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“It’s A Matter of Memory” - Interlude: Companion Piece
September 16, 2024
“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
September 8, 2024
“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
August 26, 2024
“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!...
Famous Last Words - Part Two
$ · August 15, 2024
“You’re never gonna see me cry the last goodbye.” Yes, that title is more than a trifle oxymoronic. But bear with me. Earlier this month, we looked at the...
Famous Last Words
August 9, 2024
"What was the last thing you said? It took like over a year to get you out of my head." A couple of odd, plot adjacent thoughts flashed through my mind...
Death to the Daleks
August 7, 2024
“There may be a powercut, and the candles burn down low, but something inside of me, says the bad news isn't so.” Many fans have stories about reading Target...
Comic Cuts
August 2, 2024
“Battle, battle, battle, battle, battle. Battle someone, oh. Battle, battle, battle battle someone, oh. Completion search. Here I love the bow.” I’ve had a...
Day of the Daleks
$ · July 26, 2024
“Let’s start a war! Let’s start a nuclear war!” Day of the Daleks has never, as far as I’m aware, been involved in a legal tussle about its storyline. On the...
The Seeds of Death
$ · July 20, 2024
“The space race is over. It's been and it's gone, and I'll never get to the moon. Because the space race is over - and I can't help but feel we've all grown...
“Lloyd George Knew My Father”
$ · July 11, 2024
Back in the early noughties, Britain was a different place. It was governed by a Labour Party led by a barrister with asymmetric hair, whose attempts to...
It Takes You Away
July 8, 2024
Anyone who thinks Psychic Paper skipped a week in the last few days is right. Apologies. To make up the difference, there will be at least two e-mails for...
Pyramids of Mars
$ · June 27, 2024
“Spirits of ancient Egypt. Hung on the telly. Hung on the telly.” I enjoy a good coincidence. There are times when I feel like coincidence is the operating...
Boom / 73 Yards / Dot and Bubble
June 20, 2024
“Trio. Trio. I want a Trio and I want one now.” Most the posts I write for Psychic Paper are about twentieth century Doctor Who. This isn’t, as someone...
Revenge of the Cybermen
$ · June 13, 2024
“What some men will do here for diamonds / What some men will do here for gold.” Towards the end of 1987 my next door neighbour Matthew, who was a year older...
Dragonfire
June 5, 2024
“Ice Ice Baby. Ice Ice Baby.” Immediately before the transmission of its first episode, BBC1 announced that Dragonfire was “the 150th adventure” for Doctor...
Seasons in the Sun
May 29, 2024
It is a source of joy to me that the fabulous The Church on Ruby Road is a Doctor Who special transmitted in 2023 and yet it is not, according to wikipedia...
Delta and the Bannerman
$ · May 23, 2024
"Here's to the Future. Love is the answer" In both the Doctor Who Magazine and Doctor Who Appreciation Society polls of the 1987 series of Doctor Who, each...
Paradise Towers
May 17, 2024
"Let's clean up the ghetto" Finding new writers for Doctor Who has never been easy. In 1978 Douglas Adams, determined to bring in fresh voices, worked with...
"If Jesus was a Sheriff, and I was a Priest"
May 10, 2024
Falsification is an essential part of many intellectual processes, especially in the sciences. If you have a theory, you should be looking for the evidence...
"Only U Can Make The World Seem Right"
May 5, 2024
I have recently been wondering if there’s a “core canon” of twentieth century Doctor Who stories. I don’t mean that in the sense that Doctor Who fans usually...
Time and the Rani
$ · April 24, 2024
"Push me in a corner and I'll scream. Just give me one more, one more chance. One more, one more chance. Tonight." Nicholas Pegg, the writer, actor and...
Gridlock - “God Knows I Want to Break Free…”
April 17, 2024
It's a guest post this week, as the brilliant Philip Purser-Hallard offers his thoughts on the magnificent Gridlock to celebrate its (gosh) 17th birthday....
The Trial of a Time Lord Epilogue: "The Final Countdown"
April 10, 2024
"I guess there is no one to blame... Will things ever be the same again? It's the Final Countdown." Doctor Who was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt...
Season 15 - Part Two
$ · April 4, 2024
“Why take the smooth with the rough? When things run smooth, it’s already more than enough.” This month Doctor Who The Collection Season 15 is released on...
Season 15 - Part One
March 27, 2024
“Why take the smooth with the rough? When things run smooth, it’s already more than enough.” When Doctor Who returned to BBC1 in September 1977, it must have...
“Spoilers, Sweetie.”
March 21, 2024
Another cultural discussion about spoilers is upon us, with a chunk of online discourse devoted to their definition and their statute of limitations. This...
A Brief History of Timeslots
March 15, 2024
The brief trailer at the end of the achingly brilliant The Church on Ruby Road managed to break the hearts of much of Doctor Who's audience by saddling us...
Turlough and the Earthlink Dilemma
March 7, 2024
“And If You Can't Be With the One You Love, Honey …” It's our first ever guest post on Psychic Paper this week, as the brilliant Dale Smith takes us for a...
"The Ultimate Foe" (The Trial of A Time Lord Parts 13 and 14)
March 1, 2024
"I am he as you are he as you are me." Seen: 29th November and 6th December 1986 The Long Way Round Robert Holmes died on 24th May 1986. The conclusion on...
"Terror of the Vervoids" (The Trial of A Time Lord Parts 9 to 12)
$ · February 26, 2024
"And the leaves that are green turn to brown, and they wither with the wind. And they crumble in your hand." Seen: 1st to 22nd November 1986 The Long Way...
"Mindwarp" (The Trial of A Time Lord Parts 5 to 8)
$ · February 20, 2024
"We can't go on together, with suspicious minds." Seen: 4th - 25th October 1986 The Long Way Round If the first section of The Trial of a Time Lord found...
"The Mysterious Planet" (The Trial of A Time Lord Parts 1 to 4)
$ · February 13, 2024
"What number is this?""Seven-A!""Okay, know what I mean, like, don't get excited, man. Just cos I’m short.” Seen: 6th to 27th September 1986 The Long Way...
Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150AD
February 8, 2024
“When tomorrow becomes yesterday, and tomorrow becomes eternity, tomorrow will be the 22nd Century.” Now you can see them in colour on the small screen....
House of Lords Temporal
January 28, 2024
As I type this there's almost exactly a year to go until the last plausible date for the next UK general election. Now, this is a Doctor Who newsletter not a...
"Who will buy?"
January 23, 2024
"So I could see at my leisure, whenever things go wrong. And I would keep it as a treasure, to last my whole life long." The appearance of (almost) all of...
Dr Who and the Daleks
January 16, 2024
“Red and Yellow and Pink and Green, Purple and Orange and Blue” Seen: 20th April 1985 Dr Who And The Daleks,a 1965 cinema film adaptation of Doctor Who’s...
Doctor Who And The 1979 ITV strike
January 13, 2024
"There was a clown strike, and the clowns threw down their tools." The viewing figures for Destiny of the Daleks and City of Death, the first two Doctor Who...
The Trial of a Time Lord - Prologue
January 6, 2024
“I sentence you to be exposed before your peers.” It would be surprisingly easy for me to claim that Psychic Paper's hiatus over Christmas and New Year...
Revelation of the Daleks
December 21, 2023
“I'm crazy flowing over with ideas. A thousand ways to woo a lover so sincere. Love and hate what a beautiful combination." The Long Way Round Seen: 23rd and...
“In a little while I'll be gone. The moment's already passed. Yeah, it's gone.”
$ · December 13, 2023
The scripts for The Imps1 were commissioned on 17th October 1966 from William Emms, an Australian born schoolteacher and screenwriter then active in British...
"Divided by! Divided by! Zero. Zero."
$ · December 6, 2023
Doctor Who fandom and its attendant pseudo academe have long had our own argot. Its uses vary. There are, for example, in-jokes undetectable outside a...
“AI AI AI AI AI like you veeery much.”
$ · November 29, 2023
Doctor Who fans like making lists. Lists of companions. Lists of monsters. Lists of underrated stories. Lists of overrated stories. Lists of lists of...
"You say it's your birthday..."
November 23, 2023
Doctor Who is sixty this week, and his encounter with The Star Beast is imminent. But unlike ten years ago, this year’s Doctor Who anniversary special is...
The Five Doctors
November 23, 2023
“Always onwards to the valley they thundered! Five! Four! Three! Two! One!” A version of this went out to paid subscribers months ago, but if there’s a day...
“The Tide is ‘Hai!’”
November 20, 2023
When Jodie Whittaker unexpectedly1 regenerated into David Tennant rather than Ncuti Gatwa in what is, at the time of writing, still the most recent Doctor...
“Doctor, Doctor…can’t you see I’m burning”
November 15, 2023
The Power of the Doctor features no fewer than eight actors playing the Doctor1 in new material. Even for a twenty first century series now rather keen on...
“A morning suit can be avoided by taking a route straight through what is known as…”
November 8, 2023
Shortly after The Dominators completed recording on the 7th June 1968, its co-authors, Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln completed a deal with Walter Tuckwell...
“Remember, remember the fifth of November…”
November 5, 2023
On Bonfire Night 1966, against a background of Guy Fawkes parties and fireworks, the Troughton era of Doctor Who began. The road to this “renewal”, as the...
“It’s not really like me to lash out (Oh, oh, oh, oh) I gotta let it out.”
$ · November 1, 2023
Episodes: Timelash Seen: 9th and 16th March 1985 On the 9th March 1985, HTV’s Robin of Sherwood returned to the ITV network for a second series. While the...
The Two Doctors
$ · October 27, 2023
“Doctor, I’m in trouble... ” Seen: 16th / 23rd February and 2 March 1985. The Long Way Round In his introduction to the novelisation of The Two Doctors, its...
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