X2 - The Plague

Once you get over the impressive visuals of this episode, and, indeed the serial as a whole, the general mediocrity of the story starts to take centre stage. There's a couple dodgy performances - Zentos and the Controller, namely - that serve to drag the first two episodes down. Plus, it's also a bizarrely paced story in that the first two episodes are separated by the last two by 700 years.

I'll get to the 700 year gap later, but this aspect of the story forces the drama of the first two episodes to be crammed into the first 20 minutes of Episode 2. No real drama occurs in Episode 1 - it's all exploration and exposition, with only the cliffhanger serving to set up what was to come in Episode 2. That drama involved people getting sick, Steven standing trial, The Doctor curing the plague in about four and a half minutes flat, and everybody living happily ever after. Yay.

But there's actual intrigue at episode's end, when The Doctor and company return to the ark 700 years later to see that the giant statue that the humans were building now has the head of a Monoid. Hmm......