With his latest outpouring on Bad Wilf though it appears that, unsurprisingly, the decision was all about to politics and disagreements with the senior team. We all know what senior team means though, right? Wink, wink.

Have a read of what he says and then we’ll go through and let you know what we think.

I left Doctor Who because I could not get along with the senior people. I left because of politics. I did not see eye-to-eye with them. I didn’t agree with the way things were being run. I didn’t like the culture that had grown up, around the series. So I left, I felt, over a principle.

I thought to remain, which would have made me a lot of money and given me huge visibility, the price I would have had to pay was to eat a lot of shit. I’m not being funny about that. I didn’t want to do that and it comes to the art of it, in a way. I feel that if you run your career and– we are vulnerable as actors and we are constantly humiliating ourselves auditioning. But if you allow that to go on, on a grand scale you will lose whatever it is about you and it will be present in your work.

If you allow your desire to be successful and visible and financially secure – if you allow that to make you throw shades on your parents, on your upbringing, then you’re knackered. You’ve got to keep something back, for yourself, because it’ll be present in your work. A purity or an idealism is essential or you’ll become– you’ve got to have standards, no matter how hard work that is. So it makes it a hard road, really.

You know, it’s easy to find a job when you’ve got no morals, you’ve got nothing to be compromised, you can go, ‘Yeah, yeah. That doesn’t matter. That director can bully that prop man and I won’t say anything about it’. But then when that director comes to you and says ‘I think you should play it like this’ you’ve surely got to go ‘How can I respect you, when you behave like that?’

So, that’s why I left. My face didn’t fit and I’m sure they were glad to see the back of me. The important thing is that I succeeded. It was a great part. I loved playing him. I loved connecting with that audience. Because I’ve always acted for adults and then suddenly you’re acting for children, who are far more tasteful; they will not be bullshitted. It’s either good, or it’s bad. They don’t schmooze at after-show parties, with cocktails.

Pretty frank, huh?

Clearly Eccleston, as an actor of some great repute, felt that the process of making Doctor Who and the personalities involved made his job as an actor, less than fulfilling.

It’s telling that the actor that replaced him – David Tennant, lest we forget – was a virtual unknown at the time but, and this is important, had worked with Russell T Davies previously, in the execrable Casanova.

So his status as a willing malleable puppet was assured.

Eccleston – an established actor – would have required from the role a degree of freedom, the ability to shape the Doctor as he saw fit. As a good actor, this is to be expected. Watch any of Christopher Walken’s performances to see just how effective a policy that can be.

However it’s doubtful that Russell T Davies and his team of highly skilled supplicants would have wanted anything to detract from his grand vision of a regenerated Doctor.

Eccleston’s desire to inhabit the role and actually be an actor would have been very much at odds with the one-dimensional, Davies lead, Doctor that we saw Tennant become. For Eccleston’s Doctor there was to be no gurning, brainy specs, over-acting reaction shots or cries of allons-y.

Eccleston’s take on the Doctor focussed on the other-worldly aspects of the character and had little truck with sexual politics or fart gags, and it is probably his resistance to the many, many ideas and ilconceived notions that Davies and his team were foisting upon the character that saw him leave.

It looks like it’s going to be pretty special too, with the first location filming for Doctor Who since City Of Death back in 1979! We’ll gloss over the Canadian shot TV movie…

So what do we know – or think we know – about The Impossible Astronaut so far then?

Season 6 - The gang's all here.

Well lets see…

• The Silence feature
• A lead character will die within the first 10 minutes
• We find out that River Song is from Earth
• The Silence might be related to the Cybermen
• The Stetson wearing Doctor in the trailer is from the future
• It’s a two-parter

So we don’t know much then really. Oh well, our opinion will be posted here shortly after…

As odd as it sounds – coming from us at least – there were a few incidents that reminded us of classic Who and offered a glimmer of hope that things might have gotten better.

They were few and far between but it’s only fair that we list them. This shouldn’t take too long…

Dalek – The Doctor Gets Scared
This was genius! The reintroduction of the Daleks in series one of new Who, needed to tick so many boxes that it was always going to be difficult.

The job of introducing them to a new, younger audience was never going to be straightforward, things have moved on since the sixties. The Daleks seemingly hadn’t though, their design remained resolutely the same as always. Lights on the head, an eye stalk and plungers and egg whisks for weapons.

It was going to be tricky conveying the menace and power a Dalek held, when they still looked like this.

Unchanged in nearly fifty years.

So with an unchanged design what was needed was a bit of the old acting! Which is what Christopher Eccleston gave us. In spades!

Not so cocky now are we?

Thanks to Eccleston’s mad, scrambling fear at coming face to face with just one Dalek, the kids – who, this was all new to remember – were going to be under no illusions; Daleks are evil!

Blink – Easter Eggs!

Brainy specs on!

Everybody loves Blink. Everybody. Ask them their reasons for loving it and we’ve no doubt they’ll say it’s the Weeping Angels.

Now as good a villain as they are, they’re not the reason it rocks so hard. No, it’s the easter eggs that solidify this storyline.

Those easter eggs are so neatly tied together and underpin the episode so well, that – as mad as it might sound – you often don’t really notice their criticality to the plot furthermore, in taking the retrospective lacing of hidden extras into a DVD as a starting point, Moffat managed to subtly introduce the Novikov self-consistency principle into Doctor Who. Good lad!

This girl could go far.

Another reason for the success of Blink is Sally Sparrow (played by Carey Mulligan), she more than makes up for the absence of the Doctor and thanks to her it never feels like we’re being short changed.

You see the reason why the Doctor and Martha appear in it so infrequently is that, in order to save the pennies, this episode was filmed simultaneously with the episode Human Nature. Cutting costs on a flagship show? It could only be the BBC!

Blink won the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form and Carey Mulligan received the Constellation Award for Best Female Performance in a 2007 Science Fiction Television Episode. Both awards were thoroughly deserved.

The Doctor’s Daughter – The Seven Day War
Now this was very neat, very neat indeed. Two warring factions engaged in a never ending struggle that neither side can remember the reason for.

The two sides have been going at it for generations and it’s only thanks to Donna’s mathematical genius – which also enabled her to pick up the Dewey Decimal system in two days, ho hum – that the Doctor works out exactly what’s been going on.

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You see this never ending, ever lasting war has in reality – thanks to cloning and accelerated growth – has only been going on for seven days. Brilliant!

Silence In The Library – River Song, Echoes Of The Future
This is River Song, by all accounts you’ll be seeing more of her.

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That little book she’s reading from? That’s her diary, a diary that looks more than a little like the TARDIS. Here’s a closer peek.

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You see the implication here is that River Song has already met the Doctor, although as the Doctor can’t remember this having happened we can only assume that she’s met a future regeneration. How cool is that?

It’s a lovely little twist and we must admit that we’re amazed it hadn’t happened sooner.

Rise Of The Cybermen – Rose Tyler (In A Maid’s Outfit)
Phwoar! We know it’s bringing the tone down but come on. This is fantastic stuff, Rose, dressed like a maid! Knick-knack-noo!

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Let’s leave it there shall we?

It goes without saying that it will have been difficult for them to have come to this decision, what with Doctor Who being at its most popular in thirty years and the BBC’s licence fee under constant threat.

The auction takes place on the 24th of February at Bonhams, admission is by programme only and a program costs £15. There’s some guff about a portion of the programme cost going to Children In Need but really, who gives a shit?

Some of the classic props – that should obviously have been gifted to The National Media Museum – can be seen over at io9.

As episodes go it was stupid, the premise was flawed and it was altogether hokey but you know what else it was? It was fun.

There was plenty of running around in corridors and we didn’t particularly feel for anyone but it wasn’t mired in any kind of pathetic attempt at a story arc.

If Moffatt keeps his side of the bargain and follows this sort of blueprint then Doctor Who will once again be fantastic!

That uppercut? Yeah, we loved that too.

The plot we’re working on explains the origins of The Doctor and his relationship with humanity. It also serves to introduce us to Davros and the Daleks, as well as the role of Time Lords in the political machinations of the universe .

To that end we’ve written an outline and an opening monologue. Have a read and see what you think.

Over four and a half billion years ago – while your world was still being formed – we were taking our first steps into the vast reaches of space.

Five hundred million years later – while life was only just forming in your oceans – we had conquered space and had unravelled the secrets of the universe.

By the time that your species had evolved we had long since mastered inter-dimensional travel and had developed machines and sciences that allowed us to travel through time and dimensions in space with the greatest of ease.

And now, now when we finally meet, as your species is just beginning its interstellar journey. You face your greatest challenge.

This is my story and the story of how I met you and saved you.

Like it?

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It was designed by Dylan over at happymonkeyshoes and we think it’s great!

At some point soon we’ll be replacing the header at the top of this page with the new logo and some new graphics, although it’ll probably just be the new logo at first. Chances are we’ll wait for some Matt Smith promo shots before we go the whole hog!

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This is more like it! After the lacklustre done-in-Photoshop look of the last logo this breathes fresh air deep into its lungs and shouts out that Doctor Who is catching up with the rest of the world!

The last logo was tired when it was brand new, it reeked of being sketched on a napkin by someone with no graphic design knowledge or ability. Most likely Russell T Davies himself.

Honestly look at it and tell us it looks sophisticated.

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If Davies did have a hand in the design of the 2005 logo, then it’s likely no one would have dared tell him it looked shit. Let’s face it Doctor Who was dead before he came along and afterwards it was raking in millions for the BBC, who cares about artistic credibility when there’s money about?

Then along comes Moffatt – a new broom – he let’s the writers write and the designers design and the result is a well designed logo with a lovely bold logo type to go with it. That’s not to say people haven’t criticised it a little.

They say it’s a bit too shiny? Maybe they’re right.

There’s too much lense flare? We’d agree – but certainly less than the old logo.

All in all though it looks modern, sleek and it’s given us yet more hope that Doctor Who will finally be the show it used to be and should always have been.

It had to be done.