Astrid, Estrid, Æstriðr or Ástríðr is a given name of North Germanic origin. It comes from Old Norse Ásfríðr (Divine Beauty), from áss (god) + fríðr (beautiful).

Names derived from Astrid include the name Astrida, which is a somewhat common name for girls in the country of Latvia. The name Astrida may have originated when the city of Butare in Rwanda was renamed by its Belgian colonial rulers in honor of Queen Astrid, or by following an Eastern European regional convention of adding the letter ‘a’ to the end of a name to denote the name as being that of a female.

Borrowed from Wikipedia – and no doubt the root of the name has something to do with the presence of The Host (golden angels) aboard the distressed Titanic. Just convenient that Astrid happens to be an anagram of TARDIS as well…

Am I excited or what?! Don’t let me down, Russell…

“I’m the Doctor. I’m a Timelord. I’m nine hundred and three years old. And I’m the man who’s going to save all your lives, and all six billion people on the planet below. You got a problem with that?”

Don’t you just love the end of that trailer – available on the 14th day of the Doctor Who website advent calendar – and, no doubt, glimpsed amidst the BBC TV schedule.

The Host look heartless and indifferent to destruction; the Starship Titanic looks floaty and unsinkable; and Astrid looks like Kylie in appropriately kinky gear and boots. What more could you hope from early Christmas evening?

(Just dropped to less than 10 days to go, just as I posted this…)

Excellent news that the Christmas Special will run long, to make the wait all the more worthwhile. Mind, I’m astonished how quickly Christmas seems to be heading in this direction – likely to collide with my narrowing chances of going shopping like a passenger liner hitting a transdimenional spacio-temporal transportation device.

Kylie continues to look striking and rather fetching in her costume -so, I certainly intend to be there at 6.50pm on the 25th with recorder remote in hand. Unlike the Children in Need special, I will take precautions to remind myself to turn the TV on at the right time – even if it means posting notes all around the house.

Currently, the weird gold angel figures in some of the promotional materials look rather like Axons (who many fans thought might make a return with The Master in the last season, given their name is an anagram of Saxon!).

I’m rubbing my hands in a state of anticipational glee.