I love Dr. Who. Not in that way, no, and not in a particularly geeky way; it's just fun, something that doesn't get much of a look-in on television these days. Plus, it's cross-genre, cross-audience television.

However, I'd like to take a few minutes to get cynical about Saturday's episode. I'll try and reign in the cynicism, but still, you may wish to find your anti-sillyness goggles.

*

Last Week: Shit got real, yo! Dr. 10, he got zapped!
And then there was regeneration, followed by a great deal of speculation on the part of the fan community.

This week:

Doctor: Oh no! I'm regenerating! This is a catastrophe which can only be averted by the usage of a slightly strange plot device forshadowed in previous episodes by an odd bubbling sound! Right now, I could use a hand - lucky I didn't leave that in the Torchwood Hub, or I'd have been pretty boned...

The Doctor directs his regeneration energy into his severed hand. Thousands of fans across Britain - nay, the World - experience mild shock at this strange twist, then simultaneously get over it.

The Tardis is captured by the Daleks. It's shields gone, it is now merely a wooden box - but a wooden box with Catherine Tate stuck inside it. Hell hath no fury like unto this, especially when it gets dumped in the Dalek equivalent of the garbage disposal. Suddenly, Catherine Tate can't get the chorus of " Reach Out" out of her head. She does, and there is a new Doctor, all shiny, and, as she points out, naked. He finds one of his brother's hand-me-down suits, and they contemplate their problems.

Meanwhile, in the Torchwood Hub

Gwen: Wait a minute. What's this barrier?
Ianto: Oh, it's a hasty plot device designed to keep us alive until the new series of Torchwood.
Gwen: Fair enough. Fancy a hand of canasta?

London:

Sarah Jane Smith: Oh noes! I'm about to die! And I forgot to let K-9 out for his walk!
Mickey Smith: Remember me? [kills dalek]
Jackie Tyler: Why am I here again?
Sarah Jane Smith: Never mind. If we surrender to the killing machines, they'll let us in their command ship. I know scary; I've hung around Tom Baker.

Germany
Martha Jones: Good, I'm in Germany. Oh look! An overbearing old German woman! I'll have an impenetrable conversation and be threatened by her.

Dalek Crucible
Doctor 1: Oh look! It's Davros. Long time, D-to-the-ross.

Davros: Silence your prattling, and fear my spiky metal hand. Oh, and my bomb that will destroy everything in reality except the daleks. Powered by planets that will then, somehow, have to destroy themselves, because if our own weapon destroys it's own power source then that'd be a bit silly, wouldn't it?

Doctor 1: Yes. Yes it would. Oh no! We're trapped. Again.

Transmission
Martha Jones: Listen, Daleks! You know that ominous maguffin we teased mercilessly in the last episode? Well, it's a giant bomb. Or, at least, lots of bombs that will fuck the earth right up and proper. What do you say to that?

Transmission also
Captain Jack: Hi there! You see this bling? This can blow up your entire ship. Possibly even this entire galaxy.

Martha Jones: I thought upstaging someone with the ability to blow up the entire earth was difficult, but trust Captain Jack to find a bloody way.

[All of them are teleported to the main room.]

Collectively: Oh no! Why didn't we assume that an enemy with the power to shift entire planets into a new galaxy and arrange them as parts of an engine wouldn't be able to teleport five people, four of whom were on their own ship? For now, we are undone!

Davros: Doctor, I mock your pacifism, but applaud your work ethic in getting other people to do your killing for you. Kudos on your time management. And now, I'm going to destroy everything, because I can.

[Tardis appears]

Doctor 2: Oh no you're not! I have an antenna on a stick! [runs] [is shot]

Donna: No! Now I alone bear the burden of saving the universe! [is shot]

[In the background, Donna has a Flowers for Algernon Moment.
She disables the Daleks, and her and Doctor 1 and 2 return the planets to their previous positions in space, and, hopefully, time.]

Davros: Dalek Caan! You've forseen everything - why didn't you forsee this?

Dalek Caan: Well, y'know. I was busy being mad, really. I went to the trouble of rescuing you and allowing you to clone hundreds of thousands of daleks from your own cells just so that we could all be destroyed, because we're too destructive. Why I didn't just leave you behind, I'll never know. But then we might not have had a plot, so let's just walk away from that point.

Supreme Dalek: It's my party, and I'll destroy the console allowing you to replace the earth in the right position if I want to.

[Doctor 2 get his genocide going on an epic level.]

Davros: Oh no! Fire! And falling girders, the natural enemy of the dalek race!

Doctor 1: Let me save you from the falling girders!

Davros: No! I curse you and name you Robert Oppenheimer! You haven't seen the last of meeeeeeeeee... Unless you have, in which case, I leave you my collection of Dalek Porn.

Doctor 1: Fair enough. Right. We need to tow the earth back manually, conveniently ignoring gravity, rotational shift and, frankly, all the laws of physics - and we can, because we've got a giant lassoo made out of Welsh Pixie Dust and held together by a recalcitrant schoolteacher of a supercomputer. Has anyone got any Enya? If we're going to tow the earth back, with all of us except Jackie getting to do something, we really need some Enya. No? Bollocks.

[Earth is saved. Yay!]

Doctor 1: Goodbye companions!
Captain Jack: I'm going to Wales, and I'm taking Martha with me.
Mickey: I'm coming too!
Captain Jack: Oh great, perma-sidekick.

[Ping! Alternate Universe Time]
Doctor 1: Rose, I'm leaving you with my confused, human, genocidal clone, but on the bright side he's able to say he loves you when I can't bring myself to.

Doctor 2: It's true, I can. Watch! [he whispers in her ear. They passionately kiss.]

Doctor 1: Where's Captain Jack to make three-way jokes when we need him? Oh, right, he already did that earlier. When even he didn't want to hug Catherine Tate, until she made him.

[Doctor 1 leaves.]

[Back in the Tardis, Donna starts to have a 'moment'. For some reason, a Human Time Lord makes perfect sense - a human body with all the knowledge of a time lord, that's fine - but a half-human, half-time lord isn't allowed. In much the same way as the Doctor had to remove excess Tardis energy from Rose, he removes Time Lord energy from Donna, meaning she now no longer remembers All The Amazing Adventures, rendering the majority of the series slightly pointless.

Although, given Who and Torchwood's tendency of - let's be charitable here - re-imagining Buffy and Angel storylines, I'm a little confused as to why the Doctor didn't just find a way of altering her biology to make Donna Half-Demon - sorry, I meant Half-Time-Lord, Half Human, rather than retconning her completely.]

Suddenly, there is a Cribbins Moment.

Cribbins: Let's be honest, my five minutes owns this entire episode.

THE END.

CHRISTMAS TIME SPECIAL! The Cybermen Return! Again! Just this time, with David Morrissey, rather than Neil Morrissey - although "Cybermen Behaving Badly" might have been fun...