The Sixth Doctor and Peri share an adventure on board a starship taken over by its dual personality computer, which tries to take the ship back to the dawn of the universe and start life again. Along the way the duo meet a couple of comedy policemen, an art thief and a captain who wants to infect his crew with one of his diseases... - TARDIS wiki

This is a review/commentary about the BBC Radio drama Slipback by Eric Saward. In this episode, the BBC murdered the visuals so all we have is the audio of the adventure... or someone forgot to turn the light on. I will preface this review with some valuable and important context before delving into the episode proper. And it goes without saying that these are my opinions, you do not have to agree.

Eric Saward is, quite possibly, a very nice man, but that's not the impression he gives off in behind-the-scenes interviews and anecdotes I've heard about him. In fact, quite the opposite seems to be true; his reputation with others would suggest a man frustrated with the world around him or the job he was doing. This anger fuels his more famous stories like Resurrection and Revelation Of The Daleks, Earthshock and Attack Of The Cybermen (yes, he wrote it, Ian Levine had nothing to do with it).

While this vitriol leads to some interesting dark sections (something I'm always a big fan of) but his stories often leave me feeling bored or dull - Revelation being the exception because it manages to be consistent in its themes and execution. So colour me surprised when I find there's another literary masterpiece of his I haven't experienced - an audio drama released during the infamous 1985 hiatus.

Well, this I have to hear.

The thing about Colin's era for me is that, prickly and rough around the edges though it is, I do quite like it. There's a certain undercurrent of ominousness to stories written during his era. The universe feels a little less safe, and a bit more spooky. Toss in the fact that our leading man is often unpredictable and can even turn on the companion and you have the core elements for some potentially really interesting television.

I say potentially because stories like Timelash remind me that not everyone got the memo.

Nevertheless, you have potential here. Better yet, for a story like Slipback, you're bound by audio - now you don't have to worry about the limitations of budget in regard to your visuals. You could do practically whatever you wanted. Maybe, finally, Eric would pull his socks up and deliver a cracking story. Surely... surely he wouldn't miss and hit the wall. He had every reason to succeed!

Slipback is just utter bollocks. Were Pirate Radio 4 really so desperate for new content that they thought, “Hmm yes, this is acceptable”?

The usual staples of Eric Sward storytelling are on full display: acres of a garbled mess of the English language that I like to call Sawardese spew out of characters' mouths, the plot starts off decently then spirals into nigh incomprehensible gibberish, and the medium the story is made for clearly hasn't been accounted for at all.

I expected this, yet I'm still disappointed.

The supporting actors are... something else entirely. I can't tell if they're trying their best or taking the piss. There's a range of acting styles on display, and none of them are even remotely convincing. I guess it doesn't help that the script is just plain bad, but like... come on now. This was the first new Doctor Who content in months, a show that was held in high regard by lots of people both in and out of the fandom, and the director really thought, “Hmm yes, I'll just tell them to wing it”?

Speaking of winging it, the sound design is seriously lacking and the effects dubbed on the actors' voices to simulate different environs sound really cheap. What was the budget for this? 20p? A piece of paper saying “you'll get paid, trust me”? Eric Saward's taxi fare? I jest, of course, but my mate Karma's just informed me that the budget got slashed before recording started which... yeah, Grade and the Beeb really were trying to kill Who, weren't they?

The problem with Slipback is that, if retooled by someone else, it might have been actually good. Like - get everybody treating the script with sincerity, rewrite all the bits that don't make sense, make the dialogue actually sound like human speech and not archaic neue-Shakespearean rubbish and you might have something genuinely good on your hands. As it is, that's not what we get.

When people yarn on about how bad the synths in 80s Who sound, I'm convinced they're talking about this story, because this is one of very few examples where the music is just utterly terrible. Usually the tunes and leitmotifs have some hummable element to them, and can stick in your head for years if done right. An example that comes to mind is the score that opens Mark Of The Rani, this elegant and beautifully composed piece of music that really just sets the scene for you. The music in Slipback is like someone took a bootleg video game and corrupted its data. I'm fairly sure this constitutes hearing damage. The BBC owes you compensation and a complimentary hearing aid simply for listening to it.

Slipback is a crime against Doctor Who. It was the last anyone could hope to hear from the programme until the hiatus ended, and even then, most people were convinced it wouldn't. Morale in fandom was low. The production team were reeling from their jobs suddenly and viciously being put on ice simply due to the pettiness of their channel's controller. Colin was in a state where he thought he'd killed the show. Nicola Bryant had been treated terribly by John Nathan-Turner. The future of the programme was in doubt.

Eric Saward had a massive opportunity to turn things around, to save the show that had kept the lights on in his house for 4 years. Instead, he elected to write utter sludge and the resulting production feels messy and all over the place. Colin and Nicola are acting their hearts out, desperately trying to save such a crap story from being eviscerated by the fans and while yes, they do carry the production, even their combined efforts is not enough for me to be positive about it.

Slipback is just plain bad. If you must experience this story, watch Ian Levine's animated rendition because at least then the visuals are funny but the overall experience is like taking a teaspoon of sugar before consuming five entire lemons. This story is so insipidly dull, badly written, questionably performed and shoddily edited that it feels like parody. The only difference being that parodies are funny.

As I write this post, I genuinely wonder if Eric ever actually put much stock into Doctor Who to begin with. He talks fondly about some aspects but is horribly condemning about most others; he talks with pomp about stories he wrote before casually trashing stories that didn't quite match up to his impossible standards. He wasn't willing to help writers realise their potential, he was just in it for the money. For someone who claims to like the show, given his track record, he didn't seem to have all that much investment in it.

Slipback is the ultimate proof of this, the smoking gun if you will. When put in a position to save the show, he just puts out a damp squib. Sure, you could make the argument that “oh, it was for kids so maybe he wasn't as invested”. Yeah, that might be so, but Who has a habit of being considered a kiddy show in general, yet he would sometimes bring his a-game to the screen... why not here?

I genuinely cannot fathom what went wrong, or where in the pipeline the fault happened. But happen it did, and you're left with something that's so massively underwhelming I can't even recommend it as a joke. If you're to take anything away from this, it's that Doctor Who audios really didn't hit their stride until Big Finish because man...listening to the BBC ones is like wading through treacle.

Don't listen to this. Just don't. You'd be wasting your time. But hey, at least it's not The Eight Doctors, huh?

Recuperating after the trauma of his recent regeneration, the Eighth Doctor falls foul of a final booby trap set by his arch-enemy, the Master. When he recovers, the disorientated Doctor looks in a mirror and sees the face of a stranger. He knows only that he is called the Doctor - nothing more. But something deep inside tells him to trust the TARDIS, and his hands move over the controls of their own accord.

The TARDIS takes him to a strangely familiar junkyard in late-nineties London, where he is flung into a confrontation between local drug-dealers and Samantha Jones, a rebellious teenager from Coal Hill School. But the Doctor soon finds the TARDIS transporting him to various other places in order to recover all his memories - and that involves seeing seven strangely-familiar faces... - Book blurb

This is a review/commentary about the first book in the Eighth Doctor Adventures (EDA) series, The Eight Doctors by Terrance Dicks. In this episode, we are reintroduced to the Eighth Doctor and his future companion Sam Jones. I will preface this review with some valuable and important context before delving into the episode proper. And it goes without saying that these are my opinions, you do not have to agree.

Let's talk about Paul McGann.

The Enemy Within, or Doctor Who: The TV Movie as it's more commonly known, holds a special place in my heart. I had always heard of the elusive Paul McGann but knew little about his tenure. I was aware it had been cut short, Paul being deprived of a television era, and that the movie sat on the sidelines of both the highly-praised Classic era and the uberly-highly-praised Revival. People liked to acknowledge it but not much more than that.

My curiosity struck me as a freshly-turned-twelve year old and I asked my mum for it for Christmas. When we got it, I sat down to watch it with my family and yes, while it wasn't the Doctor Who I was familiar with, I loved it. Any time I was in a dark period in my life, I put the movie on to rekindle that childhood nostalgia. Every time without fail, it would improve my mood by five hundred thousand percent. They say I exaggerate, but they are nine billion times more wrong than they think.

Joking aside, this movie has always made me really happy. It's such a fun time, Paul is in his element and he's just brilliant as the Doctor. It also helps that he just happened to be the one I had a crush on as a kid, which indirectly led me to realising I was bi - a fun fact you have no use for. Remember it if you want, I don't really care either way.

The point is, Paul's Doctor is my favourite because I associate the movie with times in my life where I needed comfort food. I couldn't really afford to purchase Big Finish for the most part - even now I don't have an awful lot of money to spend on the company - and I didn't know the books existed, so for the longest time in my life, 8 was a one-and-done that I wished the show would spend more time on.

I was glad when he appeared in The Night Of The Doctor and even more glad when he appeared in The Power Of The Doctor but there's still a part of me that hopes my favourite Gallifreyan incarnation gets a proper run on TV because he bloody well deserves one.

Let's talk about Terrance Dicks.

Uncle Terrance always seemed a curious figure to me as a kid. He seemed amiable and approachable and his ideas for the series intrigued me, however, I did notice a tendency of his not to know much about the eras he wasn't involved with and an ignorance to learn more about said eras. This concerned me as a kid because I wondered how someone so associated with the show would know so little about it.

Ah, the innocence and stupidity of little Tilly. She thought everything revolved around Doctor Who. Sweet sweet summer child, how cynical you'll become with age.

Anyway, this notice became more prevalent as I got older and started looking into his other works - his Target novelisations of any Doctor who wasn't Patrick, or Tom showed a tendency to divert to a “standard” style of lead: a Doctor that embodied the key traits of the character but not much else. This worked sometimes but often left lots to be desired, so when I found out he'd be penning Eight's first trip, I was a tad concerned that he would be reduced to little more than Hartnell's characteristics with Paul's face - I'd already seen him do this with Davison in The Five Doctors and Sylvester in Timewyrm: Exodus, so my expectations were not all that high.

Still, I held out hope that maybe people were wrong when they said the story wasn't great or that I'd end up enjoying it.

As you could probably tell by that previous sentence, holding out hope was not the best idea. I didn't enjoy it... it just wasn't my cup of tea.

I think the reason I didn't gel with it is that my love of The Enemy Within clashes with Terrance's abject hatred of it. He dismisses the film as rubbish, dispenses with its unique control room and jettisons most of Eight's characterisation, instead giving him more Hartnellian lines - I can't for the life of me picture Paul McGann calling someone “young lady”, that just doesn't sound right coming out of his mouth.

I mean, I knew he didn't like it, but I didn't think his distaste would be that strong.

So - the 96 console room is out, replaced by what I can only assume is meant to be the 1963 room or one of its counterparts from the 70s and 80s. Charming. Eight is not McGann, it's William Hartnell in a wig. Our companion, Sam, is only in the plot for a total of about 10 minutes, and the hopping back and forth between previous stories is definitely... a choice.

The plot is thinner than a sheet of 3 ply and has about as much depth as condensation on a summer day. For a 280-odd-page book, it's surprising just how little there is here. Had this come out now and someone other than Terrance written it, I'd make a jokey comment about how this might've been written on autopilot or generated by ChatGPT, but so soon after the film and by a veteran writer of the show? That's just disappointing.

If I had a nickel for every time a Doctor Who novel series started with a bad book... etc etc, you know the meme.

Like... what do you expect me to say? There's nothing here of substance. The best way I can describe the reading experience is with this hypothetical: a director comes along and sees a brief short story of about 7 minutes that transitions between two much bigger stories. They think “Hey, that's a cool idea” and expands it to a full feature-length production. Doing simple subtraction and that's 83 minutes of filler. This book is just filler upon filler with the start and end being the interesting parts.

A friend of mine, Mary, put it best by saying “It's great how he does everything he criticises the movie for but way worse in the book”. Like, that's the best summary, I genuinely could not put it better myself.

I was mulling over what I would've done with the premise and a few thoughts came to mind, but I genuinely can't even begin to recommend how you would approach this story without changing the vast majority of it. Like, everything other than the start and the end would have to go if were to even consider changing anything.

It's a damn shame, though. Eight is such an interesting Doctor because theoretically you could do anything with him and it would work, provided you keep him in character. This book doesn't do that, instead trying to reinvent the wheel and drag Eight kicking and screaming across strict points of continuity because... I dunno, fanservice?

The worst part is... I genuinely can't think of who this book is even for. Is it for fans of the film who want to see more of Paul's incarnation? Is it for continuity sticklers who must have everything tie together? Is it for the casual crowd, most of whom won't even know the stories being referenced? Why do any of that at all?

I was trying to think of a way to properly conclude this review, like making some bold statement or giving my treatment of the plot, but I dunno guys... this book kinda just left me feeling a bit cold. I am gonna keep going with the EDAs though, I've heard good things about Vampire Science so I'm eager to see where that might head narratively. Maybe I'll retool this book's narrative into something more interesting and punt it on Twitter at some point, but I'm content on putting this weird introduction to bed for now.

'We don't get aliens in Sheffield.' In a South Yorkshire city, Ryan Sinclair, Yasmin Khan and Graham O'Brien are about to have their lives changed for ever, as a mysterious woman, unable to remember her own name, falls from the night sky. Can they believe a word she says? And can she help solve the strange events taking place across the city? - BBC iPlayer description

TW // Depression, self-harm, suicidal ideation, mental health issues, bullying.

This is a review/commentary about the first episode of the Thirteenth Doctor's era, The Woman Who Fell To Earth. In this episode, we are introduced to Jodie Whittaker's incarnation of the Doctor and her future companions Graham O'Brien, Ryan Sinclair and Yasmin “Yaz” Khan. I will preface this review with some valuable and important context before delving into the episode proper. And it goes without saying that these are my opinions, you do not have to agree.

When Jodie Whittaker was announced as the Thirteenth Doctor in 2017, I - a 15-year-old mop-headed loser with no social life and very few friends - had no idea who she was. Broadchurch was a show I'd heard of but never seen. Other films and shows she'd starred in were either too obscure or stuff I couldn't watch due to a lack of availability or deemed “too adult” for me.

At this stage, Doctor Who in its current form was irritating me. It had lost its edge and despite enjoying Series 10, I was starting to get disillusioned with the show. It felt too kiddy. Too safe. The danger and excitement that had drawn me to Classic Who and early New Who had gone. This wasn't the show I fell in love with anymore.

And this disappointed me. Doctor Who was the one thing that had helped me out of really dark places in my life before, but now I couldn't even rely on Who to give me what I came to the show for. My only source of escapism from how terrible the world is had long since left the station.

As you can imagine, with no outlet left to turn to, I self-harmed. I won't go into detail, but for the longest period of time, death seemed like the only solution to my problems and I refused to eat a lot for months on end. Counselling didn't help. My friends didn't seem to care. My parents didn't know how to help. I was full-on ready to kill myself and hope people would forget me and move on with their lives.

Then the announcement happened.

Finally, Doctor Who looked like it was moving forward out of the rut it was stuck in. By casting a woman as the Doctor, the show looked like it was taking risks again. I was actually excited to see the phone box show return to TV for the first time in ages. I actually paused my self-harm routine because I was too excited to see the new Doctor.

Twice Upon A Time was excruciatingly hard to sit through. Moffat's incessantly annoying attempts to whittle the First Doctor down to nothing but an old fart sexist hurt me deeply; a grave mischaracterisation of one my favourite Doctors by hyperfixating on certain lines of dialogue and feelings from the 60s that do not represent him as a person. Truly lamentable, but some will defend it to the grave and so be it. But I suffered through it, all because I wanted to see the pretty lady with the blonde hair show up.

Show up she did. And I was immediately impressed - it just annoyed me that I had to wait ages for the new era. But I could put that annoyance aside because I was hoping - praying - that Who would take bold strides in new story territory.

I had mixed feelings about the qualities of story when Series 11 came out, but I overall enjoyed the new direction Who was taking. However, the one thing that stuck out to me was Thirteen. Somehow, I found myself being drawn to her more than other New Who Doctors who'd come beforehand.

She was upbeat, positive, full of energy and fun and came across like the female best friend I wished I had. She seemed like the right fit for the new series, and when Series 12 introduced darker elements to her characterisation I realised that she was one of my favourite New Who Doctors.

I'll qualify that statement.

I'd always seen The Doctor as a role model, but I never really felt like I could be any of their incarnations if that makes any sense. I didn't have the confidence that Tom or Colin had to strut about the place wearing big, bold costumes that screamed their identity from five miles away. I was brave, but not brave enough to reply to everyone with a witticism like Capaldi or Eccleston might do. I looked the most like Troughton with my all-over-the-place hair and shabby clothes but I don't think I embodied any of his Doctor's traits. And the less said about Sylvester's manipulation tactics the better.

But with Jodie's Doctor, I found someone I could relate to. I was always a bit of a silly goofball with a weird sense of humour and always had something to laugh and joke about, but I got judged heavily and was bullied a lot for it. Hell, when I was in P2, I had it physically beaten into me by other kids that I was worth “a hundred times less than nothing.”

Jodie's Doctor taught me that I shouldn't be ashamed of who I was deep down and that people would still like and appreciate me for the person I really was. I didn't have to hide behind enigma and false pretence - I could just be myself and that was okay.

Nobody had ever told me that before. It meant a lot.

I stuck with Jodie's era right to the end. I watched friends of mine try to give her era a chance then give up because they thought it was cringey. They called me mad for enjoying what they thought was unwatchable crap. I figured they just didn't get it like I did.

This era got me out of quite possibly one of the darkest periods of my life so far. Quite literally, this era of television is one of the main reasons I am still alive right now. I haven't self-harmed since 2017 and, while I've had some close calls with taking my own life, I'm still here.

That's a win in my book.

And, most importantly, the Doctor had transitioned - my role model was trans now. That's what opened the door to me deciding I wanted to come out as a trans woman: because if it was good enough for The Doctor, it was good enough for me. Hi. My name is Tilly, and I am no longer embarrassed to be alive. :)

The interesting thing about this is that it's probably the coldest open any of New Who's ever had. Every “new era, new doctor” story before this (Rose, The Christmas Invasion, The Eleventh Hour, Deep Breath) added some sense of continuity to what came before it, trying to execute a similar method to Classic Who in terms of introducing the new Doctor - i.e., we pick up exactly where we left off and keep moving. New viewers can join the crazy train, but returning ones can just follow along with the continuing story.

TWWFTE doesn't do that. We open in a very different setting than before. Everything looks visually different. There's no callbacks to previous eras. It takes a while before we meet the Doctor, and even then, there's barely any acknowledgement to Twelve when Thirteen does arrive; she's dressed in his clothes the whole story, yes (and I have to say, they do suit her), but other than that, we've essentially hit the reset button. Anyone who knows jack shit about Doctor Who can just start watching and not need to know much about the show's past. Sure, it might help, but theoretically you could just start here.

The best part of the story, in my opinion, has to be Thirteen. It's a showcase of her Doctor and both writer and actor sell this quite well. Jodie gets numerous strong “Doctory” moments that really do a good job of putting her character front and centre. No ifs or buts, this is The Doctor, alright. Of particular acclaim is the scene on the crane. That had me buzzing.

Her companions are interesting too. The “fam” does stagnate over time - Yaz's characterisation flatlining in the rest of this season only to pick back up again once Thasmin became canon; Ryan's just goes all over the place before fizzling out and Graham is the only one who remains consistent - but here, they work. You really get a sense of who's who, what they stand for, how they'll react to any given circumstance and you get hints of the type of people they'll become later down the line. It's nice setup, and I really appreciate their personalities this early on.

The villain is possibly the only stumbling point this episode has in my opinion. Tzim-Sha didn't really do much for me. Sure, he looks memorable with his teeth-laden face and has your standard bad guy deepvoice.mp3 but I didn't really gel with him as much as other people did. I will say on the record that the two jokes tied to him - “eat my salad, Halloween” and “Tim Shaw” have lived rent-free in my head since initial broadcast and I still find them funny.

What strikes me about this story, moreso than the others in the described-by-fans “Chibnall era”, is the cinematography. Sure, all of Jodie's tenure looks stunning and very filmic but never quite as good as it does in this episode. There's something about the way it's done here that just has a vibe entirely of its own that is really quite nice. It's a shame the rest of the era doesn't quite capture it in my opinion.

And while I'm on the “Tilly pisses off people who dislike Jodie's era in its entirety” train, I will also say for the record that I don't mind Segun Akinola's score. In fact, I quite like it. I've always been a fan of ethereal music and the synth pad sound is really up my alley. That and the orchestral swells he uses in later episodes is just really beautiful. Not that I dislike Murray Gold, far from it, but it's a nice change of pace from the stark “THIS IS THE SOUND OF DOCTOR WHO” we'd got up to that point. It's like when Peter Howell and Paddy Kingsland took over from Dudley Simpson - it's different, and in different you can get auditory beauty. They're good composers for different feels.

I wonder just how many people will be reading this utterly aghast, clutching their pearls and saying “Surely not! She cannot like Chibnall's era! It is terrible rubbish!” To which I say - do not project your opinions onto other people. It isn't healthy, and it'll keep you awake at night.

When I rewatch this story, I'm put in mind of where I was when I first saw it, and the horrible horrible mindset I was in when Jodie got announced. I wonder if I could go back in time, find the scared and suicidal young person who thought she was a man and relive how she felt watching this. I wish I could tell her that Doctor Who would always be there for her and that she shouldn't be afraid to be who she is.

Time travel isn't possible, the TARDIS isn't real and it'll never happen... but the thought of being able to go back and calm my younger self in her darkest hour with the funny blue box show that she held dear is a comforting one.

I've changed a lot in the time since this first aired. I'm trans now, I cosplay quite a bit, and I have the loveliest girlfriend anyone could ever hope to have, and somewhere deep down I have this episode to thank for pulling me out of the pit and putting me on the right track. I won't pretend it was an easy track to walk - I made mistakes and hung around with the wrong people for a time, but having come out the other side of the nightmare, I feel like life actually is okay. It was worth staying alive for.

This episode means a lot to me, because it literally saved me from certain death. And if that doesn't prove that Doctor Who has the ability to change lives, I don't know what does.

This is gonna be a short one, folks, because merely thinking about this book makes me very angry.

Timewym: Genesys is an insult to Doctor Who. As the opener of the Virgin New Adventures range, that's even worse. I almost gave up on the whole book series as a result of just how embarrassingly disgusting the story and its contents are.

For one, John Peel's style of writing isn't for me. That on its own would be fine, but it's his active contempt for the Seventh Doctor and Ace to the point of depicting them out of character for unexplained reasons that make this book a tough pill to swallow. Then he commits the cardinal sin and has the Doctor justify sexual assault with the ‘it was a different time’ excuse. So not only has he deemed these two unfit to be written decently, he also actively goes out of his way to make the Doctor irredeemable because... I dunno, he hates McCoy or something?

Oh, and the book also makes a woman - a grown woman - jealous when a literal child gets her crush's romantic attention. It's bad enough that a grown man is having sexual feelings around a minor, but the fact that a woman three times her age gets envious over this is even worse. Who read this book and went “hell yeah, this is Doctor Who material” and authorised its publication? What was the excuse?! “Oh, we're writing for adults, so we have a license to be edgy”? This isn't edgy, it's unreadably awful and disgusting.

Yeah, and less than five minutes later, said little girl has her bum pinched. How very insipid.

So - the Doctor justified unsolicited groping, a minor is preyed upon, and even then, we're not done with the list of sins this book brings to the table. No no, because Gilgamesh's comments on how he views men and women are laid bare for us in the form of this beautifully sordid quote, “If you came as a woman, we might make love. If as a man, we could fight. As you are, your form seems ill-suited to anything.” What a lovely quote to put in a Doctor Who book, huh? Didn't you pay good money to read about an apish man who sexualises kids talking about how women and men are only good for f*cking and fighting respectively? I know I sure didn't!

Peel is obsessed with characters talking about or thinking about sex. The main female lead who isn't Ace, Ta-Nin, is literally said to be examining her body when we first meet her, and has a flashback about how Gilgamesh said she was hot when they were making love. Can we go five minutes without characters thinking about what they do in bed? Why is this funny blue box show book going on and on about how goddamn horny all the characters are? Why is this laboured so much in the book?

To add even more fuel to this accursed fire, Ace is introduced... stark naked. How quaint, the book is sexualising a character whom we last saw at age sixteen. Ace is a minor. Even thinking about that just makes me sick. Couple that with a character who is repeatedly described as having “bare breasts” and you realise what kind of book you're reading. It's seedy, it's insipid and it's disgusting.

So once you wade through all this murky and disgusting material... the rest of the plot is incredibly dull. The Doctor fights a shapeshifting alien who's landed in a historic period of Earth's history, and that's about it. Most of the character development for said alien is left off to the next book, so... why should I waste my time with such vapid rubbish?

And that's the whole thing. Who was this book written for? Doctor Who fans? Clearly not, as the book seems to be actively contemptuous towards the show, its characters and its history. The suggestive and explicit content clearly isn't catered to the fandom either, unless the intended readerbase are degenerates. Does it continue Doctor Who effectively? God no, this doesn't feel like the tone the show would take following Survival. Cartmel would probably dismiss this wholesale, and so do I. Don't read this book. Just don't. You're doing yourself a favour if you haven't read it, and if you have, my most sincere apologies.

Timewyrm: Genesys should be best forgotten about. Or burnt to heat your house. Take your pick.

Attack Of The Cybermen is a story whose reputation precedes it. I've seen plenty of people hail it as a masterpiece, and an equal and opposite amount of people who treat watching it it like stepping in dog poo on the street. So what do I think?

Ehhhhhh I don't know.

Look. I like it. But I also don't? I can never make up my mind on if I like it because of the dark elements in it, or because bits of it are so hilariously strange that they classify as “so bad it's good”. Alright, let's try and make a coherent thread out of this.

For one, let's address the elephant in the room. We know Paula Moore/Woolsley didn't write it. So who did? Everyone has debated til the cows came home about whether or not it's Eric Saward, Ian Levine or John Nathan-Turner. In my mind, it's very obviously Eric Saward. For a start, it has his trademark dark storytelling, hilariously overcomplicated dialogue ('Sawardese') and things that happen purely for the sake of ✨ d r a m a ✨. This is very clearly an Eric Saward script.

This story is memorable for a couple of reasons: one, it's violent as all hell, and two, Peri's outfits. Let's start with the latter then get to the former.

As a cosplayer, Peri's outfits are iconic. They're instantly recognisable, easy to source and easy to wear. Instant classics. However, from a story point of view... yeah no, no amount of justification is going to be able to explain her costume in Part 1 of this story. With other companions you could kind of maybe see what they were trying to go for - Leela's jumps out at me in this regard given she's from a culture and a planet where her kind dress like this for ease of combat and tradition. At least that makes sense to her background and her character, I suppose. Peri, on the other hand, doesn't have much of a reason to be running around in skimpy outfits other than the infamous “for the dads” reasoning. Eugh. At least she's given a more reasonable jumpsuit in Part 2, which leads to the humorous relevation that the Cybermen must have dressed her in it given they knew Telos would be too cold for her Part 1 getup. That'll always be funny to me.

Right, so let's talk violence. Doctor Who, especially Classic Who, is known for it. And while I think a healthy dose of fighting in a Who story is a good thing, Attack Of The Cybermen kinda goes a bit overboard with it. Death after death after death. Brutal depictions of cyber-conversion. Lytton's hands being squeezed until they're bleeding rapidly as he screams in pain. The Doctor casually run-and-gunning the Cybermen in the big punchup at the end. Say what you will about the drowning scene in The Deadly Assassin, but Attack takes the notion of “Let's do violence!” and turns it up to 11. I remember reading somewhere that Attack has a higher body count than Terminator. While I'm not entirely sure how true that is, I can certainly believe it. This story is so goddamn gory, it's almost painful to watch. As I've said before, I love me a dark story, but not one that just revels in making the audience uncomfortable.

That's kinda my main problem with Attack. It doesn't know what kind of story is wants to be. Is it a “return of Lytton” adventure that explores how underhanded and shady his operations are? Is it a gruesome return to form for the Cybermen, taking them back to their macabre and experimental roots, dabbling in body horror? Is it your typical Six and Peri story where they argue and can't get along? All of these things happen, yes, but there's no through line, so to speak. What's connecting them, save for the trademark bizarre dialogue choices? Not much, if I'm honest.

As a series opener, Attack has the task of reminding our audience where we were when we left the Doctor and their companion and possibly introduce new audience members to how the show works. It fails at both of these. Is it a story that is at the very least entertaining? Yeah. Very entertaining, even funny at times. Is it also a confused and muddled mess that isn't sure what it wants to be so just throws everything at the wall and hope something sticks? Also yes.

I have to give a shoutout to Matthew Robinson's direction. The story might be all over the place, but his co-ordination with the lighting crew, cameramen and set designers is top-notch. He's made the most of an otherwise confusing mess. The actors deserve credit as well. They're really trying to make this hodgepodge work, and for the most part - I'd argue - they succeed. The music's really good, too. That's the problem, you see. The more negative thoughts and confusion about this thing cloud my judgement of the piece, which makes it really difficult for me to make a fair judgement of the piece. It's hard to know what to say about something I can't make my mind up on, and I wish I could come up with something much more conclusive to say.

Bottom-line, I'd have done it differently. That's really all I can say on the matter.

Wild Blue Yonder is a textbook example of not counting your chickens before they hatch. Everyone and their grandmother, as far as I could see, were making the most insane predictions for this episode without knowing a pick about it - so it was obvious to me even then that making any kind of wildcard prediction was not a good idea.

I had debates with people about this and they were very adamant that because we knew so little about the story that Matt Smith or Peter Capaldi must be returning. "It's the 60th", they'd say, "you can't have an anniversary without previous Doctors," conveniently forgetting that we'd technically just had a multi-Doctor story - repeating that soon after Power Of The Doctor would be a bit redundant, no?

Whatever. The point was that everyone expected this would be the special that would go all-out on the show's history. It had to, they said. The fandom really gravitated towards this idea like it was the sacred golden calf. So I was more than a little amused when it didn't.

So, let's not dilly-dally about the majority's disappointment and talk about what's actually here.

Apart from a silly throwaway little ditty starting up the most polarising running joke in the series, you have a really solid story for the most part. We explore the Doctor's trauma and who he is as a person now - this kind of meta-analysis was pretty fun all things considered, but, when combined with a two-actor psychological horror show, you have something quite unique indeed.

The Not-Things were inspired. Let's mess with our characters' heads and play with their perception of reality. Solid touch. Really keeps the audience on their toes guessing is that really Donna? or are these the real ones we're watching? Russell's playing with us. This story's one where you actively have to pay attention to even the most subtle cues: does Donna really know about the flux? What abilities do the Not-Things possess that humans don't? Etc.

You could argue this episode is just a pot-boiler/bottle episode which bridges the comic adaptation and the return of the Toymaker, but that would be doing the story a disservice. It's tense, eerie, mind-meltingly spooky and has the most interesting atmosphere of all three specials. I enjoy this one more than The Star Beast or The Giggle purely because you can just feel the tension here, something that is painfully absent from the other two specials.

I've seen people compare this story to Midnight, which - while not a completely unfair comparison - is kind of underselling WBY a tad. This one is scarier because unlike that story, there's no way out. The Doctor and Donna are alone, running scared, with nobody else they can rely on. They have to defeat these creatures with no weapons, no safety net and no TARDIS. The stakes are far higher than Midnight in basically every respect.

I've made it no secret that I tend to gravitate towards darker, possibly more experimental media, so WBY feels tailor-made for me - so much so that someone DMed me after the episode finished asking “did you ghostwrite this?” When I said no, they called me a liar. Which just goes to show that even though New Who isn't exactly to my taste most of the time, when the showrunners throw me a bone, I'm more than happy to accept it.

There's only one last thing to say.

My arms are too long. My arms are too long. My arms are too long. 

Steven Moffat is a writer whose work I have very mixed opinions on; this is mainly because he often writes stories that are really good but also ones that miss the mark so much that it's painful to sit through - so you can imagine my trepidation when it came to seeing Boom; his first script since 2017 - would it be a masterpiece or flop so hard it'd be laughed at for all time?

Going in, my expectations were low. They were exceeded, but not by much.

This isn't Moffat's best script by any margin, but it's also not his worst. It sits comfortably in the middle, I think, in “meh” territory. As expected, it has Moffat's brand of snarky companion, death fakeout, walls of exposition and an ultimately rushed conclusion - he's predictable in that regard, but it's the new things he brings to the table this time that both tickle my funny bone and rub me the wrong way.

The criticism of religion-based warfare is completely justified - such a thing is never a good idea, especially if said belief system is corrupt in and of itself. Controversial subject matter? Sure. Bound to alienate some viewers? Absolutely. Moffat is well aware of the effect this storyline will have on viewers, but his way of handling the subject does bring up some valid points... it's just hilariously ironic to me that he has the Doctor become preachy about it.

Ruby is well-handled and has some great moments to shine. You can tell Millie Gibson is having a great time with this character and exploring how she reacts to any given situation. I'd argue Ruby is the most realistic depiction of a 21st-century companion since Bill and Moffat clearly understands how to write a character like this well. Some have noted similarities in her dialogue to Clara, and I wonder whether that was intentional or not. It's fun, though.

The love arc feels very haphazard and kinda thrown into the proceedings with little care or thought. The plot just stops so Mundy and the other soldier can awkwardly skirt around the fact that they clearly have the hots for each other. The fact that this subplot is what puts Ruby out of action as well is just irritating.

The attacks on capitalism, while just as valid as the religion-based arguments, took me out of the story a bit. I just felt like Boom was retreading Oxygen's tracks and had nothing different to say about capitalism that hadn't already been said there.

Susan Twist was fantastic as the villain and I'm really curious to see how and where she shows up again. In fact, all the supporting cast were just fun in general, particularly the dad. Speaking of, I can't help but think the story might've been called Kiss Kiss Bang Bang at some point given the dad continuously says “kiss kiss” throughout the proceedings.

I also kinda felt Boom should've been more of a Doctor-lite story given he's out of action for most of the proceedings via standing on the landmine. That being said, the marketing for 73 Yards seems to indicate that it'll be a Doctor-lite adventure so maybe having two back-to-back would be a bad idea, I dunno.

Is this story better than those that preceded it? No. Is it bad? Also no. It's good, but not the cream of the crop. And to all those who are praising this like the king has returned to make Doctor Who good again, remember we've got the rest of the season to go. There may be more episodes queued up that'll blow Boom out of the water. Don't bet the farm on this being the best episode of the season just yet.

The 60th anniversary of Doctor Who starting with a new edition of a First Doctor story isn't a bad concept, but the editing decisions and strange production choices on display in The Daleks In Colour take an otherwise decent idea and throw it out of the window almost immediately.

For a start, I'd like to preface what I'm about to say by stating upfront that while I love The Daleks/The Dead Planet/The Survivors/Whatever It's Called This Week to bits, I recognise that it's not exactly the best jumping-on point for new fans of Classic-era Who. It's a cracking good story, don't get me wrong, but it is also quite long and a daunting prospect for people unfamiliar with the way Classic Who utilises the serial format - so a condensed version makes absolute sense to me.

Hiring fan colourists who specialise in making 60s Who look like it was shot on colour videotape to match the 70s and 80s output is a stroke of genius. The cherry on top of the cake of good decisions was getting David Graham back after some nearly 50 odd years to record new Dalek lines - it's little decisions like that that just feel right to me, y'know?

That, unfortunately, is where the positives dry up.

The first major red flag is the runtime: condensing a nearly 2-hour story into 75 minutes is not a good idea. Unless you are a master editor and know where to trim the fat, there is no way you can make this work without massive gaps in the story, and... yeah, that certainly occurred.

The pace is all over the place too: you can't just take a story that moves cautiously and slowly to build tension and cut chunks out of it - if you do, the result is very stop-start-stop-start. Unfortunately, this edit does exactly that, meaning I was left going, “where are we now? What's this? Why are we at this part, aren't we still on episode 3?” etc.

Things happen without context and new dialogue from the Daleks take away key moments from the story: for instance, Susan writing the note to the Thals, unaware that it's a trap, is one of my favourite moments from the serial. It ain't in here, folks.

The music, while expertly crafted, is very offputting. It's loud, overbearing and - the biggest sin - is played on top of the original score. You can literally hear the soundscape music cues underneath this new, overdramatic soundtrack, and it just hurts to hear to the dissonance.

Adding Dalek gun sounds from Destiny Of The Daleks and one instance of a New Series Dalek gun blast was a weird choice. What era are we trying to emulate here? What's the point of that?

Trying to re-edit this story in a New Who way wasn't worth attempting: the story wasn't built for this kind of presentation, and it shows. Oh boy, does it show. Look, I don't want to rag on this for too long, because we all have lives to live, but I feel like this was an idea best left on the cutting room floor. If you want a condensed, colour version of The Dead Planet, you're in luck.

It's called Dr. Who And The Daleks, was released in 1965, and is edited in a coherent fashion, you might have heard of it.