Tommy Collison

“Hello, I’m the Doctor. Basically: run.”

I caught the season premier of Series 5 of Doctor Who, which introduced Matt Smith as the 11th incarnation of the eponymous Doctor.

Matt Smith takes over the mantle of David Tennent, who’d played the role from 2005 until 2009 and had succeeded in bringing Doctor Who to an entirely new generation (myself included). Smith had a phenomenal hole to fill in the form of Tennent’s shoes – which he did admirably.

In 1969, a new James Bond was introduced to the world. Connery had created the role in ’62 so this Aussie had a big job on his hands. The directors tried to ease the newbie in by not showing his face in the pre-title sequence, by having him smoke the same cigarettes and using the same camera angles.

The same could be seen with Jones – his opening scene is him frenziedly rushing around a kitchen, speaking quickly and generally imitating Tennent’s Doctor’s mannerisms. Lines are also repeated (You’ve had some cowboys in here…” and “wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey” ). However, as the episode moves on, you can see him make new mannerisms and exclamations, which are good.

The other big change was the opening sequence and the theme tune. The former has keep the basic style with only a couple of colour changes. The theme tune is completely different and I’m not a fan of it at aaaaaall. Then again, I thought that the 10th Doctor’s tune was the best piece of television music ever composed, so that’s a hard act to follow… Finally, the new logo is a throwback to the original series (pre 1990), but I’m not liking it much.

Overall, however, I’m really happy to have the show back and await the next episodes with great anticipation!