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...
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 with in the decade or so that I dwelled within an often cold and sterile corporate ecosystem...
“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!...
Famous Last Words - Part Two
“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
"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
“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
“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
“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
“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”
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
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
“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...