No DOCTOR WHO Series 10 until 2017, and Moffat's successor chosen!

Oh, wow! There's big news for fans of Doctor Who. Good or bad? That's down to personal opinion, but I think we can safely say the lack of new episodes this year is on the downside.

DOCTOR WHO – 'The Husbands of River Song'

★★★☆☆

The worst Doctor Who Christmas specials are the ones that are impenetrable to casual audiences, because there's nothing worse than sitting around with your extended family on Christmas Day—expecting a fun, heartwarming fantasy adventure—only for everything to be tangled in so much backstory that it loses the non-Whovians in the room. Most people know the gist of what Who's about, of course, but I still think these specials are an important way to recruit new fans, and too many of the show's recent Yuletide adventures have been alienating messes with added fake snow.

DOCTOR WHO, 9.12 – 'Hell Bent'

★★★☆☆

If last week's Doctor Who was Steven Moffat at his cleverest, finale "Hell Bent" saw him at his most exasperating. It exhibited a common problem: an abundance of intriguing ideas and scenes, incoherently told. The opening stretch of the episode was the best—with The Doctor (Peter Capaldi) back on Gallifrey, now a war hero with enough public support and military respect to overthrow Lord President Rassilon (Donald Sumpter) and use Time Lords technology to save Clara (Jenna Coleman) seconds before her death. Using time-travel for such a thing is a big no-no, of course, because altering a 'fixed event' like someone's death risks destroying the universe, but of course The Doctor had a plan to prevent that nasty repercussion... right?

It's official! Peter Jackson is directing an episode of DOCTOR WHO!

It's been nothing but a rumour for awhile now, stemming from the fact Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit) is a lifelong Doctor Who fan, but the video above confirms things: the Oscar-winning New Zealand filmmaker is going to be directing an episode! Nothing else is known yet, but it's implied he'll be travelling to Cardiff to film, and production won't be travelling to the Southern Hemisphere to take advantage of those epic Kiwi landscapes. (But I could be wrong! I sure hope I am.) I also presume Jackson will be doing an episode for Series 10 next year, and surely you'd only get a director of his stature for a big, expensive premiere.

All very exciting. There aren't many TV shows that could get a director like Peter Jackson to work for them. He must be waiving his usual fee, right?

DOCTOR WHO, 9.11 – 'Heaven Sent'

★★★★★

While ironically resembling a hybrid of Fort Boyard and Cube at times, "Heaven Sent" was a magnificent hour of sci-fi and easily the best episode of Doctor Who this year. I'd rate it within the best three Peter Capaldi era hours, too—thanks mainly to something the show doesn't always deliver: a good, robust ending.

DOCTOR WHO, 9.10 – 'Face the Raven'

★★★☆☆

Series 9's three-part finale begins with Sarah Dollard's "Face the Raven", which reminded me a great deal of Harry Potter's Diagon Alley with its depiction of so-called 'trap streets'—places hidden from ordinary sight, shielded from perception, populated by alien refugees. The Doctor (Peter Capaldi) and Clara (Jenna Coleman) found themselves drawn into one, after responding to an emergency call by their mutual friend Rigsy (Joivan Wade) from last year's "Flatline". Rigsy's suffering from short-term amnesia and has found a tattoo of a three-digit number on the back of his neck (shades of Blindspot), which is bizarrely counting down to zero. Can The Doctor and Clara solve the mystery of Rigsy's missing time and find the reason for his body ink, before it's too late?

DOCTOR WHO, 9.9 – 'Sleep No More'

★★☆☆☆

I appreciate episodes of Doctor Who that do something different, even if the experimental nature isn't particularly unique in its genre. The 'found footage' idea isn't new and is rather overplayed right now in cinemas (thanks especially to the Paranormal Activity movies), and that didn't really help "Sleep No More". Of course, it's still intriguing to see what a show like Doctor Who could do with the format, but Mark Gatiss's script just felt half-baked. I wouldn't be surprised if it was intended to be another two-parter, but got reduced in scale and Gatiss had to lose a lot of material.

Autumn 2015 TV - Part One

We're a few months into the 2015/16 television season, so I just wanted to run down all the shows I'm watching, how I think they're getting on, and my degrees of continued interest in them.

'Agents of SHIELD' (season 3) - ABC.
Season 1 became good halfway through. Season 2 turned bad halfway through. Season 3's proving to be a real bore from the start. It seems someone decided what we really want from AoS is lots of people with superpowers, so they're going big on the whole Inhumans angle. I just wish the show didn't feel like a live-action X-Men more than a spy-fi show that could tackle a lot of different subjects and ideas. Unsurprisingly, the best episode (so far) concerned an hourlong flashback to Simmons stranded on an alien planet, having to survive until rescue arrived. While it was probably inspired by The Martian novel, or knowledge of the film adaptation, it was something you don't see TV do very often.

DOCTOR WHO, 9.8 – 'The Zygon Inversion'

★★★★☆

The conclusion of Peter Harness's two-parter was even better than the setup; perhaps because there were less 'UNIT soldiering' action scenes and more of The Doctor (Peter Capaldi) just being wonderful. Capaldi was on marvellous form throughout, with Osgood (Ingrid Oliver) making for a brilliant stand-in companion—good enough to make me wish Osgood might become a permanent resident of the TARDIS in Series 10. Alas, it seems this won't come to pass. Jenna Coleman also continued to have a blast as Clara's evil Zygon clone, Bonnie (or 'Zygella' as The Doctor nicknamed her).

DOCTOR WHO, 9.7 – 'The Zygon Invasion'

★★★★☆

While this has arguably been the best start to a Doctor Who series in years, qualitatively, I'm finding myself struggling to get as deeply invested as I used to be. This is for a mix of reasons, but it's becoming clearer to me that Who needs a change of direction and perhaps a few year's rest to restore some hunger for it. It helps that Doctor Who always has 'soft resets' throughout its 52-year history, with a new companion or Time Lord keeping things fresh, so maybe things will improve when Clara's (Jenna Coleman) tenure comes to an end this year. But this is only the second year for Peter Capaldi as The Doctor, which is a big concern for me. As much as I like a few aspects that Capaldi's brought to the role, I think it's safe to say he's not quite living up my expectations. I'd rank him below David Tennant and Matt Smith, but only slightly above Christopher Eccleston right now, how about you?

DOCTOR WHO, 9.6 – 'The Woman Who Lived'

★★☆☆☆

This wasn't really a conclusion to last week's "The Girl Who Died"; it was more a fresh episode with a common character in Ashildr (Maisie Williams), the Viking villager whom The Doctor (Peter Capaldi) turned immortal with alien technology. It wasn't even written by the same person (Catherine Tregenna took over from Jamie Mathieson), and Ashildr was practically a different character; someone who may not have aged, but has become hardened to life over the aeons.

DOCTOR WHO, 9.5 – 'The Girl Who Died'

★★★☆☆

For most of "The Girl Who Died", I wasn't particularly impressed with what I was seeing. It was an amusing hour of Doctor Who and Peter Capaldi felt more comfortable than ever with more jokey material, but it all felt a bit too routine for me until the last act's weirdness elevated matters and cued up an interesting continuation in next week's "The Woman Who Lived".

DOCTOR WHO, 9.4 – 'Before the Flood'

★★★★☆

The best compliment I can give "Before the Flood" is that both the storyline and the internal logic hung together well—which can be a problem with time-travel stories in general, but Doctor Who in particular. Picking up from "Under the Lake", the narrative split between The Doctor (Peter Capaldi), O'Donnell (Morven Christie) and Bennet (Arsher Ali) in 1980, and Clara (Jenna Coleman), Cass (Sophie Stone) and Lunn (Zaqi Ismail) back in 2119.

DOCTOR WHO, 9.3 - 'Under the Lake'

★★★★☆

One of the mainstays of Doctor Who is the 'base under siege' plot, probably because they're useful when it comes to saving money (no troublesome outdoor location shoots) and naturally evoke a feeling of tension and claustrophobia. The revived series has done many such stories since it began, but they can be of mixed success, and sometimes my patience wears thin because they feel so similar.

DOCTOR WHO, 9.2 – 'The Witch's Familiar'

★★★☆☆

While not as strong and epic as the first part, "The Witch's Familiar" was a mostly satisfying conclusion that held together better than it occasionally threatened to. It was certainly a lot looser than "The Magician's Apprentice", though, with perhaps too many scenes where The Doctor (Peter Capaldi) and Davros (Julian Bleach) had circular arguments about their opposing ideologies. You could have easily cut ten minutes out of this episode with very little impact, but otherwise it was an enjoyable hour.

DOCTOR WHO, 9.1 – 'The Magician's Apprentice'

★★★★☆

Series 9 of Doctor Who begins with a barnstorming opening hour, perhaps the best since Series 5's "The Eleventh Hour". While the show's revival has waxed and waned in subjective quality (often dictated by how much you enjoy the current Doctor/companion, or tolerate its haphazard plotting), there's simply no other TV show this infectiously crackers and light-footed at its best. While impenetrable to newcomers, "The Magician's Apprentice" was an irresistible mix of villainy and nonsense, grounded by the serious matter of The Doctor's (Peter Capaldi) impending death and an unexpected collusion of his arch-nemeses...

Trailer: DOCTOR WHO - Series 9

The BBC released the official DOCTOR WHO trailer for Series 9 at San Diego Comic-Con today, but it was also made available online. I've embedded it above. Not bad, eh? At this stage in the show's history, it's harder for me to be blown away -- and this year doesn't have a new Doctor or companion to promote -- but the promo does have a different feel. Darker, a bit edgier. I'm sure there are lots for the eagle-eyed experts to spot, but obviously there's the return of Missy/The Master (Michelle Gomez), the shapeshifting Zygons, the faithful Daleks. And who is Maisie Williams from Game of Thrones playing? Could she be The Doctor's granddaughter? The twelve-part ninth series begins 19 September on BBC1/BBC America, which means it will end mere weeks before the Christmas Special airs.

Infographic: Create Your Own Van Art

Do you own a van? Is it dull and white in colour? Would you love to 'pimp it up' with a television themed makeover? If you're a fan of The Walking Dead, Breaking Bad, Doctor Who, Game of Thrones, or The Big Bang Theory, this infographic from Van Monster will see you right:

Here are my 10 favourite DOCTOR WHO stories, circa 2005-15...

10 years ago today, DOCTOR WHO returned to British television screens after 16-years (unless you're counting the 1996 television movie), with the episode "Rose". And lo, how the show has blossomed! The Doctor's regenerated three times since, and we've had five main companions aboard the TARDIS. By way of celebrating nu-Who's decade anniversary (which is also my 36th birthday, BTW), I thought I'd compile a list of my 10 favourite stories the revived show has produced...

Digital Spy: BROADCHURCH and the business of keeping secrets on TV

Over at Digital Spy yesterday, I wrote an article looking at 6 television shows that managed to keep huge secrets from their fanatical audiences, thus maintaining big surprises when important episodes aired. Take a look! And share if you enjoyed reading it.