Doctor Who Saturday Off To A Good Start...

Despite still spinning out from my second night of total insomnia this week, the day has started well with BBC1 screening the complete Doctor Who: The Infinite Quest this morning.

Sometimes it's easy to forget that Doctor Who is primarily a children's programme - which is, I guess, why the BBC shows - while the series is on - Totally Doctor Who, during afternoon CBBC. This is a very light-weight, kid-orientated, behind-the-scenes magazine show with games and quizzes; and a five-minute episode each week of the simple, but effective, Infinite Quest animation.

This morning's show was a compilation of all the episodes into one 45-minute story ... and it was a good one. Not great, but good. It reminded me, in part, of the Doctor Who novel The Resurrection Casket, with its ships in space and android pirates, but also Star Trek VI with its icy prison planet. The Infinite Quest is the kind of budget-busting, planet-hopping, alien-swarm-attacking, giant-robot-mining, space opera that Doctor Who can't do live action because it doesn't have the cash, but in cartoon form it's sweet.

The icing on the cake is, of course, that David Tennant and Freema Aygeman reprise their roles from the TV show as The Doctor and Martha, and it's written by Alan Barnes, who writes audio plays for Big Finish.