Doctor Who At Christmas

Watching the Doctor Who special is a Christmas tradition in this part of the world, where Tardis is a word in common usage. As we might have already mentioned, Mike and I asked our landlord to remove the telly from our flat before we moved in, so we'd thought that we would have to forgo good television as well as the omni-present bad over here.

Happily, on that most boring of days, Christmas Day, Mike, Gen and I discovered that with a simple laptop and a basic high-speed internet package, we can stream BBC TV legally. So we indulged in the Doctor Who special. In fact Mike and I enjoyed it so much that we watched the previous three episodes Friday night, whilst Gen was off for a weekend of fun in Dublin. Mike and I had stopped watching Doctor Who after a particularly preachy episode called the Doctor's Daughter. But David convinced us to give the program another go and we're glad we did. The writing really is superb, as is the acting.

On Saturday when we picked up our weekly organic chicken from the farmer's market we were able to chat about the Christmas Special with Sascha from Hugh Grierson Organics. Like I said, Doctor Who is a cultural mainstay over here.

The rules about BBC's on-line television interface, the iplayer, are that television programs are available to watch for 7 days after they have been played on air. This time can be extended if the shows are repeated. So now we can watch British TV and we've had to fall back on our own self-control to prevent us from wasting too much time in front of the virtual boob-tube.