ANIMAL MAGIC FOR THE DOCTOR

WITH cat nuns in the first episode and a werewolf in the second, this series of Doctor Who will soon be going to the dogs!

And, sure enough, this Saturday the Doctor's old 'pet' K9 is due to make a comeback. Let's hope it is man's best friend in helping David Tennant with his struggle to mould the character of the Doctor in his own image.

I'm not yet convinced that he has grasped the essence of the Time Lord's psyche with its contradictions. Tennant's predecessor, Christopher Eccleston, managed to convince because, even when he was in 'goofy' mode, there was a core of steely intelligence that hinted at a higher being. He also depicted the loneliness of the sole survivor of a civilisation with great skill.

So far, Tennant's Doctor has been much too lightweight, with a repertoire of clownish expressions and a laddish demeanour ill suited to the role of a being with enough years of existence on the clock to have learned how to grow up.

He wasn't helped in Saturday's episode by Billie Piper's Rose spending the whole time trying to make Queen Victoria (Pauline Collins) say that she was not amused. I certainly wasn't by that tiresome joke and actually cheered when the monarch banished the meddlesome pair at the end of the adventure.

It isn't as if Tennant can't do serious - and even magnificently menacing. I saw him in one of those ITV dramas (Secret Smile) as a psycho boyfriend, and he conjured up one devilish look that scared the life out of me!

Unfortunately, the CGI werewolf that rampaged through the Scottish manor house on Saturday did not have the same effect. It looked more like something from Ice Age 2 (an overgrown fox?) than a flesh and blood carnivore that you felt could actually do some damage.

The storyline involved a group of monks gone bad (displaying the sort of moves last seen in The Matrix) who were targeting Queen Victoria during a stopover in her journey to Balmoral for a holiday (some things never change!).

The monks were trying to bring about the 'Empire of the Wolf' by infecting the royal blood. They were doing this on behalf of an alien, whose weapon was to turn into a werewolf.

Meanwhile the Scottish folk at the manor could only come up with the cunning plan of making mistletoe soup to throw over it. I would have thought a copy of Cliff Richard's Mistletoe and Wine played at full blast would have been a better bet!

Despite all efforts to protect her, the inference at the end of the episode was that Queen Victoria had fallen victim to the werewolf. The Doctor revealed, with some degree of certainty, that she really did develop a blood disorder that was not inherited.

This prompted Rose to remark that members of the Royal family must, therefore, now be werewolves - which can't be right because they have actually knighted Cliff. Unless, of course, they confused the 'wine' with 'whine' and thought the ageless one was being sympathetic to their allergy. I think we should be told!