The first thing to note about Three Kinds of Heat, a fairly typical, bargain basement piece of 80s B movie filmmaking from the Cannon Group, is that it’s a film with three kinds of connections to Doctor Who. The first, least obvious connection, is the actor Trevor Martin, who was known for playing […]
Pop Culture
Doctor Who A-Z #114: The Keeper of Traken (1981)
One curiosity of the Tom Baker years is its reluctance to use old villains. After the understandable caution of his first, continuity-packed season, the show settles into a groove of one previously established threat per season – sometimes, in Season Thirteen and Season Sixteen, even fewer than that. This sparing […]
Break A Leg (Panic Fest 2026)
Within the indie sphere of any art form there will always be room for projects where performers make their own opportunities rather than waiting for someone else’s validation or permission. It’s the lifeblood of the independent ideal, and one of the reasons why so many actors transition into directing, and […]
Dead Media (Panic Fest 2026)
The age of streaming is the age of convenience. Everything you fancy watching is available at the press of a button, all wrapped up in a much more affordable price than buying or renting individual films. But with the rise of streaming, we audiences have lost something beautiful – bonus […]
Buffet Infinity (II) (Panic Fest 2026)
It’s a beautiful day in Westridge County. The sun is shining, the birds are behaving strangely, the local fringe religious movement are advertising their upcoming book fair, and a large sinkhole has opened up in the car park outside everyone’s favourite new spot to eat… Buffet Infinity! Offering a seemingly […]
Pitfall (Panic Fest 2026)
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: James Kondelik’s Pitfall is a slasher set in the woods – which maybe needs a little more context because “slasher‑in‑the‑woods” is one of the alpha tropes of horror. It’s a stereotype that’s so baked‑in it reads like a joke, but the spoiler […]
Doctor Who A-Z #113: Warriors’ Gate (1981)
I’ve tended to interpret Doctor Who stories through an authorial lens during this project, which raises the question of how we decide authorship in television. The cliche is that it’s a writer’s medium, and Doctor Who‘s format – the ultimate procedural, where every week involves a different location, set-up and […]
The Burning of Broken Beak (Panic Fest 2026)
One of the first things I do when a film festival drops its programme is scan the catalogue for the titles that leap off the page, which is almost like picking goofy horse names for the Grand National – sometimes it pays off, sometimes it doesn’t. For Missouri’s Panic Fest, […]
Doctor Who A-Z #112: State of Decay (1980)
The fact that Philip Hinchcliffe and Robert Holmes’s version of Doctor Who was curtailed by force rather than run into the ground means it never had to go through the usual cycle of backlash and reassessment. Rather than fans getting sick of it, it was snatched away from us, meaning […]
Doctor Who A-Z #111: Full Circle (1980)
The Season 18 title sequence might just be Doctor Who’s weirdest. Not because it’s scary or experimental or anything like that – it’s just the culture shock of seeing something that’s so incredibly ’80s with Tom Baker’s face stuck in the middle of it. Despite my personal aversion to New […]