Dear Steven Moffat,

You wasted my childhood with Press Gang, my teens with Chalk, my twenties with Coupling and now my thirties with Doctor Who, apparently. Will you ever stop making such bloody brilliant stories?

As a fervent believer in everything Tenth Doctor-y (some relation to "Allons-y"), I wasn't even going to watch the fifth series which started yesterday. Matt Smith hadn't exactly made the best first, second or third impression on me. But then Twitter went completely mad for the new episode and the curiosity in me won. The iPlayer had to be loaded, first on the Wii (after a brief stint of Super Mario Kart'ing) and then the remainder on the PS3 (because the fucked-up neighbour started one of his all-night parties again). And I was, literally, at the edge of my seat already after ten minutes. Four minutes in and I had a proper laugh! The heresy!

So, prompted by this very vivid and entertaining dream I had last night where I went to a school reunion and only recognised about half of the people there; the other half slowly morphed into various actors or characters, such as Rik Mayall (having an argument with my dad and trying to seduce me at the same time), James Earl Jones (doing a bit of gardening), someone called Nis Kemp (he had been a Dutch exchange student in our class) and at least five of the previous Doctors (including David Tennant, although he was already there as a guest of mine, going on and on and on about how dry the chicken was--in his defence he had just flown in from Scotland entirely on his own (I believe he actually flew, and not in a plane, either); I decided to do a little bit of soul-searching and Doctor Who-analysing.

I am going to be totally honest here, and say that prior to Doctor Who, Russell T. Davies only meant Queer as Folk to me (and, thus, the person who taught me what "rimming" was; I sort of wish I didn't know), so I wasn't overly enthusiastic when I heard he was writing the reborn Doctor Who. This is also the reason why I never watched Torchwood, advertised as the more adult-oriented, semi-raunchy version of Doctor Who, until the five-parter last year, "Children of Earth". Chris Eccleston was basically a guy I had liked in Our Friends in the North and that episode of the brilliant Cracker where I was also introduced to Robert Carlyle. Billie Piper was just someone who'd made a couple of hits back in the late nineties. Doctor Who itself had been a children's programme institution for forty years. I wasn't exactly sold on the idea. To top it off, Radio Times were featuring the show way too often, so I was satiated even before I had seen a single episode.

When David Tennant took over as the Doctor, I referred to him as "that creepy guy from Secret Smile". I had missed Blackpool. I still wasn't interested. Then Catherine Tate, hot shot of the year, was going to feature in the Christmas special. I thought I'd have a look. It was alright, but I must have drifted off halfway through, as when I rewatched it recently, I couldn't even remember the second half of the episode. I started watching the series properly by series four, when they reintroduced Donna Noble. And I was captivated. I was particularly in love with the episodes "Silence in the Library"/"Forest of the Dead". I then watched the specials of 2009. The last episode was so heartbreaking and I didn't even know who half of those people were! Thanks to BBC3, I quickly knew. I watched the repeats starting with season two. I loved "The Girl in the Fireplace", "Gridlock", "Human Nature"/"The Family of Blood" and "Blink".

Incidentally, most of my favourite episodes were penned by a...Steven Moffat.

Now, let's face it: The Ninth Doctor (Chris Eccleston) was the abrasive rocker Doctor. The Tenth Doctor (David Tennant) was the soul-searching, pained, heart-broken action man Doctor. The Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith)? Looks to go back to the roots. He's the absent-minded, curious, eccentric Doctor. I do believe Monsieur Moffat has found his way back to the essence of the original idea.

Oh, and the new TARDIS? Bloody love it! I only wish I was ten again, growing up with THAT playground to gawk and drool at every Saturday tea-time.

David Tennant will still be "my" Doctor, though. As an incurable romantic I love/loathe the whole Rose/Doctor story, even with its horrible Norwegian breaking up the mood for me. Twice. ("Dårlig Ulv Stranden"? REALLY?)

Labels: david tennant, TV