The Doctor

Is it just me, or is Doctor Who the best thing the BBC has ever made? When other shows are stuck in pubs and living rooms the Doctor is flying around time and space. The new season opener has all the insanity of its best episodes. Possessed astronaut suits, a crazy orphanage, aliens in suits. Sometimes it's like they throw a pile of ideas into a box and pick a few out at random. It's full of foreshadowing, symbolism, and parallel timelines that don't entirely make sense, but that's the brilliance of it. You've just got to go with it. It's unrestrained. If anything it's trying to appeal more and more to the hardcore fans. So much so that even I don't really follow all of it. Here the Doctor is killed in the first ten minutes, before a past (or present) version of him turns up to help, with a woman from his future who knows his past, and a man who used to be a robot Roman but came back to life in a new timeline.

But it can also be simple. This new season has introduced the show's scariest monsters. They're not old robots, they're freaky aliens who look they've escaped from a melted Edvard Munch painting. Standing and staring like all the best aliens do. And because they're one of Moffat's creations, they're based on a clever idea instead of big lasers. Look away and you forget them, resulting in all sorts of new ways to go mad. This is a show that keeps getting better, and nerdier, and more imaginative. If it was brand new, if it wasn't already a fifty-year old institution, would something this good be allowed to exist?