The Collection - Season 26 Blu Ray

It is incredibly difficult for me to review Season 26 with any sense of perspective. One of my earliest memories is of sitting on my Dad’s knee, the night drawn in, as two white-faced girls approached a vicar in a graveyard. It’s such a peculiar and awkward shot: the reverend facing towards camera and talking to the girls behind him without turning his head, instinctively knowing they are there. There’s a confident strangeness in it that pervades The Curse of Fenric and indeed, the whole of Season 26. That strangeness captured the heart of this four-year-old, making me a lifelong fan and since 1989, I have watched the stories in this beautiful boxset time and time again. I treasure them dearly. They’re a part of who I am, of how I see the Doctor (here, a small, gentle outsider, fighting the good fight with words and subtle magic) and the benchmark by which I view all other television and film. I laughed in the face of The Lord of the Rings. It’s trying to sell me big themes painstakingly slowly and earnestly through people I don’t care about. Here, there are themes unfolding every few minutes and the characters are immediately present and live on long after those criminally under-rated closing credits. There’s a breathless freneticism about the show, an unwillingness to sit still. The manic energy of Ghost Light, the original cut of Fenric, Survival and even Battlefield mean that whatever is happening on screen, it doesn’t last long but usually thrills. On the eve of cancellation, there’s a sense that this show will not go gently into that good night. It’s doing things it has never done before; it’s giving us snapshots of a programme that does chime with its audience; that is modern and ancient at the same time; that can endure; that is slave only to the imaginations of its writers - and in Ben Aaronovitch, Marc Platt, Ian Briggs, Rona Munro and Andrew Cartmel, it found the most imaginative.

A youthful voice can be heard across the season. Despite Aaronovitch’s success with Remembrance of the Daleks the year before, there’s a feeling that each writer believes this might be the only script they’ll ever see produced and are ploughing all their energies, all their ideas into them. In The Curse of Fenric, we have Doctor Who Meets Dracula but it’s also Doctor Who Does World War Two Movie (for the first time!), Doctor Who Does The Turing Test and Doctor Who and the Evil from the Dawn of Time, as well as wrapping up threads we didn’t realise needed tying up from Dragonfire and Silver Nemesis. In Ghost Light, there are allusions to Alice in Wonderland, William Blake, Kafka’s Metamorphosis, Darwin’s Origin of the Species, My Fair Lady and far more besides. These are shows brim-full with high concepts, literary, historical and scientific. Without any bias and including the 21^st century iteration, it would be easy to pinpoint Season 26 as the most dense, rich and academic that the series has ever been.

Of course, that means that some ideas don’t fully come into fruition and end up feeling like stories off-screen. What in other tales would be important plot points are skimmed over with abandon. Battlefield is full of this. Morgaine’s relationship with Arthur is not explored well enough before she discovers he is dead so the emotional ending doesn’t land. At this point, we are supposed to feel for her, but the fact is we never really knew her. Bambera goes from being suspicious of the Doctor, to becoming his tour guide, to wanting to arrest him and his freaky friends over the course of twenty-five minutes. Shou-Yuing, like Jean and Phyllis in Fenric, becomes Ace’s best friend almost immediately because she is the only person of a similar age and they become very quickly attached without us learning very much about them or they of each other. After fifteen minutes of Fenric, Ace has met the girls at church, met up again on the beach and fallen out with them. In Ghost Light, our leads become part of the Gabriel Chase furniture without anybody asking who they are, including the people who live in the house. Only Survival’s sense of pace truly matches the unfolding of its themes. Structurally, we have one episode at home, one on an alien world and then a return to Earth where the familiar has taken on new meaning. What doesn’t particularly come into focus is the oft-cited lesbian subtext which I’ve always struggled to even notice. Despite all these perhaps shallower explorations, there have never been 25-minute instalments of the show so cram-packed with ideas, philosophy, reflection and meaning.

The Special Edition versions produced for DVD find a new home here. At the time of their production, they were hailed as “definitive” ways to view Battlefield and Fenric. It’s difficult to review these tales without at the very least alluding to the Special Editions, versions deemed more satisfactory and truer to the original visions of the writers and directors. Here, there’s also a Workprint Edition of Ghost Light with deleted scenes re-positioned (although the nature of the archive material means that picture quality can vary). This offers a “fuller” version of Ghost Light to enjoy and many fans may see it as an opportunity to get a version they might, just might, be able to follow! However, the truth is that while the new editions certainly offer a fresh take on the originals and many notable improvements, they come with attendant disadvantages as well as boons.

For a start, that aforementioned crazed pace of all three stories is damaged. Part Four of Fenric works so well as broadcast partly because of its manically cut energy. In the Special Edition, we’re given a slower more brooding affair, which may flow more smoothly in earlier sections but doesn’t crescendo like the original and even pauses for a flashback sequence which really isn’t needed. Granted, there are many scenes in the broadcast version in which the Doctor and Ace seem to materialise at different locations as if using a teleport. They leave Kathleen and Audrey in the operations room, Ace in a foul rage, and we cut directly to them entering Millington’s office quite calmly without any hint of a passage of time between the scenes. Then they’re off to the church, then they’re on the beach, and through it all, we don’t actually know why they’re there, what they’re looking for or what they want. The Doctor and Ace simply turn up and interact with the supporting characters as if they’ve known them for centuries. In the Special Edition, there are helpful segue scenes and we feel we are following them more carefully but it still doesn’t iron out the oddities of Fenric’s plotting. Why do the haemovores arrive when Judson works out that the logic diagram is a computer code? Why do new runestones appear in the church crypt? And indeed, what exactly do the Doctor and Ace hope to achieve by arriving at the army camp? It’s never stated but they seem to have a good idea. Despite its seemingly more user-friendly pace, the Special Edition reveals a story in which still, things simply happen, one event after the next, with little cause for explanation. Depending on how much the viewer prizes structure, surely dictates how enjoyable this relentlessly gothic and brooding tale can be.

Such illogicities punctuate Ghost Light too. Although the Workprint Edition explains the glowing rocking horse and ostrich eyes, there are still remarkably few explanations. Why does Lady Pritchard’s candle have a suddenly-exploding flame? How and why exactly is the Reverend Matthews devolved? It may be poetic justice for his failure to change his mind, but how does Josiah manage to achieve his Homo Victorianus Ineptus? Those hoping to find answers in the deleted footage will be disappointed, although watching the Workprint is a fascinating experience in and of itself and it’s a delight to be able to see what might have been. When asked what my favourite story is, I always answer Ghost Light. I love that the explanations are so thin on the ground; I love that it puts atmosphere first and basks in its over-stuffed bizarreness. I love the oppressive music, the tearaway performances, Sylvester McCoy, Ian Hogg, Carl Forgione, John Nettleton, Sharon Duce; I love the magnificent sets, the stone spaceship, the cliff-hangers, the allusions, the gags and the omnipresent, pervasive Victoriana – from the décor to the philosophy. I can appreciate it might not be to every fan’s tastes but the fact that this was broadcast in 1989, in Doctor Who’s dying hour and the last story to be produced, speaks volumes of a production and writing team who were torch-bearers for the future rather than coffin-bearers of the past.

Both Battlefield and Fenric Special Editions sport new effects and grading which do improve the viewing experience (although I remain very fond of the grey textures which saturate the original Fenric). It’s a pity that rubbish snake in Arthur’s spaceship wasn’t replaced but the knights flying down to Earth through space feel now more epic and mythical. The climax of Fenric Part Three sees Judson’s eyes more startlingly green and there’s a new cut for the Blu Ray just afterwards to retain the impact of that moment. The soundtracks are also improved by Mark Ayres’s 5.1 remixes. It may seem like a miniscule detail but the thunder and explosions heard across Battlefield Parts One and Two helps piece scenes together geographically. The extra horns added to the Fenric soundtrack, however, may sound classy but to my mind, take away from the ethereality of the original. All told, from a visual and aural perspective, the new editions give Nu-Who a run for its money.

Battlefield has always been seen as the worst story of the season. I’m sure, given the excellent Writers’ Room feature (which surely should have been longer!), that Ben Aaronovitch would agree with me. But there’s still loads to love. It may look like a cheap summer holiday for a BBC department not particularly in favour, but there are some delightful directorial flourishes: the reveal of the new Brig in the wing-mirror (and a big hand for Angela Bruce – the only Lethbridge-Stewart substitute to ever work); the cut from the “Doctor being back” to Ancelyn’s gloved hand on the TARDIS blue; and those explosive fight scenes in the last act.

Although Aaronovitch’s script does jump around the houses with abandon, it’s the design work which is the biggest criminal here: the spaceship sets look like gameshow backdrops, the aforementioned video-effect snake and its attendant POV look cheap and the knight costumes are dreadful. Ace asks, “Is it an android?” of a clearly lit knight in armour, making her seem unforgivably thick. Famously, these should be cyborg knights as written, but someone in costume couldn’t read a script. Still, the pub and brewery sets look amazing. (I didn’t realise the pub was in studio for years.) Despite the general lacklustre reception to Battlefield’s design work, even in 1989, let’s not forget too that this is a story featuring an actual helicopter spiralling out of control. I think I could forgive all the design work if the Part One conclusion had gifted us an actual explosion. As it happens, the arrival of the baddies is drab and makes for the most disenchanting cliff-hanger of the whole McCoy era.

Had the Brigadier met his ultimate end fighting the beautifully designed and sinister Destroyer, it’s possible that Battlefield’s reputation may be stronger and that it may be far better remembered. Everything in the production is steering towards the Brigadier’s death: his initial reluctance to go back to UNIT, “I’m not playing,” the music as Doris watches his departing from the lawn, his parleying with Morgaine, his eventual betrayal of the Doctor. All would have been worth it had any of it meant something. As it happens though, I think Aaronovitch ultimately did the right thing. Battlefield’s loss is the series’ gain. Even though Steven Moffat killed the Brig off-screen (twice, no less), in my mind, the old soldier is out there still righting wrongs, facing evils and personifying the very best of stiff-upper-lip Britishness. Long may he and Nicholas Courtney reign.

Survival ends the season with a philosophical and strange bewitching tale of feral instinct and the power of humanity against the animal. Like Battlefield, design elements break the sense of urban reality, namely that wretched cat prop and the gloves worn by the cheetah people. Andrew Cartmel repeatedly tells of his disappointment with the feline threat on various features throughout the Blu Ray, but really it’s only the hands that offend; just look at that beautiful mask by the lake, it’s yellow eyes and sinister smile boring into Ace’s onlooking gaze: this makes for magical television. Dominic Glynn’s score is another highlight of the season, those coruscating guitars providing an element of the strange and off-centre across the story. Anthony Ainley thrills in his finest take on the Master, his possession making him seem dangerously unstable (and damn, doesn’t that costume look good!). King of all, however, is Rona Munro’s beautiful script, its very own beast. Difficult to quantify, hard to pin down, the poetry of the story’s survival-of-the-fittest themes filters through to all the guest characters, even Hale and Pace and Ace’s charity worker friend, making every aspect of every scene feel like all of apiece, exploring matters of the most base instincts.

It’s ironic that the show ends on a tale exploring what is needed to survive in a dog-eat-dog world. As the 1980s, perhaps the most selfish modern decade, drew to a close, Doctor Who was a show about looking outward to new worlds, new ways of thinking; about being gentle whilst fighting injustice, about love conquering hatred, about pacifism and idealism beating anger and aggression. At the heart of it, is perhaps the finest Doctor and companion pairing of all time. The Professor and Ace personify all the vibrant energies of Season 26 and Sylvester and Sophie are charming, cute and yes, wicked. Even through all their animosity here, they eventually go “home” to the TARDIS. McCoy’s Doctor feels like the paternal figure Aldred’s Ace never had and if there’s a word to describe that relationship, what else could it be but love? It’s the only word that truly describes my feelings for Season 26. It is messy, yes, over-stuffed and wants to be about everything, but in the end, it’s impossible not to see the astonishing efforts of a team of powerhousing writers, desperately seeking to paint their original, vivid and enchanting imaginations on screen for the one and only time. I can excuse all the mistakes of their youth, because these writers’ hearts and the heart of the show itself beat louder than any officious cancellation notice. This was the series showing us what it could be and what it would be. Doctor Who would be back and no doubt about it. Season 26 is transcendental.

JH

Addenda: Lead feature of the Blu Ray boxset is the documentary Showman, chronicling the rise and fall of John Nathan Turner, singling out the 20^th anniversary celebrations as a perhaps unlikely turning point in JNT’s flamboyant life. Chris Chapman’s hour and a half doc is a stellar piece of work with a range of deeply insightful contributors including John’s childhood friends. Surprisingly moving, it sees the later years of JNT’s career as an undeserved and tragic decline, leading to his ultimate ill health and probable alcoholism. This is a man whose face simply didn’t fit with the upper echelons of the Beeb, even more tragic because he would be a pioneer these days. God, wouldn’t he have loved a show like Peter Capaldi’s casting reveal? If only he were still around, we fans, and this moving documentary, could have made him feel proud.

Sophie Aldred’s conversation with Matthew Sweet is another delight. She has a quiet, unsensational vocal quality but her stories are utterly engrossing. It’s enlightening to hear about her time at Manchester University and this interview gives, remarkably after 30 years, a fresh perspective on Aldred’s life. Sophie also joins cast members on location for the mesmerisingly well-shot Curse of Fenric documentary, directed by new series writer Pete McTighe. It celebrates the four episodes as the glory that they represent without the more prevalent fan cynicism of the adjoining years, and seeing Nicholas Parsons so happy to be associated with our little show and this incredible story is particularly poignant this year.

I’ll admit, the Behind the Sofa series doesn’t do anything for me. I don’t know if it’s the editing but the episode clips seem too long and we too often cut to our viewers watching in silence, making the show feel sluggish and unengaging. If they were half the length and twice as poppy, I might feel more inclined to love them but, despite enjoying the company of the sofa teams, they feel distant and charmless, only very occasionally offering a nugget of a reaction.

Once more, the superb quality of these box sets is evident here though in abundance. The restoration is phenomenal. Battlefield, in particular, looks far better than its videotape heritage would sensibly allow for. How marvellous to have these four special stories together in Lee Binding’s beautifully designed packaging, together for old and new generations to assess and re-assess. I hope they feel the love I do for these adventures. They were the past and they are the future and in so many magical moments and special scenes, remain completely unbeatable.

JH

10/10

The Haunting of Villa Diodati

There’s a theory that the second episode of any Doctor’s era epitomises the show at its most base. Any Doctor and Companion team could happily wonder through the Nerva Beacon, Starship UK, Platform One or even the plains of Desolation. I have a friend who has a theory that real Doctor Who, that is to say stories which feel as if the show runs through their bones, usually starts at the three-quarter mark of a new series. It’s a difficult theory to disprove: The Empty Child, The Satan Pit, Human Nature, Silence in the Library, The Hungry Earth – all feel as it they epitomise the fundamentals of the show: well-plotted, atmospheric, almost traditionally structured tales. Last year, it was Kerblam! and The Witchfinders occupying the trad-Doctor Who slot and fulfilling that unsaid brief admirably. In 2020, we find Can You Hear Me? and The Haunting of Villa Diodati. Last week’s effort certainly felt like the Doctor Who of everyone’s childhood in terms of chills. This week does it better. 

Despite the sumptuous nature of the lavish costumes and stately home, the over-riding colour we take away from The Haunting is black. Director Emma Sullivan spoke in Doctor Who Magazine about her fighting for the lights to be very, very low, and negotiating careful set-ups with her Director of Photography. It’s all for the betterment of an episode that’s sole interest is atmosphere. Lots doesn’t seem to make sense. Why does the skeletal hand emerge from a painting? Why does the skull find itself in the baby’s cot? Answers don’t matter to new-to-Who writer Maxine Alderton or indeed, this viewer. Like Ghost Light, the thrill of this strange horror story is in the very vivid threat of whatever is happening in a given moment, what is happening in the now. As in a nightmare, both the narrative and geography are off. Something is always amiss, even down to the not-quite-Cyberman of a harrowing childhood dream. These are the Cybermen as we always remembered them being but never quite were: coruscatingly frightening. The scene in which it snaps the neck of the maid and picks up the baby is a stand-out moment of terror in this scary and unsettling thriller. The follow-up scene, in which it gives its reasons for leaving the baby unconverted, is stark and brutal.

We see enough of the guest cast to get a good enough idea of who these Romantic poets and genii were, but given the runtime, it was always going to be a sketchy affair. Wisely, Alderton isn’t writing a costume drama; she’s writing a Doctor Who horror story and knows what Who does best. Jacob Collins-Levy makes for an economic portrayal of Lord Byron, skilfully managing to make a bastard charming. Maxim Baldry puts in a notable, unusual and sinister performance as Polidori. Lili Miller’s Mary Wollstonecroft Godwin, later Shelley, who you might expect to be the star of the show, is enchantingly energetic but is given surprisingly short screen time. Because unpredictably this isn’t the story of how she came up with the idea of Frankenstein. It’s the story of a group of friends, all equally important, and how they cope with the dark events of a stormy night in which frighteningly bizarre things happen. Just for once in Doctor Who too, the ghosts are allowed to be real; not holograms or shapeshifters – actual, real ghosts and all the spookier and more memorable for it.

Perhaps the only criticism I can make for the violent, breath-taking charm of this dark – I’ll say it – classic is Jodie Whittaker. She is doing something different here, for sure. The Doctor puts herself at the top of the metaphorical mountain and dismisses the much-vaunted flat team structure for the first time and Jodie rises to the occasion. However, she doesn’t play against the arrogance of the Time Lord, she plays up to it, making her lose any charm she might have had. I’ve made no bones about my dislike of Jodie’s performance. She’s an actor of complete instinct. She sees an arrogant scene and plays it arrogantly. She sees a sad scene and plays it sadly. She is at her best when the emotional trajectory of a scene is at its most obvious. But she doesn’t really understand text. Time and again she stresses the wrong words and fails to make the best sense of a paragraph. Her disdain for the Cyberman looks real but it doesn’t sound it. Whittaker is an actor of extraordinary heart (just look at any scene she plays in Broadchurch – magnificent) but sadly seems to be one of very little brain. She certainly does not give an intellectual interpretation of the Doctor and to inhabit the part successfully, you need both heart and brain. She never surprises, she never wows; she simply says the lines in an appropriate but simplistic reading, with very little nuance and a resolute lack of eccentricity. And she still can’t land a gag.

Despite a leading lady with whom I have very little affection, The Haunting of Villa Diodati is supreme Doctor Who. Like its Romantic antecedents, it flows with a poetic lilt. It doesn’t always make sense but strikes for the emotional jugular. Rarely is Doctor Who so frightening. Rarely are the Cybermen so strikingly visceral. Certainly, the show these days is rarely this spectacular. Ironically, for a series which is seemingly desperate to have its own identity (prizing morality tales and topical issue plays more than ever before) it is at its best when the fashion accessories are cast aside and it gets on with being Doctor Who. Spyfall proved this theory to be true, as did Nikola Tesla. Even the return of Captain Jack represented this season’s punch the air moment. Doctor Who doesn’t necessarily need to engage with social and political trends (Silver Nemesis is surely excremental proof of that). It needs to find its own identity, rather than have one forced upon it. Look at that list of episodes in the top paragraph. We can add another to that list of highlights. Again, the series’ three-quarter point marks the return of true Doctor Who, content to do what the show does best – be itself and frighten. The Haunting of Villa Diodati is the show at its peak, appropriately stripped back to its bones.

9/10

JH

Can You Hear Me?

In the 1990s, The Outer Limits used to close each of its episodes with a hokey voice-over musing on what the tale had taught us. It was crass and often laughable but also wry and knowing. Doctor Who’s message of the week is not wry and knowing. It’s the third time in seven episodes that the show has given us “food for thought” as we approach the closing titles. And herein is the reason why Can You Hear Me? is not completely successful: it is a victim to the series around it.

Suddenly, it seems a writer other than Chris Chibnall has an unusual interest in the regular cast; the TARDIS team’s story had been all but abandoned since Spyfall. Here, their motivations and anxieties form the basis for four different plot strands. However, it feels like too little too late. Graham had recovered from a cancer scare before Episode 1 of Series 11. Only now, 17 episodes later, does it become something to talk about and then only because this week’s message is: “It’s Good to Talk.” Yaz is, all of a sudden, a character with a past, and one who has managed to painfully endure a walking-talking PC Advert monologue at her in cliché: “I’ve been where you’ve been,” the copper remarks, hoping it might chime with a girl in despair by the side of the road and showing a complete misunderstanding of how teenager minds work. None of this rings true. It doesn’t feel like what little we know about Yaz has been informed by this almost suicidal episode. The police woman's advice does not sound like anything Yaz might heed because it smacks of script. There is nothing real happening here. Like the last two messages (Save the Planet and Plastic Pollution), this one is cack-handedly dealt with. It’s not a little patronising and feels wrong for the Sunday night timeslot. Are children watching this? Or Countryfilers? Do viewers who are about to embrace the subtle mysteries of life and death in Call the Midwife really need this sort of depressing and obvious guff before their more nuanced, more palatable, far better written offerings on a Sunday night? As the weekend comes to a close, I want to avoid thinking about work and lose myself in television. I don’t want to think about something yet more dreary than Monday. I resolutely, definitely don’t want a bloody helpline. If there’s something wholly conspicuous by its absence from Chris Chibnall’s iteration of Doctor Who, it is a sense of fun.

This is such a shame because, despite the above, there is much to applaud elsewhere in the episode. Ian Gelder is magnificently, terrifically creepy as Zellin (although I would have preferred for Charlene James to go full throttle and make him an actual Eternal or the real-deal Toymaker!). There are unsettlingly creepy sequences throughout the episode: the first instance of Zellin’s fingers detaching themselves from his skeletal frame are sure to send children scurrying behind their sofas; the monsters in the pre-titles sequence awaken intrinsic fairy-tale fears of beasts and wolves, and the one on the ceiling is petrifying; Yaz’s disconcerting dream by the country roadside is off-kilter, unreal and definitely the stuff of more adult nightmares. There’s also a true feeling of the epic. We travel from Syria to Sheffield via a different solar system. The most uncanny scenes of all though happen in the suburban streets where Zellin and his recently unleashed comrade pit to steal the dreams of the world. Segun Akinola accompanies these shots with a merciless, oppressive dread, delivering his finest score of the season yet.

Charlene James and Chris Chibnall, despite their almost obligatory mishandling of the message of the week, do deliver a story where the themes reach across all of time and space. Aruhan Galieva’s Tahira is presumably suffering similar mental trauma so as to find herself at the hospital in Aleppo. Ryan’s best friend is mentally ill in the most modern and relatable of ways: locking his doors and a creeping sense of paranoia. Yaz is battling a depressive episode from her past and Graham is worrying that a terrible illness may return in the future. So there’s a definite cohesion of theme across the script making it feel like its own divorced piece of work: an examination of the nightmare. To that end, it can only be deemed successful on its own terms.

However, situated as it is, in a series full of other worthy, patronising sermons, its impact is lessened. There are also some less successful design decisions. The Aleppo hospital set looks like it’s been lifted from the Red Dwarf episode Lemons in which the Dwarfers run around the same obvious Indian marketplace set in circles. The spaceship set looks as if it’s been built without walls, the team literally filming against black drapes and fancy neon lighting. There’s also a fashionable propensity to shoot close-ups with characters’ heads left and right aligned, leaving half an empty screen, as if this makes the shots more interesting. It doesn’t.

What is the most troubling aspect of the whole episode, however, is the performance of leading lady Jodie Whittaker. To be blunt, it’s dreadful. Irritating, unfunny, lacking nuance and with every line delivered at exactly the same pace, she is frankly killing her scenes (and I don’t mean the more colloquial meaning of killing). Watch as she leaves the TARDIS in Syria mistakenly talking to the friends she has left behind. Her delivery is so achingly slow that the gag becomes unbelievable. Why wouldn’t she have noticed that they are not there between her pauses? It has to be said, lots of her dialogue is unforgiveable too. “This place has so many secrets to yield” an example of a prize clunk. You need someone in the role though who can at least deliver this stuff naturally, with an arguable modicum of believability. Whittaker has not managed to get a handle on this material at all and her attempted jokes leave the viewer either shaking their head in bafflement or wanting to smash the telly. I wish, as the first female Doctor, she were storming across the screens with magnificence. Instead, she’s difficult to like, irritating to listen to and in supporting evidence, routinely left in the cold by the guest cast. Ian Gelder leaves her adrift whenever they meet.

There is much to like about Can You Hear Me?: Gelder being outstanding, scenes that genuinely unsettle, a lovely unity of intent. However, the show’s more general attendant problems pervade. We are living through an age with a Doctor who completely lacks charisma and integrity. We are living through an era where the companions are ignored except for when we have an episode like this which only serves to highlight how underwritten they have previously been. We are living through a period in which the show seemingly feels the need to be about something, to highlight social injustice or planetary-wide pollution without offering up any joy to counterbalance the worthy misery. There is an aching feeling that Doctor Who does not know who it is being made for. Trying to please everyone and failing to please anyone feels like a fair assessment of where we’re at. Despite the profound themes and anxieties this episode facilitates, it’s sad that the most exciting moment for this viewer was when Zellin didn’t turn out to be the Toymaker.

4/10

JH

Praxeus

On paper, this should absolutely work. An alien virus; multiple worldwide locations; frightening killer birds; a plastic menace; some terrifically grizzly death scenes. Like its eponymous contagion, Praxeus has Doctor Who running through its narrative veins. So what’s wrong with it? What doesn’t it chime? Why do we leave the episode feeling so cold?

The answer is one that is becoming more and more of a problem with Chris Chibnall’s Doctor Who: his leading cast of characters. I’ve never been a huge fan of Jodie Whittaker’s fairly insipid Doctor since her Woman Who Fell to Earth inception but to my mind, she has made clear improvements this year despite still struggling with longer “inspirational” speeches and the attendant tech talk. Her three companions, however, have become absolutely stagnant. As I’ve mentioned several times in this series of reviews, Series 11 started well, with the first five episodes slowly unpeeling layers of character in our three TARDIS-travelling friends. Then, stultification. We opened in Spyfall with a fresh realigning of our regulars and some reminders of why they are travelling with our Doctor. Now, we’re back in the quagmire. Graham, Ryan and Yaz are utterly interchangeable. You could lift Yaz from her plot and swap her with Ryan and the story would play out in the same way. You could give Graham the job of dissecting the crow and Ryan the talk on the beach with Warren Brown’s character and I’m not sure how those scenes would differ. The three of them are simply Yes Men to the Doctor’s benevolent plans and fail to propel or affect anything approaching plot. Ideas and events happen at speed around them, and whilst there is, in Praxeus, much pace and excitement, we’re not feeling it with any of our characters because they’re all of them, to a man or woman, vacuous and that’s how Praxeus ends up feeling.

I’ve never seen three companions as a bad idea; indeed, I’m an advocate for it. Ian, Barbara and Susan work. Rose, Mickey and Jack work. Amy, Rory and River work. Hell, even Tegan, Nyssa and Turlough work. All three of those respective trios, however, have quite vividly different characters and different ideas about who the Doctor is. They highlight one another’s differences in their conversations and approaches. Here, Graham, Yaz and Ryan all have one protocol: to do as they are told. The Doctor asks them to join her on her adventures asking them nicely to do nice things, which they do nicely. Ryan’s voice is becoming more and more monotonous and his conversation more and more idiotic. Graham gets a scene where he’s nice to someone and Yaz is the Doctor’s sidekick when some faux-policing needs doing and Jodie needs someone to be slightly less nice. It’s all very lovely but there’s no drama, no politics and like last year, no propulsion. We may be going all over the world in Praxeus, but in terms of human drama we aren’t going anywhere. What the show really needs are some personalities in the TARDIS: Look how everything felt so much more alive when Captain Jack entered the room last week.

This might be why here, like in Tesla, like in Spyfall, like in Fugitive of the Judoon, the guest cast easily eclipse the regulars. Our leads are so thinly sketched that the relatively simple but bold story of one’s man trip around the world to rescue his astronaut boyfriend rings truer than anything Ryan, Graham or Yaz do; Warren Brown’s Jake gets the most real dialogue of the series so far.

There is also, it has to be said, a propensity for the recent series to produce cautionary tales in the vain of Doomwatch or The Green Death. Both Orphan 55 and Praxeus issue blunt messages with regards the future of the planet. However, The Green Death had a hopefulness about it: the thought of a mad professor and a bunch of hippies coming together to forge a better future alongside the Brigadier blithely acknowledging his happiness with “cheap petrol and lots of it, exactly what the world needs.” It was complex, optimistic and fun. Here, in 2020, the show is thoroughly depressing in its cynicism. The Doctor isn’t a beacon of hope. There are no humans being seen to change things. There are simply angry writers telling us we’re using too much plastic and destroying the world in out thoughtlessness. Frankly, it’s draining and a little patronising. By all means, highlight topical issues but at least make them fun and give us some fun characters to explore them with. Why should we take notice of the four most uninspiring regulars we’ve ever had?

There is much to applaud in Praxeus (far more than I’ve given credit for – not least the make-up, effects and genuine sense of scale) but by the end, it’s a tiresome affair. There may be a breathless pace and vastly different locales, there may even be a tragically unconvincing puppet and a one-sided TARDIS prop, but by the end, there’s nothing here to care about. For a story committed to highlighting the problems of plastic pollution, that’s a whole other problem its writers need to contend with.

4/10

JH

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