N.B. there might (or might not) be spoilers in this article!

“Rubbish!” my daughter exclaimed after the cold open, pre-credits, ‘Hello, Dad!’ sting.

“You talk all the time, but you don’t say anything.”

Donna, The Doctor’s Daughter

Her initial reaction is pretty on the money. I didn’t recall The Doctor’s Daughter as being anything other than the weakest episode in Series Four and time has not changed that view. The only scene I remembered liking was the Dad-shock conversation, where the Doctor tells Donna what we already know, but what he so rarely discusses — that he’s been a father and had (and lost) a family before.

In fairness, The Doctor’s Daughter is better than just one short scene, but the best bits are almost all Donna — the figuring out what the numbers mean, the comment that a life spent travelling with the Doctor involves ‘an outrageous amount of running’, the threatened use of her ‘womanly wiles’ …

“Let’s save your wiles for later. In case of emergency.”

The Doctor, The Doctor’s Daughter

And Georgia Moffett as Jenny is very good in this too, despite the naff way in which a daughter is created for the Doctor — and the despite the whole is she dead, yes she is, no she isn’t, will we see her again, no we won’t nature of the episode’s conclusion — and even though Jenny does somewhat bizarrely emerge from the progenation machine with killer lashes, wearing tight trousers and an even tighter T-shirt.

The problem is everything in The Doctor’s Daughter — like the Doctor’s relationship with said daughter — all happens a bit too quickly, leaving us with an angry Doctor thinking Jenny is dead and lecturing everybody about how they should run their society based on his example.