Writing for IGN, Ahsan Haque praised Tennant and Myles' acting, the episode's pacing and the "extremely touching" story. He wrote that "with a little more attention to temporal details, this episode would have been considered as one of the series' greatest moments". In particular, Haque wrote that the episode would have worked better had the writers explained more precisely why the Doctor could not use the TARDIS to visit Madame de Pompadour before she died. "Metro" said the clockwork androids were one of the "most memorable villains" while "The Guardian"s Daniel Martin said, "The Girl in the Fireplace" is "one of the most acclaimed episodes from the Davies era".