“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...
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...
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...
