We caved in. After reading over on the Beeb that the first episode of the new Doctor Who had somehow found its way onto the interweb we tried sitting on our hands for a bit and when that didn't work we took a very long cold shower, but we are weak and the pull of Sci Fi is strong.
But how we grinned when the theme tune kicked in and how we applauded at the end when we realised that the last 44 minutes had actually been rather good. Yes, as far as Londonist is concerned, the Doctor is back and looking fresher than ever.
We don't want to give too much away as we know our readers have much more will power than we do and will, on the whole, wait for the broadcast in a couple of weeks, but we can offer a few very good reasons to tune in:
Christopher Eccleston owns this role. Easily the best Doctor since Peter Davidson.Billie Piper is actually very good and already the chemistry between Doctor and companion is there.
The episode manages to resurrect one of the old monsters without messing it up.
Despite being a BBC Wales creation this episode at least makes London integral to the plot and we get to see Londoners do what they do best when faced with any kind of Sci Fi menace - Flee screaming.
The pacing is terrific and made us quite giddy with excitement.
We spent the rest of the evening humming the theme tune and looking on eBay for leather jackets.
We feel that the BBC shouldn't be too miffed that this episode is out in the wild (and of course we'd never suggest it was let out intentionally to create a little internet buzz) as it has guaranteed a captive audience for the rest of the run and seeing as the Beeb has a pretty bad track record of looking after Doctor Who episodes it's good to know that this one will never be accidentally wiped away.
But Billie Piper... who'd have thought it?
