New Doctor Who? Yes please

Over a year ago, the Tenth Doctor was blasted with a lethal dose of radiation and died. But he managed to delay the inevitable regeneration by a good twenty minutes as he went on his Farewell Tour of the Universe, gazing mournfully at former companions, and shedding tears over the TARDIS. During these twenty minutes, the viewers were probably meant to feel a bit sad; not only was there an imminent change from David Tennant to Matt Smith, but also a switch of head writer from Russell T Davies to Steven Moffat. Twenty minutes was too long. For me, the change couldn’t come quickly enough.

That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy Davies’ reign as Supreme Executive Overlord. He resurrected one of the greatest sci-fi shows of all time, rescuing Saturday night telly from the clutches of Casualty and endless dance shows. He magnificently reinvented the sets, the characters, the stories, but most importantly, kept the essence of the original show the same. And yet towards the end, Doctor Who began to lose its initial fizz. I began to feel it relied more on the popularity of the lead actors than it did on the plotlines. What the show really needed was a sharp kick up the backside.

Said kick came in the form of Steven Moffat, who hit the ground running with series five. It’s obviously difficult to compare just one series to a previous four, but from the first episode of the Moffat series, I already preferred it. Many of his stories draw on the fears and vulnerability of children in a way that Davies’ episodes didn’t – an acute reminder that this is, above everything else, a kid’s programme. It’s very easy to wheel out a couple of moody robots, or flashy special effects, but episodes such as ‘The Beast Below’ tap into subtler fears, like abandonment. Moffat takes the monster under the bed and multiplies it by a billion.

Casting Karen Gillan as an assistant was also clever idea. Yes, Amy Pond may be stroppy, impulsive and pouty, but despite being nineteen, she’s a child that never really grew up. Compare this to the nine-hundred-year-old alien who looks about twenty, and you have a perfect match. Then there’s the Doctor himself. It was a brave step to cast Matt Smith, a virtually unheard of actor, and the youngest ever to play the title role. To be honest, I was hoping Moffat would pick someone older. Or a woman. Or Stephen Fry. But Smith’s youth was deceptive; he plays the Doctor as an eccentric, scatty, and slightly grumpy old man. He doesn’t need a swishy brown coat to be a hero. He has a bow-tie. And bow-ties are cool.

It was impossible to pick a favourite episode from a run that included the brilliantly slick ‘Amy’s Choice’ and ‘The Lodger,’ and even tackled mental illness in ‘Vincent and the Doctor.’ Every series is entitled to a dodgy idea or two – I wasn’t keen on the ‘Taste the rainbow’ Daleks in the third episode – but I felt that series five was easily the strongest so far. And having seen the trailers for the next series, I am very very excited for what’s to come next.

Click here to see why Jacob Martin wasn't so keen on the last series of Doctor Who, and tune into BBC1 on Saturday at 6pm to see the opening episode of the sixth series, 'The Impossible Astronaut'.

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