Doctor WhoThe Star Beast or “How Doctor Who got its groove back.” Guess Who’s back? And, more importantly, back where it belongs: prime Saturday tea time telly? That’s right, it’s DOCTOR WHO and everything old is new again as a brand new era begins with more than one blast from the past as THE STAR BEAST ..
Doctor WhoThe Power Of The Doctor sees the Chibnall Era end as it lived: messily. ***SPOILERS*** There’s a fascinating dichotomy at the heart of Chris Chibnall’s time at the helm of DOCTOR WHO, an irreconcilable, Jekyll and Hyde-style division between who he is and what he can do. On the one hand, he’s still that pedantic ..
Doctor WhoDoctor Who: Legend Of The Sea Devils is a quintessentially underwhelming Chibnall special ***SPOILERS*** Penultimate adventures are a curious thing in DOCTOR WHO. Sometimes they’re entirely disconnected from the upcoming regeneration and sometimes they only reveal their true purpose retrospectively (such as THE KEEPER OF TRAKEN or PLANET OF FIRE where new companions were introduced ..
Doctor WhoShould old acquaintance be forgot? Not when you’ll see them again in five minutes! DoctorWho – Eve Of The Daleks Review *SPOILERS* With implications of The Flux still reverberating around the still much-reduced universe of DOCTOR WHO, all eyes turned to the first episode of 2022: EVE OF THE DALEKS. Of course, the Chibinista who ..
Doctor Who*SPOILERS* And so, with THE VANQUISHERS, THE FLUX ends as it was always likely to – with a whimper, not with a bang. Chibnall’s proclivity for starting things he can’t finish returns in full force as he doesn’t so much stick the landing as throws everything at a wall and sees what sticks. There’s spectacle, ..
Doctor Who*SPOILERS* Like an unwelcome Gandalf The White, many of Chibnall’s follies return to us now, at the turning of the tide in SURVIVORS OF THE FLUX, an episode title which feels more like a writer’s note placeholder than something which can stand shoulder to shoulder with the likes of THE HALLOWEEN APOCALYPSE, WAR OF THE ..
Doctor Who*SPOILERS* VILLAGE OF THE ANGELS is, notably, the only episode of DOCTOR WHO: FLUX where the writing credits are shared, so it’s perhaps not surprising that it’s also the first episode of the season where the central story of the episode and the overarching series arc seems to be tripping each other up, rather than ..
Doctor Who*SPOILERS* Where WAR OF THE SONTARANS saw Chibnall in more or less traditional DOCTOR WHO story-telling mode, ONCE, UPON TIME sees him throw the storytelling rulebook out the window for a crazy-paving time-fractured romp through the rewriting of Whovian lore. While I’m no fan of the Timeless Child arc so far (I’m stuck on the ..
Doctor Who*SPOILERS* Is Chibnall the Thane of Cawdor? Because nothing becomes his life as showrunner than the leaving of it, apparently. WAR OF THE SONTARANS brings us possibly his most complete and satisfying standalone DOCTOR WHO story yet, combining historical fact with science fiction, while still pursuing the ongoing series arc forward in workmanlike, if somewhat ..
Doctor Who*SPOILERS* It’s hard to say where expectations are for THE HALLOWEEN APOCALYPSE, the first episode of Whittaker’s third and apparently final, season of DOCTOR WHO. With the announcement of her, and indeed showrunner Chris Chibnall’s departure, the scene should be set for a celebratory romp to the finish line, as is par for the course ..
Doctor WhoThe third serial of DOCTOR WHO’s redefining Season 24, DELTA AND THE BANNERMEN, may suffer from a clumsy and largely unsuccessful attempt to pun the all but forgotten pop group Echo And The Bunnymen, but it’s also the serial that’s surprised me the most on reappraising it. Oh sure, it still has some of the ..
Doctor WhoHaving opened the new era and series of DOCTOR WHO with the reassuringly familiar presence of a quarry, PARADISE TOWERS provides a similar comfort factor of that time-honoured Whovian trope of endless, conspicuously similar corridors, plus the inevitable return of the Doctor’s perennially ill-fated attempts to take a holiday. Beguiled by the sales brochure, Mel ..
Doctor WhoBefore it was the social media battle cry of an embittered faction of Whovian fandom railing against the casting of Jodie Whittaker, “Leave the girl, it’s the man I want!” was the portentous opening line to DOCTOR WHO’s latest narrative – and real-life – regeneration as the series exploded back to life in 1987 with ..
Doctor Who*SPOILERS* I can’t be alone, surely, in wondering where the ‘Revolution’ was in “Revolution Of The Daleks”? In the end, there was very little about this perfunctory seasonal feature-length special that was revolutionary – or, indeed, special. With the Doctor locked away in space prison, Yaz, Graham and Ryan have been trying to get on ..
Doctor Who*SPOILERS* After last week’s cobbled together chaotic opener, “The Timeless Children” continues Season 12’s trend of two-part continuations which aren’t really two-part stories. With the arrival of The Master on the scene, the Cybermen and their Cyberprophet are relegated to disposable henchmen as the real master plan, Chibnall’s master plan, takes centre stage and he ..
Doctor Who*SPOILERS* There’s no denying it’s a classy and confident opening to this archly hyped ‘game-changing’ two-part season finale, even if it does evoke David Lynch’s “Dune” just a little. Falling through the floating cyberman eye into the credits is a lovely move although I have to admit as the titles faded, I thought I’d fallen ..
Doctor Who*SPOILERS* Finally, the thirteenth Doctor’s era gets a true masterpiece, an episode which not only contains a fantastic Whovian story in its own right but one that involves a historical figure and prepares the way for a high stakes season finale. While the past few episodes have struggled to juggle the number of characters and ..
Doctor Who*SPOILERS* The series aggravating inconsistency with format continues although this latest flip-flop is a welcome one as the cold open returns for the first time since “Spyfall” and it’s a corker too, utterly Doctor-free but set it an atmospheric historic location and featuring some fearsome new monsters. The opening credits reveal that this is yet ..
Doctor Who*SPOILERS* An out of control spaceship attempting re-entry, a shoplifter being arrested and a pair of Peruvian hitchhikers find that they’ve paved paradise and put up a garbage dump. What’s the connection? None of them will provide answers to the questions you have after last week’s barnstorming episode. Opening with an unnecessary monologue – as ..
Doctor Who*SPOILERS* Time to dial up a confession of my own – when the writing credits for this week’s episode resolved and Chibnall’s name was there alongside Vinay Patel (writer of last year’s ‘Demons Of The Punjab’) I feared that he’d decided to meddle in what might have had the chance of being a decent script. ..
Doctor Who*SPOILERS* Despite the wincingly bad title of “Nikola Tesla’s Night Of Terror” – bed enough to rival “Let’s Kill Hitler” and nearly enough to make me long for one of Chibnall’s dad-joke puns, this is a welcome return to the series’ core values of edutainment: a breezy historical romp which offers just enough information about ..
Doctor Who*SPOILERS* There’s a distinct air of déjà vu around this week’s episode, the first this season not written by showrunner Chris Chibnall, or at least not directly credited to him. First of all, in an echo of the previous season, there’s no cold open (despite the script clearly being written to accommodate one) but at ..
Doctor Who*SPOILERS* There’s something quite reassuring about how the cliff-hanger is resolved, especially for Ryan, Yaz and Graham as it taps into one of the strongest themes of previous seasons of the show: the Doctor always assumes she’ll win, so of course she’ll already have taken care of the plummeting aeroplane quite nicely, thank you. There’s ..
Doctor Who*SPOILERS* They say time flies when you’re having fun and it would explain why this fast-paced, action-packed first hour of Doctor Who’s went by so very quickly. It’s a bold – very bold return for the venerable sci-fi. Also making a welcome return are the cold open and the opening credits, hopefully to stay ..
BooksBack in the dark days of the end of the last millennium, things looked bleak for Whovian fandom. The TV movie was a still divisive but fading memory and the prospects of any new “Doctor Who” were but a distant dream. Into this dark space, Big Finish shone a bright light of hope. Founded in ..
Doctor WhoCanon to the left of us, non-canon to the right, here we are stuck in the middle with…Who? Looking back at Peter Cushing’s Amicus Doctor Who for the 2nd Great Hammer-Amicus Blogathon If you thought Sony’s plan to create a viable cinematic franchise based around a popular recurring villain from another franchise with “Venom” was ..
Doctor Who*SPOILERS* The dawn of a New Year can be a time for sober, objective deliberation. A contemplation of the year just passed; its triumphs – and its follies – and, most importantly, the chance to reflect, reconsider and refresh both yourself and your work. Not that you would glean this from the current Doctor Who ..
Doctor WhoThere may be no “Doctor Who” Christmas Special this year, but we’ve got a pretty good back catalogue to keep us occupied until New Year’s Day. So, to pass the time, while you’re letting your Christmas Dinner slowly digest and contemplating cracking open that tin of Quality Street to see if there are any purple ..
Doctor Who*SPOILERS* Shirt watch: blue. Well, here we are: the season finale, the capstone to the 13th Doctor’s first set of adventures. Time to find out what ‘the timeless child’ was all about, time to see all those dangling plot threads (racist from the future, Jack Robertson) come together, time to find out if the blue ..
Doctor Who*SPOILERS* Shirt watch: Blue This week, it’s Doctor wHomage as we get spooky and surreal and writer Ed Hime brings us a Whovian spin on some familiar horror tropes. Having arrived back in the present, the Doctor, Graham, Yaz and Ryan find themselves in Norway. Intrigued by a nearby cottage, the gang investigate only to ..