"You're My Number 1" - Part Two: Journey’s End
Only a handful of Doctor Who episodes have reached #1 in the television charts for the week they were first transmitted, and all of them have been this...
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-...
