Starts exciting enough. The Doctor and Martha rush into the TARDIS with laser guns firing. The Doctor starts to tell Martha about 'this watch' and wakes up in an early 1900s room as Dr John Smith, with maidservant Martha Jones. Monday November 10th 1913 and Doctor John Smith is completely human.

Opening scene after the credits shows a fantastic looking school with Dr Smith as a head master walking amongst the students.

He gives his class while Martha scrubs the floor with her maid friend, Jenny. Martha receives some racist slurs from the students.

We actually enter this story about two months after the Doctor and Martha have moved in. Dr Smith is already attracting the attentions of Nurse Joans who has decided to give up on pretense and drop not so subtle hints to Smith about inviting her to the dance. He is quite surprised and in a completely human way mutters and mumbles his reaction before falling backwards down the stairs. The timing is perfect and the scene is hilarious.

Nurse Joan bandages the cut on the back of his head as Martha rushes in to Smith's office to see how he is. She is, of course, remonstrated for this appalling lack of manners but is unphased and proceeds with tidying Smith's room.

Smith starts to talk about his amazing dreams, describing how he dreams he's hiding from someone and how he is some character that travels in space and time, called the Doctor.

He shows Joan his diary while Martha looks on concerned. The diary contains drawings of aliens he's seen in his dreams (and we've seen in many episodes) and there's also a picture of Rose. He seems to be dreaming in some kind of sequence as he suggests that Rose disappears towards the end. We joined this episode when Smith first dreams about Martha.

Then the page that had my human heart leaping out of its rib cage, a page showing drawings of past Doctor's centering on McCoy and McGann. Finally, a picture of the Doctor from the classic series in the new one! Well, even though we know there were 8 pictures on the page, we only got to see 5 of them.

The next main scene focuses on the oiks at the boarding school. We find out that one of the young children, Latimer, has second sight and can predict the future.

One of the oiks, Baines, goes out to get some beer. Brilliantly realised I hate the older students already.

Martha and Jenny have a drink outside the pub. A bright light appears in the sky which is seen by Martha. Nurse Joans also sees the light. Jeremy Bains finds the invisible ship after running into it and walks through the door, wanting to investigate this strange aeroplane.

He is quickly taken over by the Family and returns to the boarding school without any beer.

Latimer realises there's something wrong with Baines but doesn't let on.

The next morning Martha takes a bike to the TARDIS and tries to get some more information about what she should do when the aliens arrive. We find out that the watch IS the Doctor. Martha has a flash back to the time before they arrived. The Doctor explains that he has to stop being a time lord and become human. He attaches a device to his head and transfers all his time lord persona to a watch as well as rewrites his DNA.

Flash back to Martha reading the instructions. Latimer calls in to collect a book from Smith and 
finds the watch. He feels the timelord power emanating from it and receives flashbacks of the Doctor's adventures.

He takes a book and the watch with him.

Outside Baines is sniffing out the Doctor and when Latimer had opened the watch The Family had detected it, confirming the location.

One of the farmers sees his scarecrow move its hand. Suddenly all the scarecrows from around the town converge on the farmer, and elsewhere on a little girl with a balloon.

The Doctor is overseeing kids firing guns, similar to the cover of the book Human Nature. Latimer sees a vision of how he will die in the war next year.

Smith takes a walk with Joan and sees a situation developing that could mean the death of a baby. He saves the baby being crushed by a piano with a deft throw of a cricket ball.

They head back to Smith's room where he draws Joan in his notebook, then kisses her. (Her husband's dead so she's got plenty of experience to offer and, if Martha hadn't run in at that point something else might have happened!)

Martha runs out again in shock and mutters "It wasn't on the list"

She rushes back to the TARDIS to try and find any information on what to do if the Doctor falls in love, but there's nothing because he didn't think of that.

Baines gives Latimer (Tim) a suspicious look. Bains joins the farmer and the little girl who've now been possessed by the Family and they all look strangely at Tim.

Joan and Smith get dressed for the dance.

Jenny gets captured by the scarecrows and the Family takes her over. She goes back to have a cup of tea with Martha and Martha works it out straight away. Jenny tries to kill her with a laser gun but she escapes and goes to find Smith.

Smith doesn't believe a word of her story and treats her like an imbecile. She's thrown out of the room and has to try and find a way to make him believe.

Smith and Joan go to the dance, Tim sneaks in, the Family search Smith's room then head to the dance, Martha grabs the sonic screwdriver and heads in to the dance.

The girl with the balloon has been listening to Martha's conversation with Smith in the dance hall and saw the sonic screwdriver being presented.

The Family stops the dance and vaporises the organiser, getting everyone's attention. The family capture Martha and Joan and point their guns at them, asking Smith to change back into the Doctor. He has no idea what they're talking about.

Someone he loves will be sacrificed and he has to make a decision, but he is not the Doctor anymore. He has no idea what to do. Da da da dum da da da dum etc.

I remember reading the book and thinking about how cool it was. This story has a lot of elements from the book but it is also completely different in a lot of ways.

One of the best things about this two parter is that it is not in any way plodding. The plot builds easily compellingly, a lot of the dialogue and emotions are interesting and convincing. Paul Cornell has written a very intelligent screen play that continues along at a reasonable pace. This is extremely difficult to do with a story set in 1913. (It's much easier when you've got a clock counting down and a sun to fall into)

This is definitely Freema's best performance to date. If she doesn't get her own series called the Martha Jones Adventures I'll be very surprised!

I love the line about Sydney and Verity being the Doctor's father and mother. Sydney Newman created Doctor Who, Verity Lambert was the first producer of Doctor Who.

The only thing that lets this down is the need for the scarecrows. At the moment they seem to be quite superfluous to the plot. Why are all the scarecrows identical? Why are there so many of them? Why did farmers create scarecrows that look like that anyway? Is the ship replicating scarecrows? I thought scarecrows looked like Worzel Gummidge!

Even so, my favourite story so far. 9 out of 10.

It's 1913 in England, and an ordinary schoolteacher called John Smith dreams of adventures in time and space and a mysterious blue box, as Russell T Davies's Doctor Who continues. But, when lights in the sky herald the arrival of something strange and terrible, Smith's maid, Martha, has to convince him that he alone can save the world.

David Tennant plays the Doctor and Freema Agyeman plays his companion, Martha Jones. Jessica Stevenson and Thomas Sangster guest star. 

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The Doctor takes Martha to an English village just before the beginning of World War 1 (1913). He has decided to forget who he is to try and get over Rose and so chooses to become human. He loses everything that makes him the Doctor and becomes a school teacher at the local school. The story opens with him already teaching in a school, living in his own house and developing a relationship with the local Nurse.

Martha keeps a watch over him and waits until she thinks he is ready to know who he is again. But aliens have discovered that the Doctor is here and they want his memories. This may be the episode that we see the Jackstraws, aliens made of shovels, hoes and other implements.

There's a scene where they are trapped in a dance hall with the Jackstraws advancing on them. 

Even though he is falling in love with someone in this time, Martha is protecting him from himself and tries to convince him that she is the one he wants. It is believed that this is the episode in which Martha kisses the Doctor.

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