an icepick through the keyhole

I don't know. Annoying and shrill written well is likely to be more annoying and shrill than annoying and shrill written badly. Or maybe just differently annoying and shrill.

It's not so much the character herself, though that is bad enough...it's not so much that the "brand new" companion is someone we've all seen before, and of whom some of us have already had more than enough...it's the desperate poverty of RTD's imagination when it comes to companions. Will he ever pick someone...oh, I don't know? Male? Older? Middle class? Or even, gods help us, from somewhere other than the south-east of England? Lots of planets have a north, except apparently Earth.