[Scooter]

Indeed. CV is welcome to think that the Ninth Doctor is entirely without redeeming virtue, just as for a long time the same was held to be true of the Sixth, and the Seventh, even (for die-hard Tom Baker fans) the Fifth. If you cannot accept change in Doctor Who, you are doomed to be disappointed and are liable to write off an entire category of the show, but it's your loss.

I will continue to believe that this is a mistake and even a repudiation of what Who has come to mean. As Zeke points out, the new series has brought a lot of interesting stuff to the table, and I personally--a died-in-the-wool Who fan for most of my life who was both excited and apprehensive about the new version--came away from the new 13 episodes with a lot of stuff I liked and a lot of stuff I didn't. I was happy with that, because that's been my reaction to every season of Doctor Who since I first began watching it. That in itself was a funny sort of continuity. There was fun stuff, exciting stuff, silly stuff. The Doctor's fallibility being explored intelligently I welcomed wholeheartedly. I've been waiting for ages for something like "Boom Town," in which the Doctor is confronted with the consequences of his actions in a personal way. And if I didn't like the deus ex machina of that episode, does that mean I should toss the whole season on the fire? No.

And what happened to having fun with the parts of Doctor Who you personally think are not up to your own gold standard? You watch "Horns of Nimon" for the humor and the places it's trying to go, you watch "Nightmare of Eden" for the OTT Nazi villain and the bell-bottomed monsters (even Tom laughed at them when he saw the clip in "The Tom Baker Era"). You watch "Survival" not for the stupid motorcycle duel but because it asks interesting questions about home and survival. You watch "Mindwarp" not for the Valeyard's ridiculous dialog but because the episode itself is a puzzle for the viewer. And so on.

(Clearly I'm not following PHJ's worthy dictum.) Anyway I think it's simply wrong to say the new season offers nothing at all of value, but that's just my opinion, and we both have a right to think what we want. As someone who was once violently allergic to Colin Baker, I can understand where that reaction comes from. Come back to me in five or ten years and tell me again what you think of this season.