A Rose …

My word, the thing’s you start watching, when there’s nowt on TV …

Well, I got bored with stuff about Stalin …

Somewhere in my back catalogue of backed up bits & bobs is the very first episode of the new series of “Dr Who”.

Ageing fan that I am, I’ve got to confess, I fell in love.

Again …

Much as I had as a child …

Odd?

No odder than dressing up in a silly costume and singing strange songs of a weekend; much like many football fans …

I’ve got to admit, that comparison, between football and sci-fi fandom, is probably more valid than people realise.

Or that’s my thinking.

Now I’d grown up on the original series — the Tom Baker years, to be exact — and that was the exact point I’d made to my (then) boss, Pete, back in 2005.

He’d wanted some idea’s for getting people into the Hutton; and the fact that the BBC were making a very big deal about the opening episode.

So I’d suggested getting a bunch of friends and fellow fans in to watch it.

He was dubious.

But my point — apart from the début episode being shorter — was quite simple. How was it different from half a dozen or so Accrington Stanley fans turning up to watch a game.

He had to agree with me.

It’s just a shame I couldn’t manage to pull that off, but there we go.

But it kind of show’s you the level of expectation that was surrounding “Rose”.

Something I thought, on actually seeing it, was fully justified.

“Rose” had a level of emotional maturity that I thought was very hard to find in most sci-fi serials of the 1970s and 80s. And definitely an improvement on the original.

One thing that struck me was the fact the Russell T Davis and the rest of the back-room gang had dug up both the Autons and the Nestene Consciousness.

And as a way of introducing the ongoing Time War thread that they’d written into the Doctor’s back story, had given the Consciousness a motivation for invading Earth; its homeworld had been destroyed in the War and it was blaming both the Doctor, and looking for a new place to live.

Something that the original series hadn’t done as well as it could.

But you don’t usually question these things, do you?

Not when you’re 7!

But that’s kind of my point, here, strange as it sounds.

The original — for me and many others — had magic to it.

Which “Rose”, for me, managed to re-capture.

I’ve been glued, ever since …