Monday, 16 June 2025

40 years, 5000 sessions!

A GM talks about running Doctor Who for forty years! Starting with the FASA game and incorporating a variety of systems, outside adventures, players guest GMing sessions. In case you didn’t know how versatile a story engine Doctor Who is.

(My record is six years for Buffy The Vampire Slayer, which is pretty versatile as well, and players taking producer roles and running a couple of sessions factored in too.)

Saturday, 31 May 2025

Saturday, 24 May 2025

Wish World

15.2.7 Wish World

After a What The beginning, the classic reality is not as it seems to torment someone. And Conrad was already a prick, but even for a fascist that really leaned on retrograde thinking for a guy in his twenties these days. Bowler hats?

Although of course his Doctor Who book looks like that.

Saturday, 17 May 2025

The Interstellar Song Contest

15.2.6 The Interstellar Song Contest

As multicultural things with lots of weird costumes and effects and eccentric side bits that goes out here on BBC One, Eurovision and Doctor Who have always been a bit connected, so here we are.

But as an actual episode it’s as RTD says Eurovision meets Die Hard, and that’s fun, and it’s also a lot of surprise guests.

Belinda rightly gets the big crying moment.

I was just thinking we haven’t had any animal people this year.

Iona Anderson (Wynn) looks so much like Eve Myles I was expecting that to come up somehow.

Sunday, 11 May 2025

The Story And The Engine

15.2.5 The Story And The Engine

Largely a bottle episode - I wasn’t surprised when I learned writer Inua Ellams is a playwright. (Thanks to Emmet Asher-Perrin at Reactor for linking his prologue to the episode.)

Having downplayed Ncuti Gatwa’s Blackness, an episode stemming from where the Doctor feels more accepted. Various Doctors have had places to go and feel at home, but the ones we’ve seen are usually with recurring supporting cast in the U.K.

The delayed reveal of the Barber had me expecting him to be someone familiar. I hope he will be, or this gets us more of Ariyon Bakare as wise and possibly sinister mysterious characters.

Big slow artistic spider probably not going to set off too many arachnophobes, which is nice.

Saturday, 3 May 2025

Lucky Day

15.2.4 Lucky Day

Going into the back half of the season unspoiled - I’d seen clips showing Ruby organising the defence of the pub and the bit with her telling the story (which in isolation made me wonder if this was really her?) but that was it.

So I didn’t know what was coming at all.

Wednesday, 30 April 2025

Dalek at 20

Having brought back Doctor Who could they bring back the Daleks and make them work?

Yes.

Saturday, 26 April 2025

The Well

15.2.3 The Well

Happy to have one Aliens episode every year or two, and I appreciate the yes-obviously-Aliens-ness of it. And the Planet Of The Vampires look of the suits. (See also the second Aquaman film.)

And a heart-tugging central guest performance by Rose Ayling-Ellis as Aliss.

And then...

... Okay, you can get away with bringing back a scary one-time-only monster if you wait seventeen years.

And another bonus for watching the credits.

Next week, Ruby! And after that, I have no idea...

Saturday, 19 April 2025

Lux

15.2.2 Lux

I had this pegged as a Pantheon episode right away.

A Scottish actor recorded in New York as the voice of a Hollywood cartoon playing in Miami which is actually Wales.

Belinda continuing to be reasonably annoyed but running with it partially because she has to and partially because she’s a good person.

A light touch for the issues of the time.

A quick sketch of fans rather than a full portrait like Love And Monsters, but still showing them love. And a lovely little grace note - look at the credits.

(Does this mean the Doctor and Belinda just made our universe real? Er...)

Next week, Planet Of The Vampires?

Saturday, 12 April 2025

The Robot Revolution

And here we go.

15.2.1: The Robot Revolution

Funny stompy robots are a bit less funny when they kill a cat and then a bunch of sympathetic characters.

Wondering if the bitten guy was gong to be plot, or might be later, or just a passing emergency-rooms-are-horrible reference.

Who gave the Doctor Belinda’s name?

People who saw Superman III at an impressionable age just flinched up and down the country, and I don’t believe for a second that wasn’t intentional.

Proper horrible looking cyborg for Saturday teatime.

Wednesday, 26 March 2025

Rose

Doctor Who celebrating its twentieth anniversary a year and a half after its sixtieth anniversary. Well, yes.

Thursday, 20 March 2025

Mr. Benn

BBC sort-of-animated classic Mr. Benn, as mentioned in Joy To The World, continues to sneak into reality.

Pulled up at a traffic light in some small Swiss town and...
..wait... what?

 



For those wondering, it was about a man visiting a costume shop with two doors in the changing room, the second leading to the world the costume was for...