The Girl Who Waited was a bit like that Gwyneth Paltrow film Sliding Doors. But with a Master’s Degree from Cambridge.

The Tardis lands on Appla…Appollosa…. er, Appletize…App — oh, stuff it, somewhere really exciting, with Amy and Rory promised “sunsets, spires and soaring silver colonades”, but ending up separated in two different time streams, with Amy stuck on her own.

With the Doctor’s help Rory got to her, eventually, but my God was she in a bad mood. Mind you, you’d be less than chipper had you been left to fend for yourself for 36 years surrounded by Handbots hell bent on neutralising you.

In a trend seemingly begun by last week’s Night Terrors, this week’s Doctor Who cut a higher quality crop of the mustard. It’s like they’ve been saving the best for the end of the series.

The Girl Who Waited had a brain-melting premise, but it wasn’t deliberately difficult to follow like some of the episodes we’ve had. Those episodes have usually turned into a case of the Emperor’s New Clothes, and we have, in a manner of speaking, ended up looking at the Doctor’s nudey bottom, but this took things up a gear.

Other commentators have called this episode The One Where They Saved a Bit On The Budget (and you could tell it was done on the cheap with all those white sets), but if that’s the case it just goes to show what you get when you concentrate on character and story. I really cannot find any faults in it.

(Oh, all right then, here’s a couple of, if not faults exactly, niggles: How come Amy can build a sonic screwdriver? Where was she getting her clothes from? And who was dyeing her hair? The character was pushing 60 yet she had the flaming red hair of a 23-year-old? Mind you, Lulu was on Strictly beforehand; she’s in her sixties and she looks absurdly good on it. Perhaps it’s a Scottish thing?)

The pay off, with Rory facing an impossible choice, was genuinely heartbreaking. “You’re turning me into you,” he told the Doctor in his anguish,  and the scene of  him touching hands with ‘old Amy’ through the Tardis glass was about as moving as you can get in a kids’ show on prime time TV.

But that’s true love for you. Whatever happens to these two when they eventually leave the Tardis, you know they’ll always be together – and seeing an army of therapists for the rest of their lives.

On to next week’s The God Complex then. From the trailer it looks like it’s going to be an absolute stonker.

By Andrew Owen