T-minus 16 and counting... Doctor Who series four is a go...

The Beeb, at long, long last, released the starting date for series four of Doctor Who this year. It probably killed them a little bit! While I'm pretty sure Fox has already scheduled episodes of 24 for next frakkin' year, the BBC can just barely be coaxed to tell starting dates for one of its most popular shows.

Actually, we don't even have show time yet. (Although seven p.m. is a safe bet.) This, of course, is for those lucky folks who actually live in the UK and can watch it at the time it comes on, instead of waiting to download it sneakily or find out when or if PBS or SciFi will air the episode.

I'm looking forward to this series with a lot more optimism than I was feeling at this time last year. After the first two series, where I met the Doctor, lost him as he changed into someone with a new face and grew to know him even better, and where I met and fell in love with Rose Tyler, his companion, the London shopgirl who had such a curiosity and sense of adventure as she traveled through time and space, and such a big heart. They traveled the universe in the TARDIS, saving the world and each other over and over again.

And then Rose was lost to another universe.

Of course she wasn't the first human the Doctor picked up to travel with him. Of course she's strong enough to make a life for herself. But still- it's better with two.

Christmas Special- "The Runaway Bride". Donna Noble, in her wedding gown, mysteriously appears on the TARDIS moments after the Doctor has had his heart ripped out and stomped on by emus. She patches up his wounded soul by screeching at him and calling him a Martian, and demanding he take her back to her wedding, since he obviously kidnapped her. Though bemused, he tries to take her back, things get complicated, they save the world, Donna realizes the world is bigger than chips and telly, but refuses to travel with the Doctor: he has a darkness in him, she says, and he needs someone to stop him sometimes.

An unspecified amount of time later, he picks up Martha Jones, medical student, who immediately develops passionate unrequited love for him, and completely fails to stop his darkness. The Doctor is offered many things in series three- a normal life, a wife, one of his own kind- but none of them satisfy, and it only emphasizes his lack of Rose's temperance all the more. When Martha learns to love adventure and realizes she cannot stand in the shadow of either Rose OR the Doctor anymore, she leaves, promising that she will keep in touch.

Series four- it's commonly known that Donna (played by the incomparable Catherine Tate) will be returning as the companion, and I completely embrace this. She won't moon over the Doctor. She won't stand for his shit. She'll stop him when he tries to play god. She'll balance the extraordinariness of traveling to distant times and places with the ordinariness of just wanting a damn cup of tea. At least, that's what I'm hoping. If Russell T. Davies and the Writing Team of Occasional Awesome can keep their shit together, and not jump the shark like a lot of shows do in season four (Angel, folks. Alias. Things start to make no sense whatsoever.) And there are a few other things that are happening that I just can't WAIT to see.

April fifth! That's not too long!