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...
