Yeah, that's kinda my worry, too... although I'm listening to the commentary for the new episode right now (available from the BBC website) and Tennant seems very happy in his role... they're filming the last episode of the series as they record the commentary for the first, and ther'e no sense of TEnnant being jaded or anything.

As to the effects... the Beeb can NEVER hope to compete with the budgets thrown about by big American companies (most of whome are owned buy film studios with more money than sense anyway!), so they've always focused on story over visuals... that's not to say that these new episodes aren't a WORLD above the original stuff in terms of the special fx, cos they are... but they're going to take some time to get to a level equal to Farscape, for example, or BSG.

jonthecelt