Doctor Who, curly toes and solidophiles

D and I, who are televisionless and staying that way, have discovered that you can watch reasonable-quality episodes of Doctor Who on BBC iPlay for a week after they air. So last night we watched the Christmas special, with the intention of watching the first episode of Season 4 in the next few days.

I know that the quality of Doctor Who has been steadily declining over the past couple of seasons, but this was quite excruciatingly bad. Could some merciful person tell us whether the first episode of Season 4 is as bad? If not, how bad is it? We thought that Season 3, with the exception of a couple of episodes, was generally dire, although we're glad to hear that they've stopped having idiotic love interest plots for Season 4 (mind you, that redheaded woman was dead annoying in the episode we saw her in before, though I still maintain that there was a certain amount of promise there).

Also, any thoughts on who would make an ideal Doctor, who would make an ideal companion, and what sort of relationship between them would work best? We've only seen half a dozen episodes of the older Doctor Who (The Genesis of the Daleks), but so far we are voting for Christopher Eccleston of the ones we've seen. D says Teh Internets has suggested Tilda Swinton as the Doctor, and this sounds good to both of us. Not sure about the companion, but definitely not the spunky-yet-vulnerable-young-woman-who-pines-after-the-Doctor model. Personally I reckon Tennant (who's just a bit too *nice* for the part) should get a lesbian companion who pulls more than he does. Of course, they'd have to feed them decent plots and scripts. Even Swinton or Eccleston couldn't pull off some of those toe-curlingly awful lines. (My toes really were curling in horror last night. OK, I have curly toes to begin with, but they went those extra few millimetres.)

Randomly: has anyone worked out what a solidophile is yet?

Doctor Who, curly toes and solidophiles

D and I, who are televisionless and staying that way, have discovered that you can watch reasonable-quality episodes of Doctor Who on BBC iPlay for a week after they air. So last night we watched the Christmas special, with the intention of watching the first episode of Season 4 in the next few days.

I know that the quality of Doctor Who has been steadily declining over the past couple of seasons, but this was quite excruciatingly bad. Could some merciful person tell us whether the first episode of Season 4 is as bad? If not, how bad is it? We thought that Season 3, with the exception of a couple of episodes, was generally dire, although we're glad to hear that they've stopped having idiotic love interest plots for Season 4 (mind you, that redheaded woman was dead annoying in the episode we saw her in before, though I still maintain that there was a certain amount of promise there).

Also, any thoughts on who would make an ideal Doctor, who would make an ideal companion, and what sort of relationship between them would work best? We've only seen half a dozen episodes of the older Doctor Who (The Genesis of the Daleks), but so far we are voting for Christopher Eccleston of the ones we've seen. D says Teh Internets has suggested Tilda Swinton as the Doctor, and this sounds good to both of us. Not sure about the companion, but definitely not the spunky-yet-vulnerable-young-woman-who-pines-after-the-Doctor model. Personally I reckon Tennant (who's just a bit too *nice* for the part) should get a lesbian companion who pulls more than he does. Of course, they'd have to feed them decent plots and scripts. Even Swinton or Eccleston couldn't pull off some of those toe-curlingly awful lines. (My toes really were curling in horror last night. OK, I have curly toes to begin with, but they went those extra few millimetres.)

Randomly: has anyone worked out what a solidophile is yet?