I’m something of a sci-fi buff, and it’s always been kind of tough to swallow that there’s virtually no science fiction out there, especially when compared against the host of other genres. Thousands of horror flicks, thousands of comedies, dramas, action movies…all well represented, but where’s the love for sci-fi? And the folks out at Warner Brothers, through their BBC contacts, have gotten me a handful of some truly fantastic science fiction: Doctor Who: The Complete Fifth Series.

Doctor Who: The Complete Fifth Series gives us the Eleventh Doctor, Matt Smith, as he’s about to head out on a whirlwind adventure through time and space. As is generally how this goes, he picks up a companion along the way in the form of Amelia “Amy” Pond, who first met the Doctor when she was twelve, and then didn’t see him again until she was in her early twenties.

Let this be a lesson to boys everywhere, as they consider how young Amy would look with ten years’ separation between versions, and remember to be nice to all the short, somewhat pudgy little girls out there, because if they turn into that, the last thing you want is to be associated with the time she got pushed into a mud puddle.

Anyway! Back to the Doctor and his mad exploits, as he’ll be bombing around the space-time continuum in his phone booth…er…TARDIS, that is, even if it looks like the British equivalent of a phone booth, taking on some of the worst baddies he’s ever tackled (both the Daleks AND the Weeping Angels will show up here, and that should give Doctor Who fans a brief frisson of horror) and going up against something even the Doctor may find disastrous.

This is an unbelievable experience: the whole thing manages to come across as both comical and exciting by turns. You’ll laugh as often as you gasp in this one, and each will be just as well done as the other. There’s a little bit of everything in here besides, even some historical fiction in for the bargain.

It’s actually hard to overstate how good this is. Sure, some episodes are better than others–that’s the case with most any television series box set–but man, the whole of Doctor Who is downright impressive. It is, indeed, as the headline claims, sharp and brilliant science fiction, with plenty of laughs and loads of excitement by turns.

The Screenhead Ten Scale, in turn, hands over full marks–a ten out of ten–for Doctor Who: The Complete Fifth Series, a show of science fiction at its most entertaining and its very best.