Unfortunately, my wife are still catching up with Season TWO! (We're halfway through, and I think the story lines have been great) Looks like we'll be either be catching the repeats or getting the DVD set when it comes out.

I discovered Doctor Who in grade school when some lower powered UHF station in L.A. would show the Doctor in between cartoons like Johnny Quest. Great stuff, but some of it would scare the crap out of me, even though it was the middle of the afternoon (this was during the Tom Baker "gothic" period). Later on, Doctor Who got syndicated to several PBS stations, and many of them continued to show Doctor Who for more than 20 years (until the BBC, in their infinite greed, terminated all of the PBS station contracts in the hopes that a commercial channel like Sci-Fi would buy the rights to the new episodes and the classic series together as a package).

In a way, I think the new Doctor Who series and the classic series are different in that the writing on the new series seems more consistent. So far (as far as I've seen) nothing yet that sets a definitive standard like the Tom Baker adventure Genesis of the Daleks (personally, I think that's the best of the Doctor Who adventures), but nothing laughably bad either. The higher production quality on the new Doctor Who does often help to advance the storytelling, and I'm glad that they haven't overdone it with the companions hiding out in obvious places. But, the best classic series adventures written by Terry Nation and Douglas Adams still seem a step up on what I've seen with the new series so far.

But, dispensing with the comparisons, the new Doctor Who is excellent sci-fi TV, and I've really liked the casting choices with the two doctors so far.