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We’ve just started the fifth series – that’s the eleventh Doctor, Matt Smith. Must have clocked everything up to this point in under two months. Doctor Who is quite aggressively occupying a significant part of my conscious mind, almost to the point of distraction.

Can’t possibly formulate any structured thoughts at this juncture , but I’m moved to throw around some random ones:

  1. Tennant is my favourite Doctor. I thought it was Smith, but it’s not.

  2. Tennant in the Emotional Doctor. Smith is the Eccentric Doctor. Who is Ecclestone? The Stiff Upper Lip Doctor? Of course, he had it hardest. Just one series, and the first too. Doctor Who had yet to reassert itself. And Ecclestone admits he had more or less no character direction. Compare that to how precisely shaped the eleventh Doctor is, with each syllable and eye movement precisely predetermined by the production team and writers.

  3. I wept. I wept when Tennant said goodbye to Rose the first time. I wept when he handed her over to The Other Doctor in Journey’s End. There’s a moment – a very precise moment – when the character confronts the curse that is The Last of the Timelords. And it destroyed me. Today must have been the third of fourth time I’ve seen The End of Time. But watching it as part of a near daily schedule of Who viewings killed me. I was upset as Tennant at the idea of letting him go.

  4. I remember when I first found out that Catherine Tate was returning to be a full-time companion. I was pissed off. Yet she turned out to be the second best companion behind Rose! Incredible.

  5. The Master probably deserved better episodes. But John Simm’s interpretation of the character is so utterly compelling I still love every moment of all five Master episodes.

  6. The TARDIS is by some significant margin the most characterised non-speaking box to ever grace fiction. It’s so amazingly intrinsic to the character of The Doctor.

  7. Asylum of the Daleks is my favourite single-part Doctor Who episode.

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I’ve been watching a lot of Doctor Who of late. All of it, in fact. From the beginning, with my daughter. You see a show different when you watch it with daily intensity. And it was this moment that last night really struck me as the defining one for The Doctor.

It’s the final moment of Journey’s End – episode 13, series 4. It’s not really an episode that struck me when I watched it originally in 2008. But this time it completely bowled me over.

This is the moment Tennant so brilliantly captures the Curse of the Doctor.

Sarah Jane Smith has her son. Martha and Mickey have Torchwood. Jackie returns to her husband. Donna doesn’t even know who he is.

And Rose. Rose has found her Doctor. A Doctor who loves her in a way that THE Doctor was not able to. And THE Doctor has to stand there on the beach of Bad Wolf Bay and watch his imposter steal his dream.

He returns to his TARDIS. Alone with the rest of the universe. Ultimately, always alone. That’s the story of The Doctor and this is the moment that tells it.

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I’m playing Diablo III. For me, this is a big deal. One, because I don’t really “do” PC games (actually, over the course of this last year or so that’s become less and less true). And two, because Diablo III is all dungeons and gold and orcs and wizards and loot and shit.

And yes, I know I said similar this pre-Skyrim. Then fell in love with it and put in over 30 hours.

But, y’know, yeah. Diablo III’s cool. Went on a bit of a Torchlight binge beforehand. It was short but intense. That’s my experience of it, not the game itself. Which was good, actually.

Not sure how Bernard ended up this camp, though?

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This is still the best cityscape I’ve ever seen. Half-inched off tinternet for wallpaper a while back and wish I could credit the photographer.

EDIT: It’s Hong Kong, for those who’ve asked.