After a couple of downhill years for Doctor Who, here's where the show suddenly gets really good again. Steven Moffat inherits the head writer's position, and he's brilliant. He's the guy who, in previous series, brought us the WW2 children in gasmasks, the clockwork robots under Madame de Pompadour's bed, the weeping angel statues and the shadowy library planet. This year he re-invents Doctor Who with a dark fairy-tale atmosphere and loads of clever twists involving time travel.
The lead actors are both new and both great. Matt Smith brings back the alien nature of the Doctor, reminiscent of Patrick Troughton and Tom Baker. Karen Gillan is sexy and funny, and fills the role of companion in a unique way.
Despite the fact that there's so much new about it, this series is definitely and distinctly Doctor Who, continuing on from the minute he regenerated from David Tennant, and incorporating everything that fans of the new show have come to hope for. Daleks, Cybermen and weeping angels return from recent times. More old enemies from the classic series receive a 21st Century makeover. And of course, the Doctor is dashing and fantastic, saving the world and the universe over and over again by using his brains instead of a gun.
…mostly…
The DVD set is well presented, adopting a “paged” form of DVD storage rather than the fold-out form of previous sets. The holographic cover slip is nice to look at.
Only six of the episodes have commentaries, though these are highly entertaining in-vision commentaries, so you can watch the commentators as they sit together and talk about the show. There are the usual “Confidential Cut-Downs”, which are short features on the making of each episode.
All of the six discs are topped-up with further extras, including features with writers and actors talking about the iconic monsters, video diaries, trailers and bloopers. There are also a couple of additional scenes featuring Smith and Gillan as The Doctor and Amy in the TARDIS in between episodes.