Doctor Who materialises in America

The TARDIS is due to land in the US tonight, at 9pm on the Sci Fi channel, for a double bill debut from the new series.

I'd be really interested in hearing any feedback from March-pane's US readers, and any info on how it goes down over there. It will be fascinating to see what the yanks make of it....

Just to let you know guys, the first episode is possibly the weakest, so do stick with it......

There's a great article in the Seattle Times which I'm going to cheekily paste here, I liked it so much:

"Christopher Eccleston is the new Doctor in the BBC's latest incarnation of 'Doctor Who.' But don't get too attached to him. He won't be back next year. The superb 'Doctor Who' achieves something difficult for American shows: It makes TV look easy by demonstrating that intelligence and escapism are not mortal enemies. But then, 'Doctor Who' has experience. The world's longest ongoing sci-fi series has kicked around the time-space continuum since 1963. Over 40 Earth years, the time travels of the mysterious Doctor and his sidekicks have grown from a British children's show to a legend. The latest incarnation hits U.S. airwaves at 9 tonight via Sci Fi Channel. Co-starring Christopher Eccleston and Billie Piper, it's Season 1 of a revival launched in 2005 by BBC Wales and the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. Those not already privy to past splendors needn't fear. While most space sagas drag a comet-tail's worth of back story behind them, 'Doctor Who' is instantly accessible. Maybe that's because the series at heart is an old-fashioned romance in the dashing, 19th-century sense. The mechanics of being transported 5 billion years in a moment or using Anti-Plastic to melt an enemy are tossed off with deadpan insouciance; what counts is the distance closed or opened among people and other forms of life. The focus for this epic jaunt is the relationship between the Doctor and his traveling companion, who in the new version is a pretty blonde named Rose Tyler. Rose resembles the Bridget Jones type of Englishwoman, albeit a few pegs down the socioeconomic scale. She labors in a bland department store, dates a bland boyfriend named Mickey (Noel Clarke) and tolerates her antic, overbearing mum (Camille Coduri). ... On paper, this formula puts 'Doctor Who' in the same territory as 'Star Trek.' Both reflect the optimism of the 1960s, along with the Western World's first self-conscious steps toward global thinking. But the approaches were dissimilar. The one-hour 'Star Trek' was indisputably American in its sober and open moralizing. 'Doctor Who' took a lighter, ironic point of view and each half-hour installment concluded with a cliffhanger. Even the treatment of technology was different. The Trekkian transporter room looked cheesy and behaved flawlessly; the Doctor's machine TARDIS (Time And Relative Distance In Space) was, and is, quirkily flawed. ... Mainly, though, the series resonates with its message to examine as well as relish life. Today's audience has moved beyond flip cynicism, and if the replacement isn't quite sincerity, 'Doctor Who' allows room for both."