It seems at times as if the New Series can't do anything right - certainly a very short time ago we'd not only have killed for a ratings-topping Saturday Night showstopper which maintained Who's most traditional values but also introduced something exciting and new, but we'd have laughed if anyone suggested it was possible. If that sounds like a "don't complain, just be glad it exists" plea, then it's not. But "Army of Ghosts" felt to me more like Doctor Who as we know it than the series has for a long time, and seeing as that's presumably what you stuck around for through all those years of Big Finish and DWM articles about Derek Ware and incidental music, then you should be very pleased indeed.

Not that the New Series hasn't "felt" like Who before; but it's obviously been a completely different, bold new version of our series. I like to think that the show returning has been a bit like if we'd all given up watching TV for fifteen years; as if the series had carried on, but we just hadn't seen it. So like someone who gave up on the show in 1966 but re-joined it in 1981, we can expect to find that times have moved on. The series will have leaped forwards in special effects, style and even direction and storytelling, but at the heart of it is still a Doctor and a trusty TARDIS that we know and love. "Army of Ghosts" reminded me of old Who in its look at feel: firstly there was the old "return to Earth to find something is wrong" device, a staple of "Survival" and "Invasion of the Dinosaurs" amongst others: the mystery surrounds what has gone wrong, and what mischief has occured since the Doctors last visit. The "military" (here Torchwood, essentially UNIT without the United Nations bothering acronym; I say we were here first, tell Brussels to re-invent themselves!) have taken charge, and we get a sequence where a strong female leader proudly shows the Doctor round; a kind of "see, we can manage without you!" performance, just like the way UNIT has moved on in "Battlefield" and the Brig shows the Doctor how prepared they now are. But humans generally are a bit rubbish, and still need the Doctor to bail them out. So just as UNIT forgot to tell their exterior signwriter they were a secret organisation and dealt with the threat of the other-dimensional Destroyer by chucking a plucky pensioner with a handgun at it, here we have a big-haired woman who leaves acres of space in her supposedly top-security building in the hands of decorators, and forgets to check if there are any Cybermen hiding in there. You also have to question the notion of Torchwood waiting all those years for the Doctor to turn up, when in fact he spent at least five of them right under their noses working for UNIT! The clue should have been in the spate of alien invasions that were being skillfully fended off every week down South.

Elsewhere there were more subtle nods to the past - the TARDIS being carried away is a great trick pulled by many stories from "Marco Polo" to "The Robots of Death" and "Mark of the Rani", and Rose hiding in it as it was taken (using it as a kind of Trojan Horse) was a "Deadly Assassin" gambit too. Perhaps it was these touches, combined with the very traditional 'episode spent entirely building up to the shock appearance of some old enemies' device that made "Army of Ghosts" feel so old-school. Even though in effect it was laced through with most elements that RTD's Who can justly claim proud ownership of. Never in the old series did a companion's Mum get taken along in the TARDIS, for example, and the 'soapy' feel that the series now has was reflected in the 'no fanfare' recall of Mickey and Jake, and the beginning, where the Doctor arrives back on Earth not with slate-clean as in the days of old, but to deliver Rose and her dirty washing back to Mum like a boyfriend turning up for Sunday dinner. That said, those that spit on Russell for apparently turning Doctor Who into Eastenders (I know at least one person for whom this is putting it mildly) might like to reflect that this is really no different to Jon Pertwee beginning each adventure in his lab, being informed of the lastest scheme of the Master by "his" family, Lethbridge Stewart, Benton and so on. The only difference is in seeing the Doctor actually RESPONSIBLE for someone, and allowing himself to be ticked off (or, in this case, snogged!) for his troubles. Our Doctor today is, of course, as different to his predecessors as ever, and I particuarly like his 'reverse psychology' trick of disarming Yvonne so greatly with his refusal to object to her plans, that she cancels the summoning of the ghosts to find out why. These things, and the pace, make our Doctor Who utterly unique. But it's always known where it came from, and for some reason this seemed even more evident than ever this week.

The good thing about two-parters is, of course, that you don't have to set up a story and rush into a resolution in the space of 45 minutes, making it very easy to see where the plot is headed. The downside is that the story tends to take a new structure - one episode getting somewhere, another resolving it all in a big hail of special effects. This may be the cost of "Army of Ghosts" massive shock ending. We have a threat, but aside from being supremely entertaining, there wasn't much more to the story than that. Nobody did anything, or escaped from anywhere, or got themselves into an even greater fix. The situation at the end of the episode was exactly as it was at the start (bar the final throwing of the lever), we just spent the time bringing the Doctor up to speed. This in itself is reminiscent of stories like "State of Decay", where the Doctor just happens to turn up as the villain's plans are nearing fruition. This all also means next weeks will probably tread quite a predictable path - people will die, the Mill will work their arses off and things will be resolved in a clever way. Perhaps. They may surprise me, but we'll see. And for the record, my money's on Rose deciding to stay with a reunited Jackie and Pete.

Of course, none of this matters as it's all such good fun - and intensly well made. Everyone has their favourites and I've a feeling that "Army of Ghosts" will wind up being one of mine as this series draws to a close. Probably because it had that same "original" something that "Survival" had back in the day - so inherantly Doctor Who because it used so many of the series best tricks and flavours, yet at the same time completely fresh and exciting.