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!

Christmas 2025

Of relevance, the Doctor Who Annual and the DWM 15 and Ruby comic collection The Monster Makers.

All month on the regular blog I came up with adventure ideas and the like based on fairytales for my Adventure Calendar.

And could spin them around here to provide a festive adventure for The Door In Time except one of the stories in that comic collection is already about Hans Christian Andersen and the Snow Queen.

So to do another one...

King Of The Mice

The travellers arrive at a 19th century German Christmas and find themselves being asked for help by mice. Their king has gone missing!

You work with what you get

No Doctor Who special this year!

At least we get A Ghost Story For Christmas.

And also, er, Gladiators.

Okay, what are the Gladiators involved called? Maybe something will spark an idea.

Apollo and Athena

The travellers are tested by Greek gods, because if Star Trek can do it...

The War Between The Land And The Sea

Homo Aqua

An interesting slow start, could be a prologue to the kind of thing the Doctor deals with in a two-parter.

(Also Barclay notes meeting the Doctor, for a few seconds, and being amazed.)

Plastic Apocalypse

Good speech. Kate should know people can rise to the occasion without the Doctor there to help.

But also a twisting of words. The Sea side (sorry) is naturally sympathetic here but they aren’t playing fair.

There was a vodka advert eighteen years ago where everything dumped or lost at sea was hurled back to the land. The makers of Aquaman may have seen it. Just mentioning it here.

(Also Kate reflects how nice it would be to have the Doctor here.)

December

And a war is coming!

Introducing Guest Star as the Doctor

Daft celebratory thing for this year, idly thinking that almost as soon as Doctor Who came back it had guest stars who’d make great Doctors. Off the top of my head examples starting with where I got the idea:

2005: Zoë Wanamaker

2006: Don Warrington

2007: Christina Cole, Miranda Raison, Jessica Hynes (Mark Gatiss did it already and Carey Mulligan might as well for Blink)

2008: Peter Capaldi! Wait... Fenella Woolgar, Steve Pemberton

2009: Lindsay Duncan, David Harewood

2010: Iain Glen, Helen McCrory, Meera Syal, Neve McIntosh

2011: Sarah Smart

2012: Mitchell and/or Webb

2013: Jessica Raine, Rachel Stirling

2014: Jonathan Bailey, Keeley Hawes

2015: Reece Shearsmith

2016: Charity Wakefield

2017: Stephanie Hyam

2018: Alan Cumming (who was up for the role in one of the unmade 1990s versions)

2019: Charlotte Ritchie

2020: Maxim Baldry

2021: Jacob Anderson, Annabel Scholey

2022: Aisling Bea

2023: Davina McCall

2024: Majid Luke Mehdizadeh-Valoujerdy

2025: Ariyon Bakare

Whosday

The 62nd anniversary may not be the most significant, but it is the one happening today.

I can't answer why... just go with me...

Blackstar by David Bowie, the single released ten years ago today. Among other things, the video is an all-time classic episode of Doctor Who.

The War Between The Land And The Sea

Premiering December 7th

Telefantasy Time Jump 1963

Paul Cornell and Lizbeth Myles talk about the biggest new show on UK genre TV every year and guess what they talk about for 1963!