Following on from Snakedance‘s exploration of the Fifth Doctor’s character and particular brand of heroism, here’s another road not wholly taken. The problem the Fifth Doctor keeps running into isn’t that Peter Davison is a bad actor – he may be second only to Patrick Troughton as the most technically […]
Graham Williamson
Senior Contributor
Doctor Who A-Z #124: Snakedance
Christopher Bailey, making his return here after writing the best story of the preceding season, is one of the most singular talents to write for Doctor Who. Before we start gushing about his genius, then, it’s probably worthwhile to note that he’s been extremely fortunate with his collaborators. His scripts […]
Doctor Who A-Z #123: Arc of Infinity (1983)
Season Twenty is an odd one in Peter Davison’s run. There isn’t a story like The Caves of Androzani or Earthshock which fans at the time rallied around; the best script by a mile is Christopher Bailey’s Snakedance, and Bailey’s vision of Doctor Who was simply too personal and strange […]
Outside the Blue Box: Tip Toe (2026)
The following article contains spoilers for Tip Toe. You’re not wrong, I chose an interesting time to write an article about Russell T Davies. The man who, in 2005, brought Doctor Who back to life might have turned out to be, in 2025, the man who killed it off again. […]
Madhouse (1974) The Price is Right
There’s a point in a horror icon’s career, usually when they’re still bankable but aren’t the newest fright any more, when they go meta. The roots of this can probably be traced back to all those Universal movies that pitted the studio’s once-formidable monsters against Abbott and Costello. Later on, […]
Familiar Touch (2024): dementia drama without the melodrama
On a recent episode of the Adam Buxton Podcast, Kathy Burke spoke about going to see Alexander Zeldin’s play Care, which chronicles the last year or so of a woman’s life in a care home. After effusively describing it and the effect it had on the audience, the host asked […]
Doctor Who A-Z #122: Time-Flight (1982)
Time-Flight is one of those Doctor Who stories that people tend to criticise just by saying what happens in it, as though you’ll never come up with a dismissal of it more damning than “this is the one where they thought they could successfully film Concorde crash-landing on prehistoric Earth”. And that’s completely […]
Doctor Who A-Z #121: Earthshock (1982)
Back in the Usenet days of Doctor Who fandom, people used to talk about “frock” versus “gun” episodes of Doctor Who. Some people liked the show for its “frock” elements (camp humour, weird juxtapositions, eccentric characters), some for its “gun” elements (military action, recurring monsters, violent deaths). I was never sure how seriously […]
The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz (1955): audacious thought crimes in Buñuel’s serial killer satire
Luis Buñuel began the 1950s by making arguably his first mature masterpiece, Los Olvidados; he ended with Nazarin, a cult satire that counted Andrei Tarkovsky and Pope John Paul II among its unlikely but influential fan club. The films he made in between are too often overlooked, and it’s easy […]
Doctor Who A-Z #120: Black Orchid (1982)
The decision to spend two episodes of Peter Davison’s debut season trying to revive the “pure historical” – a subgenre of Doctor Who where the Doctor and the TARDIS are the only science-fictional elements, which hasn’t been attempted since Patrick Troughton’s sophomore story – is usually regarded as a baffling […]