Doctor Who fans rejoice, as the first half of this year's two-part Series 6 is now available on DVD and Blu-Ray for your home viewing pleasure. Matt Smith reprises his role as the 11th Doctor for Series 6 of the BBC sci-fi series Doctor Who. Along for another set of adventures are the Doctor's sidekicks in time and space, sassy Scottish redhead Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) and her now-husband Rory Williams (Arthur Darvill) who travel in an iconic blue police call box called the TARDIS ("Time and Relative Dimension in Space").
Doing things differently for Series 6 (a Brit "Series" is what we in the U.S. call a "season"), executive producer and head writer Steven Moffat decided to split the episodes in two, with Part 1 beginning on April 23, 2011, and Part 2 scheduled to start Sept., 2011. Not only would fans get a double-dose of the Doctor in one calendar year, but Series 6 Part 1 would begin on the same day in the U.K. and the U.S. (on BBC America) — a first for a show that has been airing earlier across the pond on the BBC. Sure, it may have just been an attempt to gain even more viewers in the States, but it worked. Dr. Who's American premiere had more viewers than in the U.K., garnering BBC America its highest-rated telecast ever at nearly 1.3 million viewers.
Series 6 began with many questions, tops among them: What's with the cryptic phrase, "The silence will fall," that was repeatedly uttered during Series 5? And who is the mysterious Professor River Song, a new companion and seeming-ally of the Doctor that showed up last year?
This article appears in Jul 14-20, 2011.