In 2007, Seb and I hosted a gathering round at our flat to watch Utopia. We all knew that some shit was going to go down, but we weren’t entirely sure of the details, so when Derek Jacobi awoke as The Master we all went a little bit nuts. It’s probably the most exciting thing I’ve seen on TV in my adult life and a large part of that was down to the fact we’d made it an event by all gathering together to watch it. However, in the cold light of day, and even three years after the original transmission my opinion of the episode remains the same. All this is basically a roundabout way of saying that I’m fairly sure my opinion of something isn’t swayed by external influences. If it’s brilliant, then it’s brilliant, no matter what surroundings it’s witnessed in. Despite the fact that The Eleventh Hour was once again an event and opinions of it could easily be swayed for that reason, it’s still brilliant and it always will be.  Long, long after Moffat is succeeded by Chris Chibnal or some such prick.

This is just absolutely bloody wonderful and phenomenal.

Doctor Who and video games have never got on all that well. The canon basically consists of Dalek Attack (a lovely little PC/Amiga/Speccy/C64 platformer that unfortunately had very little to do with the style or aesthetic of Who itself) and Destiny of the Doctors (an “interactive” CD-ROM adventure that was a nice idea but hampered by frankly woeful execution). Last time it was announced that there was to be a new series tie-in game, we briefly built up hope that we’d finally get the time-travelling point-and-click adventure game that the show so badly deserves, but it ended up being some cheap reprehensible Top Trumps bollocks for the PS2. Indeed, the best that Who has managed in the gaming field have been those free BBC flash games that showed up on the official site during the Eccleston series – of which the best by a considerable margin was that terrifically fun Last Dalek thinger, which saw you playing as a single Dalek wandering around exterminating Van Staten’s minions.

Finally, though, Doctor Who is getting a “proper” computer game. Okay, so it’s not a full-on, commercially-released enterprise, but it’s nevertheless exciting for a number of highly significant reasons:

1. It’s written by Steven Moffat and Phil Ford
2. It ties directly into the series (with the first three of four episodes being released while Series Fnarg is broadcasting)
3. It’s being developed by the people what did Broken Sword
4. It’s FREE.
5. It’s got Amy’s legs in it.

CAN’T. WAIT. Check out the new issue of PC Gamer for more info and screenshots.