The hardest Doctor Who reviews to write, for me, are the ones where I have priors. Stories that I haven’t watched before are very easy to write for; stories which I have watched before but produce no strong memories or opinions are also straightforward. It’s the ones that scared me […]
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Doctor Who A-Z #28: The Smugglers (1966)
The ‘pure historicals’ – stories whose only science-fictional aspect is the TARDIS and the Doctor – haven’t been subjected to much scholarship compared to the rest of Doctor Who. This is probably because they’re superficially harder to relate to the modern version of the show than anything else from the […]
Doctor Who A-Z #27: The War Machines (1966)
Remarkably, Doctor Who had never done a story set on a recognisable contemporary Earth before The War Machines. There had been one – Planet of Giants – set on an unrecognisable contemporary Earth, and it had stopped off briefly in modern-day England to either pick up or drop off companions. […]
Doctor Who A-Z #26: The Savages (1966)
This is the first Doctor Who script by Ian Stuart Black. For all he won’t be one of the series’ most prolific or acclaimed writers, he’ll always be a step or two ahead of where the show is headed. His next story, The War Machines, maps out the core subject […]
Doctor Who A-Z #25: The Gunfighters (1966)
The first episode of The Gunfighters is titled ‘A Holiday for the Doctor’, and that fairly describes the mood as the story opens. Not since The Romans have we seen a TARDIS crew so eager for a vacation: Steven and Dodo, a duo who even seemed to be having fun […]
Doctor Who A-Z #24: The Celestial Toymaker (1966)
The format of Doctor Who is famously one of the most expansive in television history, and it is to the writing team’s immense credit that they took about a year to get bored of its limitations. Terry Nation’s idea to have the Doctor and his companions enter the human imagination in Season […]
Doctor Who A-Z #23: The Ark (1966)
Doctor Who is a fantastical show, so much so that every time a character does something banal, your ears prick up. When Dorothea “Dodo” Chaplet, the Doctor’s newest companion, steps out of the TARDIS on her first voyage and immediately sneezes, we know there has to be some reason for it. […]
Doctor Who A-Z #22: The Massacre (1966)
Also known as The Massacre of St. Bartholemew’s Eve, this is a case of crazy name, surprisingly sober story. The Massacre sees John Lucarotti return to Doctor Who after taking a break for the show’s second season. By the 1970s, that kind of break would be unremarkable; Robert Holmes sat […]
Doctor Who A-Z #21: The Daleks’ Master Plan (1965-66)
The odd thing about Terry Nation is that, the more he began to define himself as a writer of epic science fiction, the more he returned to his roots in comedy sketches. It’s not just that stories like this and The Chase contain more comedy than the Doctor Who stories […]
Doctor Who A-Z #20: The Myth Makers (1965)
Andrew Cartmel, the final script editor for classic series Doctor Who, would always push for more stories to be set on Earth, arguing that whereas the BBC’s attempt to create alien planets and races were variable, they were reliably world-class at period drama. The Myth Makers proves this was always […]