...blot out the climatic minute of last night's terrifying episode of Dr Who with an animated strapline for Over The Rainbow. Nothing defuses three quarters of an hour of carefully built tension like a cartoon of Graham Norton trailing the BBC's on-going advertisement for Andrew Lloyd Webber's latest play.

interrupting the first episode in 2005 with his wittering from BBC3 and the awful appearance last nite can't they give him a part to stop him gatecrashing?

Trouble is that some BBC twit obviously paid for that dumb cartoon caption and so they feel they have to use it cos its like American TV is like, innit?

As for the new episode - thats more like it. Last weeks Churchill ep was v poor aside from the comedy Daleks making tea and carrying box files.

Bit of Ringu (rather than Pingu) to frigh5ten the kiddies over their Saturday chippy teas. The Weeping Angels are the only really effective and memorable Nu-monsters. There is something otherworldly and genuinely disturbing about them - the scene with Amy alone with the video screen was perfectly executed.

Some great lines - The Doctor making 'the noise' that didn't happen when the Tardis landed only for River to reveal it only does that cos he leaves the brakes on. The stuff with the military monks 'The church have moved on a bit'. Matt Smith is improving by the week. To quote a Tiswas Chris Tarrant - THIS IS WANT THEY WANT!!!!'

As for Mike Skinner - don't blink your eyes, mate. Eythangeeww

but it was such a blink and you'll miss it thing that I thought I must be mistaken. Seemed out of place given the rest of the episode - maybe the hallucinogenic lipstick will make a reappareance in part 2.

As for the epsiode, it was definitely the best of the series so far. It reminded me of Aliens - following up a terrifying, claustrophobic first encounter with the Weeping Angels by bringing in a bunch of squaddies and ramping up the number of baddies. The idea of playing hunt the statue in a cavern full of statues was scary enough; to then turn them all into statues was genius. And the scariest bit - Amy and the video - was just an introduction to the baddies!

As for cartoon Norton, yes it was annoying and punctured the tension somewhat, but seeing as they'd been using that scene over and over in the trailers for the series, it didn't damage it too much. I bet they won't try again - apparently loads of people have complained.

Up in Scotland we didn't get the animated Norton - sounds awful though.

Best episode of the lot so far.

is a brilliant writer (Coupling, Press Gang, Joking Apart) and his previous weeping angels episode, Blink, was surely the finest piece of metaphysical-comedy-sci-fi-horror ever seen on TV.

He was a shoe-in to fill Russell Davies’ boots and it’s interesting that last week’s ‘Spitfires in space’ abomination was the only one of the series so far not written by him.

got the Norton nightmare

here it is for those who missed it

It's all very good of course, but there's something about Matt Smith I'm not engaging with. It may be that he's too much like a junior Michael Palin. I like Amy and the stories are okay, but it's just not grabbing me like previous series have.