 500+ science fiction fans at an SF convention on Saturday, watched it again in the "dead dog" party at the end of the convention last night, and enjoyed it immensely both times. So today I got home and set up to record it from the hard disk recorder to my DVD recorder - and ended up watching it for a third time! I think it's fair to say that I like it...

I liked it. I even liked some of the one liners. I even laughed in a few places.

But I wasn't that taken with the story line, I got tired of Shakespeare culling his own quotes from the doctor pretty quickly, I thought the witches were amazingly cliche-looking, and I wasn't very impressed with the set, which looked... well... not as robust as some of the others that have been used in the last couple of years. (Dare I say, I miss seeing Canary Wharf and Cardiff? At least when they show the Cardiff docks, I can play spot the landmark and hope to catch a glimpse of my friend's house. One of these days...)

But I didn't love the episode and, now, having read some of the comments here, I'm wondering what is wrong with me! I think I might have to watch the episode for a second time, just to make sure that my initial response was the right one.

Okay, so I like Martha, which has rather surprised me, given how much of my pleasure during the last two series has been based on the strong supporting cast.

But so far, I am not getting the same kind of 'buzz' that I've had with the past two series. Plus, if this means anything, nobody has mentioned the new series at work yet, and last year and the year before the episodes were unfailingly the stuff of water-cooler gossip.

Chris

Actually, the "not very robust set" was the real Globe Theatre, which was rebuilt in 1997. Can't remember where they said they found the 16th century houses used for the street scenes, but they were real too. The building interiors (the inn and the witches house) were the only sets built for the show.

Incidentally, did anyone else here spot the Marx Brothers reference?

I had wondered if The Globe was the real thing, and rather assumed that it was. That would explain why the theatre was much more convincing that the exterior of the buildings in the street scenes, which is really what I was thinking of when I made that comment. I'm therefore astonished to hear that the houses were the real things.

I seem to remember as staircase that I didn't find wholly convincing, either.

Chris