Doctor Who and the Vortex of the Travelling Pants.

TV The second tangible bit of nu-nu-Who was presented to us tonight in the form of this specially shot trailer narrated at the end by what sounds like Simon Pegg and though parts of Gallifrey Base are screaming fail (space) whale! I’m very optimistic. It’s rather busier than the Eccleston/Piper “Wanna come with me?” promos from 2005 and like those an expressively epic way of telling us that a new series is imminent.

And it must be fairly imminent if we're seeing this now. The trailer says Easter. The imdb has the 13th March (plus a bunch of potential plot spoilers so beware).

Matt’s performance seems entirely different to anything we’ve heard before – the intonation is rather more, um, naturalistic? Is that the word? (I'll get back to you.) Karen has a beautifully boggle-eyed lack of cynicism (even if we’re a bit distracted in the vortex shots). The dialogue is really a set of bullet points, but poetic bullet points nonetheless and it’s good that Steven’s got the obvious out the way early.

Clearly it will look rather amazing in 3D (should you want to risk going to a Cineworld to see Alice In Wonderland in front of which it will apparently be showing) with the baubles on an intercept course with our retinas as we try to work out what’s changed about the Dalek (a bit simpler?). Even in a rough bitrate on a tiny monitor it’s a perfectly designed statement that this will be a show that’s once again the same but also very, very different.

Role on March/Easter/sometime in the Spring.