The ninth Doctor Who has a confession to make, nearly three weeks before his police box materialises for the first time on 21st Century terrestrial television. Christopher Eccleston, who has inherited the time-travelling Tardis from predecessors including Patrick Troughton, John Pertwee and Tom Baker, never liked the programme as a boy.

He told the audience last night at a preview of the first episode in Cardiff, where much of the series was filmed, that he found the character of the Doctor "too authoritarian" and tried to avoid watching it, even though the programme was on in his house.

The new Doctor is a completely reconstituted character with short hair, a well-worn leather jacket. He jokes about his sticking out ears and northern accent. Mr Eccleston said: "I'm different from the other Doctors. All the others spoke with this RP accent - maybe it was that that put me off. I think that it's good that we teach kids that people who speak like that can be heroic too."

The new series has retained the best of the old including the 1950s police box with its siren noise, the theme music, the Daleks, the Time Lords and the doctor's all-purpose "sonic screwdriver". But banished are the wobbly sets, creaky special effects and occasionally wooden acting.

The new Doctor is mercurial, funny and ever so slightly camp, though he enjoys a closer relationship with his new female "assistant" than previous doctors. Rose, played by the singer Billie Piper, finds his Asperger-ish lack of social skills and human understanding infuriating and endearing in equal measure.

Mr Eccleston says he brought some of himself to the role, but his real inspiration was the creator of the latest incarnation of one of television's most enduring characters: the writer and executive producer Russell T Davies.

Mr Eccleston volunteered for the role as soon as he read that Mr Davies was behind it. He said: "I am a huge fan of his. I've tried to capture his speed of thought and the pace of his words, and of course they are his words."

Mr Davies, writer of Queer As Folk and Second Coming, in which Mr Eccleston also starred, said he had spent 15 years as a "closet" Doctor Who fan. He was born the same year that the first Doctor, William Hartnell, stepped onto television screens in flickering black and white dressed in a Victorian frock coat.

Mr Davies said he kept his guilty secret for 15 years only to discover, when he finally plucked up the courage to admit it, that everyone else loved the series too.

Asked whether family audiences would be spared the sight of the Doctor and Rose "snogging", Mr Davies refused to be drawn. "I am going to keep you in suspense for 15 weeks. The men I've said that to!"

Thirteen episodes will be broadcast in the crucial Saturday early evening slot on BBC One starting on the Easter holiday weekend.

Some viewers may be put off by the pacey direction and use of cinematic tricks like stop start photography. Others will miss the fact the baddies are more likely to be computer generated than out-of-work actors in cardboard suits.

The producers wanted a clean break from previous Doctor Whos to avoid being an ironic pastiche of a much-loved series that got caught in its own time warp and was taken off the screens 16 years ago.

Mr Davies says he wrote it with the family audience in mind. He said: "If you chase a cult you just become a smaller cult. If a cult fan hates this series it means they will only watch it 20 times instead of 30 times.

"When they brought Crossroads back and made it a bit camp it was a turkey of disastrous proportions."

To claim the prime spot on national network television in the same month as their production of Casanova is the cover story in Radio Times is a major achievement for Mr Davies and his co-producer Julie Gardner, head of drama at BBC Wales.

Ms Gardner says she's nervous about the audience response to the series as it is the first family drama to fill the prime Saturday evening schedule after nearly a decade of "entertainment" shows.

"We just don't know what to expect, there is no real yardstick," she said. "Of course I'm nervous."

She denied that the release of a bootleg version of the first episode on the internet had been a "publicity stunt" and said: "We were devastated."

The latest timelord is very much a creature of 21st Century television. His predecessors might have maintained a discreet silence if confronted by the entire British Cabinet breaking wind uncontrollably, as happens in a later episode. Instead, the new Doctor tells them brusquely: "Would you mind not farting while I'm trying to save the world."