Fugitive of the Judoon

BEWARE: SPOILERS APLENTY!

Now here’s an episode that defies analysis. There’s no rulebook for this sort of madness and after a thrilling first watch, I’m in no way sure whether I liked it or not. My head’s certainly buzzing with fizzing ideas and the realisation that after a year of no-returns, all bets are now off: I’m sure there are more surprises to come. Chris Chibnall’s approach to marketing last year was to lie low, one of spoiler avoidance. The problem was he didn’t have any spoilers up his sleeve and the one he did (the Dalek) he ultimately gave away in the trailer. Last night, the one person I never ever expected to return did so in a joyous chutzpah performance and I was punching the air. Then, there came his warning and a series of revelations so unexpected and out of leftfield as to leave me wondering, “Did I really just watch that or was it a dream?”

There are lots of things happening here that the average punter must think Doctor Who does all the time. Returning rhino-headed, intergalactic policemen, the Judoon, speak their own language for long stretches at the beginning of the episode from their spaceship and, like scenes of the Daleks talking with one another in the 60s, they quickly become boring. Then, the moronic things parade around Gloucester looking faintly ridiculous whilst, on an uncharacteristically off-day, Segun Akinola provides music telling us to be very scared. It represents a tonal ambiguity that feels uncertain rather than confident and it’s easy to see how your average “I don’t do sci-fi” man-in-the-street could be turned off by it. Are we supposed to take this seriously or not, because the show’s makers don’t seem to know?

It’s difficult to carry on a review without talking about Jo Martin’s Ruth. Please do stop reading if you haven’t seen the episode yet. Strangely, Chris Chibnall and Vinay Patel choose to use elements from thirteen-year-old story Human Nature (without so much as an explanation for the casual viewer) to introduce this new take on our heroine. For us fans, it’s riveting but I do wonder how perplexing it would be for newcomers to the show. My wife certainly hadn’t committed “Chameleon Arch” to memory. The imagery is splendid though: a lonely lighthouse, a buried TARDIS ‘neath an unmarked gravestone. It has the visual identity of a classic. As the mystery unravels, we are dragged along with it, the show sinking its claws into our fannish bewilderment in its strangeness. Sadly, like Jodie Whittaker throughout much of this episode, Jo Martin does not convince as the Doctor. Lumbered with a comic-book costume (For a minute, I thought she was yet another Master, sporting similarly purple Dhawan-Tweed) and a gun too big to be comfortably held, she looks cumbersome and awkward. Her acting style, like Whittaker’s is on-the-nose and explanatory. Note in her first scenes as Ruth how desperately she tells us that this is a Friendly Normal Person Who You Can Relate To. Her other half, the enigmatic, subtle Neil Stuke out-acts everyone he appears on screen with and like Goran Visnjic last week, upstages the regulars and highlights their limitations. Elsewhere, Tosin Cole’s almost invisible line readings seem even more vacant opposite the giddy, breezy campery of John Barrowman. Casting these major players – Jodie, Jo, Tosin, even Bradders, has not been Chris Chibnall or Andy Prior’s crowning achievement. The scenes in the Judoon ship with the two leading ladies could have been thrilling. Instead, we’re in am-dram country from a performative and even a costuming perspective. In her first scene, Jodie can’t make a line as comic as “Platoon of Judoon near the moon” sound funny.

Cannily, the writers know we won’t be predisposed to liking this Johnny-Come-Lately-Doctor so they make her deliberately different and unDoctorly. She fools Gat into killing herself, violently removes a Judoon horn and behaves in a fashion unbecoming of the Time Lord we know and love. She’s a gun-toting badass, not the gentle, wondering wanderer. It makes us feel that perhaps, just perhaps, Chibnall isn’t going to tear up every page of the rulebook. This must be a parallel Doctor? Coupled with a parallel Master? I don’t mind re-writing the show’s history at all, as long as it’s done with conviction, drama, laughs and energy. But knowing that Chibnall usually errs on the side of caution, I’m not sure if he doesn’t treasure that rulebook a little more dearly than I do?

Whatever the answers turn out to be, I’m rather more excited by Captain Jack’s warning of the “lone Cyberman” than I am by the Gallifrey mythology. “Don’t give it what it wants.” You just know the Doctor is about to be put in an impossible situation and I can’t wait to find out what it is. The show feels open again with a clear trajectory but full of mystery. There are multiple threads now hanging: the Ruth Doctor, the Master, Daniel Barton, the other universe, the Timeless Child. We must be heading for a showdown of a finale. If Series 11 stagnated after five episodes, Series 12 can’t stop running. As tonally askew, wild, chaotic and impenetrable as Fugitive of the Judoon was, with the bravura return of Captain Jack (getting all the best lines of course and livening up the screen enormously), the revelation of a new Doctor and several callbacks to Russell T Davies’s time on the series, there’s no question about it: Doctor Who is not what it was and there’s no guessing what it is about to become.

6/10

JH

Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror

Nina Metivier’s first Doctor Who script proves to be a distillation of all that is terrific about the programme. She brings her historical characters to life with economy and heart, allowing us to feel for both Tesla and Edison, avoiding the easy route of making Edison the villain of the piece; her monsters have a simple, clearly-defined plan and there’s space for a rollicking chase sequence, perhaps the most exciting and well-shot of the series since Chris Chibnall took over as showrunner. This is an extremely accomplished episode of Doctor Who and as solid an example of the show as one is likely to find. If a stranger to the programme were to ask what the whole thing was about, you’d do worse than to point them in the direction of this exciting adventure.

Director Nida Manzoor is also a newcomer to the Doctor’s world, but judging by her display here, you’d be hard pressed to tell. Like Metivier, her first voyage into the time vortex establishes her as a more than worthy TARDIS pilot. There is an assuredness on display here. From that first slow pan down from Niagara Falls to the kinetic train sequence, and the lovely reveal of the TARDIS crew in situ, the episode feels confident, measured and well-paced. Were the next episode written by Metivier and directed by Manzoor (one out of two ain’t bad!), I wouldn’t be worried about quality for a minute, such is their obviously refined talent.

Manzoor also shoots the Queen of the Skithra carefully, usually in full, angry close-up, possibly to disguise the shortcomings of a costume which doesn’t quite chime with the fellow CG scorpions. Anjli Mohindra puts in a creepy performance and sells the psychotic nature of the sting-tailed foes, but she’s lumbered, like Sarah Parish before her, with a costume which isn’t quite fit for purpose. Whereas Parish was clearly immobile but definitely a spider, here Mohindra is clearly mobile but definitely not a scorpion, her tail only appearing in a couple of shots as a CG addition. It’s telling that we never see her in a long shot and the only scene in the episode that doesn’t completely work is the first one on the ship: there’s a lot of dialogue here but because of the shot limitations, it feels cumbersome and long-winded. When we get back down to Earth, things quickly pick up again as Manzoor broadens the scale of her storytelling.

Star of the show, perhaps unexpectedly, is Goran Visnjic, as the titular Tesla. He brings a real edge of class to proceedings and oozes actorly charisma. His turn as Tesla is affectionate, subtle and all the more powerful for that. He’s not doing the mad scientist bit; he’s inhabiting this very real man. Robert Glenister too, puts in a fine performance as Edison. He is almost unrecognisable as the Salateen of yesteryear and in the end both he and Metivier expose a little of his otherwise unseen charm. Sadly, after what I felt was a real improvement this year, Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor returns to a more leaden form of delivery, her hands in the last scene with Yaz doing more than her voice. Watching the two leads in scenes together (especially that penultimate one) exposes sharply the quiet talent of Mandip Gill, again excellent, and the overreaching, try-hard measure of Whittaker. She has more rabble-rousing speeches and history lessons to deliver this week and sadly, like the wet wedding speech in Demons of the Punjab, she just hasn’t got the patter or the power to make them sing.

Speaking of Demons, this is the first historical story of the Whittaker era to feel joyous, truly celebratory of humankind’s achievements. Rosa and Demons, whilst powerful, were understandably earnest and sombre. Witchfinders was haunting and Spyfall – Part Two serious and dark. Here, we’re having fun again and it feels good and so right for Doctor Who to be a bit more freewheeling. To encapsulate the differences in the miniscule: Rosa does everything it can, very obviously, to not rob Rosa of her agency. However contrived that feels, it would after all be distasteful. A fortnight ago, Ada Lovelace and Noor Inayat Khan were mind-wiped to allow them to continue their Earthly stories with ideas all of their own. Chris Chibnall’s take on history is cautious and careful, not wishing to tread on the toes of pioneers and heroes. However, that caution is thrown to the wind here by Metivier and Tesla and Edison end the episode memories intact, having seen a glimpse of a new world, just as Shakespeare was enlivened by the Doctor or Dickens chose to write of aliens in his final novel. This feels like such a positive shift after the worthier historicals of last season. Because who better to steal from, who better to look up to - whoever you are, however famous - than the Time Lord who stands for all that is good? Yes, we have our Earthly heroes whose talents and achievements should never be devalued, but can’t we also allow them a bit of fun escapism with the Doctor too, a hero to everyone?

When the credits role on Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror, there’s a real sense that the show has its joy back, that it is content and assured enough to be a rollicking adventure again. With such a strong script, beautifully rich costume and set designs, an extremely effective musical score from Segun Akinola and a new sense of joie de vivre, this is as lavish and confident as Doctor Who is ever likely to be.

8/10

JH

Orphan 55

I feel as if I’ve been punched in the face. Over and over again. And not by the arguably vexing sledgehammer message at the close of Orphan 55, sure to get some folks’ backs up, but by the relentless onslaught of this frenetic, pounding narrative, directed with so much energy and pace by Lee Haven Jones that it leaves one gasping for breath.

The speed at which this manic story unfolds does two things: one good, one bad. To take the former first, the relentlessness papers over multiple cracks in the plotting and characterisation – the improbability of a mother not recognising her daughter, the improbability of a father going off to fix the mechanics seconds after losing his son to scary monsters, the running away from a working teleport to make the same journey on foot (oxygen rapidly deteriorating), the fact that two people commit noble self-sacrifices, one twice. I’m sure there are more crazy leaps in storytelling, not least having the entire cast piling into the vehicle to rescue Benni but so much happens in Orphan 55, at such a roller coaster lick, that it’s incredibly easy to shrug these oddities off. 

The latter problem though is that, amid the high-octane, wrought energy, moments of stillness don’t get the time they deserve. Like his other tale, It Takes You Away, Ed Hime seemingly wants to do creepy horror-movie after five minutes, but creepy horror-movies are slow, brooding and rely on an establishment of locale and character. He doesn’t give himself the time. The scenes in the steam room are almost there but with so much going on around them, there’s no respite for genuine tension. The moment when Benni asks someone to shoot him isn’t punctuated by character reaction because we’re swiftly shunted along to the next breakneck set-piece. Explanations too fall by the wayside or are made unclear in the freneticism: quite how the Doctor recognises the leading Dreg and quite why he is able to be locked in the cage is beyond me, however gripping those scenes might be.

Given its important message and gut-wrenching revelation in the tunnels, it’s a shame Orphan 55 doesn’t quite hold together on its own terms. Its message is a simple, robust one (Save The Planet), its plotting less so. Quite how Hime manages to give Tosin Cole’s Ryan some of his best material, as well as a true moment of dread for Graham when he realises Ryan is missing, I’m not sure. But the TARDIS crew really work here. There are some laugh-out-loud Doctor moments (the spam gag) and Mandip Gill shows signs that she is quietly the best actor of the four and it would be lovely to see her given something really meaty to get her teeth into as Yaz. I have a feeling it’s coming. Once again, she seems to slightly mistrust the Doctor and I’m hoping the rest of the series digs deeper into this fertile dramatic seam.

I am still hugely excited by Doctor Who Series 12, after the lacklustre turn taken by Series 11 midway through. At times, this felt like a different show. There was nothing in Series 11 to match the pace of Orphan 55, no episode with quite so many ideas. Yes, it was muddled and illogical, but it was an action-adventure thriller, like Earthshock, like The Time of Angels, like The Satan Pit. If it were content enough being only that, I think it may even have come out all the better for it (given it some focus) but the fact that it had a message probably, despite its clunkiness, means that Orphan 55 finally is about something. Although it may seem childish, the lecture at the end is a simple call to arms from a writer shouting at the world. What’s notable here is that his bent is one of ingrained cynicism and that’s an unusual and stirring path for Doctor Who, a show usually so full of hope. Here is a worldful of neglectful parents, neglectful humans and an environment hounded by the literal dregs of humanity. Quite what Hime wants us to do, I’m not sure. Maybe even he doesn’t know but it’s a loud enough shout to make it impossible for a critic to ignore. In much the same way that regardless of the messy plot mechanics and the awkwardly attached lecture alongside the sometimes wild characterisation, one can’t help but enjoy this well-meaning, often frightening and breathless sucker punch of a run-around.  

8/10

JH

Spyfall - Part Two

New Year’s Day’s opening episode proved to be a remarkable tour de force, giving the show a new mission statement and ending on a perilous, enormous cliff-hanger. Could the second instalment be as successful as this first blinder? Perhaps understandably, not quite, but there is lots to enjoy in this sprawling, sumptuous-looking episode, not least Sacha Dhawan’s delightfully insidious Master.

We open with the plane still crashing and the Doctor meeting a mysterious Ada in the strange netherworld. Disappointingly, the scenes with Ada prove dull to look at and dull to listen to, especially compared to the furious energy of the crashing plane. We cut between the two and the scenes with the Doctor, whilst frustratingly lacklustre, mean that the plane seems to take an absolute age to not crash. This sets up a lethargy of pace which is never quite shaken off throughout the episode’s first half.

After a switch in time to 1834, the Doctor’s mission soon becomes less about stopping the nebulous, alien villains and more about simply getting back to the TARDIS and the “Fam.” She is paired with Ada Lovelace and later, in 1943, Noor Inayat Khan. Whilst this is superficially lovely and the relative time-zones’ mise en scene look absolutely gorgeous, the impact these heroines have on the plot is negligible and actually stymies the threat level – we know nothing terrible can happen to either of them. A few mind wipes later and Chris Chibnall ensures tritely that neither can be robbed of their agency, not that Noor seemed to have all that much to begin with, save from providing a helpful hidey hole in the floor. What this story really needs is propulsion. We still don’t know what the aliens want apart from to take over our “universe” which in the last ten minutes manifests itself as actually taking over our bodies with an upgrade or “conversion” as Daniel Barton tells us. (Anyone else getting the Cyber vibe?) Without that propulsion, it quickly becomes a series of events, not necessarily leading into one another, and with no questions to ask other than “What’s going on?” We need a threat other than a stranded Doctor, also made less threatening by the fact we know she has to escape to help land a plane in the future.

What really makes this episode come alive though are our villains. Sacha Dhawan blisters as the Master. He is perhaps the first Master to be truly repellent, almost disgusting. He has an ill manner and an almost sickly complexion. His killing at the science show highlights his true terror and his meeting with the Doctor on the Eiffel Tower gives the episode its best scenes. Whittaker, it seems, really comes into her own during these duologues, with a decent villain to butt heads with. Last week she stood her ground against Lenny Henry – again, quietly sadistic here - and in the scenes high above France, the chemistry between her and Dhawan is felt.

Which brings us to talk of home: Gallifrey. Chibnall’s first foray into Who mythology is a daring one. We hear of times we know nothing about. We witness the planet crippled in a heart-breaking and truly awesome shot. Whittaker plays the loss terrifically. If last week was her best performance so far, here she delivers a performance of true worth, of mournfulness and strength and terror and unease. I’m still not convinced she has quite a handle on the bafflegab but when the narrative beats are clear and the emotions there to be engaged with, she steps up and seems to feel.

We end with the companions finally asking for a disclosure on who she is. “It’s not like we haven’t asked,” says Graham earlier in a crude piece of overwriting. They really didn’t actually, Mr Chibnall, not that you let us see. Did they ask all the big questions off screen? However, now they resolutely have been asked, we finally see some politics between our TARDIS friends. The Doctor is still holding back and given the snippets they now know, the crew ought only to be become more curious. This bodes well for the future. The TARDIS is going somewhere. The story is going somewhere. Surely, Daniel Barton - mother-killer lest we forget - has to meet his comeuppance. Surely, the Master needs to return to give the Gallifrey plot some closure. Surely, the more strain they encounter, the more complicated the TARDIS team dynamics will become. Who is the Timeless Child? Why have the Time Lords been lied to? I’m very excited to discover the answers. If Spyfall – Part Two itself lacked propulsion, it has certainly infused the rest of the series with it. Roll on next week!

6/10

JH

Big Finish - The Best of 2019

Big Finish now represents perhaps the ultimate Doctor Who factory. I started collected Big Finish releases back in 1999 with The Sirens of Time and in twenty years have never looked back. Of the thousands of CDs to adorn my shelves, I can think of only one or two which haven’t quite hit the mark. The astonishing quality of the company’s output is even more incredible when one takes a step back to think about the astonishing quantity of the company’s output. By the end of December, 2019’s Doctor Who and Torchwood related releases will have amounted to an incredible 146 CDs.

So where does a newcomer start? I’m always advocating Big Finish and fans I meet who haven’t tried a dip in the audio pool, I feel obliged to push in headfirst. Over the last few years, I’m delighted to say I’ve made a few more loyal subscribers, one now a rampant Jago & Liteoot-phile, another an Eighth Doctor and Lucie aficionado! But with the ever-increasing nature of the collection, there’s a possibility it might seem a little imposing to even begin to start buying anew. Some of the ranges are of such a particular niche that some fans may feel a little excluded before they even begin, latecomers to the party, as it were. (The upcoming Robots series, for instance, is a spin-off from the first episode of the second boxset of Ravenous, itself an extension of the Dark Eyes and Doom Coalition boxsets and harking back originally to Robophobia and before that the TV classic: The Robots of Death. That’s a very particular niche! Incidentally, I expect it will be magnificent!)

And so, for the first time in a hopefully annual tradition, I’ll be looking back at 2019 and talking briefly about my personal highlights. Hopefully, it might encourage one or two new listeners to dive into the pool!

10. RAVENOUS 3

Specifically, Companion Piece by John Dorney: a story with an almost impossibly long cast list, considering its hour’s length. The adventures of the Eighth Doctor, Liv and Helen feel like a parallel, ongoing new series, Big Finish’s equivalent of the Jodie Whittaker series. McGann feels as fresh and new as he did back in Storm Warning and his boxsets feel like real event audio. Occasionally though, something as fan-pleasing and indulgent as Companion Piece comes along, reminding us that we’re still in the same universe as Tom Baker, William Hartnell and Peter Davison. Whilst the Eighth Doctor takes a back seat for the most part, this is the tale of the leading ladies to end all tales of leading ladies. To avoid spoilers, I won’t go into details but this is a particularly special story with some lovely winks to the past. It’s also worth picking up Ravenous 3 for Deeptime Frontier: a frightening showcase for a terrified Paul McGann with plenty of spine-tingling moments to excite fans of more horrific Doctor Who.

9. THE THIRD DOCTOR ADVENTURES Volume Five

Despite the sad passing of our heroes: Jon Pertwee, Caroline John and Nicholas Courtney, the series of Third Doctor Adventures feels utterly authentic to the era it emulates and here, with the addition of Jon Culshaw as a tremendous Brigadier, alongside Tim Treloar’s Third Doctor and Daisy Ashford’s Liz Shaw, Big Finish ramps up the nostalgia yet further. Primord is a sequel to Inferno and goes in unexpected directions. The end of Episode Three is stark and as the Twitter generation might have it, a real WTF moment. The Scream of Ghosts is similarly strong, with the Home Counties England of the Pertwee years as palpable as the era’s Chromakey fringing. There’s also a nice surprise for fans of another 70s tale but to say too much would invoke the ire of River Song. If you’re a lover of the Pertwee era, you’d do far worse than to pick up this set of brilliantly well-written, superbly performed and authentically sound-designed stories.

8. THE SYNDICATE MASTERPLAN

It might seem like a bit of a cheat to choose a two-boxset eight-story arc of an adventure in the ninth spot, but at only £45 per CD bundle, the tales of the Fourth Doctor and Ann Kelso are an absolute steal. For anyone who loves The Daleks’ Master Plan (And let’s be honest, who doesn’t? It’s brilliant!), this Syndicate sequel is essential. It includes all the planet and time-hopping shenanigans of the original, as well as a police-drama in some ways akin to the first half of The Feast of Steven, a trip back into history alongside Ada Lovelace, and a Jurassic Park style Drashigs adventure! For all the shocks and twists along the way, as well as the call-backs to the past, what is perhaps most surprising about The Syndicate Masterplan is that these eight stories form one, quite isolated adventure: that of new companion Ann. It starts and ends here and feels complete, satisfying and at every turn, thrilling.

7. NIGHTMARE COUNTRY

Steve Gallagher – the renowned 80s writer of Warriors’ Gate and Terminus produces his third idiosyncratic, high-concept sci-fi thriller for the Doctor Who world. Admittedly, after fifteen minutes, this felt a little heavy, the story setting out its stall across the first episode in such as way as to feel non-user friendly. But prog rock albums are non-user friendly and usually by the last few bars, the listener wants to go back to the beginning and hear it all over again, unpeel the layers and feast in the intricacies, unpick how it was put together. Here, at the close of the very last scene and in the sting of the theme tune, one feels the same. This was something clever, something rich and was always aiming for this precise moment. It’s a beautiful, haunting, strange ending, even for Doctor Who. Second time round, like Warriors’ Gate, like Terminus, it’s easier to appreciate the hand Steve Gallagher is dealing, and Nightmare Country is a royal flush: Gallagher’s best.

6. THE TENTH DOCTOR ADVENTURES Volume Three

This is the best David Tennant set yet. Although it seems to have been far less remarked upon than its immediate predecessors (understandably, it being Volume 3), for my money it’s streets ahead in terms of quality than the already strong boxsets before it. What makes these stories even stronger are the bolder, headline-grabbing concepts from which the three adventures springboards: DR WHO MEETS MOST HAUNTED; DR WHO IN THE UNDERWATER CITY; and DR WHO AND THE GREAT FOG OF ’52. The pace and mood of each of the stories is as breakneck and exciting as Tennant’s TV era. The narratives are neat and streamlined and end with a giant dinosaur skeleton rampaging through London. The lavish boxset too is a glorious thing: June Hudson costume designs, Mike Tucker storyboards and beautiful artwork and photograph make this a must-have!

5. TORCHWOOD: NIGHT OF THE FENDAHL

The Torchwood range is one of Big Finish’s best. Inventive, schizophrenic and on occasion delightfully distasteful, one never knows what to expect from the monthly releases. This year we’ve had an anthology horror story in Dead Man’s Switch, an X-Files (specifically the episode Arcadia) homage in Serenity and a murderous screwball in Sync. The Hope was bleak and disturbing. But the stand out of the year is Night of the Fendahl, as dark and nightmarish as it’s possible for Torchwood to get and that’s saying something. Deliberately provocative, Tim Foley perhaps proves himself as the most manipulative of Big Finish’s writers. Walking to work in the dark, this really got under my skin and I put it to anyone to try to listen cynically. This release, like the Fendahl itself, will fill you with dread. 

4. TARTARUS

Composed of two enormous episodes, Tartarus feels like a Ray Harryhausen movie through a Doctor Who lens: there seriously can’t be many better things than that! The two longer instalments give the story a feel of the epic and its channelling of Jason and the Argonauts makes the visuals easier to imagine. David Llewellyn conjures a vivid, rip-roaring world and even manages to stay true to his series Cicero, one of 2018’s crowning glories in the Big Finish gamut. On the surface, this might look like a straightforward, rollicking adventure but they’re harder to come by and harder to write than one imagines, and this eminently listenable yarn is a rare beast. 

3. WARZONE/CONVERSION

The conclusion to this year’s Fifth Doctor trilogy is a worthy sequel to Earthshock and finally, after all these years, the Doctor and his companions manage to properly discuss the shocking death of Adric. Even after almost 40 years, the scenes here feel raw, full of emotion. Janet Fielding does some of her finest work as Tegan and Peter Davison, even in the trailers, displays a near-mania when it comes to tackling his feelings towards the maths wizard. The conclusion to Warzone is nightmarish and springboards us into the events of Conversion. It looks as if the events of Conclusion is are about to push Big Finish listeners into even more unfamiliar and difficult territory: a Fifth Doctor TARDIS crew more at odds with one another than ever before.

2. DAUGHTER OF THE GODS

Billed as the fifth anniversary special that never was, Daughter of the Gods, is very definitely that: special. Easily the best single-story release of the year, David K Barnes comes up trumps again after delivering last year’s seminal Dalek Occupation of Winter and the best UNIT story of all the eight box sets, Breach of Trust. The greatness of Barnes’s writing is that is completely unshowy. There are no needless gags or structural gimmicks; just a confidence and brio that drags the listener along with it. The pitch for this unusual story, complete with its many leading regulars, must have been daunting but Barnes makes it look easy. Each piece of this jigsaw puzzle of a plot tessellates perfectly with those either side. It is neat, clever and eventually and rewardingly, heart-breaking. Just as Conversion deals with the death of Adric in as rich and powerful a way as is imaginable, here the death of Katarina proves the richest source material for an adventure which proves dangerously close to the Doctor’s hearts.

THE LEGACY OF TIME

The number one spot then. Of course, it seems obvious and easy, but The Legacy of Time, Big Finish’s biggest adventure of all time, is also one of its most successful. It is grand and important, Lies in Ruins featuring a Gallifrey in a state of planet-wide demolition, but each of the six episodes is focused on its own strong story. The Split Infinitive is a strong Counter-Measures tale with a callback to one of Big Finish’s most successful original villains. The Sacrifice of Jo Grant is possibly the apex of the set, its closing few minutes surely able to move the most stony-faced of long-term Who fans. There are surprises aplenty here. Those who have been with Big Finish for the last twenty years are amply rewarded here and the last twenty minutes feel like a true celebration in a way that The Light of the End strangely didn’t. Of all the Doctor Who that have ever been made, in any medium, The Legacy of Time seems to sum up the very essence of the programme. I’d put it up there with Steven Moffat’s definitive Day of the Doctor novelisation or the original transmitted version of The Five Doctors as one of the greatest celebrations of our show to ever see fruition. 

In celebration of its release, and as a failed entry in the recent Big Finish competition, I produced this piece of art. I hope it captures the wonder and excitement of such a terrific story!

JH

Spyfall - Part One

Danger: Spoilers abound!

Almost every other review that I’ve read online about this New Year’s Doctor Who thriller begins with a statement about the critic’s feelings towards Series 11 and I can completely understand why. The show split fandom – some were never to watch again whilst others lauded the fresh, new approach. I reviewed the show weekly as the episodes went out and have had some time to reflect on the relative merits of Series 11 over the past year. Sharing those brief reflections might give you a better idea of my hopes and aspirations for Spyfall and Series 12 before I settled down to watch. If you can understand where I was coming from, hopefully you’ll appreciate even more clearly what a vivid, rollicking and perhaps unexpected success I thought this blast of a series opener was.

Series 11 was a strange beast. Whilst each individual episode had moments of brilliance and terrific central ideas, the journey of the series itself seemed unfocussed and messy. I was with Chris Chibnall up until Episode 6. Despite the fan hatred, I loved Arachnids in the UK and The Tsuranga Conundrum and felt they went a long way to pushing the TARDIS team forward, establishing their motives and dynamics. It felt as if with each passing episode, we uncovered a little more about the regulars. After that however, rather than build on the considerably strong groundwork, the show stalled and became an anthology series with a cast who didn’t learn or change from episode to episode. Kerblam!, The Witchfinders, It Takes You Away and arguably Demons of the Punjab could have happened interchangeably, so little did the results of the adventures affect the crew members. It was almost as if the “flat team structure” of the TARDIS team was mirrored by the writing squad, as if the stories needed a stronger guiding hand to push them onwards rather than allowing them to live solely by their own merits. If this were an ongoing narrative, as established in the first half of the series, why wasn’t it going anywhere? Similarly, onscreen, there was no driving force in the TARDIS. Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor was bluntly underwritten with too much to say and too little to do and even more bluntly, badly performed. As I said in my very first review of The Woman Who Fell to Earth, the gender of the Doctor seemed instantly and joyously unimportant, but the casting of Whittaker seemed like a mistake. Her performance throughout the series was laboured and heightened, her gags fell flat and lots of the time, she irritated. It was like watching an actor unable to read Shakespeare trying to perform in an idiom they clearly weren’t comfortable with. The bafflegab, the “Artron energy,” the devices, the tech, were all emphasised with an explanatory, patronising manner that only an actor unfamiliar with the trappings of sci-fi would deliver. Whittaker didn’t need to assume the viewer couldn’t keep up with ideas she possibly couldn’t.

Ultimately then, it was a series less than the sum of its parts. Some really vivid, important episodes, such as Punjab, were left as islands in a sea of disparate ideas and a narrative that, despite the brief writers’ room set-up, had not been properly developed, plotted or thought through. The beats and discoveries of character had not been as confidently posited as it seemed they might have been by the half-way mark and we ended with a finale which made for a fairly strong episode in itself but a poor culminating climax without a narrative build up, ending the show with a disaffected shrug rather than a need to find out where these people are going next.

I’m so thrilled to be able to say that Spyfall – Part One is a return to the confidence and character building of the first half of Series 11 and I am so shamelessly happy that this seems to be the most big-budget, thrilling and glamourous that Doctor Who has ever been. As fans, we delight in the intricacies of plot and clevernesses of character, but we love it most of all, after the decades of incessant, lazy, journalistic “wobbly sets” guff, when our show looks bloody good. And here, it simply looks better than ever, and if last year did anything right, it already looked amazingly good.

We go from the mean streets of Moscow, to the Australian outback, to inner city London, to a sun-kissed, San Franciscan vineyard casino, to an airport and a flying plane. Hell, we even visit Ryan’s warehouse in Sheffield. Chibnall promised us the biggest episode ever and, like it or not, this definitely is the biggest episode ever. It looks and feels like a Bond movie and makes a decent TV-budget-sized effort to match them for spectacle. We have three huge set-pieces which, perhaps for the first time in Doctor Who, don’t feel limited by resources. I can’t think of a single Doctor Who episode to match the money on screen here.

Aesthetics over with, how about the content? Well, gratifyingly, it matches the visuals. Chibnall is no great shakes when it comes to memorable or even graceful dialogue, but he has a keen eye on pace and this story plunges from one thrill into the next, sometimes with the most shameless abandon. Like Russell T Davies, Chibnall is not as interested in the ties that bind the scenes together but by the thrill of living every moment. This is a story that puts entertainment at its centre, never relenting in its pursuit to make the viewer sit up and pay attention, and even makes room for the quiet, tense, paranoia-fuelled interview with Lenny Henry’s troubling, Tobias Vaughan-like Daniel Barton as well as the jumpy, horror-movie night scenes in Australia.

We are quickly reacquainted with our leads and given a deliberately silly short-term history to lend credence to their ongoing travels with the Doctor from their peers’ perspectives back in Sheffield. Speaking of which, the TARDIS is introduced in a possibly provocative, extremely funny sight gag which manages to give us a laugh whilst at the same time establishing in an incredibly clever economy of storytelling, that the Thirteenth Doctor is now very much based in Sheffield just as the Third was down to Earth during the UNIT years or the Tenth Doctor was drawn to the Powell Estate. And as soon as we have our regulars escorted away by a tall, imposing man in black and a (forgive me) laughably short and unimposing man in black we’re off to adventures anew.

Stephen Fry arrives with a fiendish joke to gag the “Doctor Who is a man” naysayers and then is shockingly disposed of. We fly Ryan and Yaz to San Francisco and they are really beginning to work as a double-act. There’s a Mulder-Scully, will they-won’t they vibe about them which should prove fun to follow as the show progresses. Yaz is then properly shaken up and we get a sense that all is not quite going to go as smoothly for these people as it did during Series 11. Then we are introduced to Agent O and the fun really begins.

Sacha Dhawan has long been on my list of tremendously charming and dependable guest actors. I recently watched him in the overlooked The Deep with James Nesbitt and noted again, the huge talents of the man. He played a beautiful Waris Hussein in our very own Adventure in Space and Time. Here, from the off, there’s something peculiar about him. The lusty grin he gives Graham when inviting him to read the Doctor’s files is the first sign of danger. To then realise who the man is and watch Dhawan suddenly go for broke is devastating. You realise that from now on, absolutely anything might happen. And despite her furious, dynamism, we are forced to ask the question: Michelle Who?

Lastly, we see a Jodie Whittaker Doctor who is more relaxed, more charming and for much of the episode, frightened and emotional. She has no idea who the sinister, Vardan-like aliens could be and then realises how very out of her depth she is in the episode’s closing minutes. Whether she is responding to a script which gives her slightly different material or is simply more comfortable in her own skin, I’m not sure. But here, she gives her best performance as the Doctor to date especially when up against Barton at the house party. There are a few gags which land way off the mark though. (Seriously, did anyone tell her the “Doctor. The Doctor,” joke was a Bond reference?) Seeing the desperation of this Time Lord, however, is thrilling. It’s reminiscent of Davison – at his best when losing control. With the Master now firmly ingrained in the plot, it’s probable she might end up even more at sea and I for one cannot wait to see what happens next.

Spyfall – Part One is a truly spectacular kick-off to Doctor Who 2020 and with episode two another 60 minutes long and seemingly taking place in Paris, it looks as though we may, as promised, be in for the biggest show ever. It feels like Doctor Who is new again, and vital and urgent, even after its more obvious differences opening Series 11. I’m thrilled by the return of the pre-titles sequence (Essential in my book!), I love the altered TARDIS set (Less plasticky and more refined.) and I love a cliff-hanger! Perhaps the greatest achievement of Chibnall’s script is that it doesn’t feel like a homage to Bond or a spoof of Bond; it feels like another Bond movie and probably an altogether better one at that. Spyfall proves that Doctor Who, even yet, can be anything its creators want it to be and right now, that seems to be a tearaway success.

9/10

JH

The Pride of the Collectors

Scanning through my embarrassingly large number of shelves this week, my brother asked me, “How many times have you actually bought Spearhead from Space?” He’d spotted a Blu Ray version and the Zavvi Steelbook within a few cases of one another. I had to count: the original VHS, the unedited VHS, the DVD, the second DVD in the Mannequin Mania box set, the original Blu Ray, the Steelbook Blu Ray, three editions of the Target book, one with the Russell T Davies introduction, and I’d most definitely buy the Season 7 Blu Ray set on its eventual release. That’s a few too many times buying a story that, hand on heart, I can’t say is a particular favourite. So why the hell have I done it?

Well, each new version does offer something better, a fresh perspective on a familiar story. From the original VHS to the Blu Ray edition, each illustrates the progressively stronger restoration techniques across the decades. The first edition was a dirty scan of a grotty, old film. The newest is in true HD. The special features for each subsequent DVD edition got better and better: from a 1999 advert and a 1993 UNIT recruitment film on the version released in 2000 to a terrific, HD-shot Jon Pertwee biopic. Truth be told, however, I bought all these versions simply because I wanted them. I wanted that Zavvi Steelbook because it is bloody gorgeous. I don’t think I’ve ever watched it but I’m a happier man with it sat there on the shelf and I’d be irritated if I’d missed it.

These days, I hear lots of internet talk of “The Legacy Brand.” Broadly speaking, it’s the idea that the modern iteration of Doctor Who has alienated the old-school fans (and admittedly, I know for a fact it certainly has one or two) so the emphasis in terms of merchandise has become not on the latest action figures or Doctor Who Adventures Magazine because the show isn’t down with the kids any longer. No, the great push is now to sell the old programme to the old fans again. This is partly given credence by sales figures of DVDs and Blu Rays last year which pointed to Classic Who selling more than New Who. Whether this is true or not, it has given rise to a very specialist kind of product, the kind of product fans of other shows would die for. In fact, they’re the sort of products that six weeks after their release are fetching £300 on eBay.

Take the beautifully-boxed Blu Ray Season sets. Lee Binding’s artwork is masterful, the layout and booklet design are attractive and upmarket. The extra filmed content and picture and sound restoration are frankly undeservingly wonderful. No other vintage show has had this sort of attention given to its curation, aside from possibly Red Dwarf. The overall packages are high-end, deluxe collectors’ products and after 30 years of Doctor Who merchandise accumulation, they are rapidly becoming the very pride of the collection and the only way to watch the Classic show.

Closely behind them are the Demon Record editions of lost 60s stories. Heavy and neatly stylised, the vinyls look gorgeous on Amazon but to hold them in your hands is a pure delight. Placed strategically, the covers form a jigsaw of digital paintings such as the Yeti reflected in a sphere like a snow-globe, or a Dalek edging its way through a fiery Kembel jungle. The LPs themselves are beautifully and individually patterned. I don’t need these - I have the CDs released at the turn of the millennium – but they are so distinctly different to other Who merchandise and so remarkably, efficiently exquisite that they easily earn their places on the shelves.

Next comes the epic Complete History, the ultimate collection of Andrew Pixley’s Archives, updated from their original publication in DWM and brought together to form the written encyclopaedia of the making of Doctor Who. My wife bought me this for my thirtieth birthday present before we were married. In recompense, I married her. I jest of course, but this is such a magnificent gamut of literature, chronicling the show since before its inception to the end of the Capaldi years that it represents nothing more than the definitive guide, each story illustrated with a new, gorgeous-looking poster design by Lee Johnson. Shelved alongside the ongoing Blu Ray collection, it is soon to be all a collector could even need.

But of course that’s never enough for the OCD Whovian collector. There are the aforementioned Steelbooks. I am beyond excited at the prospect of adding a Faceless Ones and a Fury from the Deep to The Power of the Daleks, Shada and The Macra Terror, as well as feeling incredibly lucky to have snapped up the Series 9 Capaldi set with the painted cover by Alice X Zhang. I’m hoping Series 5-8 finally arrive but the recent Specials Steelbook is a lovely purchase, Tom Webster’s artwork a match for his Spare Parts and Chimes of Midnight vinyls which also reside lovingly beside the Demon Records.

Big Finish have got in on the act too as a matter of course. Their lavish Tenth Doctor CD-books, most recently complete with June Hudson costume designs and Mike Tucker storyboards, are as gorgeous as anything produced by the BBC and their Novel Adaptations sets are to die for. The Sixth Doctor’s Last Adventure is a very special purchase and the 20-year anniversary story The Legacy of Time is a huge, robust treasure chest of adventure (and the first three stories contained therein are as magnificent as Doctor Who has ever been).

Character Options and B & M aren’t averse to the specific collectors’ market either: Harry Sullivan just appeared on the shelves with a couple of Classic Sontarans but perhaps the most special of their summer range were the Big Finish crossover Doctor-Dalek sets: a War Doctor and a Bronze and Silver Dalek, a Dark Eyes-coated Eighth Doctor and an Interrogator Prime. Yeah, these sit beautifully alongside the mud-spattered Androzani TARDIS set and the Shada, ambulance lamp-topped Tom variety. If these releases continue to be handled with such particular care and attention, I can see my bank balance being yet more reduced and worrying.

Whatever the reasons for this bent towards very specific and high-quality Classic Series merchandise, it’s difficult to deny that we are living in something of a renaissance when it comes to our Who collecting. I thought the days of being excited for the next ultimate DVD edition of a favourite story were over. Now, we have a Blu Ray box set every few months, an animation to look forward to at least twice a year, a Complete History to browse through, a growing vinyl collection to immerse ourselves in and above all else and like it or not, a new series on the television which, in years to come, can find itself being released and re-released in a cavalcade of similarly new, inventive and beautiful ways.

JH

The Collection - Season 23 Blu Ray

Just imagine if Season 23 had opened not with the Trial ship hanging in the void accompanied by deathly electronic chimes but with the Hyperion 3 docking near Mogar, the Doctor’s voiceover introducing new and old viewers to his next adventure, inviting us in as fellow detectives in a space-age whodunit. It would be a very different and perhaps far more efficient way of introducing this particular series’ new premise. Despite the presence of Bonnie Langford, to whom some fans reacted with unsubstantiated, unreasonable and undeserved venom at the time, the first scene between her and the Sixth Doctor sets up a new status quo for the TARDIS team. Gone is the clumsy, repetitive bickering of Season 22, replaced by a companion who’s managed to cajole this most bombastic, arrogant and immoveable of Doctors onto an exercise bike. It says a lot about the force of nature that is Melanie Bush that the Sixth Doctor we see in Terror of the Vervoids is almost unrecognisable as the Doctor of the previous year. Here, he’s by turns charming (whipping out flowers from his sleeve with a smile), funny (“Wish I could get rid of my waist as easily, eh?”) and warm with only the occasional arsy moment thrown in for good measure. (He waits for Mel to leave before going with her passenger list idea, presumably just to save face.) Given a few more episodes, it’s possible that Mel may have proven the perfect foil for Old Sixie. The adventure itself is a well-structured, intricate murder mystery with some cracking cliff-hangers, hard sci-fi ideas and the oft-criticised over-articulation of Pip and Jane Baker’s prose-y script is far more charming than it’s given credit for. In short, this might well have been a terrific way to launch the show after its unfair hiatus and Vervoids gives Colin Baker perhaps his best opportunity to shine as a leading man. That’s certainly something Pip and Jane Baker understood: the Doctor should be the star of his own show.

As it happens, we ended up with the unwieldy and miscalculated season that was The Trial of a Time Lord in which our hero is relegated literally to the dock as well as spending a few episodes playing The Bad Doctor again for reasons neither Eric Saward nor Philip Martin seemed to fully understand. No one is going to argue that this season is Doctor Who’s finest vintage. But the fabulous team behind these Blu-Ray Collection releases led by Russell Minton have given us the chance to take a step into a parallel world in which Terror of the Vervoids launched the show with a terrific, new title sequence and a solid, fast-paced, occasionally gripping 4-parter which any new viewer could understand and enjoy without being drowned in drab Time Lord lore or witless courtroom squabbling. Charles Norton’s new edit of Vervoids is a sure-fire hit and this box set’s crowning glory, worth the entry ticket alone. For all the fantasising fans have done over the years about the mythic Lost Season of Toymakers and Ice Warriors, this new re-telling of a familiar story is perhaps the most tangible glimpse of a very different Doctor Who, a show which had the confidence to tell simple, standalone stories, free from continuity and introspection, with a sense of fun, mystery and scary monsters. It’s a glimpse perhaps of a Doctor Who which remained a success with all the family?

Elsewhere on the boxset, we can experience another way of watching Trial afresh in the bonus discs’ original 71 edits of every single episode, running at slightly longer lengths than on transmission. Remastered and with 5.1 sound mixes (courtesy of the incredible hard work of Mark Ayres), the slight differences and extended or hitherto deleted scenes make it feel as if one is experiencing the show for the first time and in many cases highlight the best of Trial. They also, sadly, highlight the worst of it.

Take the 71 edit of The Mysterious Planet Part One: the opening courtroom scene lasts longer than on transmission and outstays its welcome with the first irritatingly, triflingly banal objection from the Doctor. It’s perhaps a metaphor for all those following courtroom scenes, which feel more and more tiresome as the series progresses and reach their nadir in Mindwarp Part One in which they repeatedly interrupt the flow of the Thoros-Betan narrative with facile observations. The courtroom set itself is bland and vacuous, allowing only for the same three of four camera positions. Nicholas Mallett tries an early over-the-shoulder shot from the Inquisitor’s perspective but that’s about as inventive as it gets. The Mysterious Planet’s problems, however, extend far beyond the courtroom.

As a script, the first part of the Trial is as imaginative, loquacious and characterful as is typical of Robert Holmes even when not firing on all cylinders. Hell, even The Space Pirates boasts the brilliant Milo Clancey. In a parallel world, Glitz & Dibber are as fondly remembered as Jago & Litefoot, Vorg & Shirna or Garron & Unstoffe. However, JNT and Nicholas Mallett have cast Tony Selby as Glitz, a limited, run-of-the-mill actor who struggles to get through any sentence which includes words featuring more than one syllable. Watch as he “rrrrenders the rrrrobot non-operational” or as he observes that “yourssss is a simple case of sociopathy, Dibber.” You can see the man thinking his way through the mire of verbosity he is so clearly having to mentally wade through. What this part really needs is an Iain Cuthbertson or a Graham Crowden to lift it off the page, an actor of size and majesty and class, one who understands a text of theatrical proportions. Tony Selby doesn’t quite cut it. He’s followed slowly by a waddling Joan Simms as Warrior Queen Katryca, another actor who struggles to bring to life stagey cries of “Forward I say!” although she does have occasional moments of sinister magnificence: “I have studied the fires.” Lastly, the biggest disappointment of this scrag end of acting talent is the ordinarily brilliant Tom Chadbon, giving his most insipid shot at Merdeen. In some scenes, even though standing and speaking, his stark white make-up and vacant, omitting expression make him appear close to death. Casting is a serious problem in The Mysterious Planet and many of the extended scenes show up some of the actors’ even rougher takes. Things get even worse as the story progresses with Tumker and Handril, the blonde-wigged robots with less personality than Drathro. The two of them are utterly, shockingly bad and it makes the viewer wonder whether they are purposefully monotone and neutered or whether they’ve made a genuine acting decision between themselves to be as charisma-less as is possible. There’s a famous publicity photo of Colin and Nicola in hats and canes, announcing that they’re back in business, as it were. Judging by the capability of the tepid guest stars, however, we’re rooted firmly in the Z-list section of showbiz here, surrounded by talent which truly fails to inspire.

Another problem with The Mysterious Planet is its design work. Whilst Marble Arch Station looks completely glorious in its vaulted, gothic gloom, the tube tunnels themselves look more Supermarket Sweep than Web of Fear. They’re over-lit and plasticky. Imagine a Mysterious Planet played in shadows, the Immortal in his pitch-dark castle, throwing frightening black shapes against the dank walls. Imagine the train guards actually riding… you know, trains around their tube tunnels. The threat of their ubiquitous whistling through the tunnels just before the culling commences has Bob Holmes’s macabre humour written all over it. There is a tremendously dark and horrific story at the heart of The Mysterious Planet, that of a literal robot confining a group of naïve humans to a world of blackness and keeping their population at bay by murdering them routinely. What we get is a bunch of irritating mugs arsing about in bright corridors, trains you could walk away from at strolling pace and exits which seem fairly apparent and very easy to get out of. If just one person down there were a little bit curious, the whole wretched civilisation might have gone outside well before the Doctor arrives on the scene.

And so to our leading man: Colin Baker, perhaps the least celebrated of all the Doctors. Watching Colin now, and knowing the immense pressures the series was under, it seems a magnificently valiant performance, a rallying cry that this show needs to survive. A call to be seen. He plays every moment for what it’s worth and then some. Occasionally, his decisions aren’t the right ones and sometimes he could do with a director keeping him in check (his grimacing, obsequious, one-upman smile at the Valeyard after apologising to the Inquisitor is a foot-in-the-mouth moment), but the fierce passion with which Colin throws himself into the role makes him eternally endearing. What’s less forgivable is that after an 18-month hiatus, Eric Saward’s writing team still don’t seem sure how to write for him. The first deleted scene in the 71 edit as the TARDIS arrives on Ravalox shows the Doctor and Peri bickering as if they’d never been away. It seems a wise decision to have dropped it and to instead cut to Colin and Nicola playing against the lines and twirling umbrellas a few minutes later. Their opening scene as originally transmitted is far more charming and they seem like a TARDIS crew we want to spend time with. If only Colin had been allowed to play the Doctor a little longer, we might have been gifted more of this acerbically lovely paradox of a Time Lord. He comes into his own throughout the season and his best moments have to be that famous “power-mad conspirators” speech (incidentally Bob Holmes’s last fiery moment of bliss) and his genuinely tearful reaction to the death of Peri at the close of Mindwarp. In those moments, he is undoubtedly a star and the star of Doctor Who.

Whilst The Mysterious Planet remains ultimately as bland and uninspiring as its script is rich and imaginative, Mindwarp dazzles the senses from its first beach scene. Thoros-Beta is quite the alien planet, its vivid, fluorescent beach a rich visual imagining, and its cornucopia of unusual inhabitants is introduced at a fair lick. When Trevor Laird orders his guards to “Let them go. There’s nothing down there. Only the Lukoser,” we know we’re about to meet yet another weird cave dweller. Despite its courtroom interruptions, the first episode is incessantly paced but afterwards Mindwarp becomes a rather shapeless thing with a truly bizarre but nevertheless interesting tone. Sil’s joke about Kiv’s new body (“I wish you could have found a more attractive one”) comes at a moment when seriousness is surely needed because at this point in the Trial, the shit is seriously hitting the fan. Elsewhere in the episode, comedy mentors dither and clutch their temples whilst Peri dies off screen. It makes for the strangest viewing experience. Mindwarp is never quite clear what emotional beats it wants to hit and ends up feeling like something of a meandering dream. Characters wonder around from cave to cave. Gordon Warnecke is unfathomably dreadful as Tuza and Brian Blessed is deliriously mental as Yrcanos. If there’s one scene from the 71 edits which definitely should have been kept in, if only to make sense of his later inexplicable marriage to Peri, it’s the searing cry of rage he screams as his bride-to-be is led to the slaughter. And that death is a striking, painful moment, as powerful as Trial gets. If only it had been the real deal.

Terror of the Vervoids, even with the Trial segments, is perhaps the most successful of the stories. As a murder mystery it works. As a monster-of-the-week, sci-fi B-movie it works. As a traditional Doctor Who story it works. I’ve already said that Pip and Jane understood the Sixth Doctor and here they gift us with the best, most natural scenes of Colin Baker. Special mention must go to David Allister as Bruchner too who gives an edgy, teetering performance and, in the 71 edit provides a masterclass in cliff-hanger acting from which even Crash-Zoom Colin Baker might take a few hints.

The final two episodes are a curious combination. Bob Holmes for fifteen minutes, Saward for ten, Pip and Jane for thirty. It’s quite miraculous that the whole thing feels curiously cohesive. Well, as far as a Matrix-set, political assassination, computer-based, fantastical courtroom plot can be. It’s a neat touch by Pip and Jane to make the screen with which we’ve all been witnessing the Doctor’s adventures the ultimate devastating weapon, almost as if they were in on the plotting of the Trial from the very beginning. Not bad for a hastily written script based on a few set photos. Say what you will about their “catharsis of spurious morality,” the Bakers can definitely write to a spec. And even though Trial represents the upsetting burn-out and defeat of Eric Saward, it’s worth noting that the second half of The Ultimate Foe Part One is some of his finest work, the Mr Popplewick scenes proving deliciously unnerving and the early scenes in the Matrix (now complete with a Valeyard stoking fires like a demon) have a nightmarish quality to them. In the end, it cannot be argued that this is a particularly satisfying ending. The whole sorry adventure didn’t know where it was heading when it first set off, but the ride was a usually enjoyable, tonally sporadic but always interesting, one. Michael Jayston is never far from the screen which means we’re never far from the classiest acting chops. Colin is always loudly magnificent and there are moments of real, visceral power, particularly the Vervoid episode endings and the climax of Mindwarp. The concept of the Trial feels in itself ill-judged but there is a keen sense of a show raging against the dying of the light which is always fascinating, especially from this safe distance, to witness.

Whilst there is a great deal of arguably warranted negativity both in this review and on the original DVD Special Features accompanying the season, the Blu Ray edition’s producers have wisely decided to re-dress the critical balance, making the show feel more like a fun place to be with some upbeat additional programmes. Chris Chapman's Doctor Who Cookbook is a glorious curio and The Doctor’s Table is a rip-roaring, laugh-out-loud brilliant idea with some particularly funny barbs from the four stars of the Trial. Bonnie Langford’s interview with Matthew Sweet puts the programme in perspective and it’s refreshing to hear a more joyous attitude towards it than those of us perhaps more emotionally invested in the show. She comes off as a true star – professional, respectful and just a little bit above it all in the best possible way. I’m still not thrilled by the Blu Rays’ answer to Googlebox in the often leaden Behind the Sofa features but when a not-particularly-well-loved 14 part-serial from 1986 is given a treatment on Blu Ray with 32 versions of the episodes to watch, each re-mastered, all with 5.1 surround sound, four with new effects, it feels churlish to criticise a product made with such obvious and deep affection. In 1986, Doctor Who was in poor condition. Here, in 2019, we can finally say that the Trial now appears to be in far ruder health and like the show itself, just needed a little care and attention from the right people. Another huge success from Russell Minton and his team, the Great Curators of our special show!

JH

Unboxing The Daleks' Master Plan

I recently waxed lyrical about the fact that The Daleks' Master Plan could well be regarded as the ultimate Doctor Who story. For a start it's arguably the longest. Then there's the massive sense of scope: from the far future Space Year 4000 to the distant past of the Ancient Egyptians. There are the invisible Visians, the devilish Screamers, the whole swathe of alien Delegates and of course, the ultimate enemies themselves - the Daleks - as well as a renegade Time Lord for the Doctor to butt heads with. There's so much planet-hopping, it's almost impossible to keep up with our current setting, especially with the TARDIS AWOL which brings an urgency and uncharacteristic danger to events. We go from the pulpy hokum of the Kembel jungle to the harrowing darkness of The Traitors via the frenetic frolics of Volcano and finally end with a devastating blow for the TARDIS crew in Destruction of Time.

Recently, Demon Records released their beautiful, beautiful vinyl edition which I've been lucky enough to snap up from Amazon at far less than £100. I'm hoping to listen to this iconoclastic classic again this Christmas when my girls have gone to bed, the crackling vinyl popping a relic of yesteryear to complement the imagined grainy black and white beauty. In the meantime, I've always wanted to share my "Doctor Voices" with the world. I really hope you enjoy this fun little vid I put together as an ode to Jon Culshaw in his superlative video of his unwrapping of The Evil of the Daleks. Now, there's another iconoclastic classic for another day!

Follow the link and enjoy!


JH

How to Choose a Top Thirty

Every year, super forum Gallifrey Base runs the TTT: The Top Three Tournament, in which forum users are asked to vote for their favourite three stories from randomly selected groups of six or seven daily. The stories are whittled away until a final favourite arrives months later. It’s a gripping and often satisfying game but it can be painful: if a round of six or seven favourites arrives, it’s difficult to vote without feeling like you’re leaving a dear friend out in the cold. It’s agonising watching your favourites ignored by the rest of fandom too. If you’ve never joined in before, I recommend you hunt down the game and get involved: it’s such a fun way to spend a few minutes every evening and the highs and lows of the results are often moments to cherish.

However, there is an alternative game on the same forum for those with less patience: the one-round version in which users are asked to vote for their Top Thirty stories all in one go. The top story is gifted 30 points, the last 1 point. The results are collated and the story with the most points after two weeks wins! This year, Genesis of the Daleks ran away with it. Now Genesis has never been a personal favourite. I find it slow and drab-looking for the most part, despite an admittedly excellent opening couple of episodes. I have a theory that those 70s fans who enjoyed the cut-down LP version have a far fonder memory of it and that this omnibus edition works far better. But that’s by the by. With the sheer number of Doctor Who stories now available from which to choose one’s Top Thirty, I got to thinking: How on Earth does one go about such a selection? I would want my Top Thirty to be my very, very favourites, not necessarily the best written or produced, but those that I can watch over and over again and despite seeing the cracks, still find them utterly enchanting. 

So I’m going to give it a go! First, I’m going to list the stories I love in chronological order and see how close to thirty I get. Here goes:

1.       The Crusade

2.       The Daleks’ Master Plan

3.       The Massacre

4.       The Power of the Daleks

5.       The Tomb of the Cybermen

6.       The Ice Warriors

7.       The Enemy of the World

8.       The Web of Fear

9.       Fury from the Deep

10.   The Mind Robber

11.   The Ambassadors of Death

12.   Inferno

13.   Terror of the Autons

14.   The Sea Devils

15.   The Green Death

16.   The Brain of Morbius

17.   The Seeds of Doom

18.   The Deadly Assassin

19.   The Robots of Death

20.   Horror of Fang Rock

21.   The Ribos Operation

22.   The Androids of Tara

23.   City of Death

24.   The Leisure Hive

25.   Warriors’ Gate

26.   Logopolis

27.   Castrovalva

28.   Kinda

29.   Earthshock

30.   Snakedance

31.   The Five Doctors

32.   The Caves of Androzani

33.   Revelation of the Daleks

34.   The Happiness Patrol

35.   The Greatest Show in the Galaxy

36.   Ghost Light

37.   The Curse of Fenric

38.   Survival

39.   Father’s Day

40.   The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances

41.   Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways

42.   Tooth and Claw

43.   School Reunion

44.   The Girl in the Fireplace

45.   Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel

46.   The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit

47.   Love & Monsters

48.   Gridlock

49.   The Lazarus Experiment

50.   Utopia/The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords

51.   Voyage of the Damned

52.   The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky

53.   Midnight

54.   Turn Left

55.   The Eleventh Hour

56.   The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone

57.   Vincent and the Doctor

58.   A Christmas Carol

59.   The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon

60.   Closing Time

61.   Asylum of the Daleks

62.   Dinosaurs on a Spaceship

63.   A Town Called Mercy

64.   The Snowmen

65.   The Crimson Horror

66.   The Name of the Doctor

67.   The Day of the Doctor

68.   The Time of the Doctor

69.   Deep Breath

70.   Into the Dalek

71.   Robot of Sherwood

72.   Listen

73.   Kill the Moon

74.   Mummy on the Orient Express

75.   Dark Water/Death in Heaven

76.   Last Christmas

77.   The Zygon Invasion/The Zygon Inversion

78.   Heaven Sent

79.   Hell Bent

80.   The Husbands of River Song

81.   Knock Knock

82.   Oxygen

83.   Extremis

84.   The Pyramid at the End of the World

85.   World Enough and Time/The Doctor Falls

86.   Twice Upon a Time

87.   Arachnids in the UK

88.   The Tsuranga Conundrum

89.   Demons of the Punjab

90.   The Witchfinders

So…90. It proved easy enough to choose my favourites by moving along in chronological order and snapping up those stories I loved. However, the loss of two-thirds of this list is going to be difficult. If I move along the list and strike out those I can give a reason for giving the boot to, I might be able to do this while keeping my conscience clear. Might…

1.        The Crusade

2.       The Daleks’ Master Plan – Have I picked it because of its sheer length and not because of its unremitting quality?

3.       The Massacre

4.       The Power of the Daleks – Is it just the fact it’s the first regeneration (its iconic status) or is it a bit slow and cumbersome on occasion?

5.       The Tomb of the Cybermen – Loved it as a child but is it a bit cheap-looking, even by 60s standards?

6.       The Ice Warriors – Better with a cut-down recon of Two and Three than the full three hours?

7.       The Enemy of the World

8.       The Web of Fear

9.       Fury from the Deep

10.   The Mind Robber- Gripping and playful but it hasn’t got an ending. 

11.   The Ambassadors of Death

12.   Inferno

13.   Terror of the Autons

14.   The Sea Devils

15.   The Green Death

16.   The Brain of Morbius – Surprisingly, I haven’t got very much Hinchcliffe in the list. Bob Holmes could not write a decent climax though, could he?

17.   The Seeds of Doom

18.   The Deadly Assassin

19.   The Robots of Death

20.   Horror of Fang Rock

21.   The Ribos Operation – Gorgeous script. But then we have, “Bones of our fathers! Seek and find!"

22.   The Androids of Tara – Looks lovely; a bit slow? 

23.   City of Death

24.   The Leisure Hive

25.   Warriors’ Gate – Although I love it, I’m still not certain that I understand it.

26.   Logopolis

27.   Castrovalva – Is confining Parts One and Two to the TARDIS acceptable?

28.   Kinda

29.   Earthshock

30.   Snakedance – The lesser of two Maras.

31.   The Five Doctors

32.   The Caves of Androzani – Magnificent script; a bit underwhelming in the design department.

33.   Revelation of the Daleks

34.   The Happiness Patrol

35.   The Greatest Show in the Galaxy

36.   Ghost Light

37.   The Curse of Fenric – Makes less sense than Ghost Light. There are times I wonder what on Earth is happening at all.

38.   Survival

39.   Father’s Day

40.   The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances

41.   Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways

42.   Tooth and Claw

43.   School Reunion – Love the reunion itself but does the story feel a tiny bit twee?

44.   The Girl in the Fireplace – Rose and Mickey are suddenly getting on and I don’t really believe the Doctor is in love.

45.   Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel

46.   The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit

47.   Love & Monsters – Sorry William, but the Abzorbaloff itself is a bit naff. 

48.   Gridlock

49.   The Lazarus Experiment

50.   Utopia/The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords

51.   Voyage of the Damned

52.   The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky

53.   Midnight – Very grey.

54.   Turn Left – Does it work without the following two-parter?

55.   The Eleventh Hour

56.   The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone

57.   Vincent and the Doctor – Bit boring in the middle.

58.   A Christmas Carol

59.   The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon – Few too many TARDIS scenes.

60.   Closing Time – Best of a bad season?

61.   Asylum of the Daleks

62.   Dinosaurs on a Spaceship

63.   A Town Called Mercy – Looks beautiful but ultimately insignificant?

64.   The Snowmen

65.   The Crimson Horror – A shade away from pure class. Can’t quite define what that shade is. Perhaps it’s that it feels like a homage to something else rather than its own beast?

66.   The Name of the Doctor

67.   The Day of the Doctor – There’s a long, boring stretch in a forest.

68.   The Time of the Doctor

69.   Deep Breath

70.   Into the Dalek

71.   Robot of Sherwood

72.   Listen – The climax doesn’t reach the heights of the vignettes beforehand.

73.   Kill the Moon

74.   Mummy on the Orient Express

75.   Dark Water/Death in Heaven

76.   Last Christmas

77.   The Zygon Invasion/The Zygon Inversion – First half is very wobbly.

78.   Heaven Sent – A cool experiment and Capaldi is amazing. But it’s guilty of naval-gazing, despite its greatness. 

79.   Hell Bent – Those courtroom scenes on Gallifrey have never quite worked (excluding those in The Deadly Assassin).

80.   The Husbands of River Song

81.   Knock Knock – And everybody lived. Again. 

82.   Oxygen – Is the ending a bit easy?

83.   Extremis

84.   The Pyramid at the End of the World

85.   World Enough and Time/The Doctor Falls – The second half isn’t quite as blistering as the first.

86.   Twice Upon a Time – David Bradley.

87.   Arachnids in the UK

88.   The Tsuranga Conundrum

89.   Demons of the Punjab

90.   The Witchfinders – Those lake scenes feel a little cobbled together.

Which means the list now looks like this:

1.       The Crusade

2.       The Massacre

3.       The Enemy of the World

4.       The Web of Fear

5.       Fury from the Deep

6.       The Ambassadors of Death

7.       Inferno

8.       Terror of the Autons

9.       The Sea Devils

10.   The Green Death

11.   The Seeds of Doom

12.   The Deadly Assassin

13.   The Robots of Death

14.   Horror of Fang Rock

15.   City of Death

16.   The Leisure Hive

17.   Logopolis

18.   Kinda

19.   Earthshock

20.   The Five Doctors

21.   Revelation of the Daleks

22.   The Happiness Patrol

23.   The Greatest Show in the Galaxy

24.   Ghost Light

25.   Survival

26.   Father’s Day

27.   The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances

28.   Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways

29.   Tooth and Claw

30.   Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel

31.   The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit

32.   Gridlock

33.   The Lazarus Experiment

34.   Utopia/The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords

35.   Voyage of the Damned

36.   The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky

37.   The Eleventh Hour

38.   The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone

39.   A Christmas Carol

40.   Asylum of the Daleks

41.   Dinosaurs on a Spaceship

42.   The Snowmen

43.   The Name of the Doctor

44.   The Time of the Doctor

45.   Deep Breath

46.   Into the Dalek

47.   Robot of Sherwood

48.   Kill the Moon

49.   Mummy on the Orient Express

50.   Dark Water/Death in Heaven

51.   Last Christmas

52.   The Husbands of River Song

53.   Extremis

54.   The Pyramid at the End of the World

55.   Arachnids in the UK

56.   The Tsuranga Conundrum

57.   Demons of the Punjab

So… 27 to eliminate. I thought there might be fewer than that but I have picked the stories I love the most so getting them down to a sizeable chunk was never going to be easy. This is feeling brutal. Here we go again:

1.       The Crusade

2.       The Massacre

3.       The Enemy of the World

4.       The Web of Fear

5.       Fury from the Deep – Too hard to tell given that it’s completely missing.

6.       The Ambassadors of Death

7.       Inferno – It’s grand but it is a tad long. Namely Episodes 2 and 7.

8.       Terror of the Autons

9.       The Sea Devils

10.   The Green Death

11.   The Seeds of Doom

12.   The Deadly Assassin

13.   The Robots of Death

14.   Horror of Fang Rock – The Rutan itself and that lingering model shot.

15.   City of Death

16.   The Leisure Hive

17.   Logopolis – The money had too clearly run out. 

18.   Kinda

19.   Earthshock

20.   The Five Doctors – Feels like a step backwards rather than forwards?

21.   Revelation of the Daleks

22.   The Happiness Patrol

23.   The Greatest Show in the Galaxy

24.   Ghost Light

25.   Survival – That cat.

26.   Father’s Day

27.   The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances

28.   Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways

29.   Tooth and Claw

30.   Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel

31.   The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit

32.   Gridlock – We never really feel as if we’re in the undercity, and the sets are clearly re-used.

33.   The Lazarus Experiment – Very enjoyable but Gatiss is miscast. He ought to be a beautiful young man.

34.   Utopia/The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords – Last of the Time Lords.

35.   Voyage of the Damned

36.   The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky

37.   The Eleventh Hour

38.   The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone

39.   A Christmas Carol

40.   Asylum of the Daleks – Terrific fun but a bit bread and butter?

41.   Dinosaurs on a Spaceship

42.   The Snowmen – The climax is unresolved so it can’t feel complete.

43.   The Name of the Doctor – There’s only the TARDIS set left, guys. Shall we cover it with leaves?

44.   The Time of the Doctor

45.   Deep Breath

46.   Into the Dalek

47.   Robot of Sherwood – Some pacing issues and the cut was unfortunate. 

48.   Kill the Moon

49.   Mummy on the Orient Express

50.   Dark Water/Death in Heaven

51.   Last Christmas – There’s a bit of repetition in the middle.

52.   The Husbands of River Song

53.   Extremis

54.   The Pyramid at the End of the World

55.   Arachnids in the UK

56.   The Tsuranga Conundrum

57.   Demons of the Punjab – Jodie’s wedding speech is awful. 

And now we look like:

1.       The Crusade

2.       The Massacre

3.       The Enemy of the World

4.       The Web of Fear

5.       The Ambassadors of Death

6.       Terror of the Autons

7.       The Sea Devils

8.       The Green Death

9.       The Seeds of Doom

10.   The Deadly Assassin

11.   The Robots of Death

12.   City of Death

13.   The Leisure Hive

14.   Kinda

15.   Earthshock

16.   Revelation of the Daleks

17.   The Happiness Patrol

18.   The Greatest Show in the Galaxy

19.   Ghost Light

20.   Father’s Day

21.   The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances

22.   Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways

23.   Tooth and Claw

24.   Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel

25.   The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit

26.   Voyage of the Damned

27.   The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky

28.   The Eleventh Hour

29.   The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone

30.   A Christmas Carol

31.   Dinosaurs on a Spaceship

32.   The Time of the Doctor

33.   Deep Breath

34.   Into the Dalek

35.   Kill the Moon

36.   Mummy on the Orient Express

37.   Dark Water/Death in Heaven

38.   The Husbands of River Song

39.   Extremis

40.   The Pyramid at the End of the World

41.   Arachnids in the UK

42.   The Tsuranga Conundrum

Twelve more to go! Time to be honest with myself! This is so hard.

1.       The Crusade

2.       The Massacre – Like Fury, it is fair to have a completely missing story here?

3.       The Enemy of the World

4.       The Web of Fear

5.       The Ambassadors of Death

6.       Terror of the Autons – The best stuff is in the first half although it’s amazingly well-paced. 

7.       The Sea Devils

8.       The Green Death

9.       The Seeds of Doom

10.   The Deadly Assassin

11.   The Robots of Death – We know it’s Dask.

12.   City of Death

13.   The Leisure Hive

14.   Kinda

15.   Earthshock – Gutsy and action-packed but ultimately quite simple?

16.   Revelation of the Daleks

17.   The Happiness Patrol – At only three episodes, are the lemonade scenes repetitive?

18.   The Greatest Show in the Galaxy

19.   Ghost Light

20.   Father’s Day

21.   The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances

22.   Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways – Very difficult to dismiss, but the sheer quality of the second half makes the first seem lacking.

23.   Tooth and Claw

24.   Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel – The first half is a bit slow.

25.   The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit

26.   Voyage of the Damned

27.   The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky – Should Sontarans be blue?

28.   The Eleventh Hour

29.   The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone

30.   A Christmas Carol

31.   Dinosaurs on a Spaceship – Too fluffy to be a favourite? This feels like an unfair dismissal.

32.   The Time of the Doctor

33.   Deep Breath

34.   Into the Dalek 

35.   Kill the Moon – Some contrived mechanics for an otherwise clever tale (45 minutes to decide?).

36.   Mummy on the Orient Express

37.   Dark Water/Death in Heaven

38.   The Husbands of River Song

39.   Extremis – Not quite as good as Pyramid.

40.   The Pyramid at the End of the World

41.   Arachnids in the UK

42.   The Tsuranga Conundrum – That scene with Jodie and the doctor at the start is dreadful.

So my Top Thirty stands as:

1.       The Crusade

2.       The Enemy of the World

3.       The Web of Fear

4.       The Ambassadors of Death

5.       The Sea Devils

6.       The Green Death

7.       The Seeds of Doom

8.       The Deadly Assassin

9.       City of Death

10.   The Leisure Hive

11.   Kinda

12.   Revelation of the Daleks

13.   The Greatest Show in the Galaxy

14.   Ghost Light

15.   Father’s Day

16.   The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances

17.   Tooth and Claw

18.   The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit

19.   Voyage of the Damned

20.   The Eleventh Hour

21.   The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone

22.   A Christmas Carol

23.   The Time of the Doctor

24.   Deep Breath

25.   Into the Dalek 

26.   Mummy on the Orient Express

27.   Dark Water/Death in Heaven

28.   The Husbands of River Song

29.   The Pyramid at the End of the World

30.   Arachnids in the UK

Happily, every Doctor bar McGann (for obvious reasons) is represented. But now to order them! This might prove more challenging than it looks! I’ve included a line or two about what makes each story so special, by way of celebration: a much nicer task than trimming away some of the all-time greats!

1.       Dark Water/Death in Heaven – My very favourite: the story of the end of Danny Pink. It’s bleak, devastating and brazenly includes Kate Stewart being torn from a moving plane. You leave feeling depressed and affected. It’s quite unlike any other Doctor Who story. (Probably thankfully, as I’m not sure I could take something so harrowing every week.)

2.       Ghost Light – The best of the classic series and ironically the last to be made. The sets are beautiful, the narrative challenging, the dialogue lyrical and poetic. Ghost Light belongs not on the television but in a gallery. It really is a work of art.

3.       Revelation of the Daleks – If Eric Saward had managed to get the writers he was after, Doctor Who may have been like this all the time, and those 80s years may have been more celebrated. This is joyously violent, aggressive, heart-breaking and insidious. The guest characters are probably my favourite in any classic story.

4.       The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit – The scariest Who story ever made? Whilst The Daemons had a stab at meeting the horned one, it is here where we experience the true evil of the devil, creeping into the psyches of the cast and the viewers all the way through to that last fiery rocket scene. The closeness of Devil-Toby to Rose makes him utterly terrifying.

5.       The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone – An all-out, action-packed thriller of the highest order. The show has such a strong sense of geography that the tension mounts and mounts and mounts all the way up from the beach, through the catacombs, the forest and finally the flight deck before the angels come tumbling back down. Outstanding.

6.       Kinda – If a show is compared to a Kate Bush video, it’s going to be good! The strangeness of Kinda is so well performed as to make it immediately real and vital. Just as the viewer thinks the weirdness has reached a status quo, another curveball is slung our way and Peter Howell’s amazing incidental music adds to an atmosphere quite unlike any other TV programme.

7.       The Leisure Hive – The most stylish story of the classic years and the best directed. It has a taut, thrilling script from David Fisher with all the wit and imagination of the Douglas Adams years combined with the wizardly sci-fi of Christopher H Bidmead. It’s a potent mix and a heady brew, again aided by a fantastic score from Peter Howell.

8.       Deep Breath – The best Doctor-Introduction story, although by far one of the least showy. Its length allows it to feel just as much like a movie as The Day of the Doctor and in its own way, just as special. It all comes down to that final towering scene between the Doctor and the Half-Face Man although there’s so much to enjoy elsewhere. The incredibly long and riveting scene in the café is a belter, Clara finally comes into her own and the Paternoster gang fly in like ninjas. Thrillingly, by the story’s conclusion the new Doctor is guilty of either murder or assisted suicide. This is gonna get dark!

9.       City of Death – The most romantic of all Doctor Who stories. Viewed as a rom-com, City of Death works even better. It’s even got a rom-com title, or it would have given an exclamation mark. Imagine the poster: Tom sheltering under that umbrella, arms and mouth upturned; Lalla staring up at him sporting a “What is he like?” expression; Duggan in the background, fists clenched and poised; and behind them all, the Eiffel Tower. Now there’s a Doctor Who Movie.

10.   The Sea Devils – Confident, exciting and the best UNIT story that UNIT aren’t in, The Sea Devils sports all that is great about the Pertwee era: Jon Pertwee, Katy Manning and Roger Delgado all being excellent, with loads of slices of the action to share; Malcolm Hulke and Terrance Dicks’s suitably well-paced and bulletproof scripts; terrific cliff-hangers; all the hardware the Royal Navy could gift them. The very idea of the Sea Devils themselves is tremendous and set scenes on an abandoned sea fort is quintessentially Doctor Who.

11.   The Deadly Assassin – The best Gallifrey story bar none. It starts with a scrolling script and boasts almost an entire episode on film. This is knowingly rare and different. The scenes inside the Matrix are nightmarishly strange and the scenes on Gallifrey as gripping as any political drama. This is at the same time iconoclastic and unique.

12.   A Christmas Carol – A beautifully bittersweet, melancholy Christmas affair. The majestic Michael Gambon tears his way through a script that could have been written for him. Matt Smith suddenly has the vim of a man who knows how successful he is and his scenes with young Kazran are charming and sad. The showpiece shark ride across the city is just that. 

13.   Voyage of the Damned – Perhaps the polar opposite of A Christmas Carol but just as successful. As the Matt Smith special steers towards the possibilities of festive loneliness and miserliness, Voyage of the Damned is joyous and breathless, revelling in the thrill of Christmas Day. Despite this breeziness, it has moments of darkness and the Heavenly Host are as sinister as the Voc Robots. Mark Costigan’s Max Capricorn is a bombastic, hilarious villain, criminally forgotten by fandom. 

14.   The Eleventh Hour – Steven Moffat and Matt Smith delivered the unthinkable here: a story better than what had gone before with the promise of infinite adventures to come. This is Doctor Who as fairytale, the strange man in the garden entering a world of childhood fancy and fear. After 65 minutes, Matt Smith is indisputably the Doctor and the show feels brand new and ancient in equal measure. Who da man?!

15.   Tooth and Claw – A fearful tale of wolves, this unremarked upon classic surely has all the hallmarks of a traditionally brilliant Doctor Who story. The gothic mood, wooden panels and moonlit sets could be straight from the more celebrated Hinchcliffe years and there’s some viscerally implied violence to terrify the children. In the right mindset, Tooth and Claw can get under the skin.

16.   The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances – Rightly lauded as the best of Eccleston’s staggeringly good season, this two-parter now feels somewhat like a relic of a forgotten time, when story-telling was simpler, slower and mood and atmosphere were the order of the day. It’s the old-fashioned nature of the tale which elevates it to timeless status, whilst the sex gags and emotional heart plant it firmly in the 21^st century. If you ever meet someone who has never seen Doctor Who before, stick this on. They’ll be instant addicts, I’ll wager. 

17.   The Greatest Show in the Galaxy – A cast of characters as colourful as their respective costumes; a permeating weirdness and an evocative musical score from Mark Ayres, plonk this tale of a sinister circus firmly in the “oddball” camp and it’s all the better for it. With no “normal” character as the eyes and ears of the audience, one must succumb to the strange world of Segonax - complete with all its own rules - and get lost in it.

18.   Father’s Day – Is this the only Doctor Who story whose prime purpose is to make the audience cry? It is only the coldest heart that can’t be moved by the sad story of Pete Tyler, the man who saved the world by jumping under a car. As Rose holds him in her arms, the emotional centre of the piece is transcendent. We cut to Eccleston’s alien face filling the screen ambiguously and we don’t know what to feel anymore.

19.   The Ambassadors of Death – At seven parts, Ambassadors loses its way many, many times. It doesn’t really know what it wants to be about and it doesn’t really know where it’s going. But it’s absolutely riveting. Dudley Simpson’s oppressive, moody score combines with sometimes staggering visuals creating a string of moments which excite and frighten and shock. “Right, cut it open!” And then the sting!

20.   The Enemy of the World – I had always been a champion of this James Bond-esque thriller. I’d always loved the recon of Episode Two in particular which constitutes its own little political drama. I’d always felt that Episode Three, far from the comments about its wallpaper choices, was gripping. Then it came back to us. And it was even better than I’d expected, chiefly because of one man: Patrick Troughton. He is mesmeric and brilliantly evil as Salamander and as charming and loveable as the Doctor. “I know volcanoes…”

21.   The Green Death – The story of Jo Grant: so full of wonderful scenes which beat with an honest, open heart. We feel for Jon Pertwee’s jealous Doctor as he watches his fledgling fly the coop. In Planet of the Daleks, he was happy for Jo to make her own decision about Latep, knowing she was always coming home. Here, in Professor Jones, he actually meets his match. “A younger you” that he absolutely cannot compete with. It’s heart-breaking. 

22.   The Pyramid at the End of the World – Why this wasn’t hailed as an instant classic, I don’t know. The blind Doctor finally comes unstuck by, of all things, a locked door. Moody shots of breaking beer bottles and broken spectacles add to the sense that the world is about to end not because of a giant pyramid, or countries poised to declare war, but by a couple of ordinary scientists making silly mistakes. Pyramid is worrying and doom-laden and ends horribly, with the entire world sold to the insidious menace of the monks.

23.   The Husbands of River Song – Like Voyage of the Damned, there is a sense of joie de vivre about Husbands. It includes Giant Greg Davies inside a giant robot, a man who pulls his head apart to reveal a bank account where his brain should be, Matt Lucas being Matt Lucas, a fall through a ballroom and then, finally the sad, sad scene by the towers, with Peter Capaldi being distant and alien and quietly wonderful in his Pertwee costume. The music swells and… is that a tear?

24.   The Web of Fear – The Troughton era is remembered for its dark bases-under-siege and its monsters. Web is the best example we have. Tomb comes close, though its visuals are sometimes lacking. I imagine Abominable and Fury are equally creepy and menacing, but right now The Web of Fear is the best we have. Amazingly well shot by Douglas Camfield, the London Underground feels real and threatening and the cast are outstanding. Troughton too puts in an off-kilter performance, convincing us that he too could be the master of the darkness that pervades this classic, frightening mood piece.

25.   Mummy on the Orient Express – And here, ladies and gentlemen, I give you: Peter Capaldi! Seriously, the man storms his way through this story. From his frightening, sad, “Is it?” as he ponders that this might be the end of his relationship with Clara in the dim lit corridor, to his quick-fire tearing through the guest cast as he questions the near departed soullessly. On the beach at the end, we can believe that he really did leave the other passengers to die. This is a Doctor we can’t take our eyes off but still can’t trust.

26.   The Seeds of Doom – It’s an easy candidate for Best Ever Story but there are so many reasons why: Tom Baker is alien and distant and funny. The violence is felt and disturbing. The transformation scenes are harrowing. The location work is outstanding. The monster in all its forms is terrific. The scale of the threat feels realistic and possible. Tony Beckley and John Challis are outstanding. There’s more, much more…

27.   Into the Dalek – A terrific CG space chase sequence gives way to the alien stillness of the TARDIS, Peter Capaldi being severely odd and the Daleks arriving. This is a fast-paced, no-nonsense, explosive story, and ends with the Doctor facing off exhilaratingly against his best enemy. It’s also the best-directed Dalek story, Ben Wheatley shooting them from angles never-before seen, slow-motion action scenes showcasing their invincibility like never before. And to top it all, the Doctor issues forth directives straight to camera: “Put it inside you and live by it.” Yes, that first Capaldi season rocks.

28.   The Crusade – David Whitaker is Doctor’s Who William Shakespeare. His script for The Crusade sings. “We are the only day and night for you, hunter.” It’s quite a lovely thing to revel in the lyricism of the dialogue. It’s quite a joy to watch the actors handle such dialogue with the aplomb of a rep company well-versed in such meters. It’s quite wonderful to see a BBC, at such a very early stage, becoming the masters of the historical drama. And best of all, it’s quite, quite special to see William Hartnell firing his temper in the court of King Richard against “stupid butchers” like the Earl of Leicester. The Crusade is an ancient, sumptuous delight. 

29.   The Time of the Doctor – Another uncelebrated delight, The Time of the Doctor surely has it all: Cybermen, Daleks, Sontarans, Wooden Cybermen, Silence, Weeping Angels and Handles the Cyberman. (Steven Moffat does love his Cybermen.) Amidst the furious, frenetic battles, and frantic, breakneck pace, two scenes stop to sing: the death of Handles is strangely, deeply affecting and later, the old, old Matt Smith sits and listens to his Christmas cracker joke, and we suddenly know we’ll never see him again. Often emasculated by the immediately preceding Day of, The Time of the Doctor deserves equal plaudits. I can watch it every year; it reveals new elements of joy with every viewing.

30.   Arachnids in the UK – This is perhaps the only time in Jodie Whittaker’s first series when the TARDIS crew really work. Graham is in mourning, Yaz has a family making her a loadstone for the audience and Ryan is properly cool. The spiders are terrifying. The comedy is genuinely funny. The whole concept is just the right side of zany and there's that "something under the bed" terror that only Doctor Who can pull off. Perhaps it isn't the most important story of Jodie's first year, but it's definitely the most fun!

And there it is. A Top Thirty I can be sure of! Until I look back and think, “Are they all better than The Robots of Death?” Or “Where on Earth is Horror of Fang Rock?” and “Why did I get rid of Terror of the Autons?” But that said, finding a Top Thirty is not an easy task and some things have had to go. Sadly, I wasn’t in time to enter the Gallifrey Base tournament, but I’ll save these results for next year when I’ll have another season of stories to consider and probably a radically different Top Thirty altogether. Because what is a favourite other than a thing we really, really love? And with Doctor Who, there are so many stories we really, really love. 

JH