Doctor Who: Gridlock

Should have guessed the solid run of the last couple of weeks couldn't last. Gridlock sees the Doctor returning to New Earth, a quarter of a century after his visit there with Rose. However, it's not mysterious goings-on in gleaming hospitals this time, but disappearances amid massive, slow-crawling traffic jams that he and Martha have to investigate.

The problem is the action-part of the episode is really just padding for the emotional interaction between the two time travellers that comes in at the end of the story; the actual meat of Gridlock - Martha and some people we don't care about being attacked by giant alien crabs [which happen to be monsters from the Second Doctor era story The Macra Terror] and then escaping without any real threat to life and limb - feels like light-weight filler we have to sit through to get to the 'bigger picture' segment.

Up until then the story plays out like part of a story that we've jumped in in the middle of and never really goes anywhere ... like the cars stuck in the eternal jams of New New York.

The futuristic gridlock is a direct lift from the clogged freeways of 2000AD's Mega-City One and the 'homage' is cemented by the Doctor meeting a virtual clone of Judge Dredd's old pin stripe suited informant Max Normal.

Even Father Ted's Ardal O'Hanlon seems wasted as a cat-person who spends all his time stuck behind the wheel of a flying car. Gridlock looks wonderful, but save for the Face of Boe's "final secret" and the frank talking between Martha and The Doctor in the final scene, I really couldn't see the point of this tale.