It took me a while to get used to listening to the Doctor rather than seeing him/her. Nicholas Briggs voices this first book and his version of the Doctor is a good one, it has that Northern goofiness so that you can immediately tell who it is but I did think it sometimes went a bit too far into the silly voice. Our Doctor can be serious too.

We’ve seen four episodes of the new series of Doctor Who and that’s long enough for me to cast my opinion on the whole thing. Heck, it only took a couple of episodes to know I wasn’t keen on Capaldi, but where do I stand on the Whittaker era? Good news: I love it! It’s fresh, fast, funny, approachable, likeable, different and new. Here are five slightly more specific thoughts:

The last time I talked about Doctor Who, I was pondering the news that Peter Capaldi would be stepping down from the show. I talked about the rumours that there might be a female Doctor and how I wasn’t sure that’s where I wanted the show to go. Well, that’s where the show is going and I have completely changed my mind. I’m on board. I can’t wait to see what Jodie Whittaker does with the role and I think it’s a fab breath of fresh air into the show.

It was announced a couple of weeks ago that Peter Capaldi will be stepping down from the BBC role everyone’s talking about – no, not the lead of whatever baking show will replace GBBO, but in fact, the titular role of Doctor Who. It’s no secret that Capaldi hasn’t been my favourite Doctor, and I’ll admit that I have watched only two episodes of his since his tenure began. So unlike many, I’m glad that the show is adapting and changing once again, and I can only hope the replacement is more to my tastes.

I love the concept of these celebratory books, one short story for each Doctor. Unfortunately, there are a lot of references in these early ones that I don’t get, due to my limited knowledge of the early Doctor Who episodes. I had to research all about the Scottish companion once I was finished reading.

I gave it four episodes, and in the end I’m going to have to admit that Peter Capaldi’s Doctor - so far - is not for me. The first episode I had to give the benefit of the doubt because it was a regeneration episode, one in which the characters were finding their feet and getting to know each other all over again. The second episode was instantly forgettable - something about a Dalek? The third was more entertaining, but for the Robin Hood aspect rather than the Doctor being the star of the show. When he was shooting the arrows, I just thought… this doesn’t feel right. I just finished watching the fourth episode in the series, one which a few have claimed as one of the best, and it was fine, a bit tense, but ultimately not gripping.

Doctor Who finally returns to our screens after a lengthy wait since the Christmas regeneration special. And was it worth it? Erm, no. Sadly, I didn’t like this episode at all, and I will expand on that further below. It’s nice to have the show back though, and even nicer to see the addition of Doctor Who Extra - a bonus ten minutes of content, online, in a replacement for the much-missed DW Confidential.

I really loved the concept of these short stories - building up to the fiftieth anniversary, a short story for each iteration of the Doctor, written by a different children’s author. The collector in me had to wait for the set to be finished before I even embarked, and I was a bit disappointed that the first was written by Colfer - having not particularly enjoyed the first of the Artemis Fowl series.

This Christmas special found itself with a really difficult task to accomplish. Following the almost-perfect anniversary special was always going to be difficult, but it also had to steer clear of the normal festive schmultz to head rapidly towards a regeneration. It was still a heartwarming piece in places, the children of the town called Christmas, the Doctor’s dedication to staying in spite of himself, and Clara’s constant despair at being left behind.

I managed to miss a lot of the hype surrounding the 50th anniversary special of Doctor Who. Obviously in the run up to the episode airing, it was almost impossible to take an online step without finding something related to the sci-fi show, but before that, I’d side-stepped most of it. I knew of the Billie Piper/David Tennant return, and was obviously expecting an appearance from this new rogue Doctor we were introduced to at the end of the previous episode, but that was it.

Last weekend, the BBC confirmed just who would be playing the brand new Doctor, the twelfth incarnation. You’ve no doubt heard by now that it is Peter Capaldi who is going to be on the other end of Matt Smith’s regeneration, and the reaction I’ve seen so far has been overwhelmingly positive. It’s a stark contrast to when Smith was presented as the Eleventh Doctor. A startlingly young, unknown actor, which immediately created something of a backlash amongst certain Who fans. This time, the casting is older, established and a very interesting choice.

The Girl in the Fireplace takes us to 1700s France, for an adventure in history written by future showrunner Steven Moffat. It’s one that was incredibly popular when it first aired, and has an enduring quality to it - being about the people rather than the science, as is so often Moffat’s style. This time, we’ve got Mickey along for the ride, as Rose tries to figure out the complicated relationships she has with the two men in her life. Mickey is pretty excited about being on board for this trip, until naturally it all starts to go a bit wrong and gets a bit scary.

It was confirmed yesterday that Matt Smith is leaving Doctor Who at the end of the year, after taking part in the 50th anniversary celebrations and a Christmas special that will feature the regeneration. I had pondered recently whether it was time for the show to have the change and shake-up that comes with a new Doctor, and it seems those in the know are on the same page. Three and a bit series is the magic number!

I vividly remember watching the episode of Sex and the City where they finally revealed Mr Big’s name. It was such an intense letdown that I couldn’t believe it had been given the go ahead to be screened. I was so disappointed, and I wasn’t even that big a fan of Carrie and co. Thus, I approached this episode of Doctor Who with some trepidation, worried they would reveal our favourite alien’s name as Bob or Trevor or something. It wasn’t helped by the big hype machine calling this a gamechanging episode. I’ll be the judge of that, thank you very much.

Expectations couldn’t be anything but high for this episode of Doctor Who. The Cybermen were promised to be back - bigger and better, but hopefully less colourful than the Daleks 2.0 - and it was also a return to the series for Neil Gaiman, after his incredible episode, The Doctor’s Wife. Although the man himself spoke of how different this episode would be, I was still anticipating good things. And mostly, I was not disappointed.

Knowing this episode was written by Mark Gatiss and was set in Victorian Britain, I was fully expecting his brand of gothic horror to be stamped all over it. I hadn’t expected it to be quite so disturbing, but it was an episode that stood up for itself very well, despite very little alien or sci-fi meddling. The highlights of the episode were, of course, provided by Madame Vastra, Jenny and Strax. Jenny had her fair share of screen time, but topped it all with a great fight scene - disarming serveral henchman all by herself. Madame Vastra barely got a chance to get into the mystery but did manage to make a guy faint, at least twice. And Strax, he had some of the best lines, with the horse and preparing for the North, but he was criminally underused. At least he got to save the day.

I watched this episode not from the comfort of my own armchair, but in a hotel room on a tiny television. I never quite realise how used to HD I am until it is taken away from me! Thankfully, this episode didn’t look like it delivered much on the grand scale of beauty. Rather than gorgeous outer space landscapes, or moody forest settings, we were locked away inside the TARDIS - quite literally going round and round in circles.

Just two weeks after the divisive Rings of Akhaten, Neil Cross was back on writer’s duty for Hide - a ghost-hunting romp through an old stately home in the seventies. What begins as a traditional ghost story, moves through some really quite tense and scary scenes, before resolving itself as a love story that spans pocket/balloon universes. This felt more like the Doctor Who people expect, dashing through corridors, unravelling a mystery that appears to be one thing but is actually something quite different. And boy, it was beautiful to look at.

I keep telling myself I will go back and watch these episodes again before I write about them, so that I have one viewing for the sheer enjoyment of it, and another to take in the finer details. So far, I have not managed to do that. Is it just a lack of time, or is there a lack of motivation here too? The recent episodes do seem to suffer a lack of the magic that makes something instantly rewatchable - episodes such as Van Gogh or Idris the TARDIS spring to mind when I think of those I would watch again in a heartbeat. They can’t all be like that, of course, but I can’t think of any recently that have captured me in the same way.

Doctor Who is one of those television programmes that will never be able to win. It’s demographic is so wide-spread, and people want such different things from their Doctor Who experience, it really is impossible to please everyone. He’s too human, too alien, there’s too much sci-fi, too much humanity, it’s too childish, too adult, boring, complicated, incredible, ridiculous, etc, etc. Obviously opinions matter, and we write blog posts about the programme because we care about it. I’ve been known to air my disappointment about past episodes and I am usually at odds with most of the rest of the internet. That’s why, this time, I quite liked the episode. It had grand ambitions, and a great premise, and I enjoyed it - although I do think it slightly missed the target.

Ahh, it made so much sense when finally we realised what the bells related to. It made sense, and also made me feel stupid. There’s so much about Doctor Who that should be obvious but it never is until it is revealed. It’s one of the joys of Steven Moffat’s era of the show, that you can concentrate too hard on unravelling the riddles, or you can just ride the wave and see where you wash up.

I was a little wary ahead of this year’s Christmas Special. The festive episodes have not always been the best, and when they are charged with ingratiating a new character into our lives as well, the pressure is really on. Thankfully, all my fears were unfounded as what we had here was a fantastic episode in its own right, plus a continuing mystery regarding the new companion as well.

The final episode of the recent half-series of Doctor Who episodes ended with Amy and Rory together but stuck in time. I wasn’t particularly happy with the episode as a whole, and there are plenty of plot points that still confuse me. Overall, though, it seems like a fitting end for the pair, and we’re now looking ahead to the introduction (re-introduction?) of the new companion at Christmas. Except, there was some unfinished business with the last episode, and that was Rory’s dad Brian. He encouraged Amy and Rory to go off and travel with the Doctor, but was then left behind with no knowledge of what happened to the pair. They were stuck in New York so couldn’t ever come back, and he was left not knowing what had gone on.

There’s no sign of the Doctor, although a brief allusion to him in one small paragraph, so Melody is left to her own devices to find out what is going on and who is behind it all. It’s a fun little story, but I actually found it really hard to read. We know that River Song is all about the double entendre, but there was so much in here, along with an attempt to be witty in almost every sentence, that it didn’t scan as well as I think it was meant to.

BBC Four started airing Lilyhammer a week or so ago, and I tuned in to the first episode to see what it was like. Lilyhammer is exciting because it’s a Netflix original - the DVD and streaming company put their hands in their pockets and paid for this show to be created. It’s a bold new move from them, rather than sitting back and waiting for deals to be done with existing production teams, they got on and did it themselves.

“I hate endings,” the Doctor declares, as he sits having a nice picnic with his two companions in New York City. Yet, we all know that this story is going to come to an end, and it’s going to do so in the next 40 minutes. The foreboding increases by the minute, as we head towards what was proclaimed as a heart-breaking farewell. I didn’t feel at all right after watching the episode on Saturday night. I thought I’d missed something, or wasn’t understanding it, so there was a need to watch it a second time. Upon the subsequent viewing (along with 12 hours to ponder what I’d seen in between), things began to make sense. It was definitely a rollercoaster of emotion, but for me, not perhaps the one Moffat wanted.

The task this episode had to fulfil was clearly set out from the start. Rory and Amy have been showing increased dissatisfaction with their roles as companions, and the gap between them and the Doctor has been growing week on week. One or other of them usually makes the point of saying they miss running for their lives, but we don’t quite believe them. So, this week, we had to be convinced that the pair really do care about being with the Doctor again, otherwise next week’s final episode won’t be as emotional as the Moffat has planned and we would just be left saying, quit if you don’t want to do it anymore! To get right to the heart of what is going on with them, the action returns to Earth with mysterious boxes falling from the sky.

More than ever, this third episode of the truncated series seven was one of those mini-films that Steven Moffat desired. As he has previously said: When we had the pitch meetings for the various stories, I would say ‘Tell me the movie poster. Tell me the title, what’s on the poster and what’s the log-line… Let’s have a blockbuster every single week, no two-parters, every single week is going to be a blockbuster and let’s not have the cheap episode, let’s just make them all huge.’ It has caused some problems, but I think it has worked really well for us. It’s the year of the blockbuster.

Presumably, this episode’s title comes as an homage or a satire of Snakes on a Plane. I haven’t seen the film but if it is anything like as mad as this weekend’s Who outing, I’m on board. The action got going straight away, with the Doctor picking up his “gang” and heading straight to the spaceship housing the aforementioned prehistoric creatures. He referenced not having a gang before, but I can’t think that is right. There was a very poignant moment in one of the earlier episodes where every section of the TARDIS was manned for a change - instead of the one man doing it all by himself. If that’s not a gang, I don’t know what is.

Doctor Who is back on our screens as the seventh series began yesterday. With Daleks, divorce, a delightful Doctor plus a surprise special guest, this first episode had a little bit of everything. Actually, it had quite a lot of Daleks. Before we get onto the episode proper, it’s worth a quick mention for Pond Life - the pre-series build up mini-episodes that featured on the BBC’s Doctor Who webpage every day last week. Each one was only a minute or so long and featured the Doctor trying desperately to get back to Amy and Rory, whilst real life tore them apart and galactic troubles kept him away.

This episode begins with David Tennant as a science teacher. He writes physics on the board and then struts around muttering a little bit. I absolutely detested science at school because they managed to make it as hideous as possible despite potentially being one of the most fascinating subjects. However, if I had a science teacher like DT, things could have been a lot different!

Last weekend, I wrote up my reaction to the second episode of the latest series of Sherlock (got another post coming on the final episode just finding the time/gathering my thoughts), and prompted this reaction. Thank you for the wonderful SPOILER. GOOD JOB. Ever heard of a spoiler warning? Thankfully, I have a pretty prominent spoiler alert at the very top of the post, so I feel like I did my part in trying to avoid this exact situation. Even so, I do feel slightly dismayed to think I’ve spoiled someone else’s enjoyment of the show - it’s such a good one.

My Life List is now something like two years old, and rather than the whole New Year’s Resolution thing, I like to have a quick look back at the things achieved this year, and then a quick look forward at what I hope the year ahead will bring. It’s fair to say that this year has not been as full of Life List success as I would have hoped, mostly because it was full of months of soul-searching, making life-changing decisions, and forging ahead with book-writing.

This year’s Christmas special was in a difficult position - it had to be light enough to be enjoyed at prime time on the main festive day, but equally it had to hold enough gravitas to follow a very heavy series. I think this one managed to do a really good job, and improved on the fairy tale style of last year’s Christmas outing.

After the body-swapping of the first DT episode proper, we know are faced with the Doctor swapping his accent - for Tennant’s native Scotland. It filters in and out, is startlingly out of place to begin with but soon feels very natural so that I didn’t notice he’d stopped, even though Queen Victoria did. It’s always a risk for Doctor Who to take on historical figures, sometimes it works very well, sometimes it doesn’t. For the most part, the series has done a good job. Charles Dickens is a great character, and later on, Vincent van Gogh is handled particularly well.

The BBC have introduced a new trailer for their Christmas output - well, it’s more like one of those feel-good ones that has no specific content and just a lot of famous faces beckoning you to stay with the Beeb over the festive season. Works for me! I can only say that seeing The Doctor playing Twister with a Cyberman may be the best three seconds of TV that I’ve seen in a long while.

With this episode, the Tenth Doctor gets his reign underway proper, after spending most of the last episode in his pyjamas. No more of that - he’s got a suit, he’s got a TARDIS, and he’s got places to be. New New Earth for a New New Doctor. The first few scenes really cement the relationship between Rose and the Doctor. He’s brand new, but she’s willing to stick with him. In fact, she’s already showing signs of liking this Doctor more than the previous one. They’re like a new couple on a date, picnicking on the applegrass. Mmm, applegrass.

As mentioned last week, I was somewhat worried about this series finale. The fifth series ended spectacularly, and I loved practically all of the final two episodes. I have faith in Steven Moffat but after seeing the start of this series, my belief system was shaken a little bit. It really shouldn’t have been. The Doctor has been wending his way towards his death, and we were treated to him repeating over and over that it was a fixed point in time. I very much enjoyed the state of affairs in the broken time stream, where everything was happening past and present, history meeting the future. The trains were excellent, and although the CGI was startlingly obvious, it was fun.

The BBC confirmed today that after this series, there will be no more episodes of Doctor Who Confidential filmed. The sister show has been sitting alongside the main BBC1 programme since it came back to our screens with Christopher Ecclestone, but is now on the way out. The Beeb say: The Confidential team captured the rebirth of the show back in 2005 and for over half a decade they have given an unsurpassed, access-all-areas insight not just into Doctor Who, but the magic and mechanics of making successful drama. From an episode directed by David Tennant, to the special edition that broke the news that Matt Smith would be the Eleventh Doctor, Doctor Who Confidential has always delivered the very best in must-see behind-the-scenes action.

Closing Time presents the last opportunity for us to really enjoy ourselves before what is bound to be a depressing and likely confusing episode to close the series with next week. I am happy to be proved wrong and find that the series six finale is every bit as genius as the series five one was, but I will own up now and say I’m dreading it.

Last time Toby Whithouse wrote an episode, it involved a strange vampire/fish hybrid that stalked the canals of Venice. This time out, he was seemingly charged with writing the end of Amy and Rory’s adventures with the Doctor. Quite a bigger challenge, I’d say. As is often the case in some of the more recent episodes of Doctor Who, this was a standalone adventure that was really just the coat-hanger for something much bigger. It was signposted right from the start in big neon lettering - the Ponds won’t be on the TARDIS for very much longer.

When Mr C and I started discussing book trailers, we did a bit of research and talked concepts and all that good stuff. I decided to make a storyboard of my thoughts on what our trailer should perhaps have in it. I am not good at art, though, as we have previously discovered. Instead, I turned to my trusty iPad, and what do you know, there were a couple of storyboarding apps available.

The troublesome trio are off on another adventure. Presumably dissatisfied with the action they found back in “Eastendersland” last time, they are in search of a fun and exciting planet. Only trouble is, Amy has forgotten her phone. “I bring you to a paradise planet two billion light years away and you want to update TWITTER!” The Doctor has heard of Twitter! I digress. Amy forgets her phone, takes the wrong door and gets stuck in some kind of parallel time stream.

The scariest place in the world is a child’s bedroom. I must say, I don’t recall finding my bedroom that scary. The occasional moment where you see a shadow and can’t figure out what it is, but not much of the “monsters in the cupboard” stuff. However, plenty of children do find bedtime and the subsequent switching off of the lights a rather terrifying time, and this story captures that fear amazingly well. A little boy is exceptionally frightened and that leads the Doctor to make a house call. I did like how reluctant Rory was to approach the boring council estate - after flying about planets and punching Hitler, a bunch of flats did not seem much of a challenge.

Let’s come at this from the very beginning then. At the end of the last half of the series, I said I wasn’t bothered about watching the rest. I knew I was going to watch this first episode to see where they took it, but the rest was up for grabs. As much as I love the Doctor, there are other ways I can spend an hour on a Saturday night.

Last time we saw The Doctor, he was saving the world, keeping Rose from imploding and taking one for the team, by forcing a regeneration. David Tennant had just a moment to say Barcelona before the episode ended. Thus, his first full length episode is this Christmas Special. Although, he isn’t really in it for a lot of the action, so perhaps it’s harsh to call this his first episode. He spends most of his time relegated to a bed, or the floor of his ship, and 90% of the episode sees him in pyjamas - even the fighting at the end. I am not a fan of the pyjamas.

I was seriously dreading this episode. Supposedly a big cliffhanger, a game-changer some have said. I don’t know. So far I have not gelled with this series as I would have liked, so the normal trust I put in Moffat over big moments like this has been shaken. It started out well enough. I was glad we didn’t have to see Amy in labour. She put her baby, Melody Pond, in a little basket/tub thing and it reminded me very much of Superman being sent off to Earth to keep him safe.

First we have to come to terms with the fact that there are two Doctors. The Ganger Doctor has to burn through some worrying moments before stabilising - moments where other doctor voices come out of his head, talking of jelly babies and the like. Then you get two Doctors talking to each other. “It’s just so inspiring to hear me say it,” one of them says to the other. The Doctor loves himself almost as much as he loved the TARDIS last time. It gets to the point where you start to ponder if the Doctor could be his own companion.

I’m not 100% sure what I was expecting from this episode, but I was mildly surprised by what I found. It was pretty good. The writer, Matthew Graham, had already expressed that he wanted this two-parter to be a lot darker and have more of an impact than his previous outing - the 2012 Olympics based Fear Her. So, what do we find?

For me, it’s been a rocky start to the series so far. Nothing so bad I’d stop watching, but that unsettling feeling that this series is not quite what I signed up for. Thankfully, this episode puts us right back on track. I’m impressed, really, because the sneak peek at the end of the last one wasn’t that inspiring to me.