'Just follow the day...'

Life I'm sorry, but I've just got to write about it. I was going to be ironic and write about the Tarkovsky film Mirror which I saw in film class tonight (extraordinary piece, amazing imagery) but with a press launch, teaser trailers all over the schedules and news reports about downloading, there really isn't anything else on my mind.

Seeing Billie and Chris staring purposefully out from the TARDIS console room in those trailers finally brought home how much the BBC want this to work. With all the BBC Radio Two material and the new website (with the old or 'classic' one hidden just beneath), this isn't the McCoy era of sticking it on and hoping it finds an audience itself. The corporation are actively looking for one itself.

On The Six O'Clock News tonight, Sophie Raworth said that it was the news that millions of fans had been waiting for (a bit different to the eight thousand The Observer quoted on Sunday) -- and without this sounding like politics, we're going to need them. Seven O'Clock on a Saturday evening is not the cakewalk it might have been in the mid-seventies. It's right up against whatever ITV are knocking out and its been ages since a television drama has been in there.

What it really needs is the Harry Potter generation, already versed in fantasy to latch onto it. When the show left the air in the late eighties, there wasn't much decent sci-fi knocking around. Star Trek: The Next Generation was your lot (go on argue). A few years later The X-Files appeared and since then the appetite for the genre has grown in the general audience. People are simple more likely to accept the non-realistic now. Plus I don't think the series is entirely unknown to the young audience its aimed at -- the UK Gold repeats have a solid following as do parental video and dvd collections.

The only thing which can go wrong now is for it to be utterly terrible, a Twin Dilemma instead of a Spearhead From Space. Without watching it now (shan't, won't, can't download) in my heart of hearts I know it won't be. With the talent involved, the cast it's drawn, the sheer love which surrounds it (I heard earlier that Russell T Davies cried when he heard the new version of the theme tune) that come the 26th March I won't be disappointed.