Season 41 - 2004

Season 41 would be the debut season for the new Doctor, Douglas Henshall. This Doctor would be a more beaten incarnation and dealing with grief, basically he’s the ninth Doctor from our own timeline though with elements of the Shalka Doctor. An ongoing arc for this Doctor is him dealing with his loss and learning to be happy again. A new companion was introduced this season: Joanna Mitchell played by Stephanie Leonidas, who is a university student from 2004.

Matthew Robinson was no longer head of Drama at BBC Wales so he was replaced by Julie Gardner and Ann Harrison Baxter was replaced by Phil Collinson.

This season introduced a new logo, which continued the trend of the previous logo of being quite sleek but looked more interesting than the previous one. With this came a new title sequence, it starts with a shot of Earth, with the TARDIS flying away from it as we follow it fly past the moon, before a blue bubble appears near the moon, reaching the TARDIS, pulling it in, as it becomes the vortex. The main cast names appear in 3D text flying past, before the logo flies in with a flash, gradually cracking before it rushes through, broken in pieces. The Doctor's face then zooms out, as it and the vortex form back into a bubble and zoom out, taking us back to space and an alien planet as the episode title appears. A new theme tune was also created for the show, which would be done by new composer Murray Gold. The TARDIS exterior would change and would essentially be the 2005 - 2010 TARDIS exterior which would be designed by Edward Thomas, despite that change the old TARDIS interior was kept the same however we tweeks, the main one being the colour of the TARDIS as instead of the room being white as it was during the Trevor Eve era the interior would now be a lot darker and the white light of the console room would be replaced with a dark blue.

The First Hours of Life

By Paul Cornell

August 7th

This story would see The TARDIS crashing down to Earth as the newly regenerated Doctor tries to pilot the TARDIS, we see Joanna Mitchell walking home one night in the village of Llandaff and spotting the TARDIS flying through the air and crashing nearby and going to see if anybody was hurt but she finds the Doctor, she helps him and lets him stay the night, Joanna goes of to bed while the Doctor eats some biscuits and starts to become unsettled about what happened on Gallifrey.

We then see a man walking out off a pub and later encountering a weird green gaseous creature which consumes him and this is where the main story begins, an alien creature called ‘The Entitatem’ wants to take over multiple human bodies at once so it can create an army of superhumans, in the end the Doctor defeats the Entitatem and everyone goes back to normal. At the end of the story the Doctor picks his new outfit: a black jacket, blue jeans and a jumper, Joanna asks to go with him and after a while he agrees to take her for a few adventures but warns her that his life is filled with danger and nothing will be the same again but Joanna says she still wants to go with him and they depart in the TARDIS.

The Culloden Battle

By Russell T Davies

August 14th

This episode would have shown the TARDIS arriving during the Battle of Culloden but the Doctor notices that something is not quite right and realises that the Kalron from Season 29’s ‘The Angels of Mons’ are trying to turn the tide of the war to change history, in the end the Doctor manages to stop them.

The Feast of The Stone

By Cavan Scott & Mark Wright 

August 21st

The story sees the TARDIS materialise in a dark cavern, when Joanna goes to see where they are she falls victim to a force which causes her to relive old memories with strong emotional resonance. The Doctor realises what’s happening and tells her to fight it but she has trouble doing so, the cave is the home of an intangible force like a psychic vampire. It is still feeding off Alison's emotions. The Doctor taps into the psionic resonance of the cavern. He finds Alison is somehow reliving some of his memories and realises that the dormant vampire was woken by his arrival; his mind holds memories of war greater than anything the vampire had encountered before, the Doctor soon uses the TARDIS telepathic circuits, feeding the vampire such a surge of war that the entity explodes into nothingness and Joanna is saved. 

Scream of The Shalka

By Paul Cornell

August 28th

This story sees the TARDIS landing back in Llandaff as the Doctor and Joanna begin to part ways but the Doctor later realises that something is wrong and they realise that the town has been closed off for weeks due to an alien race known as the Shalka, they live underground near where lava meets metamorphic rock, breathing in the volcanic air. The Shalka attempt to destroy the surface of Earth but the Doctor is able to blow them up, in the end the Doctor asks whether Joanna would like to continue her adventures in the TARDIS to which she says yes.

Blood of The Robots

By Simon Clark

September 4th

This story would see the TARDIS arrive to find a world full of intelligent, sensitive robots being hunted by ruthless salvage squads in order to make room for human settlers forced to migrate from their overcrowded home planet.

The Mask of Makassar

By Paul Cornell

September 11th

The story sees the Doctor and Joanna land on an alien planet whose inhabitants wear masks enabling them to share their thoughts as a telepathic community, we see Makassar, the spokes-unit for the community mind, ask the Doctor to represent the planet as alien representatives want to see the masks for themselves. The Doctor declines as he tells Joanna that the system is very similar to the Matrix on Gallifrey, Joanna is later confronted by a ghost-like phantom of a man wearing a mask, and when she tries to find the Doctor, she is attacked by Units who force a mask onto her face. The Doctor is also attacked by Units and forced to wear a mask, but Makassar finds it more difficult to take over the Doctor’s mind than he’d anticipated, and the Doctor is able to fight him off and rescue Joanna from the gestalt. The Doctor places her in a dreamscape fashioned from Joanna’s memories of Llandaff, where she gets her bearings and tells him about the ghost, who is presumably a rebellious Unit. The Doctor sends her out to find the ghost, and when she is attacked by Units, she calls out to the one who tried to contact her. While Makassar’s attention is divided, the Doctor manages to overpower him and draws on the power of the gestalt to generate his own ghost, one with some physical substance. Before Makassar can stop him, the Doctor removes his control mask and replaces it with one of the masks worn by the ordinary Units. The other Units are freed, including the Doctor and Joanna, while Makassar is trapped in a mental feedback loop, capable only of sending orders to himself.

The Kingmaker

By Jonathan Clements

September 18th

The story sees the TARDIS land on the planet Kalava which was colonised by humans and is ruled by two sets of warring gods, the Flesh who favour evolution through genetic evolution and the Metal which favour evolution through artificial needs, we would see Joanna be kidnapped and the Doctor would have to save her from a sacrifice with the help of a young genetic clone of the ageing god king to which they do.

The Empty Child

By Steven Moffat

September 25th

This is pretty much the same as it is in real life, the only difference is that the character of Captain Jack isn’t in the story and instead we have a new character called Hal Adams played by Paterson Joseph, other than that it’s the same story.

The Masked Invasion

By Steven Moffat

October 2nd

Again same as The Doctor Dances in real life though Hal is in the story and he doesn’t join the TARDIS at the end.

Winner Takes All

By Jacqueline Rayner

October 9th

The story sees the Doctor and Joanna return to Llandaff where they discover a race of aliens called the Quevvil are using video games to choose victims for their mind control missions into the bases of their enemies, the Mantodeans. In the end the Doctor manages to defeat them.

Normal Days

By Robert Shearman

October 16th

This story sees the TARDIS arrive on a street where the locals relive the same day over and over again, the Doctor and Joanna investigate the matter and discover the street is in a time loop and they have to find a way to break out of it which they eventually do.

Human Nature

By Paul Cornell

October 23rd

This is basically the same as it is in real life so I don’t need to discuss it.

Wartime

By Paul Cornell

October 30th

This is the same as The Family of Blood from real life, so I don’t need to discuss it.

Winter Wonderland

By Paul Cornell

December 25th

This story would see The TARDIS landing in Llandaff for Christmas Day where they discover the village to be snowing heavily and it soon becomes worse and we would discover that a race known as the Frost are trying to seal everybody inside their homes so they can take over the planet, however the Doctor soon manages to cause the snow to melt and the Frost are defeated.

And that concludes Season 41 of Doctor Who, a complete breath of fresh air for the show and was seen as a successful season in the eyes of the BBC, the next season is Season 42 of Doctor Who until then thank you for watching and goodbye.