Five minutes was apparently all it took for the Thirteenth Doctor to convert the Tenth Doctor from a seasoned series insider into a giddy, wide-eyed fan. 

Former Doctor Who star David Tenant says it took him almost no time to forget about his previous involvement with the series and lose himself in the new story, once he fired it up late Sunday night.

Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, the former Doctor Who star, who’s already friends with Jodie Whittaker from their shared time on British crime drama Broadchurch, said Whittaker’s turn as Doctor Who’s first-ever female lead pretty much had him transfixed from the start.

“[A]s someone who grew up watching Doctor Who, it’s very exciting whenever there’s a kind of rebirth of the show,” he said. “But because Jodie’s a friend and because [Broadchurch creator] Chris Chibnall, who now runs the show, is a friend, it was exciting on so many levels... But five minutes in, I was just watching it as a fan again, and I’d forgotten that I knew them, and that they were my mates. I was just going, ‘Oh, this is fun, this is exciting!’ ”

The new series premiered Sunday to the highest viewership in the long and storied history of the franchise, roping in an average of 8.2 million viewers and a peak number of 9 million viewers. That topples the previous Doctor Who record of 8 million viewers, set by — you guessed it — David Tennant, back in the late 2000s.

Maybe Whittaker can return the love, because Tennant’s smack in the middle of a prolific genre run. In addition to his demonic turn as Crowley for Amazon’s upcoming adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Good Omens, he’s also a creepy serial killer in this year’s horror-thriller Bad Samaritan, and voices Dr. Rufus Weller for Rooster Teeth’s upcoming gen:Lock animated web series. Oh, and he also voices a mean Scrooge McDuck, too.