In a lot of ways, The Talons of Weng-Chiang is the culmination of Robert Holmes and Philip Hinchcliffe’s vision for Doctor Who. It had to be: the furore over The Deadly Assassin would see Hinchcliffe forcibly moved on after this, while Holmes stayed on for just half of the subsequent […]
Doctor Who
Doctor Who A-Z #90: The Robots of Death (1977)
The Robots of Death is one of those Doctor Who stories that’s become a perennial favourite among fans because – and I hope you’ll forgive the lapse into lit-crit jargon here – it’s really, really good. Every aspect of it, in fact, is good, and every aspect is good from […]
Doctor Who A-Z #89: The Face of Evil (1977)
The longer Season Fourteen of Doctor Who gets talked about in hushed tones as an all-time pinnacle of the show, the more it’s worth rewinding back to its transmission and remembering that it wasn’t always one discrete block of nigh-on flawless episodes. The Face of Evil is the first story of […]
Doctor Who A-Z #88: The Deadly Assassin (1976)
There is a temptation when writing about classic series Doctor Who to treat all of its controversies as items in the fossil record, but the ones surrounding The Deadly Assassin are still live grenades. As evidence, I watched this on Britbox, where the original final shot of episode three – […]
Doctor Who A-Z #87: The Hand of Fear (1976)
By Season Fourteen, the style that script editor Robert Holmes and Philip Hinchcliffe have brought to Doctor Who has been so carefully refined that it’s hard to imagine any writer being at odds with it. Their first season saw them coax a gritty, sophisticated and original script out of Terry […]
Doctor Who A-Z #86: The Masque of Mandragora (1976)
The Masque of Mandragora is an interesting story, because everyone always forgets about it. I realise that implies it’s not very interesting at all, but consider the context. This is a story with the Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith, the consensus favourite Doctor-companion pairing. It’s produced and script-edited by […]
Doctor Who A-Z #85: The Seeds of Doom (1976)
Doctor Who has existed for just under sixty-two years, and in all that time it has produced one (one) era which all fans agree is really good. That’s part of its strength: every stage of the show is someone’s golden age and someone else’s nadir. You would struggle, though, to find […]
Doctor Who A-Z #84: The Brain of Morbius (1976)
Aside from the grand experiment of The Deadly Assassin, most of the scripts Robert Holmes was primarily responsible for during his time as script editor were heavy reworkings of other writers – John Lucarotti in The Ark in Space, Lewis Griefer in Pyramids of Mars, Robert Banks Stewart in The […]
Doctor Who A-Z #83: The Android Invasion (1975)
At the height of his early success, Terry Nation left Doctor Who to try and launch an American TV series based on the Daleks. He returned for the show’s tenth anniversary in 1973, when he wrote Planet of the Daleks, then followed it up a year later with Death to the Daleks. The most […]
Doctor Who A-Z #82: Pyramids of Mars (1975)
Pyramids of Mars is one of those stories so enshrined in fan mythology as one of the series’ maximum highs that it can be hard to think clearly about it. When asked about it, we know exactly what to say: this is a great serial because it has a darker […]