It all got a little bit....Wet.

say Matt Smith is fabulous as the Doctor. And these are die hard fans. He eccentric but without the Tennant gurning and silly hair. And the assitant is ace too, I hear. Just wait until you see the new TARDIS interiors...

I agree Tennant was everywhere and we're sick and tired of him, but Matt Smith would appear to be breathing new life into what could have become a tired old warhorse.

That said, the BBC do flog everything to death so I get your point.

We are brilliant and its produced in Cardiff. And its amazing that we are creating THE most important moments in children's lives. Utterly amazing. Then again we are all so talented. And we are based in Cardiff.

does tend to overplay its cultural importance hand with these things, instilling a signficance to something that ultimately can only be determined as significant when and if people watch it and not before. It's the ceaseless determination to form the impression for you rather rather than allow you to form the impression for yourself by the simple process of watching the damn thing. I mean it's not a difficult concept: you make it,we watch it so stop telling us how to respond to it when we watch it!

They're like those old miltary parades in Moscow, carpet bombing the airwaves with triumphalist propaganda and deciding that the only views worth having are of those standing on the Kremlin balcony who watched the final dress rehearsal.

who outlined all the things people hate about nu-Who n Tennant

and as a fellow lover of the programme from when I was a tot I can't help but agree

I'm looking forward to Smiffy n the new lady. I thought Tennant's swansong had some marvellous moments and I welled up but it was time (boom tish)

If its not for you then thats cool but let us babies have our bottle!

cinema last week.
Made me want a big HD tele to watch it on...

glaring menacingly at me from my speakers. So I like vintage Doctor Who. No, make that 'adore'.

I've really enjoyed a few of the David Tennant stories, but I have some major misgivings with the revamped series...

(1) It's too camp. Doctor Who has always been camp, but unintentionally. Now it's written into the script.

(2) The music is too loud.

(3) The editing is too frantic. It gives me a headache.

(4) The Doctor should be above mentioning East-fucking-enders. He's a being of enormous intellect for gawd's sake... he would know that it's a piece of crap.

(5) John Barrowman - what an arsehole.

(6) I'm sorry, but I don't want the Doctor involved in romance. He should have had the good sense to give up that sort of thing centuries ago.

(7) It's just too slick. And I hate CGI. I much preferred it when the designers would simply paint some Bubble Wrap green to make a monster.

But all in all I'm pleased that it's made such a successful return. Sofas are once again being used for their proper purpose... as objects for children to hide behind.

aimed at kids? My 8 year old loves it. Interestingly she also hides behind the sofa much as I did in the 70s.

Look it's brilliant, we're brilliant, honest !!!

is also its most debilitating weakness. The fact is reinvents itself practically on a weekly basis – not just completely changing cast, location etc but also shifting tonally, so that one week it’s an action adventure, the next week horror, the one after that historical romance – is why it never, ever gets dull. But it’s also why its quality control varies so wildly.

At its best, though, it is as witty, inventive and clever as anything else on TV: Wire, Mad Men, Sopranos and all. And none more so than when it’s written by Steven Moffat, whose 2007 episode Blink rightly won the BAFTA for best drama screenplay that year. So I think we can expect great things now he’s showrunner (as opposed to his maddeningly inconsistent predecessor – whose watch I blather on about at length here http://www.behindthesofa.org.uk/2010/01/reading-okay-watching-russel-t-d... if anyone’s interested).

As for the BBC “overplaying its cultural significance”, Doctor Who IS significant, for at least two reasons: One is that it reinvented the concept of genuine family drama, uniting mum, dad and the kids on the sofa in a way no-one thought possible in these fragmented times, and the second is that, Harry Potter aside, it’s just about the only thing giving our kids a heartfelt, impassioned, witty, literary and BRITISH alternative to brainless franchise fodder like Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. In this sense, it deserves to stand alongside the best of Pixar as an example of big, populist entertainment that also has heart, soul and a brain.

to this at Xmas.
http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/is-it-just-me-or-does-anyone-else-...

My view then was the hype is tiresome but to attack a programme for doing what the rest of the time people bang on about being a good thing, ie well written, well acted, throughtful,exciting family tv seems churlish. The recent re-vamp has had some geniunely excelent episodes with Blink being perhaps the most popular. This story covered complex time travel ideas with engaging moving characters and real tension all this at saturday tea time!

Dr Who has faults any show that's 50 years old is bound to but the good far out ways the bad and perhaps seeing as as I write this, ITV are showing a film starring Chris Rea we might find more worthy targets for our righteous anger.

the_saint's view of the programme has been influenced detrimentally by the level of hype the BBC attaches to it PRIOR to the programme being aired. I empathise with his predicament because hyping like this by a public broadcaster seems unnecessary and can easily be construed as an abuse of its monopoly. It plays into the hands of detractors who question the legitimacy of a public service embracing such commercial tactics and in my mind compromises the integrity of the programme itself.

The hyping infiltrates virtually all platforms from which the corporation delivers and is also allowed to cross over into other fields. For example it becomes a news item. It's not news, it's entertainment; and remember this is a news item about a forthcoming programme so it's "news" about something that hasn't even happened.

A significant part of the integral appeal of Doctor Who is its escapism and potential for boundless imagination which allows the programme to reach into the minds of everyone and present jaw-dropping concepts and story-lines. So why blunt that appeal and the mysteries of the imagination with the endlessly mundane treadmill of earth-bound hype and hyperbole?

It's like a magician who wants to show you how he does the trick before he performs it. Where's the magic?

... who don't like 'Doctor Who'. Not because I think you're missing out on anything (if you don't like it, that's fine). but because it does get hyped relentlessly, and it must be unbearable if it's something you don't like. Now, I really like the show, and have done for many years, but even I find the hype a bit much. It gets a bit embarrassing after a while.

It's not surprising the BBC pull out all the stops to promote it, though. I don't think anyone could have envisaged a revived 'Doctor Who' making such a massive impact on British TV back in 2005, and they're quite rightly proud of it.

I've not grown tired of any excessive Dr Who hype by the simple expedient of not watching BBC1 or reading a newspaper in the past month. I'd recommend that strategy to anyone.

Even I get a bit tired of the hype, and I don't watch BBC1 at all, except for a very few specific programmes which I pre-record so as to be able to fast-forward the trailers and idents.

However, Doctor Who is one of those specific programmes. I love it, I just love it. Series Three was at least 50% bobbins, though, and Martha was the worst companion since Bonnie "Fucking" Langford. However, even in that weakest series, we had "Human Nature", "The Family Of Blood" and "Blink", all of which were as good as anything that has been broadcast anywhere, by anyone, in the last twenty years.

I'm delighted that Steven Moffat's in charge, not least because although Russell T. Davies can't half write when he gets going, he has a tendency to just throw in the kitchen sink. No sense of restraint at all - hence all the Daleks Vs. Cybermen stuff, and the "HEY! Let's put EVERY SINGLE COMPANION in this one!" cluster-fuck that was the series 4 finale. But you have to give the man credit: he's almost single-handedly breathed life into a dead franchise and made it THE British television event to beat. An astonishing achievement. And it still has about an 80% hit rate. And when it hits, it REALLY hits.

But yeah, the man behind "Silence In The Library", "Blink" and "The Empty Child" in charge of the whole bang-shoot? I'm pretty excited, and Matt Smith looks like he's going to be quite special.

Still, the BBC marketing department do need lining up and shooting.

that Freema really can't act for toffee. So damn stage school and wooden as hell. Made Matthew Waterhouse* look like Paul Schofield. She was more Philip Schofield

*who played Adric for the non saddos

...and all the "Oooh, he only got to be at the RSC because he's all successful from Dr Who..." bleating which was all over the papers when he did the Hamlet the other summer. He:

1) Did a flippin' amazing job leading a really good and inventive production and a sterling cast. The Beeb dramatisation at Christmas didn't really do it justice; and

2) He was doing key roles at the RSC a decade before anyone even thought about bringing Dr Who back from a Sylvester McCoy blighted memory. Saw him playing Touchstone in As You Like It at the RSC back in 1994 when he'd just had his first major BBC role in the drama "Takin' Over The Asylum". I recall sitting in the theatre thinking, "Hmmmm, here's one to watch for the future!"