A Christmas Change

It amazes me how through the use of the internet one can get almost anything instantly...

And so it was that I was able to watch the newest episode of Doctor Who just hours after it aired on the BBC in Britain.

I've always been a fan of this show and was excited to hear there'd be new episodes. Of course, we here in the United States are unable to watch the new episodes as no cable network has picked it up. Luckily, we'll be getting aboxed set of all 13 episodes (plus extras) of the 2005 series on Valentine's Day 2006.

Of course, this means that all the 2006 episodes won't show up on our shores until 2007. But I have every intention of purchasing the series on DVD as it arrives...but I don't have the patience to wait a year...so I'm supplementing...

Anyway...

The special Christmas episode, entitled The Christmas Invasion, is the first story to fully feature David Tennant as the Doctor (if you've seen the recent Harry Potter movie he played Barty Crouch Jr.). If Christopher Eccleston's portrayal of the Doctor was a 9 from the first episode he appeared in, Tennant's is an 11 (and he spends a good chunk of the episode unconscious).

The concept of a Christmas episode of Doctor Who is weird at best, but not unprecedented (William Hartnell, the first Doctor, had one, but it is sadly part of the missing and lost episodes). Luckily, it's not a Christmas episode in the sense of what we here get in the United States (on a special Joey blah blah blah). There are a few Christmas related decorations, but the story is mostly about change for the Doctor, Rose and the entire planet Earth as an alien race attempts an invasion.

Tennant, like Eccleston before him, is a great combination of all the previous incarnations of the character while still carving his own place. The episode is as engaging as everything from last season, sets up both the new Doctor's character and touches on a spin-off series (Torchwood), brings back other beloved supporting characters and gives them a new twist and even manages to connect the entire Doctor Who mythos to that of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in one mindboggling throwaway line that will have people trying to figure out how those two mythos fit together in any possible way.

The new season starts in March on the BBC and I am very excited.

Be seeing you.