Holistic Review: The special effects briefly threaten to sink Partners in Crime, but once you get past that, it turns out to be pretty entertaining, largely thanks to Catherine Tate.

A BBC News article from April 2nd yielded the following quote:

Unlike Rose and her successor Martha Jones, played by Freema Agyeman, Tate's character has no romantic feelings for Tennant's time-travelling hero. "Donna knows he's an alien," joked the comedian and actress. "She knows he's got two hearts and she doesn't want to see what else he's doubled up on. There was so much sexual tension off-screen, it would have been boring to have to watch it as well."
"We've had a love story, we've had an unrequited love story — let's have a non-love story," remarked Tennant.

But let's step back for a moment and talk about Donna. When we last saw her, in The Runaway Bride, she was harsh and strident and bossy, and frequently scowling or yelling. As a one-off, it was a fun performance, but I would have been a little reluctant to have a full-time companion with that sort of personality. After all, that's much of the reason why I never warmed completely to Tegan. However, as Andrew pointed out, probably the worst possible time to evaluate someone's personality is when it's her wedding day and everything is going wrong. Even the sweetest young lady is going to turn into a screaming, sobbing madwoman under pressure like that, and that's without throwing alien first contact and life-or-death situations into the mix. So I think we can safely say that, while The Runaway Bride illuminates some of the more unsavoury facets of Donna's personality, she's not like that all the time.

In Partners in Crime, the Donna we meet is much like the Donna we said goodbye to at the end of The Runaway Bride — a lot more calm and introspective, and frequently smiling and happy. But, under pressure, the old Donna reasserts herself. What I love about this is that Donna is very easy to relate to, and likeable, but she has no trouble whatsoever with strongly expressing her opinion. And instead of idolizing the Doctor — well, although she does, a little bit — she's a little more likely to tease him or knock the wind out of his sails. Instead of Tegan, she's actually reminding me of a less-bloodthirsty and slightly-more-bad-tempered Leela. Who likes Pringles. I think that Donna's exactly the companion I've been waiting for: she stands up for herself, she's not intimidated by the Doctor, and she cracks me up. If things continue at this rate, Donna could get added to my roster of favorite companions.

Her directionless mood and lack of a decent regular job echoes Rose when we first met her, except that while Rose was passively aimless, Donna is actively so. ("I'm not drifting. I'm waiting.") The fact that her goal is simply to find the Doctor again is very endearing, and very relatable, as of course is her deep desire to travel the universe with him. It's great that she now regrets not going with him the first time he asked, and is determined to wait as long as she has to in order to get the chance again. (I like the fact that when she tells him that she wishes she hadn't turned down his offer, you can tell that she isn't saying it in a leading way so that he'll ask her again... she's just being honest and vulnerable, and sincerely believes that he's asking her again to come with him.) It's a nice demonstration of the fact that people are just better when the Doctor is around... without him, life is duller, but in his presence, people can do things and behave in ways that they never would have done without his influence. Rose was a good illustration of this too, but it somehow seems like more of a driving force with Donna. You get the sense that Donna's travelling with him not because she wants to see the universe (which would have been a perfectly fine reason in and of itself), but because she wants to do something with her life, on a grand scale that she can only accomplish if she's around him. And that's pretty neat.

This rehabilitation of Donna starts right from the beginning. For one thing, it's cool to see her being so proactive in investigating a mystery, which we don't ordinarily see companions doing unless the Doctor has asked them to, or if they ordinarily work as something like a journalist or detective. Donna even gets to show off the smarts that she supposedly doesn't have, when she points out that if the Adipose are just converting fat, Stacey's total dissolution doesn't make any sense. And then she practically attacks Miss Foster for looking at the big picture and not caring one whit about innocent Stacey's fate. Toward the end of the story, Donna even demonstrates that she can be — gasp! — sensitive. I honestly didn't think she had it in her, but look at that! She delicately asks about Rose, she clings to the Doctor in horror when Miss Foster plummets to the ground, and incredibly, she picks up on the fact that the Doctor doesn't seem as excited to have her aboard the TARDIS as she is to be there. Her enthusiasm at finally getting to travel with the Doctor is great — I absolutely adore the fact that she's been packed for months just in case she ran into him again (the hatbox is awesome!), and her babbling as she gets ready to board the TARDIS is cute.

For Catherine Tate, I have nothing but love. Since her return was announced — mostly in the last couple of months — I've caught up on the entire run of The Catherine Tate Show and can now use "Am I bovvered though?" in the proper context. I think the most immediate impact of this immersion is that Tate can now crack me up with nothing but a well-aimed look, a skill that she puts to great use here. (Take, for example, the frozen expression on her face when she realizes that Miss Foster has been watching her pantomime conversation with the Doctor!) I can't remember the last time that I howled with laughter while watching a Doctor Who episode, and it's all thanks to her. Periodically, Tate's delivery veers into a vocal inflection reminiscent of one of her sketch-show creations, and it's kind of fun playing "Spot the Character" as she performs her lines. (One great example: "No, I don't mean like that!" sounds like it's coming out the mouth of easily-amused Sam.) Aside from all the lines that made me laugh, I really liked her tetchy "Where's Granddad?", the quietly proud delivery of "Good for her.", "I mean, even tonight, I was in a — ...doesn't matter.", "I mean, that's gotta be a hoax!", her calm "Doctor, tell me, what do you need?", "I'm waving at fat!", her proactive and excited "So then! TARDIS! Come on!" and her big beaming smile as she leaves a message for her mother and gets ready to go on the adventure of a lifetime.

The Doctor does some very interesting things in this episode. First of all, I like that they continue to reinforce the fact that this Doctor is one who will give any villain the opportunity to change, but does not believe in giving second chances. It's kind of a nice philosophy. If you refuse to reform, then action will be taken. Secondly, he admits that he found Martha's infatuation with him to have been a "complicated" situation (if I understood him correctly), which I thought was really nice... it wasn't that he didn't notice her, it was that he realized how she felt but didn't know how to handle it (although I still don't get why he was happy to flirt with Rose but not Martha... anyway.). I also love that we get a really great illustration (not the first, but excellent nevertheless) of just how lonely the Doctor is without a companion. When he's talking to himself inside the TARDIS, we clearly see that he really needs to have someone around to talk to. So that's nice, it's not just that he feels obligated to take someone cosmos-hopping now and then. He really wants company, and thrives on it. My favorite of his line readings: "Health and Safety. ... Film department." and when he finally agrees to have Donna aboard the TARDIS with a big grin and a sincere "I'd love it!"

Oddly, I don't find myself grovelling at the feet of Sarah Lancashire. I certainly very much enjoyed her performance as Miss Foster, which was perfectly-pitched as a camp-but-evil nanny/CEO, yet it wasn't one that had me applauding her every inflection. Possibly it's because Lancashire gives a very controlled performance as Miss Foster, who never has a hair out of place and considers every statement before it comes out of her mouth. I don't think she ever really got a chance to cut loose, and maybe that's why I don't find it quite as memorable, but she still gives a very solid performance. And don't get me wrong, there are some great deliveries; I especially loved "I think I'll be conducting this interview, Penny."

It's very nice to see Jacqueline King back in an expanded role as Sylvia Noble. I find it kind of funny how all Doctor Who companions in the revival have loud, overbearing mothers, yet each subtly different. Jackie was the life of the party and money-hungry; Francine was a control freak, suspicious and stern; and Sylvia so far seems to channel her caring into nagging and negativity. I suppose it gives the companions a solid reason to want to leave home for an extended period of time! I love the way King waves her nails about, as if to set the polish, while she's talking to Donna — a nice touch. I'm also delighted that we've already got Bernard Cribbins back, reprising his role as Wilfred Mott. I am, however, very sad that Howard Attfield had to pass away for him to return, and I hope we'll be able to see the original scenes with Geoff on the DVD release, because it would have been nice to see Donna's close relationship with her father. But a close relationship with her grandfather is charming too, and the two of them have a wonderful rapport. It's sooo sweet that the first thing Donna wants to do on her travels with the Doctor is to go and wave goodbye to her grandfather — to let him know that she's going away, and to show him that she finally found the man she's been looking for. (Is it just me, or did Mott seem to know the Doctor by name as well as by sight? I don't remembering them exchanging introductions in Voyage of the Damned!)

Was it just me (and Andrew), or did Verona Joseph at times look like she could have been Freema Agyeman's sister? I really do wonder if she tried out for the role of Tish. She's entertaining as Penny, who does all the right companionly things — asking tough questions, hiding out in the corporate headquarters, sniffing around for information even after she's been tied up and escaped — and yet, poor thing, the Doctor pretty much ignores her completely. The scene of her walking around strapped to a chair is very funny! (Also, I just have to say, Penny is a great name, and would have been an excellent companion name, à la the almost-companion Penny Chapman from the eighth-Doctor comic strip The Curious Tale of Spring-Heeled Jack.)

As for other characters, Chandra Ruegg really steals her scenes as telemarketer Claire Pope, who flirts shamelessly with the Doctor while she's talking to a customer, and afterwards suggests that they play a work-related game together ("You be Health... I'll be Safety."). Jessica Gunning and Martin Ball were both very likeable as Stacey and Roger, two customers of Adipose Industries who found a new lease on life after taking the pills. I particularly liked that they cast two actors with very different body types to play Stacey and Roger, which was a nice demonstration of the idea that you don't have to be particularly overweight to want to shed a few pounds around the middle (or possibly it was just meant to demonstrate that Roger had been taking the pills for longer... either way, it was a nice touch).

The structure of the episode is great. We already know Donna, so we don't have to spend time finding out who she is; instead, what we're all interested in is how she and the Doctor end up reuniting. So Davies toys with us, and scripts scenes in which they do exactly the same thing with slightly different methods (Donna goes through the front door, the Doctor sneaks in below; Donna flashes a badge, the Doctor flashes psychic paper; Donna goes for a girls' chat while the Doctor has a man-to-man talk; and many others) and, the whole time, continually manage to miss one another by mere seconds or inches. It's infuriating in an extremely entertaining way, and makes their inevitable meeting even more rewarding.

I also really like the monsterless nature of the episode. As I'll mention below, I was all set to dislike a swarm of bad CGI tofu-blocks that went around munching on people, smiling at you innocently until they bare a mouth full of fangs, but when it turned out that the Adipose were actually innocent and sweet, I found my attitude toward the story changing. It's kind of neat that Miss Foster isn't some madwoman bent on conquest, she's actually a caring nanny who loves her babies and just doesn't particularly care if a few million humans get hurt in the process. Actually, that's an interesting angle on this story — one can infer that if Miss Foster had succeeded, and had managed to seed the Adipose as thoroughly as she had planned, maybe she would have spawned enough babies through fat conversion that she wouldn't have had to kill anybody. Which brings up the point that, as the Doctor mentions, the Adipose's illegal scheme could have been hugely successful as a diet plan. I mean, if somebody told me that I could lose a kilo (or more) of pure fat a day just by taking a pill, and it absolutely would not harm me in any way... my goodness, I'd sign right up! Especially if they said "We need your fat to make babies"... well, maybe a slight rewording would help, but you know... it's a win-win situation, the humans get skinnier and the Adipose get babies. And you get to do a good deed while you're losing the pounds. Maybe the Doctor shouldn't have interfered! After all, it's only his threatening to stop their scheme that makes Miss Foster activate emergency parthenogenesis, which is what actually does nearly kill a million people. (Of course, there's also the issue that the Adipose's scheme isn't completely foolproof since, after all, Stacey gets completely transmuted purely by accident, so perhaps that slim chance is enough for the Doctor to decide that it isn't worth the risk.)

It also manages to be timely not just in its concern about obesity, but also in that it's a cautionary tale against "instant fixes"... as we all know, nothing that promises to get rid of fat without exercise or a change in eating habits can possibly be a good thing! (However, for the second time this TV season, an RTD series has basically ripped off a Torchwood novel. The first time, Torchwood itself — "Adam", episode 2.05 from February 13th — ripped off its one of its own novels — Border Princes by Dan Abnett, one of the first batch of Torchwood novels that was published on 4 January 2007 — both of which included a new team member that appeared suddenly but had apparently been part of the Torchwood team since day one, like Dawn in Buffy. Here, we get deadly diet pills being used to incubate aliens in human bodies, as in another novel from the same batch — Slow Decay by Andy Lane — in which people who take the pills eventually develop a ravenous hunger that leads them to eat other people or even themselves. Suffice it to say that the Torchwood novel was, unsurprisingly, much gorier and more horrific.)

Murray Gold does a nice job with the music here. I particularly liked the music during the Adipose infomercial, and as Sylvia is muttering about Donna in the background. My favorite bit was the music as the Doctor's trying to track down Stacey's sudden parthenogenesis; the moment when the Doctor's Y-shaped tracker blinks on is just really cool, thanks to his score. (And I really love that tracker in general, it's a great prop!) And, oh, I love the noise that the computer core makes! I don't know why, it just sounds retro and comfy. Other great noises include the sounds that the baby Adipose make, and the booming squawking noise of their ship.

Very nice direction by Charles Palmer; love the shot of the Doctor grinning at Claire over her cubicle wall, the shot of the Doctor and Roger through the cat-flap as it swings shut, the shot of Donna racing from Stacey's house into the alley, the clever dissolves of Sylvia walking around behind Donna and complaining about her lack of drive, the shot of Sylvia just before she races outside the restaurant, and the hilarious shot of the Doctor starting to carry Donna's bags into the TARDIS. But a couple of little complaints — why does he cut away from Donna as she's infiltrating Craig's cubicle and telling him "Don't mind me"? It makes her line nearly impossible to catch, so I was very grateful that the Doctor said the exact same thing to Claire moments later! He also uses a rather silly dolly zoom as Donna holds up the second gold Adipose capsule... I mean, it wasn't that momentous or shocking of a revelation.

But, ohh, the effects, the effects. The first moment that Stacey's stomach started to distend and stretch, I nearly wept with disappointment. It was almost as if nothing had changed since "Rose". When will they ever learn what CGI is, and is not, good for? I'm sure they could easily have made some kind of practical effect that would have done much the same thing but would have been far more realistic (I mean, even The X-Files was doing pulsing, stretching skin effects back in 1993, and those looked great). After that awful horror, I was not very kindly disposed toward the Adipose, whose uniform pale-grey textureless skin and CGI-looking facial features just screamed "computer overlay". (This, folks, is why I far prefer a non-scuttling giant spider over CGI creations like these: it's all in the details!) I will admit that, in retrospect, I like the Adipose better than I thought I did, mainly because I now realize that they weren't meant to be monsters in the traditional sense of the word. They're supposed to be cute, and really they are pretty successful at that, with their bright shining eyes and their one cute little fang and the way they happily burble and wave at people. (In fact, their voices remind me very strongly of the characters in the Worms series of computer games, which makes me love them a little bit more.) And the effect of Stacey collapsing into dozens of Adipose isn't really that bad, once you see what they're trying to accomplish with it. So, while on my first viewing, the abysmal nature of the effects meant that the episode had to work twice as hard to win me over, on subsequent viewings I find that I'm only really bothered by that first stomach-stretching effect, which is small potatoes compared to all the great moments that Partners in Crime has to offer.

Credit where credit is due, though, they do a fantastic job with the window-washing cradle sequence, which looks totally realistic — particularly the shot of Donna dangling from the cable. And then there's the amazing sequence of the Doctor and Donna trying to sonic/wrench their way through one of the building windows, which I cannot believe was done without an actual window in front of them. I've finally had the opportunity again this year to watch Doctor Who Confidential after the relevant episodes (which I haven't been able to do since the first series) and I never would have known that was an effect if I hadn't watched how they did it. Which, again, is what I mean by good effects being unnoticeable effects. Nobody is ever going to say "You mean Stacey's stomach wasn't really stretching out of shape?!" but I myself said (or at least thought) "You mean there wasn't really a window in front of them when they were banging away?" I mean, look how precisely Tennant follows the edge of the window with his sonic screwdriver... amazing. And the Adipose ship looks cool, I love the design. My thought to myself was: now that's a proper spaceship!

Minor points:

• Well, I'm a little disappointed that they've re-jiggered the opening theme again... I really loved it in Voyage of the Damned. Fortunately it's not changed too much, and in a couple of ways I feel it's been improved... I like the dum-dum-dum horns at the beginning, and I wasn't quite as happy with the very end of the VotD theme, and they kept in the nod to the Howell version... so overall I'm still happy.

• I love the way Tate says "Donna Noble, Health and Safety" while briefly flashing her badge! It's an amusing contrast with the Doctor and his psychic paper.

• The moment when you know for sure that Miss Foster is just putting on an impressive show, because surely nobody would really talk in meaningless advertising lingo like this?

  Miss Foster: "The future starts here!"

• One really has to ask, though. If the Adipose were looking for an obese nation to seed... why on earth did they go to the UK rather than the USA?! One website suggests that in the Americas and Europe, obesity averages around 10 to 20 percent of the population. According to the WHO, as of 2005, US obesity rates seem to be somewhere around 39%, whereas UK obesity rates are around 23%. Of course, this pales in comparison to Samoa (48%), Tonga (69%), the Cook Islands (70%), Micronesia (70%), and Nauru (81%)... but then Nauru only has about 9,275 people. So maybe they needed a slightly more populous area. But still, we're "ahead" of the UK by a whole 16%!

• A cat-flap! A nice little unintentional link back to Survival (and, for that matter, Rose), particularly the Doctor's line "Well, thing about cat-flaps is, they don't just let things in, they let things out as well."

• Confused question time: how do the Adipose extrude themselves from their victims, without damaging the host's skin? Do they secrete some kind of chemical that just patches the skin right up behind them? And, if so, are they also absorbing some of the skin as they go? Because that would explain how Adipose Industries' customers can lose fat without having a lot of sagging skin left behind. This seriously would be a major cash cow for any company that tried to market it in the US today.

• Perhaps it's just the newness of the situation, but gosh, Stacy is awfully calm about her body bulging and swelling all over. I think I'd be screaming blue murder and racing to the hospital, but Stacy just stands there and goes "Ooh!" and looks mildly disturbed but curious.

• More confused questions: why is it that all the Adipose look very light grey in color? What about the ones that were built out of Stacey's muscle tissue, or blood, or stomach acid?

• My one dialogue issue this week. I find it hard to believe that Donna genuinely has no idea what she's talking about, or that Mott would believe that she didn't. (However, otherwise, the entire scene between the two of them is great.)

  Mott: "D'you know, I don't understand half the things you say these days."
  Donna: "Nor me."

• Another example of how the expression on Catherine Tate's face is enough to send me into paroxysms of laughter:

  Sylvia: "Why are you whispering?"
  Donna: "I'm in church."
  Sylvia: "What are you doing in church?"
  Donna: "Praying."

• It's a good thing Sylvia didn't decide to call Donna straight back, after being hung up on, or Donna would've been in heaps of trouble with Miss Foster!

• Very clever misdirection that makes us think Miss Foster is on Donna's trail the whole time, when in fact she's pursuing Penny. In particular, RTD is very sneaky about making us think that Miss Foster has just detected Donna's cell-phone call in the bathroom. (Although I'd really like to know how Donna and Penny managed to avoid hearing one another in the washroom for an entire day!)

• My favorite scene of the entire episode is, without any doubt at all, the awesome miming scene as the Doctor and Donna talk to each other through two panes of glass and a room. Hilarious! Their initial double-takes are great, as is Tate's total enthusiasm, although I'd really love to know what that weird wiggling-eyelash mime is supposed to mean. (I really liked "It's me!" "Yeah, I can see that!")

• Cool that Donna suspects that colony collapse disorder (which is causing the mysterious widespread death and disappearance of honeybees) must be linked to aliens. Let's hope the Doctor comes along and fixes it! (I was amused that he had absolutely no idea what she was talking about!)

• Great delivery by Tate; and notice the way that the moment the Doctor reassures Donna, she heads straight up to join him.

  Donna: "What, in that thing?"
  Doctor: "Yes, in that thing!"
  Donna: "But if we go down in that, they'll just call us back up again."

• Soooo, Adipose Industries owns the window-washing cradle, too? That seems a little unlikely. What, they have a side business scrubbing building exteriors?

• Another awesome delivery by Tate, as Donna points out the utter stupidity of the Doctor's request:

  Doctor: "Hold on!"
  Donna: "I am!"

• I'd love to see how the Doctor manages to get Donna in through the window while holding onto only her knees. That must have been a harrowing escape!

• The Doctor seems to think that Miss Foster's sonic device is identical to his own (aside, obviously, from being in the form of a pen), but that seems a little ridiculous. Isn't the Doctor's sonic screwdriver built from Gallifreyan technology? Surely Miss Foster doesn't have access to that. Unless the Doctor just built his from a kit.

• It would be nice if the Doctor's "Just enough to stun them" line had been a little bit louder. As it is, it almost looks like he's electrocuted the guards to death.

• "Happy birthday," says Miss Foster. "One million birthdays!" Yeeeeeees, but, if each person has been generating one Adipose per night, and if emergency parthenogenesis can birth a couple dozen Adipose from one human being, then surely if Adipose Industries has a million customers in the greater London area, they should be getting significantly more than just one million baby Adipose? And we can assume that she's already gotten at least one baby Adipose from each of these million customers, right? So why does she only have 10,000 baby Adipose at the end of the story?

• Does externally-animated fat die if you run over it with a taxi?

• If Miss Foster had succeeded in seeding the Adipose all over Britain, how did the mothership expect to pick them all up? Surely they wouldn't all have had to skip down to London to be picked up. Would the ship have had to make several stops? In which case, you hope none of Adipose's customers ended up at Land's End or the Orkneys, or that poor ship would've been cruising all over the skies of Britain for days trying to get all the babies.

• I am terribly sad that Mott completely misses the Adipose ship flying around in the background, although I guess he didn't really need any validation of his beliefs, since he lives in the Whoniverse version of London, with its annual Christmas invasions and the like. But still, it's sad that he didn't see it. I always hate plot elements like that; it's the main reason that I hate the movie Dennis the Menace so completely. However, he does get to see Donna flying around in the TARDIS later, so that makes me feel better.

• When Miss Foster is giving her speech to the baby Adipose, aren't there any people around watching her (and thinking what a nutter she is)?

• An awesome exchange (although, to be fair, the difference is that the Adipose aren't going to eat the entire Earth):

  Donna: "What're you gonna do then, blow 'em up?"
  Doctor: "They're just children, they can't help where they came from."
  Donna: "Oh, that makes a change from last time."

• And I love this one just as much:

  Doctor: "She fancied me."
  Donna: "Mad Martha, that one. Blind Martha, Charity Martha."

• It's a nice point that, having recovered their babies, the Adipose don't need a nanny any longer, and are far more worried about covering up the evidence of their crimes! (So they're not exactly nice parents, are they... I mean, just look at them default on their babysitting bill!)

• I was a little iffy at first, but now I think I like the way that Miss Foster drops out of frame like Wile E. Coyote. I can just about justify it (maybe the levitation takes a moment to wear off after the beam is deactivated) and it really is a pretty funny moment.

• Wonderful, wonderful scene, as Donna actually gives the Doctor an opportunity to take back his offer, and it's very sensitively played:

  Donna: "You're not saying much!"
  Doctor: "No, it's just — it's a funny old life, in the TARDIS."
  Donna: (realizing) "You don't want me."
  Doctor: "I'm not saying that."
  Donna: "But you asked me!"
  The Doctor looks at her but says nothing.
  Donna: "Would you rather be on your own?"

• That sweet scene is then followed up by this hilarious one, which had me rolling in the aisles as Tate drags out her Nan voice:

  Doctor: "I just want a mate."
  Donna: (scandalized) "You just want to mate?"
  Doctor: "I just want a mate!"
  Donna: "You're not mating with me, sunshine!"
  Doctor: "A mate! I want a mate!"
  Donna: "Well, just as well, because I'm not having any of that nonsense. I mean, you're just a long streak of nothing, you know, alien nothing!"

• Donna leaves the keys to her mother's car in a bin? Ha! What if the garbage truck comes to collect it before her mother gets there?!

• But, whoa. Donna goes to tell some random blonde woman where her mother can find her keys, and suddenly... just as Donna started to leave... I knew. It's Rose. The spoiler mills have been running overtime ever since October 8th, when the Daily Star reported that "Leading the way in the line-up will be Billie (Piper) as Rose Tyler along with U; they will hook up with V and Donna Noble. Also on hand to help out the Doc will be W as well as X. Even Y will make an appearance. The old cast members will be reunited to help the Doc fight Z in an explosive finale to the next series." Well, at the time, that sounded (a) absurd, and (b) fanwankily dangerous. Except that, since that article was released, not only was Billie Piper's return confirmed, but W and X (and therefore probably Y) have been confirmed as well. The only ones left are U and Z, and there have been enough persistent rumors swirling around (as well as images of things associated with Z that haven't been publicized as appearing in any other episode) that I begin to suspect that the Daily Star had it totally right.

  Anyway: despite the rumor mills, spoilers and photos from the filming, I didn't think Billie would be making any appearance at all until later in the season. So even though I knew she was coming back, I was shocked to see her... looking so sad, and with the music from Doomsday swelling in the background, as she turned and... faded away! What a jaw-dropping moment. So, you know what? I don't care if it's absurd or fanwanky, I can't wait to find out where this is going, and as much as it sounded like a train wreck waiting to happen, I want Rose back. This is gonna be really cool.

• Ha! Donna sounds just like me (as I sit here coughing from a cold that I picked up in a $275/night Manhattan hotel that was too cheap to turn their heat on in early April):

  Donna: "Although frankly, you could turn the heat up."

• Great acting from Bernard Cribbins in the final scene — it looks like Mott thinks he sees Donna even before he bends down to double-check it in the telescope. And when he realizes it is her, he's so totally delighted for her and cheers her on — I love it!

So, I guess my feeling about Partners in Crime is that it's not an astounding episode — it doesn't have breakout characters or terrifying monsters or a stunning script — but it is consistently entertaining, and it's got moments in it that I absolutely treasure and will look forward to rewatching. It's a fun story, and that's enough to win me over.