Doctor Who 4.2: The Fires of Pompeii
The Last Days of Pomp-ee-eye
By Catherynne M. Valente
There seems to be a distinct hierarchy of Doctor Who episodes, ranging from the lows of Episodes Which Must be Accompanied by Side-Effect Warnings Which Include Spontaneous Organ Rupture to the highs of what for lack of a better term I shall call The Moffats. Each season has a couple of each, and peppers the rest of its allotted airtime with more subtle tiers: the Tooth and Claw sorts of episodes, which are fantastic in concept but flaccid in execution, the Gridlock shows, which exist mainly to be callbacks to either the original series or previous episodes of the new series or both, and the standalone, solid but forgettable Unquiet Dead eps. read more »
I get this strange, sinking feeling watching Partners In Crime. It’s a feeling of reversal, of a joke that works both ways…it might be nausea. It might irony. I can’t be sure. That word is still hemorrhaging meaning these days, and here I am without a triage unit. 
by Catherynne M. Valente