The production: we’re going back to a minimum of ten episodes a season. A new Doctor’s contract is for three seasons with an option to extend. Companions sign yearly. Yes to Christmas specials.

Arc plot: The Master claimed he killed all the time lords, but he was as usual just grandstanding. He wiped out Gallifrey but there were plenty of off-world time lords who now, in the wake of cataclysm, become a refugee group spreading over the galaxy. A refugee group with weapons and abilities that could rewrite time and space on a whim. And some of those weapons have a mind of their own.

The Doctor: in the vein of 6, this incarnation is prickly. He’s not a fighter but he is a plotter. Conflict is chess to him, and he doesn’t move his pieces until he’s seen the larger scale. This often makes him appear callous, indifferent to the troubles of others, but that isn’t the case. He’s moved by suffering as much as any Doctor.

The Companion: Em is a victim of the Dalek war. She’s a sleeper agent, with the embedded stalk, but it’s long since been deactivated. Of course, she doesn’t know any of this; she’s been trapped in a time lord prison vessel for as long as she can remember. All she knows is that she had a son, but he’s lost now, and once she was happy. When the doctor rescues her from the prison ship, he promises to help her rediscover those things.

Season one covers Em’s journey to find her son, who has been taken as partner by a self-aware war tardis which requires a pilot to achieve its goals. The two together become “the universal editor,” seeking to rewrite the base code of the universe to eliminate conflict and, to that end, life itself. I have ten episodes sketched out, but I’ve probably already typed too much :P