w00t! It’s back…Doctor Who series 4 

Classic line…

“This is not war. This is Pest Control!”

Very cool.

Funny the things that occur to you when you’re in that meditative zone while evacuating the bowels.

I’ve heard it said by several friends that the Doctor as played by Christopher Eccleston wasn’t nearly as Zany or fun as David Tennant’s.

Eccleston has been described as much darker, moodier… nastier in places, and it’s demonstrated several times, when he refers to humans as “stupid apes”, when he is ruthless in his punishment of the Dalek, unrepentant when Cassandra dries to the point where she is ripped apart… and then so very desparate to help the Gelth.

I feel that all this tracks back to his loss of his planet and his friends and family in the Time War. He’s mentally scarred from this; and I’d suggest that the first new series of Doctor Who occurs very close to the initial conclusion of this war. In the first episode, he is checking-out his appearance, indicating he may just have regenerated from his previous incarnation, played by Paul McGann.

As a shellshocked and perhaps even depressed individual, his forced humour at times and absolute fury makes so much more sense, and it shows what a good actor Ecclestone actually is.

Tennant’s doctor, on the other hand has some distance — notalot to be honest, but some — from the events of the Time War, and so is a little lighter (but no-less ruthless — as evidenced when he massacres the Racnoss young in Runaway Bride). Hence he is somewhat lighter and can be zanier. This is as much to the writers credit as to the actor playing the character.

“Humans, you grab what you want and then bleed it dry.”

Here’s a classic reason not believe what you read: Blink

Saw this last night and thought it was a very clever piece of writing, a well directed story and while — and this is the major beef of the reviews I’d read — it didn’t feature The Doctor and Martha, the story covered an issue that had been explored many times before, both in the old series and the new: The doctor is overcome by something and needs a hand from a clever person.

I can see the point “Oh, it’s called Doctor Who, so where is he?” but there are plenty of stories which don’t feature the good doctor for the entire eposide. Take Genesis of the Daleks as a good example: Sarah Jane is separated from The Doctor and Harry and so gets her own screen time. Spread over 6 episodes, this adds up to a fair bit of exposition in the story for someone other than The Doctor.

Since Blink had at its core an issue where The Doctor had – like in so many other instances – been grabbed by something nasty and was ultimately powerless, I can’t see what people are bleating about.