MSN Entertainment is reporting that David Tennant's final episode as the Tardis-travelin' Time Lord will see a return not only of companions Billie Piper, Freema Agyeman and Catherine Tate but also John Simm's The Master, while Den of Geek are chiming in with the rumor that Jessica Hynes - who played the Doctor's love interest in season three's "Human Nature" two-parter - will also be making a reappearance in the final two-part story that closes both Tennant's and showrunner Russell T. Davies' tenure on the show.

Is it wrong of me to feel kind of depressed by this news? I love a huge guest-star-filled extravaganza as much as the next fanboy - but the sad fact is, we've already had one of those with season four's "This Stolen Earth"/"Journey's End" two-parter, which confused bringing back as many characters as possible with having an actual story... a trick that you can only really get away with once. Especially when that story ends with pretty definitive ends for both Rose Tyler and Donna Noble, making me wonder just how they're going to return for these new episodes without undoing those stories (And in Rose's case, undoing it again; how is anyone supposed to care about what happens to her now, if she's managed to come back from final farewells twice?).

But there's something about these returns that crystalizes one of the problems with the Davies Era; a tendency to repeat itself. We didn't need a Dalek storyline every season, especially considering the quality of some of those storylines, and the number of times they were "permanently" defeated, only to return the next year, just as the series never failed to return to characters and situations from years gone by (Whether the original series' Sontarans, the Master or the Cybermen or more recent creations like the Ood, the Face of Boe or even the farting Slitheen) whenever some audience success seems to be available from doing so. For all that Davies managed to give the show (and he gave a lot, not least of all giving the show a new life that no-one else had managed for years), there was always some strange feeling of comfortable nostalgia about the whole thing almost always.

Perhaps that's as it should be; Doctor Who is, after all, a family-orientated show aimed as much at children as adults, so perhaps being comforting and familiar comes with that territory. Surely, if nothing else, then seeing Donna and Martha and Rose again will bring cheers and gasps of disbelief from the kids, and that's what the show should really be aiming at. It's just that... At its best, Doctor Who is about wonder and discovery and adventure, and none of those things can be found by constantly going back to what you know, especially when you've already done just that very thing. Here's hoping that Steven Moffat brings the new in more than just new lead actors and set when he takes over, and the show stops going in reverse all the time.

The comparison between this weekend's season premieres of Battlestar Galactica and Doctor Who does the latter no favors, unfortunately. BSG was all fresh, dark and conspiracy-minded, with lots of throat-cutting and screaming action. Who was at its absolute campiest, schlocky and backward-looking. It honestly felt kind of old-school compared with BSG.

As with the old Lois and Clark Superman series, the new Doctor Who tries to invert the traditional Doctor-companion relationship, putting the companion in the starring role. And as with Lois and Clark, the device feels a bit hollow, because the Doctor is still the one we're invested in, the person who saves the day.

The shocking twist this time around is that the companion, Donna, isn't in love with the Doctor. She pursues him and desperately needs him to fill an emptiness in her life — but it's a need for adventure, not love. It's not as much of a difference as I'd hoped, because her life is still totally worthless without the Doctor, as we're shown at great length. The only reason she's even investigating the evildoings of Adipose is because she hopes the Doctor will show up there too.

Whether you think this new spin on the Doctor-companion dynamic is enough to sustain a whole season may depend largely on how much you like the clip above, where the Doctor and Donna have a mimed reunion while they're both spying on the same barely-a-supervillain. My sympathies are entirely with Miss Foster, who wants to know if her evil scheme is interrupting their long ASL processing conversation. But to be fair, the plot of "Partners In Crime" is so thin, there's not that much for the Doctor and Donna to interrupt.

Speaking of being fair, I made a resolution last year, after I watched the end of season three — the bit where the Doctor suddenly returns to youth after being aged 900 years — and levitates — because everyone on Earth believes in him. That moment was simultaneously so amazing, and yet so awful, that it totally destroyed my critical faculties. I decided that you can't really judge Russell T.'s work based on any normal standards of good or bad. You just have to take it on its own terms.

But even if you judge "Partners In Crime" on its own terms, as a "jolly romp," it's just barely okay. It doesn't quite ever muster enough verve to be a real romp. And the jollity is a bit forced. A lot of the clever bits feel a bit rehashed, as if Russell T. is running through his greatest hits. Especially the relationship between Donna and her mom, who feels entirely like a stock character made up of pieces of Jackie and Martha's mother. And the main plot, with the fat people who make farting noises and then have babies burst out of them, is literally a rehash of the Slitheen. Except that this time it's not evil aliens pretending to be fat people, it's innocent fat people who give birth to evil aliens. And the alien babies are actually babies this time, instead of just looking baby-like.

I take comfort in the fact that the previous two season openers were also paper-thin: the one in the hospital with the cat-nuns, where the hospital gets sealed off and there's an evil secret. And the one in the hospital with the Judoon, where the hospital gets sealed off and there's an evil secret. Russell T. has a record of tossing out his fluffiest episode first, and then getting into the heavier stuff later. And indeed, everyone who's seen next week's Pompeii episode says it's miles better than the army-of-babies one, with Donna actually showing more emotional range.

Meanwhile, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that the episode sets up some mysteries for the season's overall arc. The main one, of course, is the Rose-ghost whom Donna tells about the car keys in the rubbish bin. (Which, if I was Donna's mom, would be grounds for disowning her, by the way.) Then there's also the question of where Miss Foster got her own version of the Doctor's sonic screwdriver, but there's a good chance we'll never find out. And then it's possible there's some significance to the fact that Donna and her grandfather Wilf both met the Doctor separately, a year apart. But it's probably just a coincidence. (And why wasn't Wilf at the wedding anyway?)

But, yes, it was a jolly romp, and it was nice to see David Tennant jutting his chin and shouting, "Oh, yes!" again. And a still-impressive 8.4 million Brits tuned in. So even if you hope (like me) that we're reaching the tail end of the RTD era of Who, the phenomenon still seems to be going strong. And I'm pretty sure there are better episodes ahead. What did you think?