Twenty years ago, viewers tuned in to watch the very first televised episode of Doctor Who penned by Mark Gatiss – a writer and actor who was, at the time (and to some, perhaps still), best known for his work on the macabre cult comedy series The League of Gentlemen. […]
Pop Culture
Sohome Horror 2025 Round Up: Featuring Mooch, Stinker & More…
We are wrapping up for 2025, but before we do, we have to conclude our coverage of one of our final festivals of the year—specifically its online sibling. Soho Horror has become one of the more respected British horror film festivals in recent years, forming a B-tier alongside Sheffield’s Celluloid […]
Doctor Who A-Z #97: The Invasion of Time (1978)
By Season Fifteen, Tom Baker’s Doctor is moving towards his most consistently anti-authoritarian characterisation – someone who, just two seasons ago, sulked at the idea of involving himself in Sarn’s politics now seems to hop out of the TARDIS and ask where the nearest workers’ uprising is. As such, there’s […]
Doctor Who A-Z #96: Underworld (1978)
We Doctor Who fans like to pretend we’re a special breed, unswayed by the fancy special effects that buy the affections of other SF and fantasy fans. To some extent this is true. Nobody has ever argued that The Caves of Androzani is not a classic story just because it briefly features a ropey […]
Doctor Who A-Z #95: The Sun Makers (1977)
I dunno, they’re making it too political these days, aren’t they? Making all the villains capitalists, and all the companions have to be “woke” and empowered. I prefer the good old days, when the Doctor and his cheerfully murderous friends landed on a planet owned by a mining corporation so […]
Doctor Who A-Z #94: Image of the Fendahl (1977)
It does go slightly against the principle of this series, but sometimes it’s worth taking a Doctor Who story out of the context of its season or era and looking at it in isolation. Image of the Fendahl is a case in point. The most consistently overlooked of Chris Boucher’s […]
Kinki (Imagine Festival 2025) Koji Shiraishi’s Unnerving Scavenger Hunt
Koji Shiraishi may be best recognised in the West for his contributions to the found footage genre with films like Noroi and the Senritsu Kaiki File series, but a closer look at his filmography shows a reluctance to be pigeonholed. The general unavailability of his work outside of Japan makes […]
Doctor Who A-Z #93: The Invisible Enemy (1977)
The American conceptual artist Marcus Rakowitz has a piece called The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist, which honestly seems a bit harsh. If you lost The Invisible Enemy you’d lose one of the precious few stories with the Fourth Doctor and Leela, one of the show’s most fascinating, rewarding and […]
The Misadventures of Vince and Hick (Soho Horror 2025)
This may sound like a contradiction or beside the point, but personally, it’s the “palate cleansers” at a horror festival—the movies that stray from the fest’s titular genre—that mark it out as one to pay attention to. Some don’t offer those, whereas the good ones do. Soho Horror has long […]
What The Tide Dragged In (Sohome Horror 2025)
Premiering at Soho Horror Fest is Chilean drama-horror What The Tide Dragged In, an intriguing but ultimately underwhelming exploration of grief from director Patricio Valladares. What The Tide Dragged In fits into the burgeoning world of mumblecore cinema. Yes, I hate that term as much as you do (‘elevated horror’ hasn’t […]