The new branding was released in a video by the BBC this morning:

New showrunner Steven Moffat is, of course, pleased with the new look:

A new logo. The eleventh logo for the eleventh Doctor - those grand old words, Doctor Who, suddenly looking newer than ever. And look at that, something really new - an insignia! DW in TARDIS form! Simple and beautiful, and most important of all, a completely irresistible doodle. I apologise to school notebooks everywhere, because in 2010 that's what they're going to be wearing.

The new logo will debut onscreen next year with Matt Smith's arrival as the Doctor.

[BBC America]

Apparently, there are rumblings that spring 2010 will only see the transmission of the first six episodes of the eleventh Doctor's debut series. The show would then take a break until around October, at which time the BBC would broadcast the remain seven episodes. A Christmas special would then close out the year.

If I had to guess, this could have something to do with the World Cup, which will take place from June 11 to July 11 in 2010. The BBC might well remember the last episode to come into conflict with a big World Cup match. The series two episode "The Satan Pit", which faced off against England's first match in the 2006 tournament, was the lowest rated episode of the new series. The move to split the series in two might also be meant to avoid the more general ratings drop Doctor Who experiences in the summer, as the weather gets nicer and more families spend Saturday evenings outside.

On a less pragmatic and more creative level, this could allow for the series to put in a truly massive, months-spanning cliffhanger at the midseason break, something the series has never really done before. Generally speaking, the need to preserve the Christmas specials as events unto themselves has meant they had to be separate from the stories before and after them, precluding the possibility of a big cliffhanger at the end of either the previous episode thirteen or the special itself. (Admittedly, "Doomsday" and "Last of the Time Lords" threw in random teasers for their subsequent Christmas specials, and "Journey's End" almost did the same. But those were all incidental to the story that had preceded it and neither of the two that actually aired placed the Doctor in danger.)

There's something wonderfully cruel and perverse (and thus very Steven Moffat) about the thought of ending episode six with Matt Smith and Karen Gillan in mortal peril from some terrible enemy, only to suddenly cut to the words, "See you in six months!" Frankly, I'd be disappointed if Moffat didn't do it.

[Life, Doctor Who & Combon]

All the Doctors from Patrick Troughton to Sylvester McCoy had their faces superimposed on their respective time tunnels and/or star fields. Generally speaking, the images were from photos taken just after the actors were cast in the role, which meant they often looked a bit ridiculous and less and less like the Doctor as the years passed.

Easily the silliest of these title images was Sylvester McCoy's, for which his face was inexplicably painted silver and he was made to wink at the screen. It really has to be seen (or reseen) to be believed:

This all may sound like a rather minor change, but I have to admit I was slightly disappointed way back in 2005 when the new series's opening titles didn't feature a crappy picture of a shell-shocked Christopher Eccleston. For whatever reason, I find this silly little convention to be an important part of the original show's charm. With all the other classic parts of the series's history already having been revived, this is one element I'm very glad to see make a comeback.

[Bleeding Cool]

Gillan previously appeared in last year's "Fires Of Pompeii" as a soothsayer, and she's also appeared in the Scottish drama Rebus, plus Stacked, The Kevin Bishop Show and James Nesbitt's forthcoming film Outcast. "When she auditioned alongside Matt we knew we had something special," said Piers Wenger, head of drama for BBC Wales.

New showrunner Steven Moffat also gushes:

Writer and executive producer Steven Moffat said they saw some "amazing actresses" but Gillan "walked through the door the game was up".

He described her as "funny, and clever, and gorgeous, and sexy. Or Scottish, which is the quick way of saying it".

"A generation of little girls will want to be her. And a generation of little boys will want them to be her too," he added.

Insert obligatory comment about how young she is, and how young the new Doctor is, and why can't the Doctor still be a crotchety old man traveling around with a couple schoolteachers and his granddaughter. [BBC News]

We can't tell you how much we want the upcoming Tintin movies to be sci-fi; what genre wouldn't want to claim a couple of movies written by Steven Moffat, directed by Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg and starring (amongst others) Simon Pegg and Nick Frost (as the Thompson Twins) alongside Andy "I was Gollum and King Kong, you know" Serkis, after all? It's like the ideal science-fiction movie... except that, really, Tintin isn't really science fiction.

Oh, we've tried to convince ourselves otherwise, pointing out that he went to the moon in a couple of books, not to mention an appearance by a strange meteor. But the fact remains that, overall, The Adventures of Tintin remains a more grounded series, despite occasionally wandering into stranger territories (Plus, sadly, the movies are apparently based on the very not science fiction books The Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham's Treasure).

And so, we're left looking at the amazing collection of talent behind the Tintin movies, wishing that they could come to their senses and just work on a proper science fiction story instead of this Boy Reporter And Pirates stuff, and also sneakily reporting on it nonetheless by disguising it as a post about being sad that the movies aren't science fiction after all.

Simon Pegg, Nick Frost join 'Tintin' [Variety]

Says Moffat,

Although I loved Peter Davison and Paul McGann, probably the best two actors in the role, I don’t think young, dashing Doctors are right at all... He should be 40-plus and weird-looking — the kind of wacky grandfather kids know on sight to be secretly one of them.

As for Wogan's semi-promise, it's possible he's just referring to the fact that the first couple of minutes of the Christmas special, "The Next Doctor," will air during the charity night.

[Planet Gallifrey and BBC America]

Rich Johnston - the man who broke the "Paterson Joseph is the new Doctor" rumor before Tennant had officially announced he was leaving - continues his streak of Who rumors in this week's edition of his Lying In The Gutters column, claiming that the reasons that Tennant has been giving for deciding to leave aren't exactly true:

So was David Tennant's leaving the show all down to his need to move on? A now or never thing? Not quite. He had been in negotiations with the BBC for a fifth, even a sixth full series, but wanted another 2009-lite Doctor Who break in 2011, a film pursued, and money above the current BBC wage cap. It didn't happen.

Something that did give Tennant reason to rethink his leaving, according to Tennant himself, was the appointment of Steven Moffat as new showrunner:

I had a meeting with Steven Moffat and in a way that's been the most difficult bit because I'm such a big fan of his. He told me some of his ideas for what's coming up in the show and it's going to be so good. When I finally thought I'd made a decision suddenly I was tempted to change my mind again.

Those ideas include a storyarc that will either have to be reworked considerably, or junked entirely, according to Johnston:

The one bigger casualty, as well as casting for The Doctor sooner than expected, has been an arc in Series Five for the River Song character, revealed in Series 4 as the Doctor's possible future wife. Arc plans are being rewritten, but the new team has plenty of time...

As well as Paterson Joseph, Johnston claims that Sean Pertwee and Marc Warren are in the running to take over the Tardis in 2010, which may make this comment more understandable:

I have it on veeeeery good authority that the next Doctor has already been chosen. It's an interesting new direction, and the choice (assuming no changes of heart) will probably surprise - and divide - many. The name I've heard isn't Paterson Joseph. Or John Simm. Or James Nesbitt.

Admit it; it's Mos Def, isn't it?

Lying In The Gutters [Comic Book Resources], Tennant: 'Moffat almost changed my mind' [Digital Spy]

On the topic of a third Doctor Who motion picture, Moffat told the gathering:

As long as it was great and fantastic then yeah. But a film is on [for] 90 minutes and that is not as important as the series. But as long as it doesn't get in the way of the show we could do it.

He said that when he bailed on his commitment to write TIntin movies to take over Doctor Who, director Steven Spielberg told him "The world would be a poorer place without Doctor Who."

Moffat, who devoted a lot of his recent mega-library two-parter to lecturing against spoilers, had a message for those of us who spread plot info in advance: "Shut up! Just shut up!" He said it's pretty easy to get spoilers on Doctor Who, because they practically publish the scripts and they film in public. But you should exercise some self-control, let you become "that bore in the pub who delivers the punchline of a joke a second before it is delivered."

Someone asked if the Doctor would ever be an old man again, as he was in the early years. And he said no, because the new amped-up filming schedule is hard enough for a "superfit David Tennant" and would kill an older lead actor. "For Doctor Who to turn into an old man, you'd be pissed off," he added. "Even William Hartnell had trouble back then, he was often ill and he forgot his lines. I think the Doctor will always be about 40." [Guardian]

In the longer version of the 2008 Christmas special trailer, we saw the Doctor asking a small boy what day it was. The little boy replies, with disarming specificity, that it's Christmas Eve 1851. And then Velile Tshabalala, playing temporary companion "Rosita," says that a "creature came out of the shadows, a man made of metal." And later we hear Rosita calling out for the Doctor. We also glimpse Dervla Kerwin's sinister Miss Hartigan, who's at a funeral when a man asks what manner of men these metal figures are. Miss Hartigan replies, "Cybermen," with obvious satisfaction. And then we see Miss Hartigan say "Merry Christmas" in a totally evil way. If you want to ruin your eyes, here's a cameraphone copy:

Other exciting revelations at the Doctor Who and Torchwood panels:

• Moffat says his famous catch phrase "wibbly wobbly timey whimey" isn't a "get-out clause," because the time travel and manipulation still has to make sense in the story.
• There were very vague hints about Neil Gaiman writing for Moffat's Who. At his reading, Gaiman said it would be okay to mention to Moffat that it would be nice. And Moffat agreed that it would be nice.
• People kept asking John Barrowman if he'd read the end of the script for the season three finale, where it's revealed Captain Jack is the Face of Boe, and he hadn't read it yet. Finally, he did read it, and screamed and freaked out with glee.
• Moffat said you have to give the Doctor credit for "dumping a sligthly clingy girlfriend" by sticking her with a clone.
• Gardner and Moffat disagreed about whether to bring back Donna's kids at the end of "The Forest Of The Dead." Moffat didn't want to kill off kids in a kids' show, and Gardner thought it was a mistake to bring them back as River Song's kids at the end, because it would be confusing. But now Moffat's changed his mind and thinks it "was a loss of clarity and it makes no sense." Now, when he watches the episode he can't stand watching it after the moment where the TARDIS door closes. But Gardner has changed her mind too, and thinks it makes sense to keep the kids around.
• It's deliberately vague as to whether River Song recognizes the "essence of the Doctor" or specifically the David Tennant Doctor. But in Moffat's mind, she's met the Tennant Doctor before, and that's not the only Doctor she's met.
• Moffat thinks the "stunt value" of two Doctors meeting only lasts about eight minutes, and any plot just gets in the way of the wish fulfillment of seeing them chatting. He wouldn't do a longer story involving two Doctors, unless he had a way to get some energy from the fact that the same adventure was happening to this man at two different times in his life.
• Asked about bringing back random old characters from the classic show, Moffat said it's most important to tailor the show for the new eight-year-old viewers. "We're not in the business of doing nostalgia, we're makking nostalgia for the future."
• Also, asked whether his Who would be too frightening, he responded: "If your concern is that with me taking over Doctor Who, it's going to be really really frightening every week, then tough." (But Moffat also told Sci Fi Wire that we shouldn't expect all of his episodes to be the same as "Blink," because he'll have to vary his style more when he's overseeing a whole season.)
• The Doctor's daughter didn't die, as originally planned, because Moffat made an off-hand comment to Russell T. Davies that introducing the character and killing her in the same episode would be "what Star Trek would do."
• BBC America officially announced that it's picking up the third season of Torchwood to air in the U.S. And the new Torchwood season starts shooting soon. Davies is working on scripts for it right now.

We've been debating on our site endlessly: Is Doctor Who a kids' program?

Yes. Debate over. It's good to fix those things quickly.

Even though it has a huge adult following? It's not aimed at both?

It's aimed at kids and adults. And why should anyone care about this? If you watch it, then it's for you. It shouldn't matter. I mean the specific thing about it being a children's program, is that it follows the imperatives and narrative rules and the joy of children's fiction. If you watch Doctor Who at 9 pm at night [as you do in the United States] it's going to seem a bit odd. It's energetic. The Doctor walks straight out of the TARDIS and into trouble, and you accept it. The Master becomes Prime Minister of Britain, and you accept it. It's got all the brio and vigor of Harry Potter, Narnia and Star Wars. That doesn't mean it doesn't appeal to adults. Star Wars, the most successful film franchise ever, is explicitly for children, but adults love it. Doctor Who is my favorite thing in the world. If you're in Britain, we'll show you the sticker books [and] the lunchboxes. In the schoolyard on Monday, they're all talking about Doctor Who. That doesn't mean it's childish. It's very sophisticated.

And of course England has a tradition of children's literature that's quite nasty, like Roald Dahl.

It's naughty... It's all fear. death and screaming women. It's innocent people being melted in the first 5 minutes of every episode. Why should there be a debate? If they watch it, it's their program. We're very happy they watch it [but] every single one of them would enjoy it more if they watched it with an eight-year-old. You really see it then... Literally, the whole family sits down to watch Doctor Who: mum and dad, granddad, the two kids... Mum's fancying David Tennant, dad's thinking the spaceships are really cool, the granddad is saying it was better when it was William Hartnell.... and they're all thinking it's aimed at them.

Have you seen Wall-E?

I haven't seen Wall-E. It looks fantastic.

I was really blown away by it. It's a kid's movie, but it deals with some incredibly weighty issues.

The misconception about children's ficition is that it's lightweight or fluffy. It's about really big and important things. It's adults who like light and fluffy. Everything is big and imprtant to a child, [so] their stories are about big and important events.

When the show re-launched, original showrunner Russell T. Davies talked about being influenced by Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Is the show still being influenced by Buffy?

I think when you start on a show like that... You are looking around [for things to compare it to]. Where does it sit now? What is like this now? What can I give as an example of this? Buffy is a good example: it's young-skewed, adventurous, funny and irreverent. But the moment you start making the show, you stop thinking of Buffy [and] you start thinking of Doctor Who. Doctor Who is a huge, fantastic, important show now.

So are there any shows happening now that you're more influenced by?

[You watch things, and inevitably you're influenced by things you like.] A show like Doctor Who has always been eclectic and kleptomaniac. You start grabbing bits of shows. Doctor Who switches shows all the time. You want to do a bank robbery episode of Doctor Who? You can do a bank robbery episode of Doctor Who.

So are we going to get something off the wall, like a bank robbery episode, in season five?

I won't say much about series five. It's two years off. Even giving tantalizing hints, those things will become so old. [People would be analyzing and debating them to death.] In two years [when] series five comes out, I want it to be the freshest thing in the world.

I won't ask for series five spoilers then. Except, any chance we'll be seeing River Song again?

The Doctor will certainly see her, and we know he will some day. But as to whether we will? (Shrugs)

So speaking of River Song, one of the most intriguing things in your recent two-parter was all the mentions of the future super-Doctor, who can open the TARDIS by snapping his fingers. Is that a sign of things to come?

If you've got a bluetooth key for your car, you can practically do that anyway. Having the Doctor be able to open his door [by snapping] is not a big deal. You've seen him change his face. What's really important to Doctor Who - I was discussing this with Russell the other day - is that he's got the biggest gob in the universe, and [he can talk people into anything]. Underneath it all, he's a bloke. He 's a man. He's just a man with a time machine who is brilliant at convincing people of things... and it's a great bluff. When [River Song] whispers his name in his ear, he freaks, and you see him collapse back into himself, and [into] being just a bloke. David Tennant does a brilliant job. David shows him [building back up] and shouldering the burden of being the Doctor again. He's the man who never gives up, and that's his super-power.

But there are hints in other episodes of the Doctor being sort of a god. And in the end of that Paul Cornell two-parter last year, we see him inflicting these godlike super-punishments on people, freezing them or trapping them in mirrors.

You see a very collapsed version of those events. He does things. He's not magic... It would be a very boring legend if you discovered that, at the center of it, it's actually a legend. You want it to be a legend about a man. It becomes dramatically interesting, because he is a man. I'm surprised people are worried about that. There's a lot, in the rest of the series, where we play a very human Doctor. He's prone to jealousies, he's prone to falling in love, his heart can be broken. And he's thinking, "How can i keep doing this?"

Speaking of Paul Cornell, he wrote a Doctor Who internet audio starring Richard E. Grant called "Scream Of The Shalka," where we see a Doctor who's much more weary and self-loathing. Will we ever see that side of the Doctor on television?

I shouldn't think that. I don't think that's something that we could sell to a mainstream audience, a Doctor who loathes himself. A bitter, sad Doctor. You're not going to get the audience for that. You want to think, this man is having the best life ever. This is not a piece of art-house cinema. You get glimpses of the great sadness and the loneliness, [but] that's just the occasional colour. [Even in the "Shalka" storyline, it was just an arc within that story.] Most of the time he's going to be running and running.

You're obviously influenced by the Peter Davison era, and you wrote "Time Crash," where he met David Tennant's Doctor. How does that inform your approach to a more human Doctor?

I really enjoyed Peter's Doctor. I said sometimes, he's underrated as the Doctor - although not after "Time Crash," that's for sure. I think he's a brilliant Doctor... He paved the way for the younger, more reckless Doctors... He is the [first] modern Doctor... [Before Davison], he was always the father figure, and suddenly the Doctor became your reckless mate... The Doctor always doesn't know what he's doing, he just hopes he can get away with it.

So for now we're seeing a human side of the Doctor, but are we eventually going to see him turning into the super-Doctor River Song describes? Maybe in series ten?

He's an incredible man, and we want him to do things that seem like magic. How must it have seemed to the court of Versailles, when he crashed through the mirror on a horse? How must it have looked to them? [Whereas] we know there was a horse on the spaceship, and there was a portal, and it was a trick.

Your episodes of Doctor Who are among the scariest, and you also worked on the fantastic Jekyll. What are your horror influences?

I'll be honest. The horror influence on me is Doctor Who. I haven't watched a lot of scary movies. I watched The Ring, that's bloody terrifying. Gareth Roberts, who wrote "The Unicorn And The Wasp," has a theory: You write Doctor Who as you remember it. He remembers it as funny and clever, so he writes that kind of Doctor Who. I remember it as being scary.

In the Batman comics, the idea that Batman creates his own villains used to be a subversive undercurrent, but recently it's become more like the official story. Similarly, there's the idea that the Doctor creates more problems than he solves, and he's a destructive force. This comes up in the most recent season finale, with Davros saying the Doctor dare not look back at the damage he's caused. Is this view of the Doctor becoming more prevalent?

I would hate that to be true. I think that's Davros winding him up. I want to think the universe is held in balance by this one good man. I think he does more than that, he inspires people to great acts of heroes of heroism. That's what Davros sees, because he's a mean-spirirted old [jerk], but the Doctor is more special and lovely than that.

One of the great innovations of the Russell T. Davies era was the idea of the companion being connected to her home and family, and keeping the family as a supporting cast. How do you keep that fresh with a succession of new companions?

You change everything, all the time. Even that element of the show has changed radically over the past four years... You don't worry about doing things radically, in an a new way... [You] do what tells the story... It was very important that Rose, Jackie and Mickey were clear, developed characters. [When the show started] the Doctor was a ridiculous guide. [Audiences didn't] understand who he is and what he's supposed to be. But [now] it's very different, because the Doctor is the most familiar character in the show. [Originally] we knew Rose much better than the Doctor, and now we know the Doctor better than we know Rose. And now we see Rose from the Doctor's point of view, instead of seeing the Doctor from Rose's point of view. You have to stay alive and stay lively, and Doctor Who is about change. Change is part of Doctor Who's formula. It must change.

Given the choice between taking the reins of Doctor Who and fulfilling his contract to write the second Tintin movie for Spielberg and Jackson was a no-brainer, according to Moffat:

I know a lot of people won't understand it but I've been dreaming about writing for Doctor Who since I was seven. There are no bad feelings between Spielberg and me, but Doctor Who has to come before Hollywood... I could not work on the second Tintin film and work on Doctor Who. So I chose Doctor Who. Steven is a fan and he understood my passion for the series completely.

Moffat, who's already written the first of a planned Tintin trilogy, was originally contracted to write the first two before being offered the Who gig. In a classic British tabloid attempt, the Mail of Sunday story quotes an anonymous (and potentially fictional) Hollywood insider to give the story some more spice:

No one walks away from Spielberg and all that money for a show no one has heard of. I mean, what is this doctor show about? It sounds a little silly.

More silly than a Belgian boy reporter and his cute little dog hanging out with alcoholic sea captains and having adventures on the moon? Somehow, I don't think so, Johnny Hollywood.

£500,000 Mr Spielberg? Sorry, I've got a date with the Beeb, says the new Dr Who writer [Mail on Sunday]

Talking to the UK's Daily Mirror newspaper, Davies explained how he knew it was time to leave the series:

I have got about 27 ideas boiling in my head [for non-Who stories] and that is the main reason why I've left... I love Doctor Who and I never want to go off it or get bored. Right now I want to go and work on series five, but I know that means it is the right time to leave. I get a lot of people who want me to come and make a family drama for them. But having done Doctor Who I have done the best - anything else would pale in comparison. I have almost got to go and do adult stuff, something a bit cheeky or sexy. I will just see which thing comes to the front of my mind first and start with that.

Not that he's not proud of what he's managed to accomplish in his four years with the show, as he admits:

Lot of people said we wouldn't get kids watching, saying they've moved on. And we proved them wrong. The show connects with people and it's fun. There is always that element of escapism with science fiction, but we have also had things to say about serious issues, such as Iraq and women's body sizes. I'm very proud of it because I've loved it all my life. If Doctor Who is on my headstone that would be great. So be it.

Davies has four more "special" episodes of the show left, running across 2009, before Steven Moffat takes over the reins of Doctor Who in 2010.

Exclusive: Russell T Davies on the future of Dr Who [Daily Mirror]

Despite the fact that his hair is dark brown, Steven Moffat is everybody's favorite golden-boy Doctor Who writer. He's won two Hugo Awards so far for his episodes, and been nominated for two more Nebulas and another Hugo as well. With current showrunner Russell T. Davies's blessing, Moffat is all set to take over Doctor Who in 2010. But color me skeptical — I'm not sure we should be as happy and excited about this as everyone thinks.

Don't get me wrong. There was a time when I, too, thought Steven Moffat was one of the greatest television writers in the world. I watched all the seasons of Coupling — even the one without Richard Coyle! — and I adored his brilliant World War II two-parter in the first season of Doctor Who. Clearly Davies did, too, according to his March 2008 interview with Digital Spy:

I'll rewrite 100% if I have to. With Steven Moffat's scripts, I don't touch a word, but anyone else's I do.

Not one word, Russell? Seriously? Trust me - if you really can't find a single problem with Moffat's work, I don't think that you're doing your job as showrunner. Sure, Moffat kicked ass with "The Empty Child" and "The Doctor Dances," but his episode contributions have been going steadily downhill from there. Let's look at the evidence:

"The Girl In The Fireplace"

This was a clever story, at the beginning — it's one of those historical episodes that lets the Doctor Who producers clap themselves on the back for being educational guides to hordes of British schoolchildren (and adults). The Doctor, Rose, and Mickey discover a drifting spaceship in the 51st century (Moffat's "futuristic era" of choice, apparently - he's used it before and he'll use it again) and, as it turns out, the spaceship is attempting to repair itself by harvesting human organs from its visitors. To make matters worse, bits of pre-revolutionary France keep popping through time pockets on the ship, and sucking the Doctor back.

What then develops is a random, thoughtless romance between the Doctor and famous courtesan Madame de Pompadour, who was the most famous mistress of King Louis XV of France. Apparently the Doctor's always had a crush on her; with the whole universe at his disposal, naturally the most impressive, alluring woman he can think of is a professional sex buddy from the 17th century. And after a short acquaintance, aided by the vagaries of spaceship time pockets, he's ready to settle down and give up everything for her: not only his life, but Rose's and Mickey's as well. It's pretty jarring, if you're used to watching a show about a time-travelling maverick who values his companions above all else, who never has sex, and whose one prized possession is his TARDIS. And who, a single episode before, promised his longtime friend Rose that he'd never leave her — especially not to be mutilated alive by robots on a deserted spaceship.

It's sinister. And it belies far too much of what Steven Moffat really thinks of women like Rose and Madame de Pompadour:

There’s this issue you’re not allowed to discuss: that women are needy. Men can go for longer, more happily, without women. That’s the truth. We don’t, as little boys, play at being married - we try to avoid it for as long as possible. Meanwhile women are out there hunting for husbands.

Whatever your opinion of his none-too-thinly veiled misogyny, it's clear from that comment that Moffat views people only in terms of vast generalizations (Actually, Steven, what you seem to misunderstand is that not all women are hunting for husbands - some of us are scheming to take over Doctor Who so we can make it cohesive and thoughtful, instead.)

It should come as no surprise, then, that he has more trouble with characterization than any Doctor Who showrunner should.

"Blink"

Nowhere are his characterization troubles more evident than in "Blink," Moffat's much-hailed Season 3 episode about statues that come to life when no one's looking. The idea of super-deadly aliens hiding out as gargoyles is certainly a tantalizing one, but the real scare in this episode is not those famous Weeping Angels. It's not even Moffat's embarrassingly flat narrator, Sally Sparrow, whose lack of complexity has earned her a place of honor in the annals of Mary Sue. It's the way women are written as if they have absolutely no control over what happens in their life at all — and they're fine with that.

"Blink" is a Doctor-lite episode, so we don't see him much and Martha appears even less. One might at least expect a solid presence, though, from his educated companion: She's most of the way to becoming a medical doctor, and, having grown up in a large and wild family, doesn't take shit from anyone. When she and the Doctor get trapped in 1969 with a broken TARDIS, though, it's Martha who's saddled with the consequences — and when she complains about working in a shop to support his doing who-knows-what, the Doctor shushes her away. Not now, Martha, men are talking.

To be fair, the woman with the most screen time, Sally Sparrow, does experience a tiny bit of development... if you could call it that. Throughout the course of the episode, while remaining quite superhuman in the way she deals with every obstacle, she's firm about her disinterest in her unwitting sidekick Larry. And yet, once the adventure's over, she loops her arm through his, all done with saving the world and ready to run a shop. No explanation.

Her friend Kathy makes a similarly nonsensical choice, when the Weeping Angels toss her back to 19th-century Hull and she finds herself alone in a field with a boy named Ben:

KATHY: Are you following me?

BEN: Yeah.

KATHY: Are you gonna stop following me?

BEN: No, I don't think so.

And then - marriage. Just like that.

It must make sense to some viewers and writers, that a happily single woman with her head screwed on straight could suddenly turn a corner and be ready to submit to previously unworthy suitors. The "no-means-yes" romance plotline is a convenient and popular one in television; hell, it's even been in Buffy. But as any dictionary will tell you, "no" is the opposite of "yes" — and the more television writers like Moffat push that dangerous fallacy, the more girls and women will find themselves victims of sci-fi fans who don't understand the rules of consent. Or, at the very least, they'll find themselves working in a shop to support a boyfriend's useless tinkering.

"Time Crash"

Okay, I'll admit it: this was a wickedly entertaining eight minutes. And yet, think about it: It's the Fifth Doctor and the Tenth Doctor, together. All one really needed to do was have them declare mutual respect using their trademark catchphrases, and possibly mock each other's costumes — both of which Moffat did, like the experienced audience manipulator he is. This doesn't mean he has any great genius to impart, or that "Time Crash" actually provided anything for anybody beyond fanboy glee for the Doctor Who faithful who remember Peter Davison's first time in the outfit. How fabulous for them; how utterly boring for the rest of the world, who deserve a part of Doctor Who as much as anyone.

"Silence in the Library" / "The Forest of the Dead"

If you're unconvinced by what I've said so far, I promise you that this baby is the clincher. Perhaps "The Girl in the Fireplace," "Blink," and "Time Crash" had enough cleverness and nerd-nip in them to blot out the Moffat misogyny, but his Season 4 two-parter established without a doubt that this guy has jumped the shark.

These episodes are peppered with problems. First of all, the main danger is a roving hive of flesh-eaters that exist in every shadow — which means, yes, keep in the light and... don't blink. Wow, that sounds familiar. And a (you guessed it) 51st-century archaeological research team has special technology that captures brainwaves in telecommunications devices, making it possible for people to literally speak from the dead. It's disturbing, especially when the team forces everyone to sit through someone's dying thoughts for several minutes … before they realize, oops, they could have turned it off all along. Moffat's estimate that only a few thousand visitors would come to the largest library in the universe is pretty sobering. His irritating repetition of successful tricks from his previous episodes is even more sobering. The worst, however, is yet to come.

To add to his litany of badly drawn, disappointing female characters, Moffat gave us River Song, an archaeologist from the Doctor's future who not only knows everything about him, but to whom he's also entrusted his precious sonic screwdriver. I'll say one thing for ol' Steven — apparently, he's a great wingman. He loves to set the Doctor up with every eligible, eternally willing female who comes along. Song's maddening smugness about her foreknowledge goes hand-in-hand with Moffat's, whose script is blasting love and admiration for Song before the audience has even accepted her existence. She's got no character; all we know is that someday she's important to the Doctor and that she loves him to pieces — so much that she's kept a detailed diary of every minute they've spent together. The idea that someone as empty as Song could actually be a romantic foil for the Doctor goes way beyond distasteful. I mean, once, we had Romana.

The next secondary character we get is Miss Evangelista, a personal assistant to the expedition head who's breathtakingly beautiful — but also breathtakingly dumb! Get it? Isn't that hilarious? It gets better - Later, we see the undead cyber version of the character and because of a few misplaced zeroes and ones, now she's incredibly smart yet hideously deformed, because you can't be intelligent and pretty. Ha! Ha!

But the worst part of Moffat's two-parter has nothing to do with sexism or characterization. It's at the very end, when River Song sacrifices her life for the Doctor's — and the Doctor collects her last remaining brainwaves to be stored in a giant computer program. In that way, Moffat tells us, she can live forever; and the camera pans over a vast cyber-meadow inside some giant hard drive, showing all of the lost archaeological team members.

With that, Moffat casually slips in his belief that the richness of human life can be captured with nothing more than what it takes to power a couple of LEDs. There's no discussion on this from any character, no resistance, no ambiguity in the dialogue — it just is. The Doctor's given her this great gift, something we could all hope for if we didn't bother to think about what it meant: He's simply translated her characteristics into lines of code and flipped a switch.

The line between intelligence and artificial intelligence is a powerful concept in sci-fi; it has sparked countless fantastic books, movies, and discussions. Moffat glossed over all that without a single word. If he'd rather ignore the thoughtful philosophical considerations that sci-fi can inspire, why is he even writing sci-fi?

Science fiction is supposed to be about raising the level of discourse on society by opening up the door to fantastic possibilities. It's supposed to be about hope, exploration, and opportunity — not cheapening what it means to be human, and certainly not subjugating people in the name of great white men. Yes, the first episode of Doctor Who (which aired all the way back in 1963) featured the Doctor as an old white man, cautioning his granddaughter against mimicing the stupidity of "the red Indian." But that racism wasn't something anybody wanted to see in the Doctor Who revival, and neither is Moffat's simplified view of human life or his bizarre seeming vendetta against women. We're in the future now; let's give everybody a chance to be great.

That said, no matter how great you are, you'll still need an editor. Everybody does. Even — maybe especially — the not-so-fantastic Steven Moffat.

Screen captures from time-and-space.co.uk

According to Moffat, he found out that he was being offered the job last summer while getting on a plane:

I heard last July when I got an email from Russell as I boarded a plane to Athens... and there it was on my Blackberry: an email. A whopping great 'What do you think?' It was a bit gobsmacking, to be honest.

Look, I know that Blackberries get a really bad reputation from people, but this is one of the few times that we've got to be grateful that they exist. You can tell from the offhanded way that Davies apparently sent the email that he was treating the whole "successor" thing in a very low-key way, and if Moffat hadn't been available through the wonder of email and handheld devices at that point, who's to say that Davies wouldn't have just gone ahead to offer it to whoever was walking past his office at the time? Was the world really ready for Chris Chibnall's Who? Exactly.

When asked what the fifth season of the series would be like, Moffat was disarmingly honest:

It's kind of hard to have a feeling about it at the moment - and it's way too soon to be talking about it. Series five is two years away.

Hey, Steven? If you're looking for suggestions, this lot have some worth paying attention to. Especially number 5.

(Oh, and keep letting twelve year-old extras write reports on their experiences for the internet: "I'm not allowed to say what happens in the second episode as I don't want to spoil it for anyone, but I do lots of screaming!" seems to sum up the whole Doctor Who experience.)

Moffat offered 'Doctor Who' job by email [Digital Spy]

Okay, so what on earth is actually going on in this clip? First we have Donna, who's been turned into a total pile of mush by two utterly generic children — children who are so generic, they literally are copies of every other child in the world. And yet Donna's so attached to them that even after the truth is proved to her in the universe's most incontrovertible, she still won't believe it. What is going on with that? I was waiting, through the whole episode, for Donna to have a moment of awesomeness where she not only accepted her situation, she also discovered a way out. Or at least found a way to make a difference. Instead, she just gets rescued. Bah.

The other participant in the scene, of course, is Miss Evangelista, who is comically ugly. Last week, she was incredibly beautiful (and wearing 10,000 times too much makeup) and so stupid she kept mistaking the escape pod for a toilet. I sort of rolled my eyes at the sexist caricature, but assumed she was just a throwaway character, or else Moffat was going somewhere with it. Like she was just pretending to be stupid. But then we get this — she becomes a super-mega-genius, but at the cost of her looks. Because you can't be pretty and smart. It's Asimov's law. Worst of all, Miss Evangelista intones some mock-Victorian rubbish about how you can only see the truth if you're unloved. She's in a virtual world. Can't she look like whatever she wants, or whatever the computer wants her to look like? Isn't any "love" inside the virtual world just an illusion? Why didn't Doctor Moon give Miss Evangelista her own fake husband anyway?

The other major female character in "Forest Of The Dead," meanwhile, is River Song, the Doctor's old friend whom he's never met. And I still really, really like her and hope we get to see her again. But I did start to have some misgivings. Mostly about her ending, actually. First she sacrifices her life in the most contrived and cliched way possible, the same way Sergey Brin sacrificed himself a few episodes ago (thumping the Doctor and taking his place.) I wasn't really clear on why someone needed to sacrifice his/her life anyway, because the script suddenly got very techno-babbly. And then it turns out she's not really dead, because the Doctor's future self left an escape hatch. Instead, she can be resurrected inside the world's most boring virtual reality scenario, trapped forever with the crewmates she showed no sign of liking earlier. And she gets to look after the little girl whose brain is hooked up to the computer, plus the two generic children that Donna was mothering earlier.

Let's just unpack that for a sec: She's stuck mothering three little kids, two of whom are basically scraps of junk code and none of whom will ever age — forever. This is what the Doctor came up with for her? He had hundreds of years to figure out a way to save her from frying her brain, and this is the best he could come up with? I think the words "fate worse than death" floated into my brain at some point. But at least she's not ugly, so it's fine. Oh, and hey — Miss Evangelista's suddenly not ugly any more either! Happy ending!

I only have one more criticism before I mention some things I actually liked about the episode — and I liked a lot about it, really. I mentioned last week that a lot of the story elements felt a bit similar to previous forays into the Moffat-verse. For example, I had an inkling that the whole thing about people's conscoiusnesses being stored, and the missing people being "saved," would turn out to be similar to the way the medicinal nano-genes in "The Empty Child"/"The Doctor Dances" turned out to be the key to the whole gasmask mutation, and to saving everybody. I figured it might wind up being a bit similar, but I wasn't expecting an actual repeat of the "Everybody lives!" line from "The Doctor Dances." Not once, but several times. It's a bit worrying for 2010, when Moffat takes over as the head writer for Doctor Who, if he's already repeating himself like poor old Proper Dave.

But oh yeah, before I get devoured in seconds by a swarm of angry shadows, I should mention what I actually did like about the episode. I liked, once again, the hints about the Doctor's future and how awe-inspiring he's going to be. (Although I hope we never actually see that version of the Doctor, since his adventures might be quite boring.)

I was definitely intrigued by the mystery about the Doctor's real name, and what were the only circumstances under which the Doctor could share it with another sentient. I'm assuming it's a sound that a human mouth can make, so is there a reason it's hard to say except under controlled conditions? Also, why is his name so special? (Were Borusa, Spandrell, Kelner, Romanadvoratrelundar, etc., those people's real names, or not?) Anyway, it was intriguing.

And I felt like this episode was sort of groping towards a really interesting metaphor — the library is supposed to be the sum of all human knowledge, but more than that, it's supposed to be all our stories. And yet the physical medium on which those stories are reproduced lets us down. You can print them on paper books, but then they get infected with evil shadows and stuff. (Or in the case of the little used bookstore near my house, actual weird-smelling mold.) You can store them digitally, but you run into storage problems — which is why Donna's "fictional" children are so rubbish. The only way for stories to stay vital is for living people to keep telling them. Or maybe I'm just pulling that out of nowhere. Anyway, I was on the edge of my seat for large parts of this episode because I felt like the library planet, and the books, and the shadows, and the virtual reality, and the creepy Doctor Moon, and the fake kids, would all connect up in some brilliant way. They didn't, quite, but they managed to feel like they at least belonged in the same story, which is pretty great.

Bottom line: I enjoyed it a lot, but the weird stuff with Donna and Miss Evangelista (and River Song's truly bizarre "happy ending") marred it a bit for me. Plus, Moffat is showing dangerous signs of running out of gimmicks. But it was still an engaging and entertaining romp, and it made me curious about the Doctor for the first time since mid-season one. And I'm still (somewhat cautiously) excited to see what Moffat does with the show when he's got the magic show-controlling gloves on. What did you think?

I was actually a tad nervous about the two-parter that begins with "Silence In The Library," becuase I (and others) had built it up so much. Writer Steven Moffat, the writer of "Blink" and "The Empty Child," would come save us from the dreariness of Doctor Who season four with a lovely return to form. Luckily, Moffat pretty much delivers, with an episode that feels like a slow burn at first, until it starts unleashing plot twist after plot twist with terrific dexterity.

The stakes were even higher this time around, because we all know Moffat is taking over as the show-runner of Who in 2010. So it's hard not to see this episode as giving hints to where Moffat's version of the show might be heading.

Most obviously, the new character of River Song (Alex Kingston from ER) has a huge "recurring character" flag over her head. She's had some kind of intense relationship with the Doctor in his future (and her own past), and now their timelines have crossed. I would not say no to a few years of Doctor-and-River adventures, based on this one episode — she seems like a good foil for the Doctor, almost his equal in knowledge, but also independent. She's comfortable in the Doctor's world, but can obviously also do without him. And he's trusted her enough to give her his diary and his sonic screwdriver.

(And I would bet that the next time we see River, we'll get the reverse of this scenario, where the Doctor now knows her, but she doesn't know him. This is the sort of thing the Blinovitch Limitation Effect is supposed to prevent.)

But including River in the episode also opens up the Doctor's story in all sorts of other ways. Like: he's young for a change. I've lost count of how many times in the RTD era we've heard the Doctor refer to himself as old. (Or someone else referring to the Doctor that way.) It's a refrain. Now, all of a sudden, his best years are ahead of him — which is really a much more interesting way to pitch the show, if you think about it. (Of course, if he's really only got three more lives left, then objectively, he is old.) The idea of the Doctor getting hints about his own future has only been played with a few times before on the show (most notably in 1989's "Battlefield") but it's exciting to get hints about adventures we haven't seen yet.

And, of course, it's nice for the Doctor not to know everything for a change as well. Plus all the talk about "spoilers" and how bad it is to peek ahead, was obviously very gratifying.

The main story of the episode, of course, is only tangentially about River Song and the Doctor's future relationship with her. Instead, it's about a deserted library where sentient shadows are killing everybody. All of the stuff I'd heard in advance about "count the shadows" and "data ghosts" had sounded very similar to previous Moffat outings, especially last year's weird rules in "Blink" about not being able to close your eyes, or the stone angels will move. Actually watching the episode, however, it didn't feel like a retread at all, and the business with the shadows moving around felt sufficiently creepy, and yet logical, that it worked as a threat. Especially the moment where Proper Dave suddenly has two shadows, which made a nebulous threat suddenly very, very concrete.

And then there are the "data ghosts," stored brain patterns which continue to function for a while after death. They're a terrific metaphor for the slow realization that someone is gone forever — you think you can still hear them, still talk to them, for a while after their vital signs are wiped out. It's a nice way of twisting the knife of the show's two deaths, by making us linger over them. And then it makes Proper Dave much more scary, in a very "Are you my mummy?" way, once he's lurching around repeating his last words over and over again.

(I kept wondering if the "data ghosts" would be like the nano-genes in "The Empty Child" — a throwaway gimmick that turns out to be the key to the whole mess. Obviously people are being stored somehow, the way Donna has been "saved." We know Donna can't be dead. Probably.)

The other big mystery of the episode was the not-too-empty child, apparently in present-day Earth, who sees the library when she closes her eyes. Is she actually in the real world? Or is that just a Matrix-esque simulation that her consciousness has been ported into? Is she the library computer, or just connected to it somehow? I kept changing my mind about what role she was playing in the story, either innocent victim or secret ally of the Doctor — until the end, when she announced that Donna had been "saved," and she agreed to help the creepy Dr. Moon "save" the others. Which probably means she's part of the problem — even if unwittingly. Did she put all the humans, including Donna now, into some kind of electronic storage to save them from the living shadows?

Anyway, it was a lovely change of pace, and even the stuff that could have felt run-of-the-mill (new love interest for the Doctor, monster with weird arbitrary rules, child who can see the Doctor through her fireplacetelevision) somehow didn't, because the execution was awesome and you still couldn't tell where it was really going. Still very, very hopeful for the Moffat era of Doctor Who in a couple of years.

Johnston, a long-established fan of both Moffat and Who, devoted the start of his "Lying In The Gutters" column yesterday to looking at what the future may hold for the BBC's flagship Saturday show under its new ruler:

Well, some people see Steven as transforming Doctor Who into something very different. That's not true, Steven has been a cheerleader for Russell's work on the project from Day One and will continue in that vein. Indeed, he may well fight aganst what is expected of him. But odds are we'll get some more fun time travel stories out of it, maybe a slight tweak towards intricate structure, and some interesting geek-friendly names.

Such as the rumour running around my BBC sources that Neil Gaiman being approached to write an episode for 2010. That would be this Neil Gaiman, comic author, fantasy novelist, screenwriter, poet and writer of the Duran Duran Biography 1985... [W]hen I asked Neil if he'd care to comment, he pleaded the Francis saying, "You may very well think that, but I could not possibly comment."

I do very well think that. I do.

Of course, nothing will actually have been commissioned by the BBC at this stage, and there's many a slip 'twixt cup and prosthetic lip, but it's looking good.

Lying In The Gutters [Comic Book Resources]

Notice that River Song (Alex Kingston) definitely brandishes her own sonic screwdriver, as we'd heard. That makes her the second character this season to have one — after the "governess" in the Adipose episode. Significant? Or just the producers being wacky?

Honestly, I know that Moffat is our great shining hope, but the "little girl who goes somewhere else when she closes her eyes" thing seems A) contrived and B) very much along the same lines as all Moffat's other Who scripts. There's always a fairy-tale-esque thing that happens, and it has rules that are ridiculously simple and yet so arbitrary that they seem way more complex. Like the angels that can only move when you close your eyes, or the gasmask kid that touches you. I can't help wondering if Moffat will come to seem a one-trick pony once he's writing more scripts for Doctor Who every year. Or maybe what I'm thinking of as "one trick" is actually a style.

And here's that clip for the rest of the season. I'm actually sort of excited for Rose as gun-toting action hero. Wonder if the Doctor will still hate guns when Rose is slinging one?

[SpoilerTV and BadAstronomy]