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.

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!

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...

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?

Thirteen plots from David Bowie's Black Tie White Noise

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 has enough for a regular BBC season...

The Wedding

The Stranger is asked to officiate at a wedding that will unite two galactic civilisations. Or to be the groom. Or the bride. Or something. The invitation’s rather vague.

You’ve Been Around

The travellers arrive on a new world to find people waving and saying “good morning” and addressing them by name and chatting amiably like they’re neighbours. Have they been here before?

(Or: The travellers arrive to find the TARDIS surrounded by police and news crews within minutes of arriving. It seems they saved the planet last week.)

I Feel Free

The travellers are sent to a 77th Century prison planet for a crime they absolutely did commit but which was legal when they did it four thousand years earlier. How do they escape, who was responsible for this miscarriage of justice, and how many of their old enemies are here too?

Black Tie White Noise

The travellers attend a jazz show in Weimar Berlin and have to save the trumpeter from an alien art thief trying to collect him which would rewrite 20th Century Western music.

Jump They Say

Something sinister living under the streets, best not to walk across the road too slowly.

Nite Flights

A plane sets off with two hundred and thirty-three people on board and lands with two hundred and thirty-four. And then another like it, and another. Always on night flights taking off and landing after dark.

Pallas Athena

An ancient city’s patron god reappears, over a thousand years and a move to a new religion after she was last seen.

Miracle Goodnight

A children’s hospital sees a dramatic rise in recoveries from serious conditions. What could be behind this, and why?

Don’t Let Me Down & Down

The travellers have to spelunk into an ancient cave complex to look for a missing group of explorers. Comments from a modern companion about dungeons and/or dragons will become slightly awkward once they spot something watching from the dark...

Looking For Lester

One day, everyone with a certain fairly-common name in London disappears for forty minutes.

I Know It’s Gonna Happen Someday

One of the travellers meets the love of their life. Who really shouldn’t be on this planet or in this century.

The Wedding Song

The travellers are invited to one of River Song’s weddings, and not one of the ones the Stranger remembers happening.

Special: Lucy Can’t Dance

The travellers find themselves backstage at Strictly Come Dancing, and have to make sure one of the contestants makes it through to round two.

Doctor Who scripts online

Via Reactor, You can now read a whole lot of Doctor Who scripts courtesy of the BBC Writers’ Script Library. Over two hundred, including the recent specials, The Sarah Jane Adventures, Class, and the audition piece for the Fifteenth Doctor.

ROBIN We’ve got 100 seconds?!

THE DOCTOR And I will get you out.  You will go home.  And see your mum.  And your brother.  Okay?

ROBIN How d’you know about them?

THE DOCTOR They’re in your eyes.

101 TARDIS Quirks

101 TARDIS Quirks on RPGnet, more than 10% mine for the initial number but carrying on.

Started bizarrely with the thing where it needs to be given a puma, but most are milder. from the same poster, 7 (unpleasantly organic) is disturbing while 8 (really likes neutron stars) is adorable.

Nine plots from David Bowie's The Buddha Of Suburbia

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

After album titles, ★, The Next Day, Reality, Heathen, Hours, Earthling and Outside...

If I do these annually I will retire before I get to the end. So since The Buddha Of Suburbia is under ten titles, expect another soon...

And as the soundtrack to the TV version of Hanif Kureishi’s novel it’s already been a BBC drama, so dodging that plot. (And Naveen Andrews would make a great Doctor.)

Buddha of Suburbia

The travellers return to find a philosopher as mayor of their home town and people coming from far and wide to learn from him. Oh, and it’s one of the travellers, about five years older than he is currently.

Sex and the Church

The travellers have to help Abelard and Heloise escape some very disapproving church authorities backed by the Censors seeking to stifle inappropriate artistic expression throughout human history.

South Horizon

The sun rises in the south. This is concerning.

The Mysteries

A production of a new murder mystery play is interrupted by an actual murder. By laser beam.

Bleed Like a Craze, Dad

1981, and the most famous band in the world is Theda Bara, led by a self-proclaimed immortal vampire queen.

Strangers When We Meet

The Stranger meets an incarnation of herself that she doesn’t recognise.

Dead Against It

A new bypass goes too close to a stone circle and workers start dying horribly. Dangerously zealous protesters or disturbed ghosts?

Untitled No. 1

The travellers have to team up with the Dadaists to stop the Censors wiping out the 1920s.

Ian Fish, U.K. Heir

The travellers return to the present and the person on all the money looks totally unfamiliar. Who altered the line of succession and why? Also, if we have a King Ian, is this the Ianian era?

Imagine Russell T Davies

Alan Yentob talked to Russell T Davies on BBC One arts series Imagine, even with a moment on Dark Season. And a new to me bit about what the 60s episode next year is going to be about.

The Nobles

Caroline Siede of Girl Culture and formerly the A.V. Club on The Star Beast, the Doctor’s feelings, and the Nobles in particular.

When Rose Met Doctor

Caroline Siede, former AV Club “When Romance Met Comedy” columnist, has a substack for general media talk, Girl Culture, and this week starts a Davies era Doctor Who rewatch!

Inside Man

Inside Man, Steven Moffat’s new miniseries starring David Tennant, starts tonight. Sounds dark. Doesn’t have any spaceships so I’ve hardly seen anybody talking about it.

Fire the canon

Morgan Davie on how to present canon in licensed RPGs and specifically Doctor Who.

Ten plots from Ziggy Stardust

David Bowie released The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars fifty years ago today.

So naturally after creating adventure hooks riffing on his album titles and songs from ★, The Next Day, Reality, Heathen, Hours and Earthling...

Some are informed by the song concepts, but not directly.

World Book Day

Happy 25th World Book Day!

Russell T Davies on coming home

RTD talks to Radio Times about returning to Doctor Who.

“I just like looking at a new set of challenges every time and another blank page, but Doctor Who is always a blank page.”

The Time Traveller's Wife

Steven Moffat’s TV adaptation of The Time Traveller’s Wife debuts this spring.

“I do love a time travel story in general, as my career would suggest.”

What brings you here?

Five reasons for aliens to visit Earth with science fiction examples at Tor. The Doctor comes to get milk and likes to keep up on telly so 2 and 3, and has to stop 1, 4 and 5 fairly regularly.

And five reasons not to, none of them as amusing.

Paul Cornell's 12 Blogs Of Christmas

Paul Cornell presents his 12 Blogs of Christmas, this year looking at formative fannish things starting with Geoff Love and his orchestra with, among other things, a startlingly funky Doctor Who theme.