"'s all a bit Harry Potter." No it isn't.

Doctor Who, if one lets it, can consume you. It’s a happy consummation, blissful even, but it can leave one spoiled, specifically when it comes to programmes which on a surface level may appear similar. I’m often asked if I enjoy The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Star Wars or Star Trek on the understanding that “you like all that sci-fi stuff” to which – depending on how much I know the person - I often respond, “No, I like the good sci-fi stuff and lots of what you’ve mentioned isn’t sci-fi at all.” In my mind, the good sci-fi stuff includes Red Dwarf, Hitchhiker’s Guide, The X Files, 1984 and A Clockwork Orange, with a sprinkle of Heroes, Dennis Kelly’s Utopia, The Outer Limits and if I’m feeling lucky, The Matrix. One might notice that the list is avoidant of Babylon 5, Thunderbirds, Alien, Battlestar Galactica, Stargate and other programmes one might more immediately bring to mind when they consider science-fiction as a genre. Bluntly, a spaceship is a spaceship but as Douglas Adams said, “To design an invisible spaceship, that takes genius.” My list, I like to imagine includes much richer examples of the genre in question. To my mind, The Lord of the Rings (I’m talking the film franchise here) is an incessantly dull New Zealand travelogue during which our characters refuse to develop over nine hours of screen-time and Elijah Wood refuses vehemently to stop looking as if he is suffering an extreme attack of constipation. If it were a Doctor Who story, Tom Baker would be at the top of the dark tower grinning and juggling to the bafflement of Saruman, his imagination bringing the wizard down. The film enjoys many, many minutes of Gandalf and Saruman issuing bolts of lightning from their enormous wands in each other’s direction. I wonder if they’re compensating for their lack of wit. After all, it’s usually the intellectually-wounded dickheads who sport the biggest cars.

What Doctor Who has more than any of these other programmes is imagination. It is only ever in danger of failure when it forgets that. Compare, for example City of Death and Arc of Infinity. The first is hailed as a universal classic (agreed) and the other usually festers away at the bottom of the polls like an unwelcome fart (agreed). Both are filmed in foreign cities and both involve lots and lots of running around the streets of those foreign cities. But one story is about the theft of seven identical Mona Lisas by a man splintered in time and culminates with the most important punch in history at the birth of the human race. The other is about Time Lord protocol and some lost passports and culminates in the Doctor shooting his old, ineffective adversary limply on a small quayside. One is forward looking; the other backward. For the most part, Doctor Who has been successful in its abject avoidance of its own mythos, with Arc of Infinity being an unusual example of the show, rather than its norm. The Lord of the Rings is so up itself, it works on the assumption that we’re already greatly invested in its mythos before we’ve even met people properly and audaciously pulls a slow-motion characters-crying sequence a couple of hours into its nine-hour stretch when Gandalf doesn’t die. Doctor Who doesn’t need to be this po-faced and earnest. It just needs to be imaginatively relevant. The closest slow-mo, aren’t-we-important montage I can think of in Doctor Who is the death of Astrid in Voyage of the Damned. Although it feels earned, given the length of the programme and how we’ve come to adore Astrid, even that has a gurning Mark Costigan with sparkling tooth shot thrown into the mix. 

What Doctor Who has more than any of its contemporaries is an ability to take the piss out of itself and wallow in its own ridiculousness. At the end of The Day of the Doctor, David Tennant again declares: “I don’t want to go.” Matt Smith’s Doctor observes that “he’s always saying that.” In The End of Time almost four years earlier, when arguably the programme was at its very height of popularity, those five words were desperately moving and shook a nation of fans. Here, the programme itself is able to toss them aside like yesterday’s news and point and laugh at them sneeringly. Similarly, in Twice Upon a Time, as Testimony shows the Doctor precisely who he is (The Destroyer of Skaro, the Shadow of the Valeyard, etc) he is able to follow it up with “To be fair, you cut out all the jokes.” This is a programme which stubbornly refuses to be taken seriously except when it matters. It has its cake and eats it. It is able to have us weep for David Tennant’s demise before laughing at ourselves a few years down the line. We can appreciate the Doctor’s mythic status whilst acknowledging that he has always been a bit of a joker. Doctor Who, unlike The Lord of the Rings, has an innate sense of humour and a wise, old, Shakespearean fool in the lead.

Doctor Who has many influences and often wears them on its sleeve. Amazingly, however, it manages to better them most of the time. I’d much rather watch Last Christmas again than Miracle on 34^th Street, Alien or Inception. That might sound scandalous but that nifty little hour of Doctor Who is so much better than all those try-hards. For one thing, it’s funnier. (It includes the line, “I will mark you, Santa.”) And perhaps more strikingly, it refuses to be one thing. Miracle is about the existence of Santa. Alien is about… well, guess. And Inception is dreams within dreams. Doctor Who does all of that at once and makes it look easy. Perversely, it’ll never win any awards for that script (it’s only Doctor Who after all, those well-informed judges will tut humourlessly) but it is so much cleverer, more accessible and more fun than all its influences, namely because there’s an eccentric and wonderful man dressed like a magician with a couple of huge hearts at the centre of it all – and he’s pratting about. 

The climax of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is a terrifically well-directed battle between Daniel (“I’m Harry Potter even though I can’t act.”) Radcliffe and Ralph (“I can act but I’m lowering myself to this bleeding awful make-up thanks to a colossal pay cheque.”) Fiennes. Bolts and magic sparks fly. It is an epic battle. Glass shatters, colours flash, eyebrows quiver. It is utterly hollow. There is nothing quite so boring as a fight with neither geography nor emotional resonance. The final film finishes in much the same way: a loud, brash battle with no heart. The films have taken for granted that we really love these characters without doing anything at all to give us a reason to. Harry is a horrible, little brat, so into himself that he forgets how to sympathise with absolutely everyone. Ron is the thick, ginger, Cockney one. We’re supposed to feel for Hermione because she’s a “half-blood” but she behaves like a stuck-up irritant. When Rowling simply expects us to like Hermione because of her bloodline, we can’t. These are facts about characters rather than an indication of what sort of person they might be. So Harry has no parents, right? No and it doesn’t stop him being a right wazzok. We can’t feel sorry for every orphan. Interestingly, Doctor Who fans were up in arms at the time of the Paul McGann TV movie when it was revealed that the Doctor was half-human. I can understand why: it’s a cheap, “now you’ll care about him” shorthand which absolutely doesn’t work because it’s got nothing to do with the plot, pisses over what has come before and chiefly, doesn’t make us care about the Doctor any more or raise the stakes any higher. Ironically, casual viewers are probably less inclined to sympathise with someone only half human. When the show looks into itself, it usually fails. 

I say usually: The Deadly Assassin is perhaps one of the greatest stories ever told in my view, despite its truly rubbish title. One could argue that it epitomises a backwards looking show in its exploration of the Doctor’s origins. However, it’s easy to forget that this version of Gallifrey at the time was completely and radically new. It still remains the best depiction of the planet. Because it’s not a story about the Doctor’s homeworld; it’s a story about the workings of an alien society. It’s why it works so much better than Hell Bent or The Three Doctors or Arc of Bloody Infinity. Assassin understands that we’re not very interested in the Doctor’s origins so it goes out of its way to make this new and exciting world interesting in much the same way Holmes would make the worlds of Ribos, Androzani and even Ravalox interesting. It’s the politics of the planet and the nefarious scheme of the Master’s complete with its dreamlike APC net, as well as the beautifully literate language, that fill the story with life. Appropriately enough, the Doctor treats the place with distain. After all, what is interesting about a place? He’s interested in people. Hell Bent would seem to prove the point: it only truly comes to life when it’s about Clara and the Doctor. When it’s about conversations in a Council Chamber, it’s dull as dishwater. Lord of the Rings is based on a map and its characters inherit the map and are products of it. Doctor Who can never be based on a star-chart, which is why books like John Peel’s Gallifrey Chronicles always left me cold. When Doctor Who is working supremely well, it’s about the people of these strange worlds (be they historical or futuristic) and the strangeness of those places comes hand in hand with character. It’s not about an orphan troll who lives in a mountain cave by a stream overlooking the tower of a dark wizard. Because who gives a toss?

So yes, I’m spoiled. Doctor Who has completely spoiled any love of other more map-based examples of the genre (Hello Game of Thrones) I could care to think about. There are vast swathes of sci-fi that I will never enjoy because Doctor Who does it better. There are spaceships and wonders that will bore me rigid because I’ve seen them before but with a curly-haired maniac grinning his way through them and offering philosophies on teaspoons and open minds. Doctor Who’s imagination is boundless compared to scribblers like Tolkien or Rowling. Names like Holmes, Moffat and Dicks and Davies are the ones to really conjure with. Doctor Who Versus the World? No contest.

JH

MISSING, PRESUMED DEAD

When I first became aware that some episodes of Doctor Who didn’t exist, it was when my Dad bought me the VHS of The Tomb of the Cybermen in 1992. At the top of the case was a strapline reading: MISSING, PRESUMED DEAD. RETURNED TO BBC VIDEO AFTER OVER 20 YEARS! I was seven. It didn’t upset me too much me at the time, as the black and white stories I never felt were as engaging as those in colour, despite loving Tomb and even at that age spotting the vast gulf of difference in quality between it and The Twin Dilemma (the other Easter present)! I adored the Peter Cushing Dalek films but felt nothing for their fuzzy TV counterparts. There was also so much Doctor Who that I’d never seen before that a few more episodes couldn’t make that much of a difference. I am now so, so thankful that we have Tomb. It’s an icon. But in 1992, it was just another story I hadn’t seen.

It was in my teens that missing episodes became important to me, specifically with the release of The Ice Warriors Collection in 1998. How I loved those four snowy instalments! I even enjoyed the recon, perhaps still the most cleverly handled recreation of missing footage (and that includes the animations). What I remember most vividly though was reading the inner booklet and realising that the documentary The Missing Years would include footage from The Smugglers, Fury from the Deep, The Highlanders and The Macra Terror. I had never realised clips existed from these ancient tomes and the experience of watching them for the first time was astonishing. Fury looked to be the most frightening Doctor Who story ever made. The Smugglers looked like the sort of spooky Dickensian yarn that would have scared me as a younger child. I had loved listening to the Colin Baker-narrated cassettes of The Macra Terror when I was growing up and putting pictures to the soundtrack was extraordinarily exciting. The fact that clips existed from stories I never thought I’d see was a revelation.

From that point on, missing Doctor Who became a vital interest. Ian Levine had stated quite definitively on The Missing Years that there would always be 108 missing episodes. So when The Lion was found the following year, I was over the moon and that giant, green boxset became one of my Favourite Things Ever. In 2003, shortly after the announcement of the new series, it was revealed that Day of Armageddon had been discovered too. I was at college in an IT lesson when I found out, casually browsing the internet. I cried. In front of my mates who shrugged and got on with their much richer lives. I had a stronger reaction to Day of Armageddon than the news that the real deal was coming back to TV. (After all, something would probably go wrong there.)

And that was that. I never even considered another discovery. Doctor Who’s Missing Years amounted to two moments of euphoria for me, never to be repeated. And I was actually sort of fine with that. Because since Ian Levine’s statement, I’d sort of given up hope.

Then came 2011. I was driving to work when then newsreader told the world that two Doctor Who episodes had been found after being lost in time for decades. “Which ones??!!” I screamed at the radio, but it was no use. She wasn’t for telling. I raced dangerously into work and threw myself at a computer. Oh. The Underwater Menace 2 and Galaxy 4: Air Lock. Well, I could sort of understand why the newsreader hadn’t mentioned which ones. They were hardly fan favourites. In fact, to be blunt, they were the dregs. But I wasn’t deflated. I was excited to see Galaxy 4, there being no telesnaps. This had to yield some surprises. And I was in a minority in that I really loved Underwater Menace 3 and so I was looking forward to seeing Part 2, even though it’s the first and last bloody episodes that are the most visually arresting!

But this time, I didn’t think that was it. Nobody did. Because what probably started as a lovely idea: “Let’s announce it at the BFI and let people see it immediately!” had become six months of secret-keeping. And the horrible thing about secrets is, you don’t know who’s got them. Now, we fans were no longer wondering where the episodes might be, but who might know about them. And that was awful, because the crime of these stories being missing didn’t equate to human error any more but to human secrecy.

Philip Morris appeared on The Reign of Terror DVD commentary to talk about his search for Doctor Who long before his anniversary announcement. I wondered why on Earth he was there and deduced that he must have found some Who he wasn’t telling us about, especially with that last comment as the credits role: “Which would I most like to find? What an interesting question.” As if he hadn’t expected that one to come up! In July 2013, I was told that Enemy and Web were back at the BBC but that it was being kept under wraps and there could be more to come. I waited 3 months before an announcement was made, and again, that was after a long period of secrecy. In the end, I was deflated. I couldn’t believe Web still had an episode missing! But to see these stories was of course, a great joy. In the intervening years, I’d heard the CD soundtracks so often, I knew Enemy was a belter and I was surprised in that Web was even better than I thought it would be and absolutely lived up to that first spectacular episode.

However, what was once a tantalising hope – that one day I might get to see these beautiful programmes, that they’d turn up in a loft or a vault somewhere – has now become an irritation. Why does Philip Morris keep alluding to more finds and refusing to deny that he has any more? Why does he remain so irritatingly optimistic if he has nothing? The protracted way in which Enemy and Web were returned means that there could be stuff sitting at the BBC which we don’t know about at any given point. Bluntly, I’d much rather he admit he has nothing than keep us hanging. It’s worse than not knowing if anything exists; it’s not knowing what Phil is playing at. In the old days, the episodes either existed or they didn’t. Now, we have to wait for someone to tell us that they exist or not. It’s bloody infuriating that a group of individuals would keep their secrets for such a long time. Surely, any fan would like to be told that episodes are back, being worked on and will be released soon, rather than be kept in the dark? 

However, hope remains. And it’s a nagging, horrible feeling! But it’s there!

Episodes I’d still love to see include:

·         All of The Massacre – I think it’s a masterpiece.

·         Fury from the Deep Parts 2 and 4 – the creepiest ones with major set-pieces: the Hariss household and the trip down the pipeline. I can do without the helicopter stuff later on!

·         The Abominable Snowmen Parts 1 and 6 – the beginning and the end. I’d love to see Padmasambhava and the first episode is a tense and wild affair! 

·         Anything from The Daleks’ Master Plan – it jumps around from episode to episode and there are no telesnaps to offer even a clue as to how some of it may have looked!

·         The Savages Part 3 – For Freddie Jaeger’s Hartnell impression.

·         The Wheel in Space Part 1 – It’s a weird, trippy, mental thing.

·         Evil 1 – A contemporary 60s episode.

·         The Macra Terror – Cos it’s bloody amazing.

Of course, any discovery would be most welcome. Strangely, given the animations, I’m less inclined to vote for those stories (Power, Invasion, Moonbase, etc) in a list of Most Wanted, already having very watchable versions to hand. But imagine the delight in getting to see Troughton’s first steps as the Doctor or Hartnell’s last. Even yet, these unknown treasures feel like magical totems. And the hope does remain. Please, Phil, do the right thing: either pull your finger out and share or tell us you’ve got nothing. It’d be much easier to bear. Here’s still hoping, one day soon…

JH

We’re All Stories In The End. Just Make It A Good One, Huh?

Growing up in the 90s, it took me an awful lot of time to realise that there were more Doctor Who fans in the world than just me. For most of my childhood, Doctor Who was an entirely solitary pursuit. Any friends from Primary School I tested it on failed to be interested and by Secondary School most simply laughed at it (although one lad did remark on the Doctor Who and the Silurians repeat in 2000 that the monster faces sported “really good graphics”). Doctor Who was a lonesome business then but not a lonely one: the Doctor never made me feel alone.

In 1993, for one day only, my dad took me to Manopticon at the Town Hall in Manchester. There, I met Jon Pertwee who said a total of five words to me: “Who’s it to?” and “To John.” He asked my dad if it was with or without the h and gave us a mildly disappointed autograph with a tut. Colin Baker was much more affable. He asked where I came from down to the specifics: “Whereabouts in Oldham?” and told me of his early work at the Curtain Theatre in Rochdale and the Shaw Playhouse. Later, I became members of both places on his advice and still work there very happily to do this day. The Collectors’ Stalls were exciting and I particularly loved finding a host of sculpted character heads on display – much too expensive for my Dad! I spent the rest of the day in the video room, watching tantalising, old episodes: The Ambassadors of Death (IN COLOUR!) was a VHS recording from UK Gold but I didn’t care. It was amazing. The biggest joy of the convention, however, was – perhaps embarrassingly - getting to see The Happiness Patrol in its entirety again, a story I’d had taped a few years ago but which I’d sadly lost. A couple of years for a child is a long time and I couldn’t wait to see it again!

What I’d missed, I note in hindsight, were the panels. You know, the one bit that a convention is all about! I attended Battlefield IV in Coventry and Panopticon 2000 at Manchester’s Palace Hotel when I was 15 and couldn’t believe what I’d missed out on: these panels were so much fun! I heard stories about the making of the stories I’d never been privy to before. I saw Tom talk for an hour about flytraps and champagne: Bliss. I saw Anthony Ainley slapping his own arse in appreciation of a new diet he’d discovered. I saw Jon Culshaw take off all the Doctors, in front of two of them. I saw Peter Purves bemoaning his missing episodes whilst Michael Sheard proudly noted that he had never been deleted. What I didn’t realise was that a lot of what I was seeing was actually old hat. Nicholas Courtney had refused to tell the eyepatch story on account of it being so ancient. Sylvester and Sophie wanted to talk about Death Comes to Time. Big Finish and these shiny new things called DVDs were the new kids on the block. One fan very excitedly told me he’d just found out that the next DVD release was to be the TV Movie. “Right. Yeah. I’ve seen it.”

I wish I had been new to the game when these old stories had been doing the rounds originally though, when the actors, designers and producers were new to relating them. I remember telling a mate about how I’d laughed watching such-and-such a DVD when Terrance Dicks imparted such-and-such a thing. His response? “Oh, have you not heard that one before?” These tales now form as much a parcel of a Doctor Who adventure as the adventure itself. Who can watch Ambassadors without hearing, “Well Terrance, you were doing your job and I was doing mine?” Who could watch Planet of the Spiders without intoning “His hair got more and more bouffant as the years went by, you see?” Who could watch Planet of Evil without knowing that the jungle set ended up on the BBC’s in-house designers’ manual? Who could watch Battlefield without knowing that Sylvester saved Sophie’s life? Who could watch Nightmare of Eden without thinking Tom vs Bromly? Who could watch Silver Nemesis without knowing that “that gap is just too wide?” Who could watch Pyramids without knowing it’s Mick Jagger’s house or Mind Robber without chickenpox or Pirate Planet without the sausage dog story? The list goes on and on and on. And I love, love, love those anecdotes.

I’ve tried valiantly to poetrycise them. Here goes:

We only had three Daleks;
The day Sylvester saved my life;
Marshminnows were actually peaches;
Morgaine was Jon’s first wife.

A dog had asked Tom for sausages;
His collar bone broke that day;
Levene was dressed as a Yeti
Jon’s wage Shaun just wouldn’t pay.

She ran up to the vic in her knickers;
Daryl Joyce was filming off-set;
It was so cold I got hypothermia;
The fans Christened him “the wet vet.”

John wanted something totally tasteless;
Jon said, “You gonna do it like that?”
We nearly lost Liz on that underground lake;
Sophie Aldred’s allergic to cat.

“Dalek 1, move to your left”;
Lou wanted her eyes back to blue;
For that set Roger used mirrors;
Gary said, “Let’s make magic now, crew.”

Mr Grade was a pompous, old arsehole;
Mr Powell didn’t return calls;
I nudged Patrick right in his ribs and said;
“Look at the size of those balls!”

“The Daemons was always my favourite;”
The vehicles got stuck in the clay;
K9 was a right bitch to work with;
Chief Clown’s teeth still hurt to this day.

Nick always had to have his three pints’ worth;
Those costumes were terribly hot;
“I was just about to go on leave
When the high-ups said, ‘No Jon, you’re not.’”

I’m off. This is it. I’ll do Dreamwatch.”
Katy had the map upside-down;
The horse it set off through the woodwork;
And the whole thing came tumbling down.

Ark In Space got thirteen million
And we knew we would still be a hit.
We wanted Victorian London
So we caked his Ferrari in shit.

JH

The First Doctor Adventures - Volume 1

Twice Upon a Time secured David Bradley’s status as a bona-fide, real-deal First Doctor on Christmas Day. An hour later, Big Finish released their First Doctor boxset in which the cast of An Adventure in Space and Time got together to record their own take on Doctor Who’s fledgling years. And it’s a funny old thing. Whilst David Bradley can be acknowledged as an in-universe Doctor Who, the same cannot really be said of Jamie Glover, Gemma Powell and Claudia Grant as Ian, Barbara and Susan: The actors played William Russell, Jacqueline Hill and Carole Ann Ford respectively in the BBC2 anniversary drama as opposed to their characters. If they had appeared in a TV episode as Ian, Barbara and Susan, the stories on offer here wouldn’t feel quite so Unbound.

Which brings me to why this boxset is such a fascinating paradox. It does feel like an Unbound version of the First Doctor era: the actors are all quite different to their TV counterparts and there is a definite strangeness in hearing the regulars we know and love being performed in such an off-kilter fashion. But ironically, writers Matt Fitton and Guy Adams don’t make the most of this. They want the box set to feel authentic, with references to Marco Polo in both stories to add verisimilitude. In the end, once the oddness of the performances has bedded in, this really does feel like the First Doctor era: two lost stories brought back from the dead, such is the structural mirroring, pacing and laudable earnestness of the tales. It’s like no other Doctor Who ever produced, at once completely faithful and totally different.

The Destination Wars begins with an attack on the senses. The first few moments scream The Sixties at the listener who is instantly transported backwards in time as the TARDIS travels forwards to the Space Year 2003. This is a very clever piece of dating jiggery-pokery on the part of Matt Fitton and its in-text explanation warrants applause. His sci-fi tale of a world at war is terrific. Whilst it seems almost inconceivable to imagine a First Doctor Versus The Master story appearing on TV, James Dreyfus as the Inventor makes the mischievous Time Lord’s appearance seem like a missing link, giving David Bradley’s First Doctor a big ol’ villain to stand up against. Can you imagine Hartnell rubbing shoulders with the Master? It would have been to die for. “You Sir, are an abomination! An outrage! How dare you, Sir, how dare you?” Whilst The Destination Wars could be accused of having a slower pace than is strictly necessary in 2017, the feeling of listening to a story that could have been made in black and white is such a thrill that I’ll allow the more languorous narrative moments and wallow in the insanely good Master that is James Dreyfus. I’d love to hear him chewing a bit more scenery in other ranges.

In a shamelessly fannish move, The Destination Wars ends with a typically naff cliff-hanger into the next story The Great White Hurricane. A big hand for that title everyone and for the inspired choice to link the stories seamlessly.

The Great White Hurricane is a traditional historical tale. It has the earnest tone of The Aztecs or The Massacre and the regulars are split into two factions as they are in Dennis Spooner’s The Romans. By the time we reach the TARDIS at the conclusion, neither team really knows what the other has been up to. Ian and Barbara spend time with Rosalita in the search for her missing son at the hands of an abusive father. The Doctor and Susan become involved in the machinations of New York street gangs. The content on offer here is pretty bleak and the story becomes about light in the darkness. The way people stop to help each other in the face of the hurricane mirrors and accentuates the way characters behave in the wake of familial devastation. The civilians, helping each other from a train adrift in the snow or the members of the public desperate to get home stopping to aid those trapped on the frozen lake, are synonymous with a story about hope: a drama which, too rarely in Doctor Who, is actually about something. 

It is perhaps irritating that the complexity of the violent characters gives way to two fairly easy endings. Spoiler alert: abusive father is told he’ll see his son when mother says and he agrees to her terms because Ian says he’s good with his fists. The gang members who are seeking revenge against the death of one of their own simply decide to forgive and forget because their target is from “the streets.” These somewhat twee resolutions seem to worry the writer as just before the end of the tale, we find the dead body of an old man in the snow, allowing Barbara to venture that “History can be a cruel place to visit.” On everything but this evidence, history is, in the end, quite nice. Ultimately though, these minor details fail to detract from a very strong story with some complex and interesting character dynamics at play and a vivid feeling pf place and time.

If James Dreyfus was the star of The Destination Wars, then Jamie Glover is undoubtedly the star of The Great White Hurricane. His voice is imbued with a comfortable “leading-man” quality and he drives through the narrative like the hurricane itself. Sadly, the boxset’s lead actor is not quite the William Hartnell we hoped he would be. In fact, most of the characters from Hurricane find him annoying and I’m sadly inclined to agree. Like the very early Hartnell Doctor, Bradley's is passive, the narrative happening around him. It is Ian and Barbara who find their way back to him in The Destination Wars and their journeys are granted equal air time in Hurricane. This is an ensemble show and Bradley makes up just one member of the foursome. This passivity is also heightened by a weaker performance than his co-stars. I’m not sure what he’s doing with his voice - in that his speech patterns are all over the place - but he sounds nothing like Hartnell, nor anybody else alive for that matter. The cliff-hanger to Part Two of The Destination Wars falls flat because of his delivery, coupled with some equally flat sound design. He sounds weak and old. Hartnell never did. Hartnell was raging against the dying of the light all the time. There is simply no fire in Bradley. He just isn’t strong enough. (I’d like to add the disclaimer that I usually love David Bradley – have done since Our Friends in the North, through True Dare Kiss, Harry Potter and Broadchurch. Here though, he’s all at sea.) It must be said though that his Doctor is consistently well-written across the two stories, and has a distinct and assured "voice."

Sound design here is definitely a mixed bag. There are some terrific, Sixties seeming sound effects and the music is authentic: orchestral with some BBC Special Sound thrown into the mix. In that respect, much of the sound design is delightful. Elsewhere, though, it’s a mess. Track 3 of Disc 2 of Great White Hurricane includes an actor fluff a line, then go back a couple of sentences and repeat it for the re-take! The whole thing is there for us to hear. Maybe it’s an ode to the Hartnell era? There are some poor fade-ups during cliff-hanger reprises and there’s a half-finished feel to much of the second story. Even the hurricane doesn’t sound remotely dangerous, amounting only to some wispy background wind effects. Now, though I love Howard Carter's music, he's never managed to orchestrate a decent cliff-hanger sting and perhaps, just perhaps, Mr Carter is being overstretched? It's a testament to the fine scripts that these problems don't detract too much from the overall enjoyment of this set.

The First Doctor Adventures are – on the whole - a resounding success. After almost 20 years of audio production and almost 2000 Doctor Who episodes, Big Finish have managed to create something quite magical: stories which look backwards but are also refreshingly, inspiringly new. What a thrill.

8/10

JH

The Fourth Doctor Adventures: Series 7 - Part 1

For quite a long time now, Tom Baker has been striding across the Big Finish landscape, as only a voice like Tom Baker’s is able. He has enjoyed 6 series so far: 3 with Louise Jameson’s Leela, 1 with the late Mary Tamm’s Romana and 2 with Lalla Ward’s second incarnation of Romana. He’s also had 4 adventures written in partnership between former producer Philip Hinchcliffe and Classic Series writer Marc Platt, as well as 2 Lost Stories originally considered for TV production in the 70s and 3 terrific novel adaptations from the 90s. Besides that, he’s also appeared in the Classic Doctors, New Monsters series, the Diary of River Song series and the anniversary special, The Light at the End. With rumours that he is to appear in a Comic Strip range as well, that’s not bad going for an actor who once said the Big Finish scripts he’d received had fallen from his lap and into a bin.

This month sees the release of the first half of a fourth series of adventures with Leela. And it’s pretty brilliant. If you’re feeling over-faced by the huge amount of Tom on offer, start here. It includes something for everyone. There’s a traditional sci-fi adventure story with the Voc Robots, an experimentally told surreal departure from the norm in The Crowmarsh Experiment and a 4-part Bladerunner-style thriller. Also, in terms of cost, it’s much kinder on your wallet. This and the second half of the series (out in May) cost £45 to subscribe: that’s 8 discs. Last year, Tom’s season of 9 discs cost £75! 

Before I begin my review, I must say I’m a staunch supporter of The Fourth Doctor Adventures range. I’ve read on less positive parts of the internet that people have problems with the unambitious nature of the series, and that the majority of stories feel like wallowing in nostalgia for its own sake. Now, there are a fair amount of returning villains to be sure (perhaps more than I’d like) and some of the stories in their hour-only running time can feel a bit slight. But in the 50 releases since Destination: Nerva there are only a handful I’ve been disappointed by and although I hate to join the chorus of naysayers in this (whose persistent verbal abuse of the Big Finish Executive Producer I find irritating and abhorrent) they’re usually written by Nick Briggs.

So what of Series 7 so far?

The Sons of Kaldor opens brilliantly. Tom and Louise are on terrific form. The soundscape is wonderfully nostalgic (the door pin codes and the hum of the ship beautifully echoing The Robots of Death and instilling a kind of childhood comfort we couldn’t have expected from 70s sound effects alone). Toby Hadoke and John Dorney make for excellent Vocs and the pace of the story rattles along as it does in any script written by Andrew Smith. Part Two is a little disappointing although the plot is very cleverly unravelled. Oliver Dimsdale as villain Tace however gives a one-note performance and the threat he poses feels small, unconvincing and not altogether dramatic. Once the mysteries of The Sons of Kaldor have been unlocked, the story feels a little hollow and there isn’t very much left for any of our characters to do.

The Crowmarsh Experiment raises the game. It has to be said that Louise Jameson has always been incredible as Leela and here she gifts us with perhaps the best performance she has ever given. Confused, vulnerable and hardened, Jameson fights her way through a story which puts Leela front and centre. A philosophical, esoteric battle perhaps wouldn’t seem like a natural fit for Leela as a companion, but David Llewellyn makes such a tale feel like the missing link. The narrative only heightens Leela’s strength of character. Tom Baker is – unusually - subtly wonderful here. His performance as The Other Doctor is a muted, weird affair giving the play a definite sense of strangeness and unease. It is as if he is narrating one of his Late Night Stories such is his lightness of touch. The Crowmarsh Experiment stands as one of the very finest Fourth Doctor Adventures and deserves to be heard again and again.

The final two stories are really, as we all know, one story. The Mind Runners/The Demon Rises is a traditional four-parter when it comes to structure. In terms of pace, we do slow down a little. The first episode feels like one long conversation, although scriptwriter John Dorney is drip-feeding elements cleverly which will be important later and the dialogue between The Doctor, Leela and Taraneh sparkles. Dorney’s scripts are in fact adroitly structured. The story is expertly executed in the way Dorney reveals elements of his very clever plot. There is a memorable, well-performed villain in Mr Shift, a brutal, shocking death and a most unusual monster, all revealed at tipping points in terms of our understanding of the narrative. Whilst The Mind Runners/The Demon Rises is not as showy or as spectacular as some of its contemporaries, it is difficult not to admire the immaculate craftsmanship at work here. This is a taut, gripping thriller, brilliantly written and very well-acted.

Half way through, this series is shaping up to be another goldmine. Is it May yet?

9/10

JH

A Cosmos Without the Doctor: Big Finish and the Companion Chronicles

When The Companion Chronicles began, they were an effort on the part of Big Finish to represent the eras of those Doctors unavailable to them: William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker. Now, of course, we have Great Uncle Tom chomping at the bit to record stories, Jon Devon Roland is represented by the superb Tim Treloar and Hartnell and Troughton have their ranges of Early Adventures as well as continued Chronicles boxsets. 

But back in 2007, the inception of The Companion Chronicles failed to set the world on fire. David Tennant was breezing across the TV screens with Freema Agyeman and a series of CD adventures without the stories’ respective Doctors involved seemed like a bit of a reach. I didn’t pick up any until a few years down the line, when a couple of titles and narrators sparked my interest. And suddenly I realised what I’d been missing out on. Because The Companion Chronicles were and remain utterly superb.

I’d turned my nose up at the idea of listening to stories without the bona fide actors involved, foolishly without thinking that I might actually enjoy simply listening to stories. Some of the tales in the Chronicles are so far beyond what the TV series was and is capable of. Some delight in what has been lovingly referred to as “fanwank.” (The idea of setting a story within the closing minutes of The Tenth Planet as the First Doctor stumbles towards his regeneration doesn’t seem quite so “out there” now that Steven Moffat has presented it as a Christmas Special. But The Companion Chronicles got there first in a truly heart-breaking story.) The return of WOTAN might feel like an indulgence the TV show wouldn’t aspire to but its arrival happens in one of the best scripts our programme has ever enjoyed. Other stories are completely original, outlandish and experimental. Some of our finest Big Finish writers produce their finest works in this range, with Simon Guerrier surely the undisputed King of the Chronicles. Jonathan Morris, Marc Platt, Eddie Robson, John Dorney and Jacqueline Rayner also produce phenomenal pieces of writing for the range. 

At their best, The Companion Chronicles are intricate and emotional and take one right back in time to the respective TV eras. But also they can be tremendously audacious. There are stories set within 1970s kids’ puppet shows, toyshops whose doors all lead to the same room, airlocks with the oxygen slowly running out. There are stories which detail the intricacies of the Master’s Earthly life from his prison cell. There are stories told as jigsaw puzzles, where track-listings can be moved about. There are stories so beautiful it makes one balk in wonder.

Here are some of my very favourites:

MOTHER RUSSIA by Marc Platt

Marc Platt’s florid, lyrical prose style is the perfect fit for The Companion Chronicles and Peter Purves narrates with a crispness that allows the writing to shine. Mother Russia begins with a relaxed and ponderous tone, and takes place unusually over a period of weeks. As we become more attune to and in love with the story’s rich setting, we begin to realise that war is coming, an invasion more threatening and dangerous than any alien attack for we know this one to be the real deal. As the cover art suggests, Napoleon is on his way. Like the best Hartnell historicals, there is a pervasive sense of doom about this Chronicle and it’s all the better for it.

THE GLORIOUS REVOLUTION by Jonathan Morris

After Helicon Prime proved what an uncanny and startlingly accurate Patrick Troughton impression Frazer Hines has been able to master over the years, The Glorious Revolution gives Jamie a story that allows his creator to shine. There are many “Pat” moments which send tingles up the spine, but best of all, this is a story that could only be about Jamie McCrimmon. He and the Doctor find themselves on different sides of an historical argument, and Hines plays the scenes of the Time Lord and his companion arguing astonishingly, well. Jonathan Morris’s script evokes all that was atmospheric and strong about The Highlanders and spins a taut, tense drama from the period. It’s, in lieu of a better expression, glorious.

THE ANACHRONAUTS by Simon Guerrier

There aren’t many thrills for a Doctor Who fan like spending time with those actors from the 1960s era of the programme. To get Peter Purves and Jean Marsh together is completely cherishable and utterly delightful. They are brilliant and here we enjoy double time with them with 2 discs’ worth of adventure. The story is an odd one, which fits perfectly with the unpredictability of Hartnell’s third season and its tendency to hop settings. A desert island and then Berlin via a magic door: this is a story only 1960s Doctor Who could tell, but which it never did. And to hear these two old pros perform such a terrific script is such a moving, bracing pleasure. 

THE ROCKET MEN by John Dorney

If Jean Marsh and Peter Purves are the Prince and Princess of the 1960s companions, then surely William Russell is the King and is to be revered. His earthy reliability and quiet charisma mark him out as a narrator of genuine stature and his Companion Chronicle readings are perhaps stronger than any other actors’. The Rocket Men is a simple story, told out of sequence but at its heart, it’s a story of the relationship between Ian and Barbara. So much of their TV tale was unspoken and it remains unspoken here, and yet their deep, unbreakable love for each other is what powers this extraordinary production, which itself gives way to a raft of Rocket Men tales over the following years. This is nothing short of a masterpiece and like Ian and Barbara’s relationship, rather beautifully it doesn’t feel the need to shout about it. 

THE SCORCHIES by James Goss…

…is a musical! Not only that, it’s set within a TV kids programme hosted by puppets with guest star Jo Grant. It’s a gimmick that shouldn’t work. It certainly shouldn’t be so engaging and entertaining for a whole hour. It certainly shouldn’t feel like the Doctor is genuinely dead at the end of Episode One. It certainly shouldn’t have spawned two direct sequels. And it certainly shouldn’t be ignored. This is as audacious, brazen and valiant as The Companion Chronicles have ever been. In short, it is bloody brilliant.

THE FIRST WAVE by Simon Guerrier

At this point in the series, it really did seem like Mr Guerrier could do no wrong. After two extremely good instalments in what has come to be known as the Oliver Harper Trilogy, he hits us with this. It’s a beautiful story, with a haunting conclusion. Guerrier has an uncanny knack of instilling feelings of the ghostliness of nostalgia. It’s a childhood anxiety felt keenly in Dickens and the last few minutes of this play haunt the memory long after the closing titles. They are heartbreakingly bleak and wonderful. The rest is pretty awesome too.

THE MAHOGANY MURDERERS by Andy Lane

A story that unknowingly launched thirteen 4-hour box sets, a spin-off with Strax, three adventures with the Sixth Doctor, two Short Trips and a loving posthumous release by way of a coda: Yeah, The Mahogany Murderers was pretty good. Aside from the very strong, very funny script (what a cliff-hanger!) the real joy of this release is hearing sparks fly between Christopher Benjamin and Trevor Baxter. They complement each other so very well, Benjamin with his big, brassy boombox and Baxter the more restrained, stiff-upper-lip sort. To hear them together in this first instalment, unaccompanied is something very special, now captured on audio forever.

THE LAST POST by James Goss

Caroline John’s final work as Liz and it’s incredible. We meet Liz’s mother and the story chooses an interesting form to relay its narrative. John is, as ever, unshowily amazing, as is Rowenna Cooper as Emily. The sound design makes for a mesmeric experience and a special shout-out must go to Richard Fox and Lauren Yason who are the unsung heroes of the best Chronicles. After a rattling and emotional yarn, the icing on the cake has got to be when WOTAN turns up at the finish. This is terrific and just the kind of thing Big Finish do so well.

THE COLD EQUATIONS by Simon Guerrier

Again Richard Fox and Lauren Yason make this story feel like it’s spiralling towards a strange, kaleidoscopic conclusion, which is perfectly in keeping with Simon Guerrier’s complex, revolving narrative. Admittedly, the science was a bit beyond me but it didn’t matter as I cared so much for these two men trapped in a tin can spinning in outer space towards their doom. What is so brilliant about The Cold Equations is its remote and claustrophobic atmosphere. The pre-titles sequence alone sold it to me instantly as a classic.

PERI AND THE PISCON PARADOX by Nev Fountain

When the Chronicles launched, I wouldn’t have predicted that perhaps my very favourite would feature Nicola Bryant: it just didn’t seem to fall within the remit of the series. But The Companion Chronicles decided very quickly that actually, they could tell any story they wanted. Nev Fountain here produces a work of magnificence. Not only is it affecting and heartfelt, but it also features Colin Baker dressed in a flappy fish costume. (Inside of which, he’s wearing his TV costume and getting a bit hot.) By the time you reach the end of this terrifically funny couple of hours, you realise that any snobbery you might have had about the range has been completely dispelled. Because Peri and the Piscon Paradox is as enjoyable as any Doctor Who story has ever been. 

Given the vast number of Companion Chronicle releases, it was extremely difficult to whittle it down to just 10 so I’d like to name-check a few which are definitely worth spending money on: Mastermind; The Library of Alexandria; The Suffering; The Transit of Venus; The Flames of Cadiz; The Selachian Gambit; Solitaire; The Pyralis Effect; The Blue Tooth; Across the Darkened City; Fields of Terror and Home Truths. There are untold wonders across every series of Chronicles and all kinds of experimentation, cleverness and invention. 

I hope readers might try to dip their toes into this superlative range. Once they sink their teeth in, these stories really won’t let you go. 

JH

1992 and Me

1992: Hardly Doctor Who’s Golden Age, but for this seven-year-old it was utterly bracing. The BBC decided to repeat one full story from each Doctor (with two from the Pertwee era for good measure). This was the first opportunity for me to watch Doctor Who the old-fashioned way, on a weekly basis with cliff-hangers to mull over all week long. 

I’d seen Sylvester’s last two seasons (88-89) but couldn’t really remember watching them on transmission (although I do have a fuzzy memory of watching the vampire girls approach Wainwright in the graveyard whilst sitting on my Dad’s lap). My videotaped repeats of those stories had been watched to within snapping point and every story after that I was able to blitz through on VHS. I remember my first five were: The Five Doctors, City of Death, Day of the Daleks, Death to the Daleks and The Ark in Space. 

But 1992 was really special. Firstly, we were granted a documentary in the form of Resistance is Useless, which I adored. So many clips from stories I’d never seen before! Highlights included the Kirby dance from The Underwater Menace, the krynoid attacking the house in The Seeds of Doom and Susan hanging from the ladder in The Dalek Invasion of Earth. There was such a viscerally exciting strangeness about these clips that it is probably the one programme that absolutely cemented my adoration of the show. Most of the clips were in black and white but to this seven-year-old they were no less tantalising.

Then the repeat season began. With The Time Meddler. After the promise of Resistance is Useless, The Time Meddler fell a little bit flat, although it has to be said that the opening episode is a masterclass in tension and atmosphere. And it contained my first honest-to-goodness cliff-hanger. Hartnell’s expression as the wooden bars slide down to imprison him completely sells the jeopardy he’s in and the danger of the mysterious monk. I was hooked. The rest of the story though, in complete honesty, I found a bit dull. Even watching now, the Hartnell-less Episode Two grinds to a halt and the narrative has an uphill struggle before it can find its pace again. Still though, there was that other, more celebrated, prize cliff-hanger. I was as gobsmacked as the 1960s viewers – probably – when it was revealed that “The Monk’s got a TARDIS.” Suddenly, there were worlds of Doctor Who I’d never known about unfolding on the TV screen.

The Mind Robber was next and how magnificent it was. Just four years after The Time Meddler and the energy, slickness and pace are completely different. The first episode, set in the TARDIS and a white void rattles along, and it’s bloody weird. The special sound gives the story an unearthly lift and images such as a bleached-out Jamie and Zoe beckoning the Doctor smilingly as we hear Zoe screaming epitomise what makes The Mind Robber so spectacular a piece of television. The story speaks to children perhaps even more strongly than adults: it’s about their fairy tales and legends coming to life. The tautness of the episodes means we sometimes get three or four characters personified in each twenty minutes. Clockwork soldiers, Gulliver, Rapunzel, the minotaur, Medusa, the Karkus, Sir Lancelot: across the five instalments, there is so much at which to marvel. As an adult, it’s easy to smirk at the naivety of the structure but for me, it was tantalising. It remains a firm favourite. 

Next came the two Pertwees. Both fabulous. The Daemons had an almost perfect first episode, but one which my Uncle Dave taped over with Episode Two the following week. I was livid. I wouldn’t be able to experience it again. Annoyingly, when the VHS was released, I bypassed it as I had the last four episodes recorded and felt like other, unknown stories were worthier of my pocket money. I didn’t see Episode One again until I bought a deleted VHS copy at a convention during my college days. But I still remembered images from those first spooky 25 minutes so much had they haunted me. Even as a seven-year-old, I had been right: the first night was the best. I vividly remember Bok storming into the dig site at the end of Episode Two though and Azal, the real-life devil, growing at the end of Episode Four. But it was the next story that made me fall in love with the cliff-hanger ending most of all.

Whilst The Daemons had atmosphere, The Sea Devils had pure, unadulterated excitement. It was pacier, more frenetic, it had even madder music, rowing boats, speedboats, carrier ships, motorbikes, submarines and a bona fide swordfight. It caught my imagination like no other story of the repeat season. And most importantly, I finally understood the power of The Sting of the Cliff-Hanger. My brother and I spent a week wondering what the thing was coming towards the Doctor and Jo at the end of Episode One. “It’s the man in the yellow jumper,” we managed to work out after rounds of talking. Episodes Two, Three and Four have equally brilliant cliff-hangers, and the last five minutes of those instalments have to rank amongst the greatest moments in Doctor Who for me. Just when you think the swordfight is over, the Master wields a knife. And only bloody well throws it. The Doctor and Jo are trapped on the beach: guards to the left of them; minefields to the right of them; a Sea Devil in front of them and the Master behind them. The Light Brigade had it bad but it surely wasn’t this harrowing. At the end of Episode Four, I really wasn’t sure what Jo had seen in the capsule: was it empty, was there a body inside? I didn’t have a clue and it was all I thought about that week. The Sea Devils, rubbery turtle heads and all, is a masterpiece. I absolutely adore it. Even with so many belters (and future discoveries - how amazing is Ambassadors?) to contend with, it remains my very favourite of his era.

The other repeats weren’t quite as much fun. By the time Genesis and Caves came around I’d seen them on VHS and the only McCoys I yearned to see were the ones I hadn’t: ironically Season 24 (major disappointments abounded with their eventual VHS releases). But Revelation of the Daleks was… well, a revelation. I loved the violence, I loved the just-a-bit-too-difficult language, I loved the characters and I loved the atmosphere. I have a vivid memory of watching on a tiny TV in my half-attic bedroom and a storm causing signal interference which interrupted my recording. (This happened with Twice Upon a Time this year: the more things change…) I still love Revelation. The only thing to knock it from its pedestal slightly is the moment when the renegade Daleks arrive and you realise you need that awful thing to fully understand it: backstory. I felt left out at the time and I still believe it to be the script’s only failing. The rest is irresistible.

It is an irony that when Doctor Who was at its most unloved – those dark early 90s when its resurrection seemed completely impossible and only darker times lay ahead – a half-arsed repeat season to fill the schedules meant that at least one young boy became a true fan. I learned to love black and white, and Jamie and Zoe, and Roger Delgado and The Grand Order of Oberon and the “Monk’s got a TARDIS!” and Jon and Katy, and Necros, and Patrick Troughton and Douglas Camfield and white robots, and David Maloney and Eric Saward and Michael E Brient, a once glimpsed-never forgotten Episode One of The Daemons and the true majesty of The Sea Devils. These stories caught my imagination like no others. They are examples of the most triumphant television: television that gets kids hooked.

In 1992, there was still light in the darkness. 

JH

Half Way Out of the Dark: The Christmas Specials Ranked

It is difficult for fans who grew up in the wilderness years to fully comprehend that a 13-year-old fan will not have lived through a single Christmas Day when Doctor Who was not on the television. To think that when the show returned in 2005, we were worried that it might be unsuccessful, or worse – an embarrassment! Doctor Who now motors through the Christmas schedules every year, each time offering something new, unique and very, very strange.

Which are the best though? What does each festive treat have to offer? Here’s my rundown of the specials from least to most favourite, including the most recent Twice Upon a Time. What I will say though in the spirit of Christmas is this: I’d happily sit down with a mince pie and some mulled wine and enjoy any of these prestigious and very special programmes. There is not one bad programme among them. Well, apart from this first one:

THE RUNAWAY BRIDE

It’s just rubbish, isn’t it. We meet Donna Noble who, contrary to what yeasayers would have you believe, does indeed shout her way through most of the story. (She gets better later in the episode – and much better in her full television season – but here for much of the story’s length, she’s an irritating mouth on legs: “Get me to the church!”) What kills the episode is its feeling of repetition. We’ve got the Killer Santas from last year but this time, there’s not much reason for them to be there and they’re not quite as sinister. We’ve got a Killer Christmas Tree but this time it doesn’t spin wildly like a whirling dervish; it plops baubles at you. At the time, I remember wondering if every Christmas special was going to be like this: trees and Santas. And The Runaway Bride stands out now as the only special to feel like a re-hash of last year’s bonanza before Russell T Davies realised that this show would go on forever and that every Christmas special can be quite vividly different. Granted, the taxi sequence is terrific and worth tuning in for, but there’s a feeling of diminishing returns in this episode as its big reveals become less… big. In the last act, we meet the Racnoss, a clearly immobile, stupid prop with an annoying actress (who is usually bloody brilliant!) inside it and her annoyingly invisible brood. Then, we have a boring trip to the beginning of the Earth which we witness from miles away. I’ve always held that if the Doctor must return to the TARDIS for a conversation (Hello Impossible Astronaut! Hello Black Orchid!) then the story has some serious pacing issues. There’s the nebulous huon particle plot which equates roughly to magic dust – see also vortex energy, void-stuff and the power of the archangel network. There’s a lovely summery feel to this episode so it doesn’t even feel like Christmas and the latter half is set against garishly lit red and green flats. The major problem with this story is that we’ve seen it many times before but better. What’s that you say? The Thames has been drained? So what, it was Big Ben last year and that really was amazing.

THE NEXT DOCTOR

If this story had been called The Court of the Cyberking, I may feel better about it. As it happens, The Next Doctor as a title is drab. It feels clunky and undercooked and compared with the previous year’s epic outing, that’s exactly how this Christmas Special feels. It’s an hour long compared to last year’s 75-minuter and thus feels smaller. It’s a more contained story but with less spectacle. The Cyberking, in all its glorious CG beauty, towers over the city in the last 10 minutes of The Next Doctor. Starship Titanic, in all its glorious CG beauty is glimpsed in the first few seconds of Voyage of the Damned and that’s only the very beginning. The Next Doctor feels comparatively so much less special. Were it a mid-series episode, it would certainly be looked upon as grander but as it stands, it’s falling short of last year’s dizzying heights. The title never, not even for a second, convinces so the essential mystery of the story’s first half feels like something to be got over before we get to the meat of the tale. Had the focus been more on Miss Hartigan, her lonely life and rise to Cyber-monarch, we may have had something more entertaining. As it stands though, David Morrissey mopes about mumbling in the dulcet tones of a Russ Abbott impersonator for half an hour. Funny that both he and Sarah Parrish, who had been so wonderful together in Blackpool alongside David Tennant both fail spectacularly to enliven a Doctor Who episode. Derblha Kirwin, on the other hand, dazzles in the story’s best scene: the Cyber invasion of a snowy graveyard. Bluntly though, the Cybermen look shocking. Gone is their might of steel, to be replaced by black plastic heads and rubbery digits. All told, The Next Doctor is just a bit dull and unspectacular when everything around it is so full of pizazz. 

THE RETURN OF DOCTOR MYSTERIO

This is a particularly strange beast. In and of itself, Mysterio is decent stuff but as a Doctor Who Christmas Special - in a year when Doctor Who has been off the telly – it fails to pack a punch. Quite unexpectedly, the only time the story feels less like knockabout fluff and more vitally alive is in the last few minutes at the mention of River Song. Mysterio is a superhero film with a 60-minute runtime, meaning that cuts have had to made – chiefly budget ones. It is irritating that we fail to see the superhero in question do anything remotely super. He holds up a bomb at the very end of the tale, but his remaining feats of derring-do are left off-camera and delivered via news reporters. Instead, we get Matt Lucas pulling focus by twatting about with an elephant and a three-way split-camera phone-call which tries desperately to be funny but isn’t. However, there are scenes which do work. The Ghost and his girl meeting for a romantic dinner on a rooftop deliver scenes which truly sparkle and the pre-titles hanging-from-a-rooftop business is cherishably Doctor Who. Quite what this story has to do with Christmas, on the other hand, I don’t know.

THE DOCTOR, THE WIDOW AND THE WARDROBE

There is much to love in this most unloved of Christmas Specials. The pre-titles sequence has got to be one of the most exciting pieces of action Doctor Who has ever presented. The “caretaker” sequence in which our hero conducts a tour of the house is warm, upbeat and extraordinarily Christmassy. The wooden King and Queen are rather frightening in their imposing statures and stillness. It has charm by the bucket-load and the whole thing looks beautiful too. So why is it so reviled? Honestly, by the time the children have passed through the Christmas present and into the new world, the story grinds to a halt. It takes an eternity to reach the lighthouse and the Androzani crew, despite being played by terrific comedy actors, have nothing to do. The ending too is utterly predictable and a touch saccharine. Perhaps Steven Moffat, after a whole season of inter-tangled, over-complicated plotting and misdirection writes a reactionary story which is far too simple with certainly nowhere near enough plot to fill its runtime.

THE END OF TIME

As a regeneration story, The End of Time probably just about works. As a Christmas Special, it’s an odd one. In the episode actually broadcast on Christmas Day, offerings are surprisingly drab. It’s the equivalent of a stringy piece of tinsel in lieu of decoration. The Doctor’s chase after the Master through the wasteland is odd, colourless and bleak. Scenes melt into each other without definition or ironically, a sense of time. After the Doctor’s aforementioned breathless chase, he simply finds the Master’s hideout a few scenes later, walking in on him without energy or sense of occasion. Things in The End of Time just happen because they happen. We find out what a white-point star is when we are introduced to it because suddenly the plot needs an ‘out.’ There are so many rules being broken here, it’s almost irritating. However, The End of Time does mark the finish of one very vivid golden age of Doctor Who. When watching Planet of the Spiders, we forgive the chase sequence because it’s one last hurrah for Jon Pertwee. Here, we forgive the plot deficiencies and leaps of internal logic because we are saying goodbye, not just to David Tennant but to Russell T Davies and this is as fitting a tribute as one can imagine. The regeneration roll call lasts an eternity but it feels earned. This is very much the end of a five-year story and it feels right that it’s a little indulgent, even a bit heavy-going at times because it is deserved. Most affecting of all though, are those scenes between David Tennant and Bernard Cribbins, the old soldiers, discussing skirmishes and graves and death and weaponry. They alone are worth what is essentially a flabby, cluttered and unfocused celebration, though celebration – and a grand one at that - is probably the best word to describe The End of Time. 

THE CHRISTMAS INVASION

Henceforth, it is very difficult to order the Christmas Specials, such is their extremely high quality. Awarding The Christmas Invasion such a lowly position is difficult because there is so much joy in it, so much to love, so much of the spirit of Christmas that it feels cruel. However, order must be had and given the staggering quality of those stories above it, here is where it sits. David Tennant’s first story makes the bold move of having him essentially absent for 45 minutes. Granted, there’s the very funny “I need…I need…” sequence up in Tyler Towers but for the rest of the time, Tennant is bedbound. We forget how innovative a move this was at the time, because we’re so familiar with The Christmas Invasion’s plot now. But it is extremely canny. “So you wanna see the new Doctor? Tough. You’ll have to waist til Easter.” However, in the 15 minutes of screen time he is afforded, Tennant dazzles. He has an instant handle on the part and Davies’s dialogue that Christopher Eccleston, try as he might, never quite got to grips with. Tennant quotes The Lion King, talks of Big Red Buttons using audible capital letters and chooses a magnificent costume in the last few minutes. There are one or two niggles. Directorially, there are a few “off” sequences. What is with that crazed military music as Harriet Jones walks uncomfortably around a corner in the base? The height of the ship is never quite clear and the colour grading is a bit grey and murky for Christmas. However, like the festive period itself, this is a story of hope. The Doctor and Rose will carry on having adventures. Forever. The last scene completely warms the heart: The future looks so bright. 

LAST CHRISTMAS

What a strange beast this one is! Despite the presence of Santa Claus, a sleigh ride, a snowy rooftop, elves, toys and the North Pole, this story doesn’t much feel like Christmas. It feels dark and dangerous and scary, tinted in deep blues and a feeling of uncanny isolation. Face-crabs slither down from ceilings, people are sucked into television sets and a woman who dreamt she was a scientific outpost worker in reality cannot walk. It is a story in which we are allowed to mourn Danny Pink and are promised that every Christmas could indeed be “last Christmas.” This is a Christmas Special for the Capaldi era: grim, bittersweet and unpredictable. It really shouldn’t work given its menagerie of elements and dangerous tone but – despite one scene in the middle in which every bugger reiterates that we could well be in a dream using almost exactly the same explanation over and over again – it resolutely does. Last Christmas is a moving triumph and ultimately the story of the Doctor and Clara’s reconciliation.

THE SNOWMEN

Compare this to The Next Doctor, the other Victorian Christmas Special, and The Snowmen’s richness is evident. It’s more complicated, ambitious, magical and atmospheric. Directorially, it’s leaps ahead of its 19th century counterpart: there’s the supreme sequence of Clara entering the TARDIS for the first time, and for the very first time we get that shot – we’re outside, we circle the ship, we enter, it’s bigger on the inside: all in one fluid movement. The snowmen themselves look frightening and sinister, the CG snow which opens the episode looks haunting and alive. Richard E Grant gives an unpredictably tremendous underplayed performance (given his dreadful turn as the Shalka Doctor) and to top it all, it’s a prequel to The Web of Fear. The only downsides are niggles: I wish the Paternoster gang had been given an onscreen introduction, rather than their own internet-only “prequel.” The narrative leap from A Good Man Goes to War to The Snowmen doesn’t quite work. Given where the story sits in the ongoing narrative of Doctor Who, the special also feels like it lacks its own ending, acting as a springboard for the Doctor’s mission in the next series. In that sense, The Snowmen doesn’t really work entirely on its own merits but nevertheless, by emulating Mary Poppins, Tim Burton, The Web of Fear and Sherlock Holmes, the story boasts all the ingredients of a very clear winner. It is a sumptuous, beautifully-told tale of the snow and ice at the heart of Christmas. 

THE TIME OF THE DOCTOR

Yes, there is an awful lot going on in The Time of the Doctor, but after a few viewings, when all the dots are joined and everything has fallen into place, it’s easier to see what a minor masterpiece it is. Steven Moffat finds himself at a point when he suddenly has to conclude a story he has been telling for almost four years and one which he might have suspected he’d have a bit longer to tell. He has to wrap up not just the time of the Eleventh Doctor, but also the Silence arc, the “crack” arc, the Trenzalore arc and jolly well make the story a Christmas Special too. At 60 minutes, a lesser writer would be all at sea with this impossible task, but Moffat manages to navigate it with aplomb and even finds time to introduce us to Handles, a Cybernetic head whose death we feel as sharply as the Doctor and Clara. After four years, we even discover who blew up the TARDIS. (Spoilers: It was the Silence. Obvs. Duh. It rankles personally and embarrassingly that I worried about this for a good while during those four years.) When Matt Smith’s time comes to an end, he has such dignity. As an old man, he is heart-breaking. As a younger man for just five more minutes, he is The Doctor again. (Though I do wish the production team had had the gall to introduce Peter Capaldi as the owner of the boots that walk up the TARDIS staircase.) The Time of the Doctor wraps up the era in a neat bow and parcels it away. What could be more Christmassy than that? We can now watch an entire era, from start to finish, from beginning to end and enjoy a very definite and satisfying ending.

TWICE UPON A TIME

For the most part, Twice Upon a Time is a fairly serviceable runaround with added First Doctor. In fact, it’s more of a plodalong than a runaround, the only action being when our four heroes jump onto the chains securing the TARDIS and even that sequence is wonkily directed. The First Doctor doesn’t ring true either: he is a curious mixture of First Doctor and the actor William Hartnell. There are very few examples of the First Doctor being sexist in the original run. The “smacked bottom” line is originally directed at Susan, his grand-daughter and the female companions he travelled with after her departure were essentially substitutes for her. Ironically, the one time he orders his female companion to “fetch” something is at the start of The Tenth Planet Episode 1 and fortuitously a clip the production team can use to bolster their depiction of the original Doctor as a behind-the-times sexist bigot. He never was. So there are plenty of things wrong with this Special: It’s not rip-roaring and action-packed; it’s ponderous and slight. But something happens at the 45-minute mark. Suddenly, it comes alive. We realise this is it for Peter Capaldi and as he looks on at the WW1 battlefield and considers the innumerable friends he has watched die, we feel with him. As he sees Clara, we see the alien, bittersweet melancholy in his smile and we feel it. In every word of his final, quite beautiful speech, we feel it. He and indeed Steven Moffat, have been truly remarkable, utterly magnificent. And we can forgive and forget the wonky journey with an off-centre version of the First Doctor (and a staccato performance by the usually brilliant David Bradley) we took to get to the end of this story and remember only where we ended up: with something majestic. Something transcendent.

THE HUSBANDS OF RIVER SONG

When fans talk about Christmas Specials, this beauty always gets missed. Perhaps, that’s because fans were too busy thinking of this as the last story for an entire year rather than seeing the great story that it actually is. The Husbands of River Song is superb. There’s a crashing Voyage of the Damned style spaceship, a head in a bag, a head with a diagonal schism through its centre, a rollicking screwball element throughout, and – at the finish – one of the most beautiful and underplayed scenes in the whole history of the programme. Look at Capaldi watch River as she looks on at the stones. He stands, composed and strange behind her. What is the man thinking? Loss, love? This is the Doctor. Capaldi plays the scene in a distant, alien and deeply affecting way. What is so wonderful about Capaldi as an actor is that every single decision he makes is an offbeat, unusual one and he is never ever predictable. The last scene of Husbands is one of my very favourite Capaldi moments. And isn’t the music just terrific? The whole story is an underrated masterpiece. In years to come, fans will realise they’d never had it so damn good.

A CHRISTMAS CAROL

Second place for A Christmas Carol feels insulting. It is so rich, so beautiful. Even its musical score is one of the most accomplished and filmic the series has ever enjoyed before or since. Murray Gold is on fire here. His score is as Christmassy as the episode itself, which unlike more saccharine fare, acknowledges the darkness at the heart of the festival. Katherine Jenkins also adds her considerable vocal talents to the world of A Christmas Carol and - in the end - fills it with a beautiful melancholia. Steven Moffat’s “halfway out of the dark” plotting is a thing to balk and marvel at. Every moment, every second buys us either a laugh, a tear or a shock and gives us moments of awe, wonder and thrill. The shark trip across the skies is wonderous and indicative of a director at the very top of his creative game. The story is at once familiar and unusual. We don’t realise there hasn’t been any snow until in the final few minutes, it starts snowing. I simply can’t articulate how perfect an adventure A Christmas Carol is. Even using the word adventure seems to belittle it, make it sound hollow. There is a great, beating sad, happy heart at the core of this tale and it flits across the screen like well-oiled clockwork of the grandest design. This is perfection.

VOYAGE OF THE DAMNED

Only a super-sized 75-minute, Kylie-starring blockbuster of a disaster movie could knock A Christmas Carol from the top spot. This is Doctor Who at its biggest and best, told in the most vivid possible colours. The casting of Kylie says everything. The Starship Titanic setting says everything. This is a massive adventure. It is also a perfect disaster movie script from Russell T Davies: we meet the characters quickly and they are painted in memorable, broad but original strokes. There are moments of laugh-out-loud funny, the Tenth Doctor is loveable and fun, there is a talking conker that we fall in love with and cry for when he dies, there are flying angels with killer halos, there’s a metal-bound, bald nutcase whose teeth twinkle even in death. The last scene is marvellous too. Mr Copper – in a brilliantly funny turn from Clive Swift – discovers he is rich and goes a little mad. The Doctor smiles and leaves. That’s our hero. In any other series, the fate of Mr Copper would be that of the lead character, but here we have a man who isn’t remotely interested in money. He is a thrill-seeking nomad and as he leaves we are promised adventures still to come. They can’t all be as tremendously grand as Voyage of the Damned but they can at least aspire to be.

JH