Anyone would think there was a lot of Dr Who between the start & the introduction of the Daleks to read that.

Ooops! You're quite right of course. That's me trusting what I read in the Radio Times when I half asleep this morning!

*

but I seem to remember you have done this before. You once accused me of personal abuse and when I asked you what you found offensive or abusive about my comments you did not answer.

There you go again! Keep it abstract, DtheG - nice & impersonal!

*

In expressing an opinion here I might go on to say why I have that opinion - as I've done in this case - which is not as simple as saying 'It is rubbish!' (which it is) but I'm not going too deeply into any sort critical evaluation either. This is not the place. Anyway, I think I've explained that.

It's not simply a matter of taste either, it's the feeling of being sold a pup, which I dare say is all part of the media Zeitgeist of the present age which increasingly isolates both itself and the viewer from any sort of human reality at all by miring both its mythos & meta-mythos in the faux-realms of CGI & celebrity that seems to be the driving force of TV these days. People obviously like it, that's why its being made, but I find it utterly phoney.

One of the issues I have with Nu-Who is that its two major spin offs were so much better than the parent series. Torchwood was solid enough until it blew it with that last week-long thing which lost the plot rather BUT The Sarah Jane Adventures was bang on the nail & worthy of the Old Dr Who Tradition from beginning to end - & great fun to boot. All of which made the parent series seem all the more wanting in the things that made the original so compelling : from the creaky special effects and ubiquitous quarry landscapes, to the eccentric Radiophonic soundtracks with embodied perfectly the humanity of the drama.

I have my favourites of these (at the moment its Carey Blyton's neo-medieval score for The Silurians (1970) full of buzzing crumhorms & elemental percussion effects) but the other week I was watching the Colin Baker story Attack of the Cybermen (1985) which is remarkable for its stellar supporting cast including Brian Glover. At around 12 minutes into the first episode the Tardis materialises in the Trotters Lane scrapyard of I.M Foreman thus referencing the first ever episode, but Malcolm Clarke responds with a twisted radiophonic analogue of 'Old Ned' in homage to another TV show entirely! Genius! A perfect moment for me, one that maintains a tradition going back to the pioneering work of Daphne Oram, and to that of Delia Derbyshire who gave us the Dr Who theme in the first place - a seminal moment in the Electronic Tradition which is now blown out by Nu-Who's bombastic orchestral arrangement.

But one more reason to be irked!