1990
“It’s all just a little bit of history repeatin’.” “1990 was the brainchild of Wilfred Greatorex, and conceived as literally ‘1984 plus six’; a series that...
The Mind Robber
“It's too bad that all these things can only happen in my dreams. Only in dreams. In beautiful dreams.” In 1990 BBC Video really accelerated their Doctor Who...
Planet of Fire
“Fire! I want you to burn!” I wound up with a VHS copy of most of Planet of Fire in early 1990. It was an unlikely choice for only the sixth story I had even...
Genesis of the Daleks
“It’s time to start all over, make a new beginning.” As I’ve said before here, sometimes the most celebrated Doctor Who stories are both the hardest and the...
ESREVER NI EMIT
“But is tomorrow yesterday? Or has it been and gone today? I wish someone would say.” George Kaufman and Moss Hart’s 1934 play Merrily We Roll Along is the...
TIME IN REVERSE
“But is tomorrow yesterday? Or has it been and gone today? I wish someone would say.” In the July 1994 cover dated issue of Doctor Who Classic Comics1 Marvel...
Journey’s End
“You’re my number one, I’d do anything for you.” Only a handful of Doctor Who episodes have reached #1 in the television charts for the week they were first...
Boom Town
"Boom boom boom boom, I’m gonna shoot you right down, right off your feet. Take you home with me. Put you in my house.” Anniversaries fly by once you’re a...
The Time Warrior
Attentive readers of this newsletter, assuming it has any, will have been expecting Genesis of the Daleks next. It was, after all, on the same tape as last...
The Sontaran Experiment
“Experiment - make it your motto day and night. Experiment - and it will lead you to the light.” At the end of 1989, and with exquisite timing, I went to my...
The War Games - Part Two
“Goodbyee! Goodbyee! Wipe a tear, baby dear, from your eyee!” I split writing about The War Games into two parts for a number of reasons. Chief amongst them...
The War Games
“We’re here because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here. We’re here because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here.” The War Games was...
An Unearthly Child
“Time doesn't go round and round in circles. You can't get on and off whenever you like in the past or the future.” says Ian Chesterton. Doctor Who laughs. I...
"Memories are made of this."
“A man is the sum of his memories, you know. A Time Lord even more so.” But not my memories. The second of our short series of pieces about the most recent...
Ncuti Doc Thing
To start with this week, here’s a time capsule; something I wrote for The Guardian back when Ncuti Gatwa‘s casting as the New Doctor Who was announced. Some...
Survival
“Cat People. Putting out the fire.” Doctor Who fandom has long done easy jokes about the final serial of the final twentieth century series of Doctor Who...
The Curse of Fenric
The Burial of the Dead By the time The Curse of Fenric was transmitted, Doctor Who’s immediate fate was already sealed. Sealed like a tomb. Or in a flask....
"Pain is so close to pleasure. Oh yeah. Sunshine and rainy weather? Go hand-in-hand together, all your life."
A guest post this week, from the brilliant Graeme Burk, whose remarkable Sydney Newman book can be bought here and also at less evil places. Jim’s Psychic...
The Ark in Space
“I’m forever blowing bubbles.” Someone with whom I used to work in the decade or so that I dwelled within an often cold and sterile corporate ecosystem had a...
“Serial B”
“Well if I had money I'd tell you what I'd do. I’d go downtown buy a Mercury or two.” It’s an almost perfect irony that I should walk into a video rental...
The Ultimate Adventure
“Business is business. We always aim to please.” As the 1980s came to a close theatre impresario Mark Furness was enjoying success with his stage version of...
Nemesis of the Daleks
Printed in for four monthly episodes from August to November 1989, Nemesis of the Daleks (reprint available here) was the sole Doctor Who Magazine comic...
Ghost Light
“The monkey house is nearly full, but there’s room enough for you.” It’s the twentieth anniversary of the return of Doctor Who this week. Twenty years since...
"Names that will live forever."
We have a guest post this week, from writer Jonathan Morris, whose diverse credits in many media include Doctor Who audios, books and comic strips - but also...
Battlefield
“We’re knights of the round table, we dance whene'er we're able. We do routines and chorus scenes, with footwork imp-ecc-able.” Battlefield is a serial that...
The Talons of Weng-Chiang
“I’ve got the real Limehouse Blues… Rings on your fingers and tears for your crown. This is a story of the old Chinatown.” In early 1989, in a post twenty-...
"Is it just me that's taking the mick? Or are other people waiting for it?"
Doctor Who fans don’t, on the whole, much like our show being parodied. For those of a certain age or or beyond, it probably conjures memories of playground...
Death Flower!
Death Flower! ran in TV Comic #1204 - #1214 in early 1975. With #1204 being published the same day as Part Two of Robot was transmitted, it also served as...
“I'm going through changes."
“My friends just can't understand this new me.” Watching Spearhead from Space at the BFI earlier this month two paradoxical things struck me. The first was...
Terror of the Zygons
“Eighteen months is too long to wait.” Terror of the Zygons (1975) and The Talons of Weng-Chiang (1977) came out on VHS towards the end of 1988, having been...
“N n n n n Nineteen”
Season by Season Doctor Who had started the 1970s with a clean break. A new regular cast, a new format and the series in colour for the first time. The...
"I'm in pieces, bits and pieces."
I’ve been luxuriating in “The War Games in Colour” a bit since Christmas. A favourite story in a new edition, skilfully cut down to TVM length, and coloured...
The Greatest Show In The Galaxy
“‘Ha! Ha!’ said the Clown. ‘Is it bringing you down, that you’ve lost your chance?’” I’ve said before that it can sometimes be harder to write about an...
Planet of the Dead (1988)
“If they were me, and I was you. Would you’ve liked a present too? Happy Birthday!” There never seems to have been serious consideration of doing a multi-...
Silver Nemesis
“Ooh, baby, you couldn't have done a worse thing to meIf you'da taken an arrow and run it right through me.” 23rd November 1988 was a significant day in the...
Step Into Christmas
“GOOD KING WENCESLAS LOOKED OUT ON THE FEAST OF STEPHEN?” We all know that Doctor Who and Christmas are inextricably linked, probably. But here are some...
A Ghost Story for Christmas? 73 Yards
A Christmas Eve interlude, as guest writer Dale Smith offers some thoughts on this year’s instant classic, 73 Yards. The consensus on 73 Yards already seems...
The Happiness Patrol
“Blue is the colour...” At the turn of this century, a marginally pre-fame Charlie Brooker published a website called “TVGoHome”. This consisted of parodies...
Remembrance of the Daleks
“Oh what a night, late December back in sixty three, what a very special time for me.” It is 1988 and I am watching Remembrance of the Daleks, in black and...
Spearhead from Space
“I am the very model of a modern Major General” The Long Way Round Upgrade now Frequent readers will be aware of three things I’m going to skip through very...
The Robots of Death
The Long Way Round “They're programmed to destroy us. She's gotta be strong to fight them. So she’s takin’ lots of vitamins.'Cause she knows that it'd be...
"Number Nine. Number Nine."
“Who’s to know?” The 1972 series of Doctor Who was the first during which no actor or character arrived or departed. It was also the first series of Doctor...
The War Machines
“Who Are You? Who? Who? Who? Who?” Last Saturday I had the great joy of seeing The War Machines on a cinema sized screen at Riverside Studios in Hammersmith:...
Turn Left
“Things can only get better” There was a Doctor Who Prom at the Royal Albert Hall this year. The first for over a decade. It was presented by Catherine Tate...
The Woman Who Fell To Earth
On a recent anniversary of the transmission of Rose, I took the opportunity to re-run a review of it I’d written immediately after its transmission and for a...
"It's A Matter of Memory" - Part Two
“Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes. Turn and face the strange ch-ch-changes.” Last month, we were looking at the question of multi-Doctor stories, and whether the “past”...
The Masque of Mandragora
“Looking for words to say. Searching but not finding understanding anywhere. We're lost in a Masquerade.” The initial impetus for The Masque of Mandragora...
“It’s A Matter of Memory” - Interlude: Companion Piece
“Should old acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind.” A side issue of all the memory man stuff we discussed last week, and the question of whether...
"It's A Matter of Memory" - Part One
“I made myself a promise, that I'd soon forget we ever met. But something sure is wrong. I forgot to remember to forget” In the years immediately following...
The First Doctors
“I am the one and only. Nobody I’d rather be.” On the 5 November 1988 episode of BBC One’s Saturday morning children’s magazine programme Going Live!...