the first Easter Saturday in seven years without a new episode of television's Doctor Who

TV This is the first Easter Saturday in seven years without a new episode of television's Doctor Who. Each new series has begun on this day each year and even in 2009 when the show was on a vague hiatus we were gifted with the often underrated Planet of the Dead, the first and so far only proper Easter special (even if all that really amounted to was the Doctor eating a chocolate egg in the teaser).

No new incarnation, no new companion, no direction of narrative travel to scratch our heads over and no nervous wait in the morning for the pointless overnights and our ensuing, inevitable sheepish protestations that they don't mean anything in the contemporary media landscape as we're beaten by Celebrity Family Fortunes with Vernon Kay taking the piss out of us on Twitter by making a joke about Daleks not being able to go up stairs either.

It's also the first year when I'll not be sat here until midnight watching my brains spill onto the keyboard as I attempt to provide some kind of instant critique which won't require too much rewriting in the morning because of factual errors, typos and a hazy grasp in general of the English language.  I had considered tapping out some paragraphs about Night and the Doctor and although I will at some point, it's just not the same.

As I write this I am at least listening to the two Adele albums for old times sake.  Through some strange coincidental convergence, I've always found that it takes the collected duration of 19 and 21 to write the first draft of one of those reviews, the final invective emerging some way into the admittedly magnificent Someone Like You.  Last.FM thinks she's my favourite singer and thanks to those reviews I'm unable to convince it otherwise.

It's almost enough to make me consider finally getting around to watching The Twin Dilemma, the only instalment of the classic dvd range which I've bought out of habit but on which the main feature has gone ignored.  But not quite.  I can still wait for that.  I expect I'll find something to fill these empty hours.  I'm an only child and we're quite self sufficient (if a bit lonely). I just thought it was worth marking this change in all our collective routines.