Gridlock.

TV When I suggested, like many people, that these would be the words that the Face of Boe would offer the Doctor during this blog's pre-series quiz I didn't actually think he would use those exact words. And on a day when, for various reasons I stood about twenty feet from the finishing post in Aintree at the Grand National having watched both of the horses I'd bet on fall at earlier fences, it's good to know that in general, my instincts aren't completely off kilter.

I hope Russell won some money on the gee-gees today because he deserved to after delivering a fantastic episode that not only made a virtue of the few good things in the infamous New Earth disaster but also demonstrated a new energy in the making of the programme. This was a ballsy, passionate, probably quite personal bit of storytelling and exactly why it seems to be splitting fandom in half once again, I'm not sure.

The endless sky version of the M25 is a great idea, especially in three dimensions - sure it's a staple of such dystopian films as The Fifth Element and Blade Runner, but there they were incidental pleasures. Here, nearly a whole civilization existed in the motor lanes with a Convoy-style sense of community. The affair had a slight old school feel taking place in redresses of the same set over and over which is the kind of trick which is relatively cheap but still manages to have a sense of scale - like the umpteen re-uses of The Ark In Space.

It's the community element that made this work, and that includes the singing which ranks as one of the most sad moments in recent years. It's not often in the new series that all of the running and shouting stops for this kind of moment of contemplation; the Old Rugged Cross was written by band-leader and evangelist George Bennard in old New York when his message wasn't being communicated and it's fourth line 'For a world of lost sinners was slain' tied in beautifully with the fate of the remaining city dwellers. I wonder how George would feel knowing that his message could still be resonating Five Billion years later.

When I was in my mid-teens our school choir joined a range of other schools at Liverpool's Anglican Cathedral to create a chorus of a thousand voices and this was one of the hymns we sang and even though, as I've mentioned before, my religious beliefs are undecided, hearing all of those voices intone those words was really powerful and that's exactly what was replicated on screen tonight. Seeing Martha's reaction here, so wonderfully played by the increasingly indispensable Freema took me right back because that was my reaction too.

But the joy for me is that like all of the very best Doctor Who stories, there were what seemed like hundreds of details to enjoy, incidentals bobbing in and out of one another, mostly in the various cars that the Doctor dropped through looking for Martha. Nudists? That guy from 2000 AD! Actually that was another strength of the episode - by using our comics as a touchstone it felt wonderfully British despite the ambition. I can't imagine anywhere else that interspecies relations would lead to actual kittens (poor woman). Wasn't Ardal O'Hanlon wonderful? Just enough to make me want to forgive him for appearing in forty-three episodes of My Hero. Just. Great prosthetics too...

See also, The Macra! Of all the monsters to revive! Obviously it's Russell having a laugh and you can imagine him chortling to himself at the keyboard as he refreshes one of the great unknowns. Beautifully rendered by The Mill, you could hardly pinion a whole story around them any more, but they made a change from the usual in the big chase sequences and it's a return to the series being conscious of its past 'glories'. Even three episodes in there seems to be an awareness developing that was missing from the second series was a regular glancing against the show's mythology - actual mythology not some alternate reality redux of the past. Mondas, not Lumic Cybermen, please.

That's why the return of Novice Hame and The Face of Boe worked so well - they're part of the apparent nu-mythology but you wanted to discover what they had to say. The re-direct as to Hame's motives was lovely and the death of Boe was really quite tragic because unlike the equally unlikely Cassandra there was a dignity to the character and a connection with the Doctor that didn't include getting into his pants.

This was a good episode for the casting team although it was a shame to see Lenora Crichlow (who was my original suggestion for Billie's replacement) in such a small role but she played it as wonderfully as you'd expect. There wasn't a weak link in here but of course Tennant towers. He owns the role now and the range that we're seeing here makes me totally understand people criticisms of the interpretation in the second series, the general squeeness of it all.

I think those final moments in the street as Doctor and new companion talk frankly for the first time saw him at his most poignant. Even though he was essentially recapping what we already know from the opening two series about why he's the last of his kind, you can see the loss in his eyes and I'm sure there was a deliberate through line from here, back to the moment in The End of the World when Jabe comforted the Ninth version of him and we saw Eccleston cry for the first time. Cleverly, by mentioning the Daleks, when they reappear next week, Martha is going to be all the more frightened because she knows she's facing the beasties that did away with the civilization of her new best friend.

My theories then on Boe's words: extrapolating them with Tennant's hints in the Confidential that followed are that of course he's talking about the Master, who isn't a timelord anymore, but continuing his life in other hosts - so Boe is right but so is the Doctor - there are no more timelords. Now, if whenever old beardy face shows himself the Doctor says something like - 'But I killed you - I threw you into the eye of harmony - at the heart of the Tardis - in San Francisco - during my Eighth life...' Then I'll really have the reaction Russell was probably expecting some fans to have tonight over the Macra. One of these days, I'll tell you my theory about why it was the Seventh Doctor that was involved with the Time War...