Episode seven of Doctor Who places us firmly in the second half of the series. "The Idiot's Lantern" sees the Doctor and Rose arriving in 1950s London expecting to see an Elvis concert in Las Vegas. From the opening moments, it's apparent that we're in for something far more interesting than the previous two episodes of Cyber-tedium. The pop culture references are back, the humour is back, and quality writing is back!
Mark Gatiss, perhaps most famous for The League Of Gentlemen (no, not the Sean Connery one, this one), does a far better job on the script here than Tom MacRae. There are some genuinely funny one-liners, some brilliant snatches of dialogue, and an original villain that I'd like to see more of (in the sense that we're not recycling past monsters, a la Cybermen or Autons).
And what a villain. Maureen Lipman is fantastic as The Wire — an alien entity that plots to use a new-spangled invention called "Television" to drain the life from unsuspecting viewers, in much the same way as the Cybermen two-parter did, actually. She's clearly having a ball delivering some deliciously villainous one-liners ("I'm going to eat you all up") and munching heartily on what little scenery she can get her hands on - she exists inside a television set, after all.
Rose gets a bit more to do here than she has recently and, more importantly, Billie gets to have a bit more fun. There's far more rapport here between Rose and The Doctor than we've had lately and it's far more appealing viewing as a result. The oft-overused damsel in distress scenario doesn't really detract from the episode at all because it's following a firmly established convention: establish monster, place companion in harm's way, wait for The Doctor to save the day. It's great. It doesn't try too hard or to do too much and, as a result, works brilliantly.
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1 - TimesRelative
The problem with reading these reviews is that they remove the fun one had while watching the episodes that were heavily criticized. Best to just watch, enjoy, and not give a fig on what the would-be professionals think.