SPOILER ALERT: This weekly blog is for those who have been watching the new series of Doctor Who. Don’t read ahead if you haven’t seen episode five – The Doctor’s Wife

Dan Martin’s episode four blog

Neil Gaiman live Q&A

“You poured in your personalities; emotions, traits, memories, secrets, everything. You gave them your lives. Human lives are amazing. Are you surprised they walked off with them?”

It’s that time of year again. We’ve been to Planet America, we’ve been on a dodgy pirate ship, we’ve been through the plughole at the bottom of the universe. And now, to complete Doctor Who’s checklist of formats, it’s time for the one in the grimy industrial future. So yes, this is familiar ground in many ways, but whether it is Matthew Graham’s writing, or simply the swagger with which this series has been carrying itself, it is particularly satisfying. This is what last year’s disappointing Silurian story should have been.

True, with so much buildup and exposition, it ends up feeling like not very much actually happens by the time groundwork is laid. There’s also a debate to be had as to whether, since it doesn’t feature any aliens, it qualifies as a proper Doctor Who at all. But on the parameters it sets itself, this is classy, stylish and nicely unsettling.

Graham creates a believable world and workplace in that converted monastery, which you buy into from the opening credits. Raquel Cassidy’s deliciously brittle Cleaves, Marshall Lancaster’s Manc everydude Buzzer, and Sarah Smart’s mouse-that-roared Jennifer are well-drawn. And most promisingly of all, while second parts tend to look limp compared to first episodes, here’s a story where it’s the other way round.

“I’ve got to get to that cockerel before all hell breaks loose! I never thought I’d have to say that again.”

The episode opens with an extended clip of Supermassive Black Hole by Muse, and as Matt Bellamy and co’s sex-funk-rock-jam swaggers in, we’re straight back into Tardis housekeeping. These extended soapy sequences could have turned out, well, soapy – but seeing them play darts, listening to prog rock as the Doctor continues to surreptitiously scan Amy’s uterus just serves to lend credibility to what on paper is a ridiculous scenario. They may be having a laugh, but we also get a sense that the arc is really starting to go somewhere.

Fear Factor

The Gangers are, at heart, a more psychologically disturbing creation, and The Rebel Flesh’s questions of identity and spirit and “who is the real monster?” are bound to invite comparisons with Battlestar Galactica and the Cylons. But when they do bring out the sparing CGI, it reaffirms the renewed horror quotient we’re getting this year.

Mysteries and Questions

The obvious assumption here is that with a Ganger Doctor now running round, we have an easy and obvious get-out for the Doctor’s death. But wouldn’t that be too easy and obvious? And of course it assumes that both Doctors are going to survive next week’s episode. Elsewhere The Doctor refers to The Flesh as “primitive technology.” So what else does he know about it and what will it be turning into?

Meanwhile, something intriguing has come to our attention. Deep within the bowels of the BBC website you’ll find this video of the Doctor in some distress. Its title, Analysis Lessons, is an anagram of Lonely Assassins. And Lonely Assassins was of course a name for … the Weeping Angels. Could they be this year’s real Big Bad?

Time-space Debris

• The Doctor chastises Amy for the suggestion they have arrived by accident. Is that a reference to last week and the Tardis taking him “where he needs to go,” or is he up to something.

• Rory: “My Mum’s a huge fan of Dusty Springfield.”

Doctor: “Who isn’t?”

Actually, I’m not sure that I have ever met anyone who doesn’t like Dusty Springfield either.

• Eyepatch Lady is back after her week off. Are we all agreed she’s the midwife?

• Are we to assume that Jennifer is going to lead Rory down the path of temptation? He wouldn’t, would he?

• I’m not sure how I feel about The Doctor’s “northern” jibes. Was I the only one who felt a little offended?

• Matthew Graham’s only other contribution to Doctor Who is the best-forgotten Fear Her from 2006. Legend has it – although we don’t know whether it is true or not – that when Stephen Fry’s script finally proved unworkable, Russell T Davies asked Graham to come up with something in two weeks and with buttons for a budget.

Next week!

Something rather major happens. That’s all you’re getting.