catholiclefty

The Christmas specials - it still feels nice to say that at all! - get back on form with The Next Doctor, a neat mix of mystery, running around, smashing things up, and neat little character pieces as we slowly reveal just who this character who appears to be a future regeneration of the Doctor actually is. There's lot of hints that you'll probably not pick up on at a first viewing - there's decent depth here, of both story and character, while also being rather good fun, and it breaks from what was quickly becoming an alarming tradition of the last couple of specials by not giving a one-shot companion who the Doctor ends up rather liking. The Cybermen are never exactly my favourite monsters, but I don't mind them here as they're pretty incidental to the character stuff going on.

Atmospheric, touching, and with a reasonably tight storyline, this is easily the best of the Christmas specials since the first, and far more consistently strong than that one (the first isn't exactly consistent all the way through, but the last 20 minutes make up for the all the uneven tone of the rest). Very good indeed.

So, err, Matt Smith is the next Doctor. All around the country, those of us in our late twenties and early thirties suddenly felt quite a bit older, as we discover the next Doctor is actually going to be younger than us. Gah!

I've no idea if he'll be any good or not, we'll have to wait and see. I do wonder about the logic behind wanting an even younger Doctor than Tennant, I don't think it is the stylistic choice I'd have made, but then I can't write for toffee, and for now at least I still have a decent amount of confidence that Steven Moffat knows what he's doing...