It's all about the resolution. Any story must be mostly judged by the way it resolves itself, this has always been true. Firstly, because the resolution is the last thing you discover, and thus has the power to furnish you with a satisfied feeling on leaving the adventure, and secondly because it ties the rest of the piece together. A scene where a lonely ghost wanders an ancient house in Part 1 either becomes apt and appropriate if explained properly in Part 4, or an inexplicable blemish if completely abandoned as an idea.

It's become doubly important in modern day Doctor Who. The stories are much shorter, therefore there is less of a gap between setting up the plot and resolving it. With four-part stories, there used to be plenty of time to drop plot points and contrivances into earlier episodes which could then be 'worked' into a solution later. These days the busy Doctor has to work out the problem and find a way of fixing it in less time than it takes to beat an Argos mail-order telephone queuing system. Still quite an ample stretch of time I'll warrant, but short enough to make it look look dangerously like he's stumbling from problem or solution in one bound if the writer isn't careful.

It first became apparent in "Rose", perhaps because anyone would struggle to establish a complex series like Doctor Who to a new audience AND tell a rounded story in 50 minutes. Yet the alarm bells couldn't help but ring when the Doctor produced a vial of 'anti-plastic' from his jacket and promptly disposed of the conveniently plastic-based menace he was facing. The trouble with this is, the audience immediately considers future adventures and the lack of threat that could now be on offer - why am I now to be worried about the Doctor facing the Daleks when he might just as easily produce a packet of 'anti-Dalek' capsules from his coat? Pop one in twice a day and be free from all your Dalek worries. Enough concern was raised in "Rose" for us to keep a close eye on this phenomenon in coming weeks. And knock me down if seven days later didn't see the Doctor struggling through a predictably placed series of killer fans to reach a big red button that would sort everything out. I don't wish to be unfair here, I know how difficult it is to tell a story in that length of time, but one couldn't help but consider that these are supposed to be the nation's best TV writers at action here. Surely we could expect something better.

Luckily "The Unquiet Dead" showed us how it could be done, simply in not making it obvious when the last phase of the story was beginning. More, it just sort of told a story and then ended. There were admittedly concerns over how Gwyneth could somehow have been dead for ten minutes AND managed to bail our heroes out against the evil Gelth, but that's mere detail, and less of a problem than a 'catch all' solution like a magic vial or off-switch would have been. It nevertheless showed how the resolution is always going to be the most critically-scrutinised aspect of any show - even those carefree non-fans are going to feel short-changed and therefore vengeful towards watching next week if left with a hollow "is that it?" feeling.

I bring this all up now because "World War Three" was different for a number of reasons. As the resolution to the new series' first ever cliffhanger, it was also the first story with the luxury of fifty minutes worth of story to tell first, before it had to even begin to wrap things up. The cliffhanger solution was interesting, in a subtle way. I fully expected the (now traditional) mini-cliffhanger of the pre-credits sequence to mirror that of last weeks episode, with its resolution coming soon after the opening titles. Surprisingly, the pay-off instead came immediately after the recap, leaving the duration of the titles for the tension to be diffused. This was, if you think about it, a very clever idea, especially given the highly-dramatic nature of last weeks episode ending. Inevitably, because RTD had put absolutely everyone in danger, something simple had to happen to get them out of it, and this in turn would have generated a horrid moment of 'post-threat' silence for the audience to feel deflated in (watch the start of "Arc of Infinity" Part 4 and you'll know what I mean. Doctor is about to get shot, somebody shouts "No!" and there's no-where else to go but linger uncomfortably on how easily the threat has been resolved). The immediate crashing in of the titles in "World War Three" at least gave us something exciting to look at and not worry about the fact the Doctor had essentially escaped simply by "being a Time Lord", an old trick the original series rarely stooped to.

So was the resolution of the actual story helped at all by having two weeks to built up to it? In a way, yes, because the sequence with the missile could go on for longer, and thus give the audience a proper impression of the resolution being just a bit tricky, and therefore heightening the satisfaction when it pays off. Not that it was perfect - the Doctor still, in a sense, simply pulled something magic out of his hat, in this case a hidden missile that he simply launched at his latest threat and blew it up. But this time they got away with it, simply because it was told so beautifully; there was the fact that Mickey, cleverly established previously as a bit of an unmotivated underachiever in all senses, used his brain and saved the day, the Doctors revision of his opinion of him, the added dilemma of the Doctor actually having to fire a missile at himself and his companion and risk their lives to succeed and the excitement of Downing Street being blown up, a scene which should, if there is any justice, join all the other iconic ones like the shop window dummies and the unmasking of Scaroth. This was a classic Doctor Who moment!

It would, however, be nice to see more resolutions relying on plot aspects set up earlier on in the story; it's a simple trick to pull for a writer, but very effective - perhaps the missile could have been what the Slitheen were after in the first place, for example. The alternative is to have the solution pulled "out of the air" which annoys the audience if it's too obvious because it robs them of the chance to work it out for themselves earlier. It can be done - the sonic screwdriver is a 'magic' device which has so far been used plentifully but always 'naturally', and never in a way which makes you go "pah!" and think the writer is trying to worm his way out of eliminating the threat another way. We'll certainly have to keep an eye on the Doctor in future weeks to make sure the bugger isn't cheating himself - and us - out of his latest sticky situation.