The "new" Doctor Who - review

So, the "new Who" era ends, to be replaced with the "new new Who" era. I think that any comparisons with the Russell T. Davies flavoured series will be a bit premature after only one episode, so I will wait until the end of this new run until I give my full review, but the early indications are good.

The episode itself was a bit hit and miss, but such is the way with series openers - you have to introduce new characters, new plot devices for the series as a whole, AND you have to have a decent story that will hold it all together and stand by itself. There were enough interesting things going on to hold the attention, filled with the usual Steven Moffat motifs: the everyday things being subverted into something more sinister, such as the crack in the walls and things just being in the periphery of your vision. It also acknowledged the geekier elements of the fanbase, with plenty of potential clues and/or red herrings to satisfy the internet detectives who will pore over every detail of the series.

The writing was also very good: it wasn't a classic Who (or Moffatt, come to that) story by any means, but it was a very different beast for the executive producer - rather than providing the chillingly terrifying episode, as he normally does, he had to write something else entirely, and to these end it was entirely efficient, with some excellent lines across a lot of the characters.

I do like the new Doctor as well - I had a lot of goodwill for Matt Smith, who I wanted to succeed in the role, and there is enough evidence to suggest that he will be a success. I quite like the fact that he stopped off mid-plot to change his outfit, and I hope that this attention-deficit part of his character continues throughout the series - I quite like the idea of the Doctor being intensely relaxed about the whole "saving the world" thing, instead of being angsty about the burdne he carries with him. In an ideal world, he'd stop off at a newsagent to get a can of coke or a mars bar, before continuing on and demolishing a couple of daleks.