Eight plots from David Bowie's Let's Dance

For David Bowie’s birthday and now monthly, adventures based on his studio albums’ song titles, working backwards.

After album titles, ★, The Next Day, Reality, Heathen, Hours, Earthling, Outside The Buddha Of Suburbia, Black Tie White Noise, Never Let Me Down, Labyrinth. Tonight...

Or is it more than eight?

Let’s Dance is a big crossover pop hit with songs to dance to and songs about dancing.

I could go for a season throughline here, but I'll mostly swerve dance plots. I did one last time, and having the travellers appear on Strictly might be a bit too much like The Interstellar Song Contest.

Modern Love

Internet dating, can you trust what you see on screen? Buffy and Angel did this with demons. Did Doctor Who do it with aliens?

China Girl

Why is there a beautifully made figurine of the Stranger in the window of that antique shop?

Let’s Dance

An alien diplomatic envoy and entourage arrive in modern London and they expect the reception to include (a) representatives of other alien visitors in the area like the Stranger and (b) formalities. And then there’s a murder attempt.

Without You

A few years before a companion’s home time and she bumps into - or gets a chance to see - a lost love.

Or, a sequel to Within You from Labyrinth?

Ricochet

The travellers in the Wild West face another time machine crew, here to steal precious metals ahead of a Gold Rush mining disaster. Cybermen optional.

Or, slingshot around a sun.

Criminal World

The Galactic Federation has just outlawed an entire planet? Crime planets appear in a lot of space opera settings, but does this one deserve it?

Cat People (Putting Out Fire)

Hollywood, 1942, and the travellers have to get help from filmmaker Val Lewton against, well, you can guess.

Shake It

An artificial earthquake threatening a future colony.

Or, the travellers have to staff a malt shop in 1950s California.

The Daleks' Master Plan

Now streaming the recovered and restored first and third episodes along with the second.

Two lost episodes found!

The first and third episodes of The Daleka’ Master Plan have been found and will be watchable on iPlayer at Easter.

And so the number of lost episodes goes down again.

(Shame about the Mavic Chen of it.)

Nine plots from David Bowie's Tonight

For David Bowie’s birthday, adventures based on his studio albums’ song titles.

After album titles, ★, The Next Day, Reality, Heathen, Hours, Earthling, Outside The Buddha Of Suburbia, Black Tie White Noise, Never Let Me Down, Labyrinth...

Tonight is a short album, largely covers with some of the new tracks co-written by Iggy Pop.

Loving The Alien

Well, there are plenty of ways to use this title, with or without Doctors and companions having emotional investments. So let’s say... The travellers return to their home time and find an alien visitor has become a celebrity.

Don’t Look Down

Sabotage in a future flying city! - or - A monster lurking in people’s shadows.

God Only Knows

Tome around the time Christianity should be going mainstream, and another religion seems to be gaining favour instead.

Tonight

After saving the world, the travellers find themselves guests on a late night talk show.

Neighbourhood Threat

A suburb in the heights of the Cold War, and the travellers have to help the “monsters” due on Maple Street.

Blue Jean

A second encounter with the Jean Genie, troublesome avatar of not-quite-understood American pop culture, only this time he’s nursing a broken heart.

Tumble And Twirl

Mavity has failed on a 26th century space station!

I Keep Forgettin’

Was there someone with us just now? I’m sure there were three of us in the TARDIS...

Dancing With The Big Boys

So to save the world the travellers have to make sure a teenager gets to compete in a dance contest. Life’s like that sometimes.

World Book Day

Happy World Book Day!

Peter Capaldi, Friday I'm In Love

Peter Capaldi, Friday I’m In Love live in Edinburgh

Twelve plots from David Bowie's soundtrack for Labyrinth

For David Bowie’s birthday, adventure hooks based on his studio albums’ song titles.

After album titles, ★, The Next Day, Reality, Heathen, Hours, Earthling, Outside The Buddha Of Suburbia, Black Tie White Noise, Never Let Me Down, moving to a monthly feature...

Labyrinth was a musical collaboration between Bowie and composer Trevor Jones, as well as Bowie’s starring role in the film as Jareth the Goblin King.

The film has its own story game, so I’ll try not to re-enact it in my title ideas.

Not to be confused with any other musical Goblins and their king that we might have seen in Doctor Who (though I did use them for one) or the times Bowie played a vampire, a mage, a ghost, a demon...

Opening Titles

The travellers are guests of honour at the premiere of a new film / play / opera / installation / holoshow / other popular entertainment or baffling art piece about a previous visit by the Stranger - but someone wants to make it her final curtain!

Into The Labyrinth

An ancient/future weapon of the Time War strikes the TARDIS, randomising its internal structure. How do you get back to the control room?

(I would have done a Minotaur but they did that in The God Complex.)

Magic Dance

The travellers have to recruit the Smothers Brothers to win a dance-off with an avant-garde troupe from Alpha Centauri.

Sarah

The travellers receive a letter from Sarah Jane Smith, an investigation she could never complete.

Chilly Down

A plan to restore the polar ice, threatened by an energy corporation and a thing escaped from the ice.

Hallucination

The travellers fall into illusory worlds designed as perfect traps for each of them. Almost perfect, anyway. (Hey, I’m allowed one, right?)

As The World Falls Down

One of the travellers is newly heartbroken, and a world with a Pathetic Fallacy interface locks on to his feelings.

The Goblin Battle

Since the death of the Goblin King there are now a Prince and Princess trying to claim the throne, fighting above modern London in their air galleons.

Within You

The Stranger takes a blast from a memory thief’s weapon and the travellers fall into fragments of her past. Can they save her from her darkest moments?

Thirteen O’clock

A secret hour where impossible things happen.

Home At Last

The TARDIS lands without warning on Gallifrey, and the Stranger finds herself face to face with her family.

Underground

The map of the London Underground is a masterpiece of simplifying a complex system. The agents of chaos want to undo that. And as they do, it will cause more than a few delays...

Five Doctor Who Moments

Five Doctor Who Moments That Live In My Head Rent-Free by Lizbeth Myles

Blake's 7

Blake’s 7 reboot in the works. This has happened a few times before, but this particular group seem qualified.

Eleven plots from David Bowie's Never Let Me Down

For David Bowie’s birthday, adventure hooks based on his studio albums’ song titles.

After album titles, ★, The Next Day, Reality, Heathen, Hours, Earthling, Outside, The Buddha Of Suburbia, Black Tie White Noise, that’s ten years and there are seventeen more to go, so moving to a monthly feature...

Never Let Me Down

Day-In Day-Out

The travellers arrive in a future where people can trade days of their lifespan. There are safeguards to prevent overtrading, but of course the time trade takes a small cut, even in donations. But someone is taking a minute here and there off the books...

Time Will Crawl

The travellers have to stop a disastrous time engine failure, and the TARDIS is badly damaged. Now its localised spacetime is out of synch with where it lands. The travellers find themselves losing minutes as time speeds up to correct around them, or having to wait as everything slows. The Stranger will have to take it to a time machine repair facility to get it working again, and the fix involves flying through a Blackstar.

Beat Of Your Drum

The travellers have to help a punk band after someone steals their drum kit. Optional crossover with We Are Lady Parts.

Never Let Me Down

A 30th Century colony built on platforms over a lava planet, and a youth gang daring each other to 

hang and swing off the underside.

Never Let Me Down (original idea)

The Stranger never makes promises. “I should be able to stop the Daleks, but you never know...” So when she promises to save a dying companion, you know she means it.

Zeroes

Anybody lacking a certified ID does not exist. Psychic paper will get the Stranger through doors but not past human double-checking. And when the travellers are separated, one of the others will have to find their own way back to the TARDIS through a sprawling city of locked doors, certified citizens who won’t help and whatever hunts the unrecognised Zeroes.

Glass Spider

An ancient rival of the Time Lords, imprisoned in the unseen web for millennia, now free. But did it deserve to be locked away?

Shining Star (Makin’ My Love)

Where did the idea of wishing on a star come from? A living star that can grant wishes. And nowadays has interstellar travellers trying to get her attention.

New York’s In Love

The travellers find an entire city in a good mood. Why not, it’s a lovely sunny spring day, and... is that a spontaneous musical number? Maybe it’s a flashmob thing.

87 And Cry

(The album was released in 1987)

A city where north-south streets are numbered and east-west streets are... a lot more poetic and maudlin than they should be.

Too Dizzy

A terraformed planet with fluctuating gravity. Can the travellers stabilise it before it breaks down completely?

Bang Bang

The travellers land in a gold rush town and one of them is on a Wanted poster, for a pretty hefty reward. What did he do? And when will he do it, because from his perspective he hasn’t done it yet?

SteveD

One of the games Steve worked on was C7’s Doctor Who, with The Ravens Of Despair adventure series.

He also reviewed the original boxed set on RPGnet.

2026

Happy new year!