The Space Pirates
”We are going to be too late again!” My friend Toby Hadoke recently ran a poll on his Patreon podcast, asking people which missing episodes of Doctor Who...
The Enemy of the World
The final episode on The Hartnell Years VHS was The Final Test, the fourth episode of The Celestial Toymaker, a serial I have written extensively about on...
The Crusade
“Now there’s a subject for our troubadours and actors.” The second of the three episodes of Doctor Who included on The Hartnell Years VHS was The Wheel of...
Fade to Grey
It’s a guest column by our occasional Canadian correspondent, the brilliant Graeme Burk this time, whose book about Doctor Who’s creator Sydney Newman can be...
An Unearthly Child(ren)
”The Second Time Around” It was once fairly obscure high fan knowledge that the first episode of Doctor Who was recorded in its entirety1 twice, weeks apart....
Century of the Daleks
For just under two years, from January 1965 to January 1967, the Daleks starred in their own Doctor-free comic strip on the back page of the comic TV Century...
The Last Battle
We live in a new liminal time for Doctor Who. Curiously both like and unlike the period we’re covering in the The Long Way Round section of this newsletter,...
The Years (and Years) Tapes
The BBC Doctor Who VHS range really got into full swing in the early 1990s. When it did, the show’s fans, who were, lets face it, never collectively happy...
City of Death
“Je cherche fortune,Autour du Chat Noir,Au clair de la lune,A Montmartre !Je cherche fortune,Autour du Chat Noir,Au clair de la lune,A Montmartre, le soir!”...
The Ambassadors of Death
“Space Oddity” Last time, I mentioned the humble three hour domestic video cassette, and its role in the Doctor Who VHS “grey market” of the early 1990s....
The Evil of the Daleks
“If you really like it you can have the rights, it could make a million for you overnight.” In the era where trading grey market VHS copies of Doctor Who...
The Gunfighters
“The time will be soon, when there’s blood upon the sawdust, it’s the Last Chance Saloon.” When I was a time-tot 1966’s The Gunfighters, an overtly comic...
"I wish I was special."
The first two BBC Doctor Who VHS releases of 1991 were The Krotons and The Curse of Fenric, both were released in late February and both were quickly...
On the Trail of a Time Lord
I was struck by many things watching the new 4k master of the 1996 Doctor Who TVM at the BFI this weekend. One is that, in exactly the same way as the Blu-...
Return to Devil’s Planet
The Daleks’ Master Plan (1965/6) was made at a strange time for Doctor Who. Originating producer Verity Lambert had departed a few months before, and her...
The Nightmare Begins Again
As with The Underwater Menace Episode 2 fifteen years ago, watching the newly recovered The Nightmare Begins for the first time is a strange, relapsing and...
“Lucky for Some”
Star Trek fans have long been acquainted with the maxim that “Having is not so pleasing a thing, after all, as wanting. It is not logical, but it is often...
The Dalek Invasion of Earth
“I may be wrong, but I thought we said ‘It couldn’t happen here’.” The Dalek Invasion of Earth’s VHS eluded me on its release in May 1990, being an expensive...
The Three Doctors / The Aztecs (Fast Return)
“One more Christmas with you.” On Sunday 15th February there was bad news for fans of one of the BBC’s most popular continuing drama when viewers of (checks...
The Three Doctors
“I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.” When I was a lad, and the universe less than half its present size, we all saw The Three...
