Doctor Who is back and there’s a new Doctor and a new assistant and Russell T Davies is back doing it and there’s a new Tardis and there’s a new Sonic Screwdriver, too. This information is either the most important thing you’ve received in five years or it means absolutely nothing to you. You are either a Doctor Who person or you are not, and that is OK. Here’s a word I gleaned from the first episode and checked through the many, many embargoes to ensure I am allowed to say it in print: “Gallifrey”. Did that mean anything to you? If “yes”, you’re going to have a very exciting weekend.
I want to be cynical about Doctor Who (11 May, 6.20pm, BBC One), I want to ruin my next week by receiving really long emails from the people who watch it (“Dear Sir, Ncuti Gatwa is in fact the Fifteenth Doctor, not – as stated in your laughable screed dated 11 May! – the Fourteenth. David Tennant’s three-episode reappearance was as a separate incarnation of the Doctor to the Tenth he played for 47 episodes between 2005 and 2010.”). I want to say mean things like: “Doctor Who is a series I would show to my dog if I was trying to make him smarter.” But, sadly, I sat down with a big bowl of cereal and my nice headphones on, watched the first two episodes of the new series and was dreadfully, inevitably, embarrassingly charmed by it.
