Jon Pertwee-era Doctor Who looks and feels very different to William Hartnell-era Doctor Who, and yet behind the scenes there’s still a surprising amount of shared personnel. This serial, for instance, is written by Brian Hayles, who’s been working on the show since 1966’s The Celestial Toymaker. He’s had a […]
Graham Williamson
Senior Contributor
Play It Cool (1970): walking the fine line between melodrama and exploitation
The picaresque structure, in which a roguish but sympathetic hero moves through an episodic plot usually set in a criminal underworld, was used in early landmark novels like Don Quixote and Moll Flanders. It’s now used more in pornography than serious literature, but if that’s a fall from grace no-one […]
Doctor Who A-Z #60: Day of the Daleks (1972)
Steven Moffat once cited The Rescue as one of the most influential stories in Doctor Who‘s history, arguing that while we commemorate the debut of a new Doctor, companion or monster we rarely remember the stories which introduce new ideas, or a different type of story that can be told within this wide-open […]
Doctor Who A-Z #59: The Daemons (1971)
For the second time in as many years, Doctor Who closes a season by closing the book on a particular version of the show. And just like the last time, there isn’t much of a change in the cast and crew to explain the tonal shift. When Season Nine of […]
Doctor Who A-Z #58: Colony in Space (1971)
It’s strange that Colony in Space tends to be the forgotten soldier of Season Eight. It is, after all, the story in which the Third Doctor gets to travel to an alien planet for the first time, ending an Earth-based format which a considerable number of fans find hard to […]
Doctor Who A-Z #57: The Claws of Axos (1971)
Bob Baker and Dave Martin have a reputation in Doctor Who fandom as undisciplined writers, a reputation that comes in part from the production of this, their first script for the show. The Claws of Axos was originally intended as a Patrick Troughton seven-parter and ended up being broadcast as […]
Doctor Who A-Z #56: The Mind of Evil (1971)
A contemporary audience would not have seen The Mind of Evil as a throwback. Two stories in to Jon Pertwee’s second season, and Doctor Who is already hard to recognise as the same show Patrick Troughton and William Hartnell starred in. Don Houghton’s story also features the show’s newest ingredient, […]
Doctor Who A-Z #55: Terror of the Autons (1971)
Here he comes, folks. The Autons might be the headline monsters but there’s no question who steals the show. In introducing the Doctor’s most frequent enemy, Terror of the Autons makes good use of the show’s recurring props, with a gently modified version of the TARDIS materialisation sound effect heralding […]
Doctor Who A-Z #54: Inferno (1970)
Season Seven is one of those seasons of Doctor Who that’s cherished, in part, because it has a unique tone which the show immediately moved on from. You can think of other examples: seasons Fourteen, Seventeen, Eighteen and Twenty-Six have the same air, as do series four and ten of […]
Escape from the 21st Century (2024): everything, everywhere, even more than that (Review)
Do you think, when he went into the vocal booth for the first Kung Fu Panda film, Jack Black knew he was changing film history forever? Probably – it seems like the sort of thing he’d say to psych himself up. But even he probably couldn’t have guessed that the […]