Matt Smith Doctor Who To Kick Off With Hour-Long Episode

Website Radio Free Skaro has scored a bit of a coup by getting its hands on a BBC press release about the first Matt Smith season of Doctor Who. It reveals that the premiere episode will be 60 minutes long, as well as a number of other tantalising titbits (click away now to avoid spoilers:

* Amy Pond is described as "enigmatic" - so does she arrive with a built-in mystery?
* "A silent menace follows Amy and the Doctor around wherever they go" - is this going to be a season-long story arc?
* They explore 16th century Venice, France during the 1890s and the United Kingdom in the far future, now an entire nation floating in space.
* The Daleks are hatching a new master plan from the heart of war-torn London in the 1940s.
* There are also alien vampires, humanoid reptiles, old enemies such as the Weeping Angels and a Star Whale (which presumably has nothing to do with Pat Mills's abandoned season 20 story, "The Song Of The Space Whale").

Meanwhile, The Sun is claiming that EastEnders actress Nina Wadia has been cast as an evil psychiatric expert in the news series. “I play a bit of a baddie," she tells the tabloid. "And yes, like my EastEnders character Zainab, she’s not a very pleasant woman – but at least I’m human and not some kind of strange alien life-form. I play a doctor – more of a psychiatric doctor than a traditional medical one.”

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