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 […]
Pop Culture
Outside the Blue Box: Our Friends In The North (1996)
This series of reviews has led us writers down some very peculiar avenues, ones we perhaps weren’t expecting to take. Personally though, I’ve been using it as an excuse to explore my parameters and start ticking off things I hadn’t seen before (not that you’d notice since over on Patreon […]
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 […]
Doctor Who A-Z #81: Planet of Evil (1975)
Season Thirteen is the first of two consecutive seasons where Louis Marks will turn in a very good script that nevertheless gets ignored because of all the consensus classics around it. Perhaps this is why he’ll leave the show next year, twelve years after his first story was broadcast. That […]
Doctor Who A-Z #80: Terror of the Zygons (1975)
Terror of the Zygons is a rarity among classic Who stories, in that its masterpiece status is most often defended by pointing to its visuals. Classic-era Doctor Who fans, who normally find themselves in the position of declaring a haughty disinterest in special effects, have been known to go into […]
Outside the Blue Box: The Last Detective (2003)
Peter Davison arguably defied being typecast as the Doctor more than most of the actors who took on the role. By fluke or canny strategy, Davison managed to quickly and cleanly shed all vestiges of the Time Lord, ensuring that he maintained a long and varied career after leaving the […]
Outside the Blue Box (1970) The Vampire Lovers
WARNING: This article contains spoilers for the Doctor Who Series 15 two-part finale ‘Wish World / The Reality War’. Picture this: the year is 1970, and Hammer Films – at one point, the most iconic and beloved horror film studio in the world – are in a state of turmoil. Anthony Hinds, the […]