It’s worth restating here just how significant TiA/TDotM have been.  In two episodes, Stephen Moffat gave the show the biggest kick up the arse it’s had since 2005.  It’s arguably even bigger.  What I was left with was a very different view of what I want Doctor Who to be, and I was thinking radically.  Fuck individual episodes.  If it doesn’t directly contribute to the overall arc then throw it away.  In fact, sod it, get Moffat to write every single episode and reduce the size of the series if need be.  I’m tired of sags, dips and ‘ok’ episodes, I want every single episode to be better than the one that it follows.

Of course, I realised most of that is bobbins of the highest order.  Yes, Moffat has changed the nature of the overall series arc, and made it far more prominent, important and high stakes at the same time, but this is still Doctor Who.  We still need isolated episodes.  Jumping into the unknown and arriving in a rich and interesting setting.  What TCofBS does is break up the flow well, and gets us back to the core values of Doctor Who.  The Doctor turns up, wrestles for authority with someone, wins them round and leaves them as a better person (and every now and then with a new spaceship to fly around, for some reason), a companion is in mortal danger and in the end everything is tied into a neatish bow and we’re ready for next week.

However, this episode’s problem was that, in the main, so it was so fucking boring. No remarkable performances for the guest cast and a bizarre Lily Cole guest star role that brings into sharp focus the fact that she possesses the face of an alien.  What was interesting though was the revelation that old Nurse Alien Face’s stranded ship existed in a different dimension to the real world, accessed through reflective surfaces (and just how many plot holes did that little revelation bring up?).  A nice development on its own, but when you consider the overall arc, it starts to look this episode has a prupose to serve after all.  Amy’s on-off pregnancy and and various other dimensional fuckery from the premiere are clearly leading towards a similar explanation (but, I assume, with a much greater scale), and TCofBS does a nice job of easing in this idea to the audience, while at the same time probably provding the story’s nicest plot development.  In the end, Moffat’s arc has blessed this mediocre episode with a mutually beneficial dusting of sparkle, even thought it ended up not being quite enough.

I no longer think that Doctor Who should be streamlined, with episodes like this thrown to the side.  They’re clearly important, but they can also be done much, much better than this.  Last year, Amy’s Choice – one of the only episodes not to directly tie into the overall arc – was one of the best episodes the show has ever had.  It was written by a sit-com writer who’d failed to make any significiant splashes on TV since the 90s.  I think the difference is down to proper use of the characters.  In AC every single one of our main trio is examined, tested and, in the end, validated.  In TCofBS they’re just there, jumping about a bit.  Amy’s slightly out of control, Rory almost fucking dies AGAIN and The Doctor is about as bog standard as a character played by one of the greatest actors to inhabit the role can be.  It’s good, but it isn’t remarkable, and it’s certainly not doing nearly as many interesting things as it could.  Simon Nye and (to a certain extent) Richard Curtis made relatively standalone episodes seem effortlessly interesting and individual. Even The Fucking Lodger did a better job of justifying its place in the series by confidently and skillfully doing its own thing.

At the end of the day, The Curse of the Black Spot needed something so much more than “OMG, PIRATES” to lift above its status as a boilerplate episode and convenient seed for a story element that will be more important to the proper episodes that will follow.

I have a feeling that Neil Gaiman is about to school Stephen Thompson on this matter quite comprehensibly.

It’s been confirmed that the BAFTA-winning Sir Michael Gambon and Welsh star Katherine Jenkins are playing major roles in the 2010 Doctor Who Christmas Special.

Gambon! And, er… Jenkins!  I’m going to lay my cards down on the table now and say that Gambon will be the ‘pilot’ of the The Orient Express (in Space!) and that Jenkins will be the on-board cabaret who will doubtlessly become a one episode companion.  And not be very good.  But probably not as bad as Kylie.  Maybe.   However, Gambon, here playing the role of  Geoffrey Palmer, will almost certainly be excellent and it’s certainly one of those classic new Who castings that you just know will be spot on.

It’s worth pointing out that The Orient Express (in Space!) isn’t the definite plot just yet, but I’d say it’s a fair bet.  Personally I’d prefer an actual proper historical for a Christmas Special (The Next Doctor is by far the best of RTD’s era) but, let’s face it, this ain’t going to be a Voyage of the Damned II despite the current, superficial similarities.

As carefully as it’s obviously been laid over the season, the ongoing story of the crack in time has had a few wobbles. In Moffat episodes it’s mainly featured heavily as he builds up the mystery in an excellent fashion, but at time it’s felt tacked on to other episodes (I’m thinking mainly of Chibnal’s two parter and The Lodger) but the way the opening five minutes of TPO managed to weave together a number of characters from episodes throughout the series was beautifully and simply done, somehow managing to give people like Van Gogh, Churchil and Liz X such satisfying but ultimately short cameos without it feeling forced or tacked on is a great achievement. It gives extra meaning to their episodes that doesn’t demean them as stand-alones and serves to give the episode a big and important feel right from the off.

The pre-credits also brought River Song back in excellent fashion, even if it was almost a beat for beat recreation of her Time of Angels introduction. Right from the moment you see the guard pointing a gun at a lipstick drawing you know you’re watching a Moffat episode and you know everything is going to be fucking brilliant. The whole episode was the best example yet of TGM’s uncanny ability to get the balance of drama and humour absolutely cock on, with one never overshadowing the other and simultaneously mainlining the pure essence of all Doctor Who right into your astonished eyeballs and ears.  Speaking of River, it’s been one of the great successes of this series that she’s been woven into the story with such skill and transformed the character from a (fairly) cheap trick in series 4 in to a proper, interesting and funny character.  In very tight trousers.

Matt Smith spoke a lot in interviews leading up the Eleventh Hour of how proud he is of what the show and his performance developed into towards the end.  At the time it smacked of him trying to lower expectation for his early episodes, which is clearly ludicrous in hindsight, but he was certainly right that he would get better and better.  Even though the finale episodes were the in the second to last block, his performance gives an overwhelming feeling of progression that is appropriate for a newly regenerated Doctor anyway but is given weight by the fact we’re probably seeing the best Doctor that ever Doctored finding his stride helped not inconsiderably by some amazing speeches from the pen of TEH MOFF.  I feel completely confident that the role is in the safest hands possible, mainly because you get a real feeling that Smith is not afraid to develop and change and he’s certainly got much better (and considerably less smug) foundations to build on than Tennant did after his first series.

When it comes to plotting, Moffat is rightly held up as a master in his field, but for some the memory of the quite considerably iffy conclusion to 2007′s Jekyll was weighing a little heavy considering it’s probably the only reference point we had for Moffat doing Big Drama.  Thankfully, those concerns were unfounded away for the most part.  Right from the brilliant cold opening through to the revelation of the whole set-up of the episode being linked to Amy’s mind was very satisfying, but if I was to pick problems I’d probably start with the arrival of Every Enemy Ever Whose Costume Isn’t On Display In Blackpool…

The revelation that the Pandorica has been built to contain The Doctor to stop him ending the Universe is a good one, but the fact that this has been masterminded by every enemy The Doctor has ever had smacks of an unthinking BIG moment that has not been properly earned or thought through.  When we’ve had a whole series focusing mainly on the impending threat of the cracks and the cause of those cracks, seeing a completely unforeshadowed bunch of bastards turn up to do nothing of great use to anyone (dur, you forgot about the TARDIS you stupid alien fucks) seems like a cheap trick to get a great big squee out of the audience.  I mean, why are The Silurians there when they left The Doctor on fairly decent terms?  Why the merry fuck are Weevils there?!  And, also, I know it’s all about allying to defeat a greater threat, but any race trusting The Daleks deserve to be hastily removed from the plot at the start of the next episode, frankly.

But… well, I’m finding it very hard to be all that fussed about that mis-step because with it it brought the properly AMAZING Auton reveal and an encounter with a damaged Cyberman that single handedly rescued them from the painful mediocrity of the last few years and, with the power of the sort of hindsight you only get when you’re epicly late with a review, I see now why this episode needed a Big Monster Moment due to the distinct lack of them in the concluding episode.

The biggest triumph of The Pandorica Opens is the fact that it managed to be so massive and even reminiscent of previous RTD finale set ups, but it still managed to engage and delight me for every second.  In hindsight I have the odd issue, but that cynicism never encroached on the watching experience which, at the end of the day, is all that really matters.

For reasons best kept to himself, Roberts has always written episodes with quite a bit humour in them, but has always ended up falling flat on his stupid, fat, right wing face.  In The Lodger, though, he’s managed to write The Doctor’s ‘fish out of water’ schtick incredibly well and coupled with Matt Smith’s excellent feel of physical and verbal comedy it ends up being the strongest aspect of the episode.  The fact that Roberts has written The Doctor as someone with little to no comprehension of being a ‘normal’ human does slightly go against previous moments in the series (so, The Doctor knows what Twitter is, but not football?) but it also helps the eleventh Doctor further distance himself from the know-it-all Tenth who was written and betrayed to be less an alien and more a slightly eccentric physics teacher.  This ‘alienness’ and the distancing of himself from previous Doctors is something Matt’s been developing all series and here, in the last episode recorded, you can really see the final phase of Smith clicking 100% into the role.  Next year, he’s going to permanently seal himself as one of the best Doctors ever.

Furthermore, and it really pains me to say this, but Corden was very good.  It’s easy to forget now in the sea of shit comedies, shitter panel show appearances and the slagging off of SIR PATRICK STEWART, but he’s an established and very competent actor. Here, he does very well as someone for The Doctor to bounce off and he gives quite a subtle and likable performance, especially when you consider the suffocating (and sometimes painful) dominance of a character like Donna, an actor with whom I have a similar dislike for similar reasons.  Craig and Sophie’s relationship is also played very well, even if it started to get quite heavy handed with The Doctor shadowing of Craig during the football game and the further jealousy that follows.  It seemed needless to throw a spanner in the works of a relationship we were supposed to believe in.

So, this is an episode with some strong performances and some great characterisation and dialouge.  A shame, then, that the story and its execution is a load of shit.  If the ship is luring people in to activate its console, but is instead overloading their brains and burning them up, it then feels jarring that The Doctor would sit around downstairs and wait it out, all while more people are dying and he doesn’t even notice.  The ending, too, feels like an incredibly hasty throwback to the RTD years with a hasty and garbled explanation from The Doctor, the companion of the week saving the day and ‘LOVE HAS SAVED THE DAY, DO YOU SEE?’ theme all present and correct.  Oh, and as far as devices to confine one of your cast to a standing set for budget and time reasons, ‘it’s stopping TARDIS from materialising, or something’ is pretty transparent and clumsy.

At the end of day, Robert’s writing still feels like a classless version of RTD’s, only now his heavy hand is trying to emulate Moffat as well and the result is a curious mix.  This is far from a terrible episode and, unlike last week’s, it’s Doctor Who through and through, but it was too throwaway for the episode 11 slot and felt too slapdash in its conclusion.  It was more Fear Her than Utopia (that’s an extreme example and I am in no way comaring this to Fear Her, but you get the idea) and I would’ve liked to see a stronger link into next week’s episode.  It’s possible this mystery craft will show up next week, but the callback will feel unearned as we simply weren’t given enough context or a satisfying conclusion this week.  Instead we have a tantalising but bolted on tie in to The Big Arc, much in the same way as we did with Cold Blood.  Moffat may have handled his arc perfectly in his own episodes, but the threads have felt neglected in the other episodes, which has damaged the overall impact of a clearly well thought through arc.

In terms of production it was an interesting episode.  It was part of a block that was rescheduled to be the last to shoot (along with Amy’s Choice) and features not a single scrap of Mill CG.  Anything CG you see is done in-house and it’s one of the current Hot Topics in the ongoing hear’say-fest that is Gallifrey Base.  Rumours of this block being particularly ‘fraught’ for budgetary and schedule reasons could well be the start of what might be a turbulent time for the production if the recent rumours of people leaving left right and centre.  We’ll wait until we get some confirmation before we comment on it in any depth, but if this series has been chaos behind the scenes, then it’s certainly affected what we’ve got on screen and I’m almost certain this finale is the going to be the best we’ve seen. Not long to go, now…

If you ever find yourself talking to a Doctor Who writer for an extended period of time, you’ll probably end up hearing something about the best thing about writing for the show is that it’s “based on ideas” which allows them to go places and do things that other shows don’t allow.  All too often, though, the ideas can get lost under (or even entirely consist of) the monster that has been dreamt up and lovingly (quickly) rendered by The Mill that week.  At worst, New Who can often feel like a thoughtless procession from one monster to the next with actually very few ideas driving this supposedly ideas based show and this is a problem normally associated with these mid-series episodes.

The central concept of the Dream Lord (even before The Big Reveal at the end) is a superb frame to hang a weird and limitless story on.  That’s what Doctor Who is when it’s running at its absolute best; it can take an idea a perfect and simple as “a baddy can control dreams so you have no idea what is reality” and in the hands of a writer as supremely skillful as Simon Nye from that you can tie up an ongoing love story, absolutely destroy and expose your central characters, all the while giving yourself the freedom to create exciting, weird and funny set pieces and situations.  With Doctor Who you need to keep planted in your internal logic to allow the story to progress effectively and, ultimately, make sense but that original idea that is at the core of each episode and from which the rules of the story are defined, can be as a weird as wonderful as you like, but picking the right one is very, very difficult. Getting this right is the biggest quality Moffat Who has over pretty much any telly ever, and Amy’s Choice absolutely this quality from start to finish.

It’s been very brave of The Moff to bring another Doctor/companion romance to the forefront of the ongoing story.  Not because they’re traditionally unpopular with certain areas of fandom, but because it’s something that’s already been done and very recently, ending with probably the most mentally shit conclusion to anything, ever.  The answer to that is, of course, he’s taking a different approach and The Doctor’s willingness to reconnect Amy with Rory have been a very endearing character trait.  That story comes to a head (it seems) in Amy’s Choice as it forms the backbone of the whole episode.  The two dream scenarios have a very clear difference and that is whether The Doctor is in Amy’s life or not.  After dithering about whether to get married, or whether she wants to just fuck off with the Doctor for good and whether she really loves and wants to be with Rory are things she has to find answers for during the episode, which is a neat way to give a character a lot of emotional progression in a very short space of time.  Amy’s indecisiveness about which dream is actually reality (back when she thought one of them *was* reality) could be less about the confusion caused by the Dream Lord, and more to do with her own internal conflict about which one she wants to be real.  When she’s eventually forced to make the choice after the apparent death of Rory (brilliantly acted by Karen) it nicely and neatly ties up her and Rory’s relationship issues but also advanced the main situation to a point where The Doctor can conclude the main story and deliver the big reveal the Dream Lord was him, casting the whole episode in a new light and also further developing the Doctor’s dark side.  This episode has very a skilfully implemented central idea serving lots of different threads.

This was also another episode where all aspects of the production seemed absolutely spot on.  The simple but effective idea of the birdsong carrying over between dreams lent a nice surreal and dreamlike feel to the episode, and the the frozen TARDIS was superbly realised.  This was a smart and incredibly funny story, complimented by the continuing fantasticness of Matt and Karen and a guest performance from Toby Jones that has to be ranked among the best in the show’s history.  Not bad for episode seven.

The Tardis will materialise…

lol.

…in nine UK cities on a 25-date Doctor Who Live tour in a spin-off that will see epic on-stage battles and special effects.

I do wonder just how ‘epic’ it actually can be, but cool.

While Doctor Who Matt Smith will not appear live on stage, he and assistant Karen Gillan have filmed special scenes for the show.

Oooh, the kicker, there.  Obviously it’s unreasonable to think they’d actually be able to perform over the tour, but am I the only one quite keen on the idea of recasting?  It’d be more than a little cool to have a ‘stage’ Doctor and, more importantly, it would pretty much kill everyone on Gallifrey Base as their tiny brains pop contemplating the ‘canon’ implications.

“This is everything I ever wanted since I was 11,” he said. “A live show, with all the coolest Doctor Who monsters, a proper story, and brand new screen material for Matt Smith’s Doctor.

And I guess that’s the point, really, this is going to be pretty hugely awesome for the kiddies.  The disappointment of only seeing The Doctor and Amy on screen will only be fleeting when they see Daleks and Cybermen on stage.  Unfortunately there’ll be no sofas for them to hide behind, but since no child ever does this ever in the history of ever, it’s not much of an issue.

“I’ll be writing scenes for it…

Well, of course!  Although I’ll be very interested to see who’ll be helping him.  Someone Who or someone with some theatre experience?

…and probably attending every single night.”

Sure you will.

Doctor Who Live will open in wartime London…

Well, they say this but according to the schedule they’re actually opening at Wembley Arena on the 8th of… oh, I see.  WW2 does seem like a strange setting to start with, though, considering it’s already been covered in the show and by that point the Daleks had already fucked right off, so I’ll be keen to see what they do with this.  It’s possible it’ll be existing purely in it’s own continuity bubble, but it does suggest they’ll be doing some sort of continuation from VotD, although how they’d do that I have no idea.

Anyway, this is all very interesting, but it’s not something that particularly appeals to me, but I’ll look forward to the inevitable TV showing over the Christmas period.  One thing that is bothering me is a possible over saturation of Daleks and Cybermen as this is the second spin-off media that they’ll both feature heavily in that’s been announced in recent months.  Kids do get bored, you know.

Anyone who’s going along (I’m looking at you, si) be sure to report back.  Tickets go on sale just under three days, if that obnoxious countdown clock they’ve got dotted around various corners of the Internet is anything to go by.

For a start, I still find it slightly strange that SJA even exists.  I mean, in telly terms it’s very successful and acclaimed and all that but it still feels weird having this RTD spin-off still hanging around.  Does Moffat have any creative control or is it entirely out of his hands?  Are they going to make any effort at all to co-ordinate with one another?  Of course, a lot of that is answered with this news, but it still feels a little off.However, given that SJA is establishing itself as the show where old characters can easily return (aside from the title character, we’ve had K9, Raxacoricofallapatorians, Judoon, Sontarans and The Brig) another old companion being brought back doesn’t seem all that surprising, but Jo Grant?  Really?  I’d sooner have Jamie.  Or, if Ben Paddon’s schedule allows, Turlough. Maybe I’m being unfair to old Jo but she’s never struck me as someone people are crying out to be brought back, especially since Sarah Jane made her character looks positively antique by the time she came along.

Anyway, on top of all that, we’ve got the Eleventh Doctor making an appearance (!) and the whole shebang is going to be written by LA’s Russell T Davies (!!!)  So, that’s RTD, not six months after he left Doctor Who writing for his successors Doctor for an episode of a spin-off that he still owns, all the while trying to get a US version fo Torchwood off the groun and, if rumours are true, a Doctor Who movie.  It’s… just… weird, and I’m not sure I like it at all.

This weeks episode certainly looks like a cracker, and if you want to whet your stupid appetite then you could do much worse than having a look at these preview clips.  The words “feel”, “like”, “McCoy” and “era” leap instantly to mind, which certainly bodes well for our Scouse in Chief.  Be sure to talk incessantly about what you thought of the episode in the comments, and we’ll have a review up for you at some point during the week.

By the way, by reading this post you have automatically agreed to its Terms & Conditions, stating that Chealsea are cunts and Aston Villa are the greatest football team the world has ever seen.  Just so you know, like.

As the first episode not only of a new series but a new production team AND Doctor it’s always going to be judged slightly differently to a more regular episode. Its aims and priorities are different, as they should be, so if you’re faced with a fairly thin plot it doesn’t matter so much because the important part is establishing new characters, actors and tone. Yes, TEH (made all the better for having an amusing acronym) does have a thin plot and the resolution is almost perfunctory (basically, a magic laptop and a phone make some dim policeman aware of what should be obvious to them anyway) but it’s just very effective dressing for the real meat. In terms of series 5 as a whole, the important detail is in how and why Prisoner Zero was able to escape through the crack in time, and we certainly get a good lump of foreshadowing on that score, so the viewer is already pretty well versed in the Big Threat before it even becomes the focus of the series. Nice, simple and effective storytelling, and even though the foreshadowing appears to be a bit clunky, at least it’s done by a character who’d actually know about this and would want to taunt The Doctor about it. Effort has been made to make the dump more palatable (so to speak…) rather than just bringing in a psychic at the end of a shit episode to say a load of bollocks no one cares about.

Speaking of the main antagonist, Prisoner Zero was a very well executed exercise in saving some money.  For a great deal of the episode, he was taking human form in the shape of the dreams of coma patents (chalk that one up as a Brilliant Idea) and this paved the way for some great performances, most notably Olivia Coleman and her creepy spawn.  The image of those little girls bearing Zero’s fangs might well live in my nightmares for the rest of my life.  When Zero reverts to his native form of The Master from off of The TV Movie, things got a little less impressive.  But, hey, show me an FX house that can deliver convincing CG for a character that’s supposed to be organic and you will be showing me someone with a budget of many millions.  The Atraxi crafts (or were they the Atraxi themselves?) suffered from similar ropeyness, but I’d say they looked no worse than what we’ve had before.  The frankly bonkers design of the Atraxi does lend itself to this new ‘fairytale’ tone that Moffat likes to talk about, too, which does allow for less sophisticated effects and it’s more about the ideas rather than the execution.

Tone-wise, it was a strange episode, as it was obviously written in a way designed to straddle the two eras. The plot in general felt a lot like an RTD opener (such as, say, Smith & Jones), and this was especially evident in the very quick solution to the Big Threat and the video conference complete with celebrity cameo, but these are useful techniques that RTD perfected, so there’d be no reason why Moffat would abandon them, especially when one of his top priorities must’ve been to convince people this is still the same show. For me, though, it did feel very different indeed; somehow more restrained despite the fact it was very high energy. It’s hard to pin down, but I suspect it’s mainly down to greater subtleties in the characters and Matt Smith’s quite astounding performance.

As pretty much everyone in the world ever has been saying over the last few days, that man is so completely The Doctor it’s frankly scary.  His performance as a whole characterised the whole episode, as he swings between Tennant and his new personality he manages to always hold on to his identity, but in way where you can practically see his transformation, with all manner of subtleties and quirks creeping in, in front of your eyes.  He’s got all the old Tennant staples nailed down (ENERGY, ANGER, THOUGHTFUL), but done better, plus he absolutely and completely hilarious.  Despite his sit-com pedigree, previous Moffat scripts haven’t always been packed with jokes, but he really, really lets rip in this episode (if painfully funny is his version of RTD’s bombast, then I’m very happy with that) and Matt’s flawless physicality and delivery does every single word of the script, comedy or otherwise, superb justice.  The food scene is an obvious example of writer and lead clicking so completely (and, honestly, I defy you to find a funnier scene anywhere else in Doctor Who.)  Conversely, Matt is a master at tiny physical details (my favourite being throwing the water out of the glass and placing it to his ear before he walks over to the crack in the wall to have a listen.)  Details like this are littered throughout the episode, and they all serve to make sure we completely get the new Doctor very, very quickly and gives the character and the episode as a whole an immense rewatchability.

Speaking of characters being established comprehensively and rapidly, let’s move on to Amy.  We first see her as a little girl when The Doctor crash lands in her back garden, but it’s not until we see her as a (fairly plain looking and not at all stunningly beautiful) adult that we see how brilliantly Caitlin Blackwood played the young Amy as the whole character seamlessly morphs into an adult.  Characterisation was one of this episodes biggest strong points, and the fact that we finish the episode with such a clear impression of Amy and the extent to which The Doctor has, essentially, fucked her up is a testament to that.  Amy is brand new to us, but for her the series to come is the culmination of her entire life which already makes her one of the most interesting companions we’ve had.

Looking at some of the changes the production team have made, I’m happy with a lot.  The new Console Room is incredible, if just for the sheer size of the thing and the pant wettingly exciting addition of STAIRS leading to PLACES, which is something that was sorely missed in the old days.  It actually feels like a proper hub for an entire ship, and even just seeing those doorways gives the whole thing an scale, even if that scale largely remains unseen.  As for gripes, they’re pretty few and far between, although can you all take a wild fucking guess what my biggest problem with the episode was?  If you don’t know, just go and read the entire Internet for a bit and you’ll get a good idea.  Basically, no amount of ‘getting used to it’ is going to change the fact that Murray Gold has all but removed the opening bass line of the theme tune to make way for some dodgy melody that ISN’T IN THE THEME, nor will it bring back the original OOOEEEOOOS (which were always there, buried in the RTD themes.)  The title sequence, though, I like.  S’good.

It’s amazing, after so many months and even years of waiting for Moffat’s Who to arrive there was always a danger that it wouldn’t live up to expectations, especially since Moffat now has to write the type of episodes he’s never tackled before, but he’s taken the traditional first episode fluff and Moffated the shit out of it. Moffat Who looks like it will turn out to be as expected which, considering he’s rightly one of the most celebrated Doctor Who writers ever, is just about the biggest compliment I can give this episode.

It’s difficult, really, sitting here trying to say things about the episode and explaining why I loved it so much without it sounding like I’m taking a great big dump on the RTD era.  That’s certainly not the case.  The day I become one of those twats that insists that RTD was shit is the day you should all stamp on my head.  Without him Moffat wouldn’t have a Doctor Who to take and run with and just because fans of the show seem to mostly prefer what Moffat is doing (so far, I hasten to add) doesn’t mean a great deal, because he wasn’t the Main Man when the show needed to be huge, brilliant and popular.  Russell was and it’s because of him that we’re sitting here now, marvelling at what the show is turning into.