Bigger on the inside...

So Doctor Who is 50 and there's been lots of comment about the series.  As one who has watched it since the beginning, here's my take,  What tends to now be referred to as "Old Who" (1963-1989) seemed to me to be funny/scary, but "New Who" (2005-date) is above all emotional.  There's scarcely an episode of the new series that has not ended with me wiping away a secret tear, or even openly weeping. Maybe that's because my personal life has made me more receptive to sadness, but I think that the writing has quite deliberately made the stories veer more towards the tragic.  I defy you to watch the Van Goch episode with dry eyes, and then there's the one where Rose's father has to die by being run over by a car in order to repair an anomaly in the time/space continuum, and Rose gets to say goodbye to him in that church - this is anything but fun.  And Donna Noble (who in my opinion, albeit by a small margin, is the best of the "companions") stepping out under the wheels of a truck to save the universe.  I have to say- as I've said before - that for me Matt Smith's Doctor doesn't hack it, but that doesn't make the stories any the less sad and downbeat.  What will Peter Capaldi bring?  Watch this space.