What? A New Doctor Who?

What can I say?

It's a great joy seeing the Doctor Who series coming around again to the television screens after a while.

Never mind Easter. I want my Doctor Who.

And I got it. In more ways than one.

There's a new actor fitting himself into the lead role, and he brings with it a bristling charm and youthful appearance as Matt Smith slips into the part with ease. The wonderful thing about a series like Doctor Who is the ability to change the actor in the lead role while still being able to tell the story of a time traveling meddler.

Smith brings all his acting experience he has at the age of twenty-six, the youngest actor to be taking the mantle for the series. He plays it as if he is an older man in a very youthful body. There's a great enthusiasm being unleashed in his performance.

The opening shot of the episode “The Eleventh Hour” is going out in a blaze of glory. It's a wonderful scene filled with action. Having just regenerated into a new body, the Doctor must now contend with his time traveling machine crashing to earth... and in the middle of London.

It's great to see them messing around with stuff like this which brings the new actor right slap in the middle of things.

But the beauty of the story, the very center of a heartfelt tale, is in the newfound companion who befriends the Doctor when he crashes in her back yard. It is like a tale of the dashing, young hero, her knight in shining armor coming to take her away from the boredom of life. She is Amelia Pond, a very young girl of age ten. She is the first human the Doctor sees in his new form.

And it's a very touching moment.

Amelia Pond is a little redhead girl who has found her hero. And she says to him when he climbs back into his time machine, “Can I come with you?”

The Doctor promises to come back to her in five minutes.

It becomes twelve years instead.

And Amelia Pond is now all grown up played by the wonderful Karen Gillan, a little girl who has become resentful of her hero. She has become disappointed in her wonderful, dashing knight. It sets up a great conflict between them as the Doctor must convince her that he is the very same man of her childhood memories.

Not only that, the earth is in danger as a creature called Prisoner Zero is on the loose, and the very status of the world is threatened by an alien race who act as a prison warden keeping the prisoner in line. But the menacing creature is hiding itself along with the human race. And the Doctor has just twenty minutes to save the world.

It's a real tough break for the new Doctor Who.

Leave it to three time Hugo award winning writer Stephen Moffatt who pulls no punches with his introducing story of the new round of episodes. “The Eleventh Hour” is filled with so many heart warming moments... and it is the little things that makes up this story and sets it apart from the previous run of stories. “The Eleventh Hour” has so much style to it, clever gimmicks and a wild imagination. Thanks to Moffatt.

I love how one scene shows what is going on in the Doctor's mind. It's a simple technique involving stop action photography. And yet there is a great style to it all. You really get inside his head this time and it's very cool to see his point of view.

Karen Gillan is brilliant as Amelia Pond who is feisty, very sharp tongue girl, a very strong woman capable of making her own decisions. They may not be always the right decisions. But she sticks to her decisions especially when she shoves the Doctor's necktie into a locked car door so she could tear an answer out of him. It's a great scene.

What I also did like about this particular episode is the references of the previous shows in the old Doctor Who series. I remember seeing one reporter saying at the premiere showing of “The Eleventh Hour” regarding the lead actor: “He has pretty big shoes to fill... replacing David Tennant.”

But there are at least nine other actors who came before him.

The nice thing is the gentle nod to these other actors who make up the show's composite history, the montage of its long years on television. So Moffatt was writing this show with giving his nod to all those who came into its history. And now Matt Smith is the eleventh actor to be playing the part.

It's pure fun to see the show. There's a new lead writer, a new lead actor and new lead actress. There's a new feeling about it all. The show always experiences an anxiety from the audiences whenever there is a new actor stepping into the part. People get worried. Will it suck the bean bag? Will it be any good?

You don't have to worry about any of that.

The show is in very good hands.

Trust me on this.

And trust the new Doctor.

So this is really only a taste of things to come for the forthcoming Doctor Who series this time around with thirteen episodes produced. So I could only imagine the greatness approaching in another fine period of Doctor Who history.

Some people might not like it. They're missing out on the fun. For me, I'm very happy for the series to continue the tradition of Saturday night entertainment. And it's like I'm being dragged again by the Doctor himself into another round of adventures.

In a way, the Doctor is everyone's hero. I'm very excited. So should you.