It's Doctor Who with a werewolf as the primary villain! It's going to be awesome! Or maybe not. It's actually going to be a forgettable 45 minutes with too much going on so that it fails to do justice by any of its plot strands and falls under its own weight.
You get a cult of monks that want to unleash a werewolf to kill Queen Victoria. You have the owner of a manor house under threat from them with his wife captured. You have a story in the past being told about Prince Albert and the landowner's father preparing for events they could not have possibly known would ever occur. None of these stories really has the time needed to develop properly, especially as they all take place against the backdrop of a monster chasing people through corridors. You get the feeling watching this that it should have maybe slowed down a bit and done things as a two-parter. It would be a classic then, as it is in reality it is a forgettable disposable filler episode good for nothing more than just making up the numbers.
The 10th is still a good Doctor at this point, probably Rose hasn't yet fully developed into the bi}c4 she'd turn into later, as such David Tennant and Billie Piper are great in this. Pauline Collins is good as the Queen. Heck, everyone is good in this episode, a rarity for any TV show! Shame that the script (RTD has begun his decent into bad writing now) doesn't reach its potential, RTD doesn't hit the right mark with it, biting off more than he can chew with too many plot elements going on that don't stand up to scrutiny or repeat viewings. Wasted opportunity for awesomeness that just fails. Shame. 3/10
You get a cult of monks that want to unleash a werewolf to kill Queen Victoria. You have the owner of a manor house under threat from them with his wife captured. You have a story in the past being told about Prince Albert and the landowner's father preparing for events they could not have possibly known would ever occur. None of these stories really has the time needed to develop properly, especially as they all take place against the backdrop of a monster chasing people through corridors. You get the feeling watching this that it should have maybe slowed down a bit and done things as a two-parter. It would be a classic then, as it is in reality it is a forgettable disposable filler episode good for nothing more than just making up the numbers.
The 10th is still a good Doctor at this point, probably Rose hasn't yet fully developed into the bi}c4 she'd turn into later, as such David Tennant and Billie Piper are great in this. Pauline Collins is good as the Queen. Heck, everyone is good in this episode, a rarity for any TV show! Shame that the script (RTD has begun his decent into bad writing now) doesn't reach its potential, RTD doesn't hit the right mark with it, biting off more than he can chew with too many plot elements going on that don't stand up to scrutiny or repeat viewings. Wasted opportunity for awesomeness that just fails. Shame. 3/10