Let’s just dive in….

Since its revival in 2005, Doctor Who has been strongly supported by the BBC…  Russell T. Davies, overall had a good run as Executive Producer, writer, etc…  And while there is criticism on RTD’s era, it overall was a good restoration and brought the series back to our Television screens.  My criticism of the RTD era is simply that there was a fabulous build-up during the story, but then at the last-minute, a Deus Ex Machina would be pulled out with no foreshadowing to solve the problem at the last-minute….

But since 2010, when Steven Moffat became the Executive producer, subtle changes started to appear.  The plot lines became more detailed, and foreshadowed, and Time Travel became more integrated into the stories…  Which believe it or not, is a surprise for a series based on Time Travel…  Doctor Who has only had a handful of episodes where Time Travel was integral to the plot of an episode,so this has been a welcome change.

Season 5, the first season that featured Matt Smith as The Doctor, had some remarkable episodes.  In fact, the entire season was extremely strong.

Season 6, started out fantastic, and has continued strong so far.  Although, we are only 4 episodes into the first half of the season…  I wanted to give some impressions of the 2011 season.  Please note, I am not reviewing the episodes in detail, and trying not to give significant spoilers…

• Episode 1 – The Impossible Astronaut, starts on a cliff hanger, introduces the plot threads for this season, and we discover the secrets of Watergate!
• Episode 2 – Day of the Moon, brings a resolution to Episode 1, and seemingly concludes the issues with the secret.  But what of Amy’s Schrödinger’s pregnancy?  The odd “window” woman?  And will Mark Shepard be in any more episodes this season?  And what about the little girl?  These are questions we want to know the answer for….
• Episode 3 – The Curse of the Black Spot, while this episode is a lighter toner than episode 1 & 2, it’s quite noticeable that the Doctor admits that his first 3 or 4 theories were wrong….
• Episode 4 – The Doctor’s Wife….  Like Episode 3, this appears to be a standalone episode, this episode concentrates on the Tardis itself…  While the Tardis is the companion that has been with the Doctor the longest, it is rarely recognized as such.  There have been a huge number of references to older episodes, including:
  • The Unearthly Child – Idris refers to The Doctor as “her thief”, and that she choose The Doctor.  Suggesting that she unlocked the Tardis door allowing The Doctor to steal/borrow The Tardis
  • Castrovalva – The Doctor jettisons / “burns up” parts of the Tardis to enable the Tardis to cross over
  • The Doctor refers to another Time Lord, The Corsair, that has changed his/her sex for at least one or two regenerations.
  • The TARDIS corridors are seen for the first time in the revived series. They are show a similar design to that seen in the classic series, though they are now hexagonal in shape with updated roundels.  House mentions that he disabled the corridor antigravity,
  • The Time Lord distress signal cubes are similar to the one used by the Doctor in The War Games
  • The Doctor and Idris use a TARDIS control panel outside of an outer TARDIS shell, as the Doctor did in Inferno.
  • The TARDIS’ secondary console room was first mentioned in The Masque of the Mandragora

While the two parter of “The Impossible Astronaut” & “Day of the Moon” were excellent.  I almost prefer, at this point, “The Doctor’s Wife”.  Why?  Because there hasn’t been an episode that explores Idris’s relationship with The Doctor…

Next up, is “The Rebel Flesh”, and the “Almost People”.  I am really looking forward to those episodes, except for the fact that we that much closer to the mid-season hiatus.