The Trial of a Time Lord - Prologue
“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
“Love To Hate You” The Long Way Round Seen: 23rd and 30th March 1985 Revelation of the Daleks is, to quote a famous description of That Was The Week That Was...
Dr Who & the Imps
The scripts for The Imps1 were commissioned on 17th October 1966 from William Emms, an Australian born schoolteacher and screenwriter then active in British...
"Two Divided by Zero"
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 CARUMBA!"
Doctor Who fans like making lists. Lists of companions. Lists of monsters. Lists of underrated stories. Lists of overrated stories. Lists of lists of...
"Happy Birthday To You..."
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
“Five! Four! Three! Two! One!” A version of this went out to paid subscribers months ago, but if there’s a day for a free to air repeat about The Five...
"Hai!" Tide
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...
Fever Pitch
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...
QUARK RIGHTS!
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…”
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...
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 1984 series had...
The Two Doctors
Doctor in Distress. Seen: 16th / 23rd February and 2 March 1985. The Long Way Round In his introduction to the novelisation of The Two Doctors, its producer...
The Second Time Around
The brave new era of streaming is suffering some teething troubles. Recently several people on the late, unlamented Twitter were very exercised about the...
"I should like a hat like that!"
I’ve alluded to the tall, felt hat worn by Patrick Troughton’s Doctor in a handful of Doctor Who episodes a couple of times in this newsletter already. I’m...
The Mark of the Rani
“My troubles are coming by threes and by twos, We’ll lay off tomorrow with the coal miner’s blues.” Seen: 2nd and 9th February 1985 The Doctor Who stories...
Vengeance on Varos
“She said ‘Viva Las Vengeance’…” Seen: 19th and 26th January 1985 The Long Way Round Writer Philip Martin approached the Doctor Who production office because...
The Celestial Toymaker Redocs
This is an amended, edited and shortened version of a much longer essay sent to paid subscribers early this year. One which I’ve produced in response to some...
The Clone Wars
The Sontarans are a clone species. Every fan knows that. But when did we find it out? When did the idea become textual?1 Well, on meeting Sarah Jane Smith in...
18 and Life
Logopolis was the first of three 1980s Doctor Who serials written by Christopher H Bidmead, but writing it was also the last thing he did as Doctor Who’s...
