“Spoilers, Sweetie.”
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
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
“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)
"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)
**"And the leaves that are green turn to brown, and they wither with the wind. And they crumble in your hand."** In February 1986, writers Pip and Jane Baker...
"Mindwarp" (The Trial of A Time Lord Parts 5 to 8)
"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)
"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
“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
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?"
"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
“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
"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
“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
“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.”
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."
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.”
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..."
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
“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!’”
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”
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…”
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...
“It’s not really like me to lash out (Oh, oh, oh, oh) I gotta let it out.”
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
“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...
“Ooh, the second time is so much better, Baby..”
The brave new era of streaming is suffering some teething troubles. Recently several people on the late, unlamented Twitter were very exercised about the...
“My brain is scattered. You can be Alice, I'll be the Mad Hatter.”
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...
“Toymaker, Toymaker, how do you know / Where all the pieces in your jigsaw puzzle go?”
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...
“‘Ha! Ha!’ said the Clone.”
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...
Season 18
"18 and life, you got it18 and life, you knowYour crime is time and it's18 and life to go." Season by Season Logopolis was the first of three 1980s Doctor...
“And if you go chasing robots..."
This is a full length and free to read version of a post written and sent to paid subscribers a while back. You may have read the first third back then,...
Season 8
“It’s the Master, step in time!” Season by Season Doctor Who got out of the 1960s more or less by accident. Once a top ten series watched by more than 10m...
"Better Living Through Chemistry"
For the best part of a couple of decades many Doctor Who fans regarded The Krotons (1969) as little more a punchline, and that was true for both the four...
Season 14
“Fourteen's all about being free.” Season by Season Back in the 1990s there was a running joke among Doctor Who fans that if asked in a social situation what...
“We're at the lost and found.”
The first time The Tomb of the Cybermen whizzed past on Twitch, a staggering five years ago now, it did so as one of around one hundred and twenty five...
Earthshock
“You once said that you liked happy endings, and no-one can ever know.” Earthshock Part Two Seen: 16th August 1982 The Long Way Round If anyone acquainted...
“Now I'm in exile, seein' you out.”
On the 21st June 1969 Patrick Troughton made his final regular appearance as Doctor Who. For the first (and arguably only) time in the twentieth century...
Attack of the Cybermen
“Daddy was a bank robber, but he never hurt nobody.” Seen: 5 & 12 January 1985 The Long Way Round Attack of the Cybermen is the first story of the 1985...
“Three is a magic number.”
In 2017, Peter Capaldi ruined my birthday. He didn’t mean to. By all accounts he’s a very nice man who would never do any such thing on purpose, and besides...
The Twin Dilemma
“When we switch, you can't tell which is which. We’re twins.” The Twin Dilemma Parts Two & Four Seen: 23 & 30th March 1984 The Long Way Round Historically,...
“New Adventures in Sci-Fi.”
Doctor Who was dead, to begin with. 1992 isn’t considered a landmark year in the history of Doctor Who. The TV series had ended in 1989. The 2005 revival was...
The Caves of Androzani
"Mud. Mud. Glorious mud." Episodes: The Caves of Androzani Parts Two and Four Seen: 9th & 16th March 1984 The Long Way Round The Caves of Androzani has been...
Resurrection of the Daleks
“I couldn’t ever bring myself to hate you as I’d like.” Resurrection of the Daleks Part Two Seen: 15th February 1984 The Long Way Round Writer Eric Saward...
The Awakening
“Sumer is icumen in. Loudly sing cuckoo.” Seen: 19th & 20th January 1984 The essence of Doctor Who is in juxtapositions. Its first episode starts with the...
“You take the high road, and I’ll take the low road.”
In 1986 a selection of Doctor Who comics were given away with Golden Wonder crisps. On the back of each comic was a quiz page, proudly entitled The Doctor’s...
Spearhead from Space @ the BFI Special
“We are showroom dummies. We start to move and we break the glass." It would be surprising for anyone with any interest in twentieth century Doctor Who not...
“The Kids Are Alright”
This week’s Doctor Who article is being published on Sunday, not Friday, as it’s tying into something. So today, instead of that, here’s something else. It’s...
“Toymaker, Toymaker, make me a Toy.”
The mostly missing The Celestial Toymaker has prompted a variety of fan responses since its single UK television airing in 1966. It is, for example, one of...