Safely back from Devon yesterday evening but feeling pretty exhausted after a relatively gruelling journey (Christmas traffic around Bristol as well as some earlier roadworks) I wasn’t feeling up to anything too energetic. Instead we watched the latest Doctor Who Christmas special on the BBC’s iPlayer.

Jane and I recently caught up with the repeated specials from the last couple of years and the 2012 one lives up to their high standards and perhaps even exceeds them by setting up a major lead for the following series.

Doctor Who was one of my childhood favourites although, as I drew on through my teens it became less and less unmissable and it seemed to have reached its last regeneration a few ticks too early. There was a very promising but brief return in the mid-90s with Paul McGann and then a decade of further darkness until Christopher Eccleston stepped back onto the screen in 2005. Even from the start of this revival, standards have been high and I feel the quality of the stories has been ascending further. The Doctor looks set for another healthy season in 2013.