Remember 2006? Torchwood had yet to flail onto our screens, The Sarah Jane Smith Big Finishaudio plays continued the adventures of Elisabeth Sladen’s popular character, and all we knew about the Tenth Doctor was that he could recite lengthy passages of The Lion King and could throw a small citrus fruit with unerring accuracy. By and large his personality wasn’t fully formed, but what we’d seen had been very promising.

After the 2005 series Doctor Who was back, more popular than anyone had expected it to be, and David Tennant was an up-and-coming young actor who had worked solidly to great acclaim in theatre and on TV. He was, also, a massive Doctor Who fan. Now that the role was being played by someone with detailed knowledge of the series (I have been informed that Tennant can identify Target Novelisations just from looking at a small detail of Roger Delgado’s nose from the cover) it meant that the back story would be more readily embraced, elements above and beyond the returns of the major monsters and villains. It also meant that he knew what elements of the character could be reacted against, developed further, or explored for the first time. After the relative seriousness of Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant’s tenure allowed Doctor Who to be really, really silly again. For that, we have much to be thankful for.

Initially, we weren’t sure if Rose and Ten would work. If anything, they got on better than before, to the extent where they started to get on people’s nerves a little. The series arc investigated the impact that the Doctor had on people’s lives when he moves on. It was all about setting up Rose and the Doctor for a fall, as sometimes they had so much fun that they forgot to consider other people.