It was a glorious few seasons with David Tennant, the eminently likable Doctor Who, but all good things must come to an end. For those who aren't familiar with the series, The Doctor is a Time Lord, a species that short of disintegration regenerates after death into an entirely new body.
The eleventh Doctor took the reins this season, and in a policy turnaround BBC America is showing the series in the US a mere two weeks behind the UK debut. With a new Doctor, new showrunner, new companion, new sets and new opening, thing could go very right...or very wrong.
That's the reason why I'm so pleased by the two episodes so far. They have had that magical Doctor quality, skirting the line between madcap adventure, social commentary, with a dash of science fiction wackiness for good measure.
So far the episodes have touched base with the series history, but the most fun for me has been the many nods to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Douglas Adams had worked on several episodes in the series, and conversely both his Hitchhiker's series and the Dirk Gently series incorporated time travel.
In the first episode of the new season, ships hover above the Earth and are about to destroy it, but unlike the Vogon's the 2010 aliens can tap into our cellphones as well as TV and radio to broadcast their message of Doom. At the end of the first episode, the Doctor's new lithesome companion joins him from her bedroom--and so spends the entire second episode in her nightgown, much like the hapless Arthur Dent in his bathrobe.
And oh yes, there's a whale. In space. I love the human imagination, always creating new variations on themes both strange and sublime.
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