A serial in which Doctor Who boldly takes the stance of "Pacifism is fundamentally flawed and you should always have a standing army on hand in case some guys in stupid costumes come and start drilling on your land"

Not one of Torchwood's best, but definitely not its worst. Some interesting ideas, and some really nice practical effects, but I don't really care about the main American cast and the "up next this series!" outro didn't really fill me with confidence

There's "slow-building plot" and then there's "the central antagonists don't show up properly until episode 3 of 6, rendering the first 40 minutes an awful lot of people standing around in spaceships and talking."

I liked Zoe, but it feels like they just forgot to give anyone else on-board the Wheel any sort of characterisation

Fury from the Deep is a slow, suspenseful story. I get why the pacing isn't to everyone's taste, but I really enjoyed the creeping horror of it all.

Also, Victoria's exit is REALLY well done, possibly the best we've had in the series at this point. Just, banger of a story. I really hope this one gets found

Some of the ending felt a little rushed but I LOVED this book overall. It was tense, creepy, weird and confusing without being needlessly dense, and dark without being needlessly tryhard. Like genuinely I think it's immediately reached "one of my favourite EDAs" status

A fantastically middle-of-the-road book. Enjoyable enough without doing anything too exciting. Rushed character motivations with a fairly interesting resolution. Something that's almost a Cyberman story, written by someone who clearly did not want to write Just Another Cyberman Story.

All in all: it's fine, I guess!

The Abominable Snowmen 2: Less Yellowface And More Guns

The Web of Fear is a mostly acceptable Doctor Who story that doesn't really do anything special. I like the atmosphere created, more or less - the museum at the start was nice if let down immediately by the antisemitism, and the paranoia created by not knowing who the traitor was is knocked a bit when you know that the Brig (sorry, Colonel) is going to be a major recurring character. Also, the fungus subplot is never really solved?

I did like how the story played with trust. Neither the audience nor the characters can trust what anyone says - we can't even trust the Doctor. The ending, when all the plans come out, was really fun

The Enemy of the World could've scored higher, were it not for the fact that a core part of the plot is Patrick Troughton in brownface doing a fake Mexican accent.

It's shot, directed, and paced well. The world is fascinating and the side characters are interesting (we even have a black character with her own motivations and plot relevance, which is a miracle for 60s Who, even if she does die in ep4). Troughton plays it well, with the Doctor-as-Salamander and Salamander-as-the-Doctor and more layers of subterfuge beside, it's just disappointing (to say through least), that Salamander is the way he is

The Ice Warriors doesn't have enough plot to fill six episodes but makes up for this by loading up on utterly unintelligible voices. From the computer to characters communicating over radio to the Ice Warriors themselves, I can recommend this only with subtitles

The Abominable Snowmen has a meandering plot that would've been better suited to 4 rather than 6 episodes, a monster that fails at "scary" and lands firmly in "quite sweet, actually", and a lot of yellowface and racism. Maybe one day it will be found again, but honestly?, I cannot muster any strong feelings on the matter