What's up, Doc?

I occasionally get asked (okay, I was once) why the new Doctor Who doesn't get the Battlestar/Lost/Avatar treatment on this blog. It's a current, ongoing SF series and would seem a fair target for coverage.

That's an interesting question, especially since I was a huge fan of the original show (in fact, just yesterday I had to move my old collection of 30-odd Who VHS tapes into storage). I think it stems from the fact that I see the new Doctor Who very much as a kid's show which sometimes rises above that to deliver killer episodes, but in terms of quality is extremely uneven, to the point where if I tried to review it I'd have to analyse it to death and probably lose all the sense of fun I do get out of watching it. There's also the issue that up until a few weeks back I wasn't getting back from work until after it finished, and as a result I'd missed huge chunks of Seasons 3 and 4 (or, as I like to call them, Seasons 29 and 30). And before someone mentions it, no the BBC iPlayer was not available in Ireland. Now I'm back in the UK I can make use of it.

Having said all of that, with Who taking a year off in 2009 (bar a couple of specials), I may take that opportunity to get the box sets in and take a look at the whole thing. I do like the new series, but it's a lot more infuriatingly uneven than almost any other SF show on the box at the moment.