I’m going to let my Fan Entitlement flag fly for a moment—something of which I don’t generally approve—and say that it’s about bloody time there were some new episodes of Doctor Who on the air. The first episode of Series 10 is finally going out on 15 Apr 2017 (mere days after my next Confession, incidentally), and I couldn’t be more ready.

It’s selfish and rude of me to be so antsy—after all, other shows have even longer waits—but going a full year between episodes in 2016 was like torture, especially given all the other Scheiße that went down last year. Since the show’s return in 2005, we’ve generally not had to wait more than about six months for new material—even during the Year of Specials—though there have been a few larger gaps. The span between the 2011 Christmas special and the start of Series 7, for example, was just over eight months.

During Capaldi’s era, however, extended wait times have become both increasingly long and increasingly standard. Right from the get-go, we had to wait eight months between Smith’s departure in the 2013 Christmas special and Capaldi’s debut in Series 8. The following year, there were nine months between the 2014 Christmas special and Series 9.

Once we got to the end of S9 and came to the 2015 Christmas special, we had to wait an entire year for another one-off episode (Christmas 2016) before this four-month gap until Series 10. While this schedule has allowed me to get caught up on a ridiculous backlog of episodes with the Ladies of WhoFest (Remember the NuViews? Yeah, it’s been two-and-a-half years—but in our defense, coordinating four adults’ schedules is nigh impossible, and current episodes take precedence over old stuff.), it’s made keeping up on the blog much more challenging.

Have you noticed that Whovians like to talk about Doctor Who? And that a lack of new episodes tends to lead to a rehashing of the same arguments discussions about the same things? I try hard not to retread too much old ground here on the blog, but the dearth of new episodes has made that increasingly tricky. It’s made worse by the fact that the tidbits we do get—change in showrunner pending, new Companion announced, change in Doctor pending—all serve to fuel some of the most common debates fans have had for some fifty years.

So I am over-the-moon at the thought of our long Episode Drought coming to an end. Not only will it provide me with weekly blog material in the form of reviews, but it will also give us new continuity about which to begin new, ridiculously detailed debates. And one of the things I love most about this fandom is the way that everyone brings their own, unique reading to any given storyline or scene. So here’s to the pending new series—because [opinion alert!] more Capaldi can never be a bad thing.

SaveSave