this is my fanboy moment, aka - this post would have been aptly titled as, "all i want for christmas part 3"

I enjoy Christmas, the music, the presents, the time off work, and of course, getting to spends lots of time with my girl. But this year, for months now, I've been mostly looking forward to the new Christmas themed Doctor Who episode - the Christmas Invasion

Doctor Who is a Bristish show and is (by far) the longest running sci-fi show ever - first beginning in 1963. The BBC has an excellent breakdown of the history of the show so far starting with the 1st Doctor in 1963, the major enemies, the cancellation in 1989, the breakouts into books and audio adventures, back to the Doctor's TV resurrection a year or two ago - here.

For those of you who don't want to tread through a dozen or so pages here's my .10c breakdown:
The Doctor is an alien from the planet Gallifrey. The Gallifrians were amongst the first species in the Universe to create time travel - and thus christened themselves as Timelords. Eventually the Gallifrians adopted a policy of non-interference, and removed themselves from active interference in other races activities.

The Timelords eventually fell into a sort of stagnation or complacency - content to sit in their ivory towers and monitor the universe without ever becoming involved. Eventually one Timelord - known only as the Doctor - rejected this lifestyle and stole an antiquated time ship from his people. With his Grand daughter, Susan, in-tow - the Doctor left Gallifrey in his new ship - the TARDIS (Time and Relative Dimensions in Space, which has the curious distinction of being substantially larger on the inside then the out. (Imagine being a kid and seeing that for the first time - a TV show where you see characters walk into a box, and the next shot is of them in a massive control room. Pretty awe inspiring ;)).

Rather then sit by idly, the Doctor and Susan wandered throughout time and space having adventures - and generally doing good in the universe.

After a few years the first Doctor - William Hartnell - decided to leave Doctor Who and rather then cancel a successful show the Producers made the decision to re-cast the lead, explaining that the Doctor could ‘regenerate’ a tired or injured body, taking on a new persona along the way. Don't you love Sci-Fi?

This went on, with each new Doctor taking on the mantle for an average of 3-4 years each. Of course, over the years the mythos grew - at the end of the 1st Doctors life we found out about his ability to regenerate, at the end of the 2nd we discovered the truth behind the Doctor's people, the Gallifrians, and their decision of non interference. Standing on trial for his crimes, the Doctor is forced to regenerate and is banised to Earth.

The 3rd Doctor spent the majority of his tenure unable to TARDIS to travel, and was in essence tied to early 1970's Earth in the employee of a secret military arm of the United Nations. Doing his tenure we discover more about how the Time Lords discovered the secret of Time Travel, and of the mysterious ancient Time Lords Omega and Rassilon who helped the Gallifreyians become the Lords of Time.

The 4th Doctor was the craziest and had the longest tenure as the Doctor - 7 years. The 1980s saw the 5th, 6th and 7th Doctors each taking the crown for 3 years each. I really discovered my love for Doctor Who under the Sylvestor McCoy - the 7th Doctor, considered the last Doctor of the "Classic Who" era.

McCoy brought a darkness to the show which hadn't existed since the 2nd Doctor days. Rather then randomly drop into situations, the 7th Doctor was presented as a manipulator - who played chess on a cosmic scale, slowly moving pieces into place and brilliantly executing his plans to get his desired results.

Though the show was abruptly cancelled in 1989, Virgin Books (part of the Virigin family of companies including Virgin Airlines and Virgin Records) picked up a license to continue the Doctor's adventures in a series of novels, dubbed the New Adventures. These books continued the 7th Doctor's adventures with his last companion, Ace (a childhood crush of mine).

It happened that the release of this line of books coincided with my move from the UK to the States. As a young lad living in Oklahoma, I yearned for something quintessiantially British and discovered the Virgin novals in a mall in Tulsa. Every month I'd go buy the latest book - and slowly grew my love of all things Who.

Fast forward 5 years. The New Adventures had been praised as expanding in Who in directions never imagined - and not possible on the small screen. The 7th Doctor had been firmly established as a master manipulator, and as something more then an "atypical" Timelord. He had become the "Champion of Time", and spent a good portion of his time fixing the problems he had caused himself in earlier adventures as his other incarnations.

Then a miracle happened. Fox and the BBC came to an agreement to create a new Doctor Who TV pilot for American TV. Not only would it be big bugdget and beautiful, but it would be canon (ie fit in with everything that had come before it), showing the 7th Doctor "dying" and regenerating into the "8th Doctor."

And it would air on my birthday. Can you say the best Birthday present ever?

The Pilot aired, but not to the ratings needed to "green light" a new series. It had some problems, but all things considered was pretty damn good Doctor Who. Sigh.

Virgins book license was coming to an end - and rather then renew it the BBC opted to pick up publication of new Doctor Who themselves underneath their BBC Books imprint. With a nod to the fans, the Virgin Doctor Who books dovetailed into the TV movie with the last novel setting the Doctor down the path he's travelling at the beginning of the movie. BBC Books then picked up with a new series featuring the 8th Doctor picking up from the TV movie.

Fast forward 7 years. The BBC range has made some dramatic shifts to the Doctor Who universe. They've introduced a future Time Lord cult known as Faction Paradox, bent on destroying the Universe through the creation paradoxes in time, and who have seriously jacked up the Doctor's personal timeline (which in turn provided a nice mechanism to "canonize" a lot of the seemingly inexplainable events in the Doctor's life, such as the 2 one off movies in the 1960s starring Peter Cushing as the Doctor, who is an explorer from the 23rd Century, rather then an alien from Gallifrey, as well as explain why the Doctor was referred to as "half-human" in the Fox movie, when he clearly was not before that particular incarnation.) They've also introduced many other "arcs" including a future Time War between the Time Lords and some unknown enemy, the Doctor becoming an amnesiac following his destruction of Gallifrey to save the universe from Faction Paradox and the unknown enemy.

Then the bomb dropped. Doctor Who had been recommisioned. And we're talking properly recommisioned - 13 episoders, $1million pound budget for each episode, an amazing actor as the Doctor, solid production team, and some of the biggest name Dr Who fans as writers of the new series.

Awesome. A year later, the new series began airing the UK to massive viewing figures, critical and fan aclaim, a new series of tie-in novels and general media hysteria in the UK. Though we never saw the regeneration, the new series did an excellent job of introducing both new and classic fans to the new Doctor.

After one series Christopher Eccleston, the 9th Doctor, opted to leave the show - and was replaced during the last minutes of the 1st season with David Tennant, the 10th Doctor.

And so we are brought to the present. About a month ago the world got their first proper look at the new Doctor in a 7 minute episode which aired as part of "Children in Need" charity fundraiser on BBC. This mini-sode bridges the few minutes which occur between the end of Season One, and the new Season Two which begins this March/April 2006.

Now that I've rambled on for a while - hopefully at least one or two of you are interested enough to go and watch some Doctor Who.

I've provided some links to allow you to check out the new episodes - but be sure to buy the Season One box set when it becomes available in February in North America.

Doctor Who Related Links:
The Christmas Invasion (700meg avi)
The Christmas Invasion (500meg avi)
The Pre-Christmas Invasion (75meg avi)
The Graske Invasion (Win & Lose Versions)
Season 1
Gallifrey One - Premiere Doctor Who Site
BBC Doctor Who Site