The classic Doctor Who series has recently been revived after a significant absence to much acclaim and to a whole new audience. This Doctor Who review reflects on all the actors who have played Doctor Who and their impact on the series.

Clearly Time Lords have children, yet this aspect of their past has, until recently, been conveniently ignored through-out the programme’s history. Perhaps the new producer could address this in forthcoming episodes, just as Russell T Davies has let slip that the Doctor 'had' a brother and we now know the Doctor has a cloned daughter.

Patrick Troughton was my first real doctor. I can remember him regenerating and thinking ‘wow’. Looking back, the special effects were clumsy and poor, but as an awestruck 4 year old, I could barely wait for the next season to commence.

Patrick really engaged me in the series. Quirky, irreverent and mischievous, his character had so much more appeal than the rather scary and austere William Hartnell.

The writers had also come into their own. Perhaps released from their mental confines by the necessary regeneration experience, they began to explore the Doctor Who universe in greater depth and with more imagination.

By the time of Patrick’s departure, Doctor Who had been around for most of my aware life, and the thought of yet another doctor was spectacularly unappealing, even if it did herald the advent of colour television.

Clearly with an eye to budgetary constraints, the production team ditched the expensive ‘alien’ sets and confined the Doctor to Earth by way of punishment and our first real glimpse of the new doctor was when he stumbled from the Tardis on Earth.

Oh dear, this was never going to work. I didn’t like Jon Pertwee already. No I was never going to watch it again, ‘my’ doctor had gone and long before the advent or even dreams of video or DVD, was never coming back. (Although in truth he did in the Three Doctors, The Five Doctors and the disappointing Two Doctors, But then hey, that’s the nature of the Time Lord’s Universe.)

No, this new Dandy was clearly no replacement for my quirky, hobbit like Doctor. But then again, I did rather like the Earth bound episodes, never having been fully convinced by the alien planet, or rather quarry, stuff. No, this time, they could concentrate on the scripts rather than sets, and some of the stories were remarkably good. So good in fact that I rather liked this new approach, and even more so with the arrival of Katy Manning and Sarah Jane Smith, two companions who added depth and dimension to the new series as it evolved. I also rather enjoyed U.N.I.T. (which presumably was unaware of Torchwood and vice-versa (perhaps another granddaughter anomaly. Star Trek: The Next Generation explained the mutation from early Klingon to late Klingon by a gruff Worf snorting “We don’t like to talk about it!” Is there a lesson here?)

By the time of Jon’s departure, I was aware months in advance of his character’s impending regeneration, and can remember becoming sad as the great ‘Omming’ Spiders signalled the end. Then this regeneration, oh no, this Tom Baker would never do. I wanted Jon back. Now.

Yet, from the ‘first generation’ of Doctor Who’s, Tom Baker became my all-time favourite. Deliciously odd, he really was the Doctor, combining everything from his previous regenerations and so much more.

Many of the stories were great, the larger than life acting covering for the poorer than life sets and finally we were allowed glimpses of the inner Tardis with its many passages, courtyards and alternative control panels. Wow. The legend was secured.

But then along came K-9. A massive mistake, for it allowed the scriptwriters to become lazy. Faced with impossible situations that left you gripped to your seat, K-9 would quickly solve any dilemma and in the process signalled the demise not only of Tom Baker’s reign, but of the sheer imagination of the programme. Thank God, K-9 left when he did.

Lagopolis provided, to my mind, the most mature and intelligent regeneration to date. We knew it was over for our longest serving Doctor, but those episodes prepared not only the Doctor, but us viewers as well for the closure of that chapter.

It was never quite the same after that. When Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker’s faces morphed into being in front of my eyes, I had never seen them before. But Peter Davison was already a well-known face from his ‘It shouldn’t happen to a Vet Days’. The Doctor had gone from being a genuine alien to a mere actor. Then it happened again with Colin Baker, complete with poor scripts and poor scheduling. I actually started skipping episodes and, with the introduction of Bonny Langford and the return of the early stereotypical screaming female companion, my interest was definitely waning.

By the time the BBC had decided to recommission the programme, Colin Baker was involved in other projects so we had our first faked regeneration scene. A regeneration scene that was to mark the beginning of the end for the series.

Deliberately increasingly sub standard scripts eroded the very essence of the programme to the point where it became more pantomime that science fiction, and with viewers deserting in their droves, the series was finally ‘rested’ for good. Looking back at that those final years, and the genuine commitment of so many fans, one had to ask why, in an era when the US were producing fine science fiction shows, the BBC allowed it to come to this.

The 1996 one off special, was too US orientated, and failed to make the grade, though some of the Tardis interior concepts were an improvement. I had been awaiting that film for so long, but it didn’t leave me gasping for more.

Then came the second generation of Doctor Who with Chris Ecclestone and David Tennant. Better, so much better, yet some how not being quite good enough. The US, when successful, have developed a strategy with films like Finding Nemo, that make them delightful for the younger generation, yet engaging to a more mature audience.

Somehow the new Doctor Who Shows haven’t found that balance. Watching preview clips of alien space craft crashing into Big Ben then disappearing into the Thames could have taken the show to a new level, but then they damaged it by having a pig as a pilot and the Slitheen with their wind problems. Funny to eight years olds, perhaps, but somewhat silly and a let-down to the accompanying older audience.

In the main, the new shows have been about scaring children with monsters, without the classic cliff hangers (and even when there is a cliff hanger, the next week’s preview shows you everything actually will work out fine) or serious science fiction plot development and twist. There are signs, however, that this is beginning to happen in Season 4 and with Russell T Davies gone there is a new opportunity - and less running about unnecessarily.

I’m pleased a new generation of fans can witness this classic British television concept, but would invite the writers to revisit some of the earlier themes and combine the quality production of today with classic scripts from the past.

City of Evil for example was imaginative, scary and clever. Maybe that’s what’s missing from the new show, perhaps it is good, worth watching, but simply not yet clever enough.