But this isn't just Viking with wheels. NASA has sent a whole laboratory up there this time and is going to do some serious science. I think they have very specific suspicions about where life—or evidence of what was once life—may be and are going after it.

Today we begin in earnest our search for life on other planets. Life that one day we may be able to communicate with. No one knows the form this life may take, if it will have a face or even a corporeal form, but we do know this: we WILL try to have sex with it.

We will band together as a planet and send a fleet of young men and women from all over the world (except Eskimos) into space to seek out new life and new civilizations. They will carry our banner and our ideals to the far reaches of the solar system and beyond, searching for anything with a hole or protuberance that looks remotely inviting. We pledge to do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard. We do not know what benefits await us. They may try to eat us, perhaps enslave us, even steal our brains, but we will persevere. Space is out there, and we are going to bang it.

I want some of these as throw pillows or something. They're terrific.

David Tennant was great, but his companions got progressively more annoying, in my opinion. And RTD's scripts got progressively more ridiculous and mawkish until the finale just threw up on itself and sobbed.

Matt Smitt under Steven Moffat was a wonderful breath of fresh air that is only just starting to go a little stale after last year's season-long shaggy dog story.

Count me in.