The latest reviews at Television Heaven

2026 has started strong with reviews of Matt Smith's grimly comedic Brighton drama The Death of Bunny Munro and Doctor Who spin-off The War Between the Land and the Sea. Plus, season four of classic Doctor Who is now complete, with my reviews of The Smugglers, The Underwater Menace (what a classic) and The Moonbase, plus The Highlanders and The Evil of the Daleks from site chief Laurence Marcus.

So if you want to know what Matt Smith got up to in the block of flats where I live, how underwater civilisations looked in 1967and 2025, and just which alien menace mocks "stupid Earth brains," you're just a click away.

Sarah Jane Smith: Roving Reporter II - out now!

The second volume of Roving Reporter, Pencil Tip Publishing's collection of short stories, comic strips and critical essays on all things Sarah Jane is now in print. You can order a copy from Lulu, for the sum of £20/£36 (CAD). All proceeds go towards the British Columbia Cancer Foundation.

The volume includes some excellent new fiction starring Sarah Jane, rounded off with my own story "Remembrance."

Order here now!

Doctor Who - the complete season three reviews now up

We've been slowly moving through season three of the classic Doctor Who over on Television Heaven and we've now, with my reviews of The Massacre and The Celestial Toymaker, filled up all the gaps. The complete season three rundown is now available to read:

• Galaxy 4
• Mission to the Unknown
• The Myth Makers
• The Daleks' Master Plan
• The Massacre
• The Ark
• The Celestial Toymaker
• The Gunfighters
• The Savages
• The War Machines

All the above reviews are by me, excepting the two Daleks stories, which are both by site head honcho Laurence Marcus.

While you're over there, I've also reviewed the late '90s ITV sci-fi serial The Last Train. Next up will be the BBC's Invasion: Earth and the first serial of Doctor Who's fourth season, The Smugglers.

Aliens, savages and evil computers

My latest reviews up at Television Heaven include Alien: Earth, the best installment of the Alien franchise since 1986, and the last two serials of Doctor Who season three, The Savages and The War Machines. I should hopefully have more up before the month's out. 

Next on the blog itself I'm planning to review Strange New Worlds season three, and mabe get back onto the Lower Decks and Prodigy reviews when I have time.

September reviews

 I'm roughly 47 years behind on everything I want to write, thanks to many, many real life concerns; however, I have managed to get a few write-ups and reviews done lately. September marked a couple of notable pop culture anniversaries that warranted some attention.

30th September 2025 marks the official 60th anniversary of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's classic series Thunderbirds. I've reviewed the first episode, "Trapped in the Sky," for Television Heaven. Meanwhile on TVH, we've been cracking ahead with season three of classic Doctor Who, with Galaxy 4, The Myth Makers and my beloved The Gunfighters as my latest contributions. I'd written up The Ark previously and Laurence Marcus has also added Mission to the Unknown. I've also reviewed Bookish, the wonderful new murder mystery series from Mark Gatiss.

In other media that gives you square eyes, 13th September was the 40th anniversary of Super Mario Bros. and thus the Super Mario franchise (although, of course, Mario goes back three years earlier, to 1981's Donkey Kong). Head over to Vocal for my two-part play through of every 20th century Super Mario platformer: Part One covers the 1980s (Super Mario Bros. to Super Mario Land) while Part Two takes on the 1990s (Super Mario World to Super Mario 64). Summer also saw two notable Nintendo anniversaries, with Yoshi's Island and Donkey Kong Land both hitting thirty. Just like my TV reviews, I can't help but delve into the history of the games as well as replaying them.

WHO REVIEW: The War Games in Colour

 

As part of the 60^th anniversary celebrations, the Beeb released The Daleks in Colour, an edited down, colourised omnibus of the second Doctor Who serial (and the earliest one they can currently show, due to an absurd copyright dispute). It wasn't terribly good. So I greeted the news of The War Games in Colour with cautious interest. The War Games is one of the best 60s serials, and while it's overlong, it's entertaining across all ten episodes, which is no mean feat.

Cutting a story down from four hours to ninety minutes means a lot has to go in the bin, even more so when new footage has been generated to swish things up. Still, The War Games is a story with plenty that can be chopped; while the padding is all enjoyable, it's still padding, put in to stretch out a story that had to fill the gap of two late in the day. It's an important story, though: Patrick Troughton's final story; the last of the monochrome era; the introduction of the Time Lords and the Doctor's exile to Earth.

The War Games in Colour, fortunately, works. It's a vast improvement on The Daleks in spite of taking more liberties with the original material. Visually, it's a massive step-up from The Daleks; part of this is down to better quality of the original footage, but a lot of it is down to more consistent and logical colouring work. A large chunk of the story being set in familiar historical locations means that there are realistic colours to try to recreate, but even the alien locales, in the War Games headquarters and Time Lords' capital, a less over-the-top than the Dalek cities while still making the most of the incredibly late-60s psychodelic design.

The music is also an improvement on whatever was going on in The Daleks, with much of the original score surviving, albeit somewhat remixed, although there's still a weird tendency to make some scenes sound like the worst excesses of 80s Who. (This sort of thing has been happening since the 90s patchwork release of Shada.) Musical cues are also used to highlight story connections, in a cheeky but obvious retcon: it's made abundantly clear that the War Chief is now meant to be considered an earlier incarnation of the Master. While the use of both the original Master theme and the Murray Gold one are obtrusive, due to being entirely out of keeping with the rest of the score, I'm completely in favour of the idea. I've always been in the War Chief = Master camp, so it's nice to have some validation of this on screen (with plausible deniability if you don't like the idea).

It's certainly a pacier version of the story, and while this means you can comfortably enjoy it all in one sitting, it also means the story loses a great deal of its original atmosphere. The original serial had a slow build-up of foreboding as the extent of what was happening was revealed, while here everything is explained at breakneck speed. Whole chunks of the story are excised, and while a lot of this is just capture-escape-capture stuff used to bulk the original serial out, it also makes the story and the Aliens' plot seem a lot smaller. Lady Jennifer is scarcely in it now, which is frankly a crime.

The most notable changes come at the story's climax, highlighting an old issue with how The War Games is viewed by fans. We tend to treat the first nine episodes as an extended prologue for the last one, when the Time Lords show up, put the Doctor on trial and sentence him to exile and a change of appearance. With so much of the preceding plot removed, the focus is even more heavily on the ending, with the majority of extra material added here. There's new CGI material throughout, most strikingly a outside look at the Aliens' base, and while it all looks great, it's so clearly of a different style and grade to the original footage that it sticks out like the proverbial tender thumb. This is ratcheted up a notch when we're approaching Gallifrey, making the final scenes feel even more separate to the rest of the story.

The biggest change, of course, is the addition of the regeneration. Originally, all we got was Troughton spinning away into blackness, pulling faces until his image was obscured completely. The net time we saw the Doctor, he was played by Jon Pertwee, tumbling out of the TARDIS at the beginning of Spearhead from Space. Now the entire trial is rejigged – much more effectively, in fact – and the story ends with a full regeneration sequence, put together using archive footage, rendering and new effects. On the whole, it works, and gives the Second Doctor a rather more dignified send-off than he got before. Where this leaves the old “Season 6B” theory is anyone's guess, as there appears to be even less of a gap for the Doctor to nip off for some extra adventuring than there used to be, but entire eras have been shoehorned into less feasible places. The only thing I'm not keen on is the substitution of the Tenth to Thirteenth Doctors for the Doctor's parade of possible faces. Something like it has been done before by fans, of course, but in an official story it's a bit too knowing. (It would have been more fun to stick in photos of some of the actors who were considered to take over from Troughton.)

At the end of the day, though, whether you want to consider this the “real” events of The War Games or ignore it completely is up to you. As an alternative version of the story it works, providing a punchier, far shorter yet still effective adventure, while the 1969 original still sits there, untouched and ready to watch.

Hallowe'en at Television Heaven

It's spooky season, so it's time to review some classic chillers (because the rest of the year I don't watch monsters and ghosts and things, not at all).

Pop along to Television Heaven for new reviews on the ingenious horror spoof Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, the most terrifying part of which is that it's somehow now twenty years old; the Frankensteinian hammy horror of 1970s Doctor Who serial The Brain of Morbius; and, the Hammer movie Quatermass and the Pit (aka Five Million Years to Earth), featuring perhaps the very best version of the good Professor. 

Plus, Mark Turner-Box reviews the 1979 miniseries of Stephen King's Salem's Lot, while Malcolm Alexander examines the more recent horror series The Enfield Haunting.

Enjoy an array of Martians, monsters, vampires, ghosts, apemen and invasive broccoli.

WHO REVIEW: Deathworld

Deathworld is the first Big Finish release I've been excited for for quite a while. The latest in The Lost Stories range, this is based on a story treatment submitted by Bob Baker and Dave Martin, classic Who's big ideas men, for Doctor Who's tenth season. It never got further than that, being scrapped in favour of their second idea, which became The Three Doctors. It's very similar to the broadcast story in many ways: all (then) three Doctors appear, the Time Lords are involved, UNIT HQ is beseiged, and the Doctors and their companions are sent to another world outside of their reality.

It's a far more esoteric adventure, however. Instead of facing a disembodied Time Lord in a universe of antimatter, the Doctor is forced to battle Death himself, in his realm beyond time. It's a wonderfully out there idea for Doctor Who, and I've long been fascinated by it as a road not taken. It wouldn't have been completely out of place back in season ten - only one story before the Doctor fought the Minotaur in Atlantis and stood in the vortex facing a god that ate time itself, and in the sixties there were occasional trips beyond reality, to the Land of Fiction of the Celestial Toyroom. Now, of course, the idea of the Doctor facing the Grim Reaper in the afterlife doesn't seem unlikely at all, in the series' new "gods and monsters" phase.

From the sounds of it, this is one of those Lost Stories where there was little more than an outline to go from, so BF writer John Dorney has basically created the entire script from scratch. It's great work; it fair zips along, with the occasional quieter to focus on loss and the philosophy of death. The dialogue is, for the most part, very strong; only once do the characters fall into the trap of describing what they're seeing instead of reacting to it, which makes it better than a lot of BF scripts. Dorney peppers the script with little references to other adventures (the First Doctor asking if the Brigadier is related to Bret Vyon was fun), and his use of the odd phrase or paraphrase from The Three Doctors itself seems appropriate, given that surely some of Baker and Martin's material would have ended up in either version.

There are some irritating bits. Having the different Doctors discovering the same thing then reporting to each other gets repetitive. Why the Brigadier refers to himself as such, instead of his actual name, is a mystery, although this is far from the first story to include that. Looking at the story itself, while it's fun to have the First Doctor and the Brig team up, and it's something we never got to see on TV, it's also a shame one of the First Doctor's companions doesn't take part. This is, I presme, due to who the production team thought they could get involved at the time.

Indeed, they were pretty overconfident there, since in the event Frazer Hines was unavailable to play Jamie, while Hartnell was too unwell to be involved fully, necessitating some serious rewriting. It's wonderful to be able to hear a full team-up of the first three Doctors, their different personalities brought into focus by their interactions with Jamie, Jo and the Brig, as they're busy sniping at each other. Using Death as the antagonist is a clever way to frame the meeting of different Doctors; as they discuss, they are to each other a reminder of their mortality, albeit a very different kind of mortality to humanity's. 

Interestingly, the story involved a number of elements that, by coincidence, appeared in the latest season on TV. While the version of Death here is miles away from Sutekh as God of Death, they fundementally come from the same idea. There are more specific moments that line up; there's even an army tricked into fighting itself. Other parts are hard to imagine televised Doctor Who fully committing to then or now; armies of zombies would either push the boundaries of what the programme could get away with, or be so neutered for the teatime slot as to be pointless. It's one of these time when audio is a benefit; we can let our imaginations run wild, without concern for budget or viewer sensibilities.

There is, however, a fundamental drawback to this whole endeavour. Since the first three Doctors are now long dead, Big Finish relies on its squadron of impersonators to recreate them for this story. Stephen Noonan stands in for William Hartnell; Michael Troughton for his father Patrick; and Tim Treloar is now well-established as Jon Pertwee's understudy. As well as the Doctors, Jon Culshaw portrays the Brigadier in place of the late Nick Courtney. Happily, Frazer Hines and Katy Manning are still with us, but it does make for a strangely distant experience. It does fit with the theme of death and loss, though, and for the most part, the impressions are strong. At times, they're uncannily accurate, while other times they're wildly off, but they're mainly solid so it doesn't detract from the story.

Hats off to Joe Shire as Death himself, as well as his three fellow apocalyptic horsemen. He gives a powerful, sinister, yet oddly avuncular performance as the personification of Death. Joe's got a number of Big Finish credits to his name now (notably he's a regular in Torchwood Soho), but his first turn as main villain is a triumph. Good work, Uncle Joe! Dianne Pilkington gives a good performance against him as the overconfident Lady President of Gallifrey.

The climax to the story does fall under the somewhat frustrating category that undoes the adventure, but it doesn't feel like a cop-out, unlike some. In this case, it's in keeping with the dream-like, otherworldly nature of the story. I'm not keen on the range's continued insistence to force its releases into existing continuity, clumsily segueing here into The Three Doctors. It's far better to let these "what if?" stories remain in their own, unique little universes. Still, it doesn't undo what is a fun adventure, and one that worth waiting for through the recent delays.

Placement: As Dorney has gone to pains to fit this into established continuity, we might as well have a try. As previously noted, for the Third Doctor, Jo and the Brigadier, this leads directly into The Three Doctors. 

For the Second Doctor and Jamie, it's a little trickier. They're one their way to pick up Victoria, and Jamie mentions experiments by the Sontarans, clearly setting this after The Two Doctors. However, neither of them recognises the Brigadier, so from their perspective it's also before The Web of Fear. This means that The Two Doctors takes place during season five, rather than after season six and the Doctor's trial, where most fans place it. This is probably the work of script editor Simon Guerrier, who took this stance in his audioplay The Black Hole, which dialogue suggests follows this straight after. Funnily enough, The Black Hole was a working title for The Three Doctors. If this is right after The Two Doctors, Jamie has met three extra incarnations of the Doctor in a matter of days.

The First Doctor mentions going to find Steven, so for him, this is presumably between The Daleks' Masterplan and The Massacre. 

Television Heaven update

Evening all,

I've a bunch more reviews over at Television Heaven this week.

First, we have the adventures of sleuth, magician technician and all-round know-it-all Jonathan Creek.

Then we join Michael Kitchen as Hastings' finest in WWII crime drama Foyle's War.

Then, having been just announced for a relaunch, I revisit the groundbreaking prehistoric documentary Walking with Dinosaurs.

You may also have missed some classic Tom Baker Doctor Who reviews. Gothic classic Pyramids of Mars introduced the terrible Sutekh, who returned to plague the Doctor in the latest series. A few years later, the Doctor was recruited by another godlike entity to search for the cosmic Key to Time, a season-long quest I've divided into part one (featuring The Ribos Operation, The Pirate Planet and The Stones of Blood) and part two (featuring The Androids of Tara, The Power of Kroll and The Armageddon Factor).

That's it for the moment, while I knuckle down to some fiction.

WHO REVIEW: The Power of the Doctor

 

SPOILERS throughout!

WHOTOPIA #37 out now

 The new issue of the Canadian Doctor Who fanzine is now available for free download from whotopia.ca. 

This latest issue features two pieces by me: my review of "Revolution of the Daleks" and the latest (and presumably final, but who knows?) installment of my Master Who column, looking at Sacha Dhawan's incarnation.

As well as that, there are articles on the unmade serial The Masters of Luxor, The Return of the Cybermen,  the Children of Time, Doctor Who on film, the physics of time travel, authorship in the series, horror in Who and the mystery of the Timeless Children, plus the first chapter of a Cybermen comic strip.

WHO REVIEW ROUND-UP: Classic reviews on Television Heaven

Two new Doctor Who reviews up at Television Heaven. From the classic series, The Caves of Androzani, because I haven't given the Fifth Doctor enough attention lately and it's absolutely brilliant. And from the revived series, my perhaps unexpected choice of Best Of: series three episode "Gridlock." Enjoy!

WHO REVIEW ROUND-UP: Return of the Cybermen

This is the first in, I think, the sixth run of Lost Stories, which began over ten years ago and petered out a few years later when it looked like Big Finish had completely mined the resource of undeveloped Doctor Who stories. Then, the range made an unexpecter return with a pair of stories two years ago, and it looks like there are plenty more scripts to be unearthed from the depths of the Beeb's filing cabinets.

Return of the Cybermen is the original version of what would become Revenge of the Cybermen (Jedi return, but Cybermen can wreak revenge, apparently), which closed out season twelve in 1975. This is the script written by Gerry Davis, co-creator of the original Cybermen, adapted for the new format by John Dorney. Refreshingly, it's presented as what it is: an alternative final story for that season, with no attempt to fit it into existing continuity. There was, apparently, a plan to do this, with a timey-wimey twist at the end, but it was ultimately decided not to go with this, which is a relief. The earlier Lost Stories recreation of "Season 27" misguidedly rewrote original storylines to try to fit in with where Big Finish had already taken the characters, rather than giving us the original ideas as an alternative continuation. I prefer this: a look sideways at what might have been.

The big draw here is having the Fourth Doctor reunited with Sarah Jane and Harry for a new adventure, something which seemed very unlikely to ever happen. Ian Marter, of course, sadly died in 1986, aged only 42, while we've just had the tenth anniversary of Lis Sladen's death. While Sladen reprised the role of Sarah Jane Smith for Big Finish in her own series, before doing the same for the BBC, by the time Tom Baker finally decided to join BF she was too ill to continue and died soon after. Yet we now have a new season twelve TARDIS team, with Sladen's daughter Sadie Miller taking on her role, and BF stalwart Christopher Naylor playing Harry Sullivan. 

It's really rather a beautiful recreation of this classic team. While it was never going to truly recreate the combination of Baker, Sladen and Marter, it comes remarkably close. Miller sounds similar to her mother, of course, but occasionally, just occasionally, she sounds exactly like her, and it's spooky. Naylor, on the other hand, does a fine impression of Marter that never sounds like a send-up. Both are fine audio actors and do their forebears proud. Tom Baker, of course, is on fine form as always as the Doctor. He never seems quite as enthused with these straighter sci-fi stories as with the sillier ones, but he never fails to give a spellbinding performance. 

Not that Return of the Cybermen isn't silly. It's marginally more sensible than the version that reached the screen, but not by much. It still relies on the conceit that the Cybermen, having developed a terrible weakness to gold, would elect to go straight for an asteroid covered in the stuff, and that's just the start of their illogical actions. Still, this version, which has no Vogans on their planet of gold, is a bit more reasonable, although the asteroid we get, populated by what sounds to be a lost colony of South Africans, isn't exactly the most enticing setting for the climactic sequences.

Events on the Nerva Beacon are rather more gripping, with some excellent performances by the guest cast. I particularly enjoyed Nicholas Asbury's gruff interpretation of the station commander, a real no-nonsense spacedog. The music and audio effects provide a very 1960s feel to events. There are a lot of recycled elements from Davis's earlier scripts, too, such as the Doctor's reliance on his 500-year-diary (straight from The Tomb of the Cybermen) and the Cybermen's extreme vulnerability to radiation (The Tenth Planet). It would have been derivative in1975, but they would have gotten away with it then, while an audio presented to fans who've watched and heard this stuff over and over it seems repetitive. Still, at least there's consistency, even if it does hammer home just how many weakness the Cybermen have. 

I don't think Return of the Cybermen will top many best-of lists for BF this year, but it's a pretty solid, enjoyable adventure made special by the performances of the lead cast. In any case, it's a better, more coherent story than the one that replaced it, an let's be honest, even that old nonsense is a lot of fun.

WHO REVIEW CATCH-UP: Out of Time

Out of Time is the first in a trilogy of audios from Big Finish, which are each going to be released a year apart - pretty restrained for the company, who normally chuck out a major box set every couple of months when there's something significant to shout about. Each one features the Tenth Doctor teaming up with a classic series incarnation, and a fan favourite monster. Next year we'll have The Gates of Hell with David Tennant and his father-in-law against the Cybermen, followed by Wink in 2022 with Colin Baker and the Weeping Angels. 

First though is Out of Time itself, which sees Tennant team up with Fourth Doctor Tom Baker. This is, of course, a big thing, with the two most popular Doctors by any reasonable measure joining together for an adventure. This doesn't, however, automatically mean it's going to be any good, although you'd at least expect it to be pretty entertaining. Which, in all fairness, it is. It's a slight story, more of a runaround than anything, but then again, does a release like this need to be anything else?

The Tenth Doctor pops in for a visit at the Cathedral of Contemplation, a huge, mysterious structure outside of time where anyone from any era can attend for solace. He's in a mood because he's avoiding his impending regeneration, and has gone there on his big holiday before facing The End of Time. However, the Fourth Doctor is already there, having picked up a temporary travelling companion in the form of Private Jora (Kathryn Drysdale), a young deserter from the 26th century.

There's some enjoyable farce as the Tenth Doctor avoids (poorly) letting on who he is to his earlier self, while secretly hoping he'll work it out. It doesn't take Four too long to get the measure of him, and he pretty quickly squashes Ten's sulk about the future. Four's meeting himself in a new form, and for him, it's confirmation that he'll survive, whereas for Ten regeneration is death. 

However, Jora's space commander dad turns up looking for her, followed by a phalanx of Daleks, leading to the two Doctors working together to run rings around them as they plan to use the temporal powers of the Cathedral to invade the Earth and win the war. The Doctors' eventual victory is pretty cunning. 

While there's nothing really unusual or outstanding here, it's a pretty fun little adventure, livened up by some wonderful chemistry between two beloved Doctors who, for the most part, keep on the right side of self-parody while doing a bit of a best-of performance. And after all, isn't that why we're here anyway?

Best Lines:

 "More like apres-deva-vu: knowing what's going to happen but only after it does. Maybe it's always like this when I run into them... well, I wouldn't remember."

"Old school? I prefer to think of myself as classic!"

Placement:

For the Fourth Doctor, in the period between The Deadly Assassin and The Face of Evil. For the Tenth Doctor, during the gap between The Waters of Mars and The End of Time, but presumably after the Time Lord Victorious period. For the Daleks, the 26th century, in the Second Dalek War that followed Frontier in Space - except that they're Time War Daleks, so presumably travelling back along their own timeline, which ties into the events of the novel Prisoner of the Daleks.

WHO REVIEW: Regenerations

The Time War is perhaps the perfect backdrop for Doctor Who fanfic. It provides enormous scope and possibility, the highest of stakes and a constant background threat. More than that, though, is the very nature of time as the field of war means that characters from any era of the series' history can justifiably appear, and continuity needn't be a burden if a story can't quite “fit.” If there's any time to break the rules, it's during a time war.

Regenerations from Chinbeard Books, (publisher of Seasons of War) returns to the Time War in the midst of its darkest hour, and uses it as a way to look at the Doctor's lives through different lenses. When the possibility of Dalek victory in the War becomes too likely, Rassilon sanctions a desperate gambit: change the Doctor's history to prevent the War from beginning. By preventing what Lance Parkin called “Last Contact” - the first meeting between the Doctor and the Daleks – the malevolent pepperpots will never become obsessed with alien life and time travel and the War will never come to pass.

Naturally, things do not go as simply as planned. Regenerations sees the Doctor's timeline unravel, presenting us with well-remembered stories from the series twisted into new forms. As history is altered, there isn't even a consistent timeline between these stories – they may follow on, or they may contradict each other, but each one sees a classic story bent out of shape by the manipulation of history.

Kenton Hall edits the collection and also writes the overarching story, which follows the War Doctor as he moves from a galactic crisis to dealing with his own past unravelling. A triplicate story starts the collection off, with “The Shallow Stage” setting the cosmic scene before we're wrenched back to the very beginning in “The Untrustworthy Child,” an ingenious rewriting of the very first Doctor Who story, before the consequences are explored in “The Hidden Well.” Hall takes us back to the War Doctor's travails several throughout the book, and also introduces two new characters, the young Time Lords Jelsillon and Dyliss. These two become honorary companions for the collection, their stories woven into the Doctor's timeline at the outset with dire consequences for all of them.

From there we move along the Doctor's mangled timeline, stopping first with the Second Doctor in “Time of the Cybermen” by Dan Barratt. A clever reversal of the central conceit of The Tomb of the Cybermen, Barratt's story gives us a glimpse of the Cyberwars we often heard about but so rarely saw on the series, in a gripping adventure. Things get more peculiar in “The Paradoxical Affair at Styles,”a new take on Day of the Daleks by Andrew Lawston. To begin with, while the details are different, the overall story seems much the same as the classic serial, perhaps with more of a side of humour. But as it progresses, the Time War encroaches upon it as Gallifrey attempts to intervene in the Daleks' history.

The Doctor's role in Dalek history is very much the focus of Alan Ronald's story, “Terminus of the Daleks,” which presents a reality where the Fourth Doctor decided he very much did have the right. At least, that's what the Time Lords believe, so much so that on Gallifrey they hold theatrical productions of the their own version of Genesis of the Daleks. The fictionalisation of history is just as much a theme in the collection as its outright rewriting, and “Terminus” balances both to become my favourite story in the book. I couldn't help but imagine the faux Doctor as played by John Culshaw.

“Shockwave” by duo Simon A. Brett and Lee Rawlings is another nifty tale of changing history, giving us a reality where Adric managed to die in a completely different way in Earthshock. The consequences are a version of Time-Flight that is, shockingly, really very good, as timelines converge at Heathrow with Tegan baring the brunt of the chaos. After all, had the freighter not crashed circa 65 million BC, Earth's history would be very different indeed. It's a very funny story but it has a nasty sting in the tail.

Christine Grit's story “Revelation,” is, as you might guess, a reworking of Revelation of the Daleks, somehow even nastier than the original. By this point things are becoming very odd, and the story sees the Sixth Doctor and Adric arrive on Necros. The Doctor can feel something's wrong with his timeline by now but is powerless to do anything about it. “Revelation” becomes even more Sixey when the Rani shows up, her story continuing in “Enter the Rani” by Target Trawler Nick Mellish. This story takes the infamously dreadful Time and the Rani and turns it into something that's honestly brilliant – more than that, it turns it into something that makes sense. With a wicked sense of humour, a truly vicious examination of the Rani's cruelty and better-written Mel than I've ever seen, it's another highlight for me.

The further along we go, the more the War Doctor's central story comes into focus, and we learn that the villain behind the masterplan isn't who we expected (but is utterly in keeping with the themes of the book). A diversion back to the Eighth Doctor's first and last moments keeps the experiment running. “The Edge of the War” is this broken universe's equivalent of the TV Movie, one that spends far more time looking at things from the Master's and Grace's point of view. This version of the story moves in a very different and brilliant direction, and the Doctor gets absolutely owned for laying kisses on unwary surgeons. “The Flight of the Doctor” sees the Eighth Doctor's arrival on the War's outskirts and on Karn play out differently, with Barnaby Eaton-Jones telling a different story to Moffat, albeit one with just as many brilliant lines.

Hall comes back to wrap things up in “The Weight of the Doctor,” which storms through the new series – the future, of course, from the protagonist's point of view – bringing the timeline as up-to-date as you could possibly want as the Doctor rights the wrongs of his own reality. Regenerations is based on a very clever concept, but without such a strong selection of stories the idea would be wasted. An excellent fanthology. 

The Regenerations ebook can be purchased from Chinbeard Books here, with all proceeds going to Invest in ME.

WHO REVIEW: 'Scratchman' by Tom Baker

This was one of the great unknowns of Doctor Who. An original Doctor Who movie for the 1970s, Doctor Who Meets Scratchman (occasionally Doctor Who and the Big Game, which is a less exciting title) was a script written by Tom Baker and Ian Marter to feature themselves and Elisabeth Sladen. It never happened, and the details of it were left obscure until 2007 when Marcus Hearn uncovered the original scripts and wrote an in-depth article on it. Before this, we knew that it involved the Doctor facing a figure that may have been the Devil himself, and that they wanted to get Vincent Price for the role (there was also a plan to get Twiggy on as the companion when it looked increasingly unlikely it would involve Sladen and Marter).

Then came the announcement that Tom Baker himself was to novelise the script. In fact, at first James Goss was down to write it, following his successful novelisations of City of Death, The Pirate Planet and the other great unmade movie project, The Krikkitmen. With all the Douglas Adams scripts covered, Scratchman was the only Tom Baker script left to novelise, unless they try to get a book out of Exploration Earth. It turns out that Goss's name was just a placeholder to keep the surprise of Baker's authorship under wraps, although I suspect he had at least some involvement, since some of the prose does sound like his. On the other hand, Baker is an established writer himself (treat yourself to the wonderfully disturbing children's book The Boy Who Kicked Pigs), and much of it just sounds like pure Tom.

We'll never really know just how much of it was Tom's own work, how much was from Marter's scripting, and how much was assisted with by Goss, but the final result is an absolute joy. There have been a couple of novels told first person by the Doctor, and the Fourth Doctor at that, but they never really feel like they're actually giving us a glimpse of the Doctor's personality. Tom Baker, of course, knows his Doctor inside-out, and it's a pleasure to have him tell the story. The book is full of wry observations, non sequiturs and absurd metaphors, but the silliness doesn't overtake the mounting horror of the book. To begin with, the misfortune is no greater than a trampled picnic (but even the Doctor seems ready to burst into tears at that), building to the extermination of an island population as they are horribly transformed into scarecrows. It sounds ridiculous and probably would have looked so on screen, but in prose it's nightmarish. The scarecrows, weirdly enough, are a vanguard for the Cybermen, who have allied with Scratchman foolishly. It's a sort of dry-run for a Cyber-conversion virus. On the island, though, even these deadly threats pale into comparison with the dreadful local busybody, Mavis Tulloch...

The second half of the book takes place in Scratchman's dimension, going full-on surreal and delving into some truly unnerving imagery. Whether Scratchman is the Devil or not (and that would open up a few continuity questions with the other Devils on Doctor Who) he's a being who revels in fear and power and forces nightmarish visions on his victims.In fact, visions of the past and future are a big part of this story. The Doctor faces visions of his past enemies, and even scarecrow versions of his former selves, but there's also signs of things to come. Sarah sees her own future adventures up to and including her own spin-off series, and there are sneaky cameos by the Tenth and Thirteenth Doctors. It's very much a modern reworking of the old script, using the intervening decades to add all sorts of nods and winks to the story. The entire tale is folded into a framing story where the Doctor has to justify his adventures to (yet another) Time Lord court. So, really, the entire thing is a vision, and who knows just how much is true?

Scratchman is a daft old romp while also being a solid horror story, which is about as perfect an evocation of the prime of Tom Baker's Doctor Who tenure as it's possible to be. It's a tragedy that neither Sladen nor Marter are here to see it finally come to fruition (Marter presumably would have co-written this with Baker had he not died so tragically young). It's even better listened to, with Baker giving his all with an absolutely raucous narration. Easily one of the most entertaining Doctor Who novels in years, and probably far better than a movie ever could have been.

Placement: Sarah and Harry have already encountered the Loch Ness Monster, so it's after Terror of the Zygons. They're taking a holiday when the story starts, so this is presumably a breather after The Android Invasion and before The Brain of Morbius, when Sarah is back to travelling with the Doctor alone.

Why does everything have to be so POLITICAL?!!!1!

The BBC Doctor Who social media team have posted a statement about racial equality and standing with Black Lives Matter. The last Lockdown story mentioned the protests currently sweeping the world. Now some fans are complaining that Doctor Who should just be escapist fiction and not bother people by being all political.

These people have apparently missed the point of the entire franchise so far. Doctor Who has been political, and indeed, predominantly left-leaning, since 1963. If you can't see that for yourselves, here are some examples from the last fifty-six years.

An Unearthly Child/100,000 BC: Ian teaches the cavemen that “Kal is not stronger than the whole tribe,” providing an early lesson in socialism and democracy against authoritarianism.

The Daleks/The Mutants: An extended lesson on the danger of arms races and eugenics, although it does stray worryingly into Aryanism with the “perfect” blonde Thals.

The Aztecs: Barbara tries to instil modern western values onto another culture, and is doomed to fail.

The Sensorites: Exlpores the damage wrought by colonists on another culture, although reveals some latent racism with aliens who can't tell each other apart because they all look the same.

The Reign of Terror: It's the French Revolution, fer cryin' out loud.

Planet of Giants: An environmentalist tale where the travellers tackle pesticide pollution.

The Dalek Invasion of Earth: Not so subtle allegories of Nazi occupation and slave labour, with a futuristic resistance movement.

The Romans: Explores the horrors of slavery.

The Crusade: A pretty even-handed tale of the Crusades, with decent and cruel people on both the Christian and Muslim sides.

The Space Museum: Vicki leads a youth revolution against a colonial force.

Galaxy 4: Fixes the questionable racial politics of The Daleks by having the blonde humanoids be the villains and the ugly aliens be the good guys.

The Massacre: War and slaughter between Christian denominations.

The Ark: A parable on colonialism and indentured servitude, as the (all white) survivors of the human race keep the dark-skinned Monoids as a servant class until they rebel.

The Celestial Toymaker: Dropped the ball on that one. Pretty racist, even for 1966.

The Savages: A planet where the dark-skinned “civilised” folk rule over white-skinned “savages” and use them as a resource.

The Tenth Planet: Exploring the risks of extensive surgery and over-conformity. Seems old-fashioned now but topical at the time.

The Moonbase: A very deliberate attempt at a multinational base crew.

The Macra Terror: A very sixties exploration of conformity with a touch of McCarthyism.

The Ice Warriors: A look at the dangers of excessive carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. Although they got it the wrong way round back then and thought it might cause global cooling.

The Dominators: Pro-violence, anti-protest, anti-hippies. Political, yes; good, no.

The War Games: A long treatise on the horrors of war and conquest, and how people will fight blindly for their leaders.

Doctor Who and the Silurians: The rights of the indigenous against the rights of newcomers.

The Ambassadors of Death: A story about how extremists will lie, cheat and use people to further their agenda, and the human fear of the other.

Inferno: The perils of progress, set against a background of a Britain under fascist rule.

The Mind of Evil: Is it right to take away the capacity of men to do evil? What are the rights of prisoners?

The Claws of Axos: The dangers of unfettered greed and national interest against the greater good of the world.

Colony in Space: While agrarian colonists fight with corporate miners for who has the rights to a new planet, no one asks the natives what they think.

Day of the Daleks: Discusses the morals of collaboration with an occupying power and terrorist action to avert a war.

The Curse of Peladon: An extended metaphor for Britain's entry to the European Common Market, with a side of interference with developing cultures.

The Mutants: The whole thing is a thinly-veiled look at British colonialism and South African Apartheid, with segregated teleporters for natives Solonians.

Frontier in Space: Interstellar politics, looking at the risks of miscommunication between cultures, with a bit on unfair treatment of political prisoners.

The Green Death: Pro-environmentalist, anti-corporate look at pollution and the exploitation of miners.

Anything with Sarah Jane: 70s men try to write about feminism.

Invasion of the Dinosaurs: An environmentalist story that looks at the risks of going too far, into extremism.

The Monster of Peladon: Miners rights and the influence of foreign powers, especially during a time of war.

Planet of the Spiders: Barry Letts's big book of Buddhism.

Robot: The villains are a “progressive” terrorist group who want to run the world as a rationalist meritocracy (but are also weirdly sexist).

Genesis of the Daleks: All about war and thinly-veiled Nazis.

The Masque of Mandragora: Rationalism and science vs. superstition and faith

The Deadly Assassin: Of course this is about Gallifreyan politics but it's amazing how many people miss that the Time Lords here are a parody of the British establishment.

The Face of Evil: Rationalism and science vs. superstition and faith

The Sunmakers: Robert Holmes complains about taxation.

The Ribos Operation: Rationalism and science vs. superstition and faith, again.

The Stones of Blood: Please tell me you can see the lesbian subtext in this story?

The Power of Kroll: Anti-colonialism, albeit through a pretty racist lens.

Nightmare of Eden: Anti-drugs story.

Full Circle: It's an alien society, but there's a lot here about how people in positions of power will lie to keep their power safe, and how people will follow anything if that's what they're used to.

Four to Doomsday: Not perfect, but Who's biggest attempt to show different cultures on screen. Tegan speaks an Aboriginal dialect, which is a pretty big deal.

Kinda: Another Buddhist parable.

Warriors of the Deep: We're still in the Cold War, and a century later, there are two power blocs threatening the world with destruction.

Planet of Fire: Rationalism and science vs. superstition and faith once more.

The Two Doctors: Robert Holmes teaches us about vegetarianism.

Remembrance of the Daleks: Ace is disgusted by the casual racism of the 1960s, while a neo-Nazi group works with the Daleks, who have a renewed interest in eugenics leading to their civil war.

The Happiness Patrol: Space Thatcher rules through fear in a society where people can't express their true emotions. People take to the streets in demonstration and commit destruction of property to make themselves heard. Has been seen as a gay rights allegory, your mileage may vary.

The Greatest Show of the Galaxy: About the perversion of sixties ideals to eighties consumerism.

Ghost Light: Ace remembers the racial attacks on her friend Manisha by white kids, ending in the firebombing of her house. Also mocks British imperialism.

The Curse of Fenric: In reality, the Cold War is just coming to an end, and in the story, the British and Soviet troops join forces to defeat a weapon of mass destruction.

Survival: More lesbian subtext.

Rose: A little bit on plastic pollution for a quick bit of environmentalism.

The End of the World: Religion is banned on Platform One.

Aliens of London/World War Three: “Massive Weapons of Destruction.”

The Long Game: Explores the insidious power of the media, and how it can twist our view of the world by controlling the news we read and hear.

Anything with Captain Jack: RTD's so-called gay agenda (although Jack's pansexual).

Boom Town: “Cardiff could fall into the sea and for all London cares.”

The Christmas Invasion: “Tell the President that he's not my boss and I'm certainly not turning this into a war.” Then has Harriet Jones destroy the Sycorax ship in a reference to Thatchers order to destroy a retreating ship in the Falklands War.

Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel: The dangers of unchecked technological advancement and consumerist culture.

The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit: Science vs. religion again, but fails to explore the concerning parallels between the Ood and black slavery.

Fear Her: Explores abusive family life.

Army of Ghosts/Doomsday: The villainous head of Torchwood wants to bring back the British Empire.

The Shakespeare Code: Doesn't dwell on it, but it does touch on the poor treatment of the mentally ill.

Gridlock: Rationalism vs. religion again, and you're missing the snark if you think RTD has suddenly gone pro-religion here. It's people's faith that has kept them trapped, unquestioning, in this impossible situation.

Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks: You can't look at the Depression and the homeless of New York without looking at our own economic system and its failures.

Human Nature/The Family of Blood: A whole story purely about the horror of war, the folly of blindly following orders and why we must “never forget.” Plus, the classism an racism that's still deeply embedded in British culture.

Voyage of the Damned: Discrimination against cyborgs stands in for any oppressed group you want to identify with, with a side of corporate greed.

Partners in Crime: The obesity epidemic and the monetisation of health problems.

Planet of the Ood: Addresses the slavery issue from “The Impossible Planet” with a look at corporate greed as well.

Midnight: The most RTD thing ever: people are stupid and awful, especially in a group.

The Beast Below: The possible perils of democracy, and is it ever OK for one group to suffer for another to thrive? Plus a gag about Scottish independence.

Victory of the Daleks: You can't make a Churchill story without it being political. This one comes down on the “Churchill was a war hero” side of history.

The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone: This, and later stories in River's era, redress the balance somewhat when looking at religion.

Vincent and the Doctor: Yes, talking about mental health is political too. The way the mentally ill are treated by society is still an issue.

The Day of the Moon: Canton's fiance is a black man, which is too much for America in 1969 and, let's be honest, today.

The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People: Could be looked at as a piece on slavery, or on workers' rights, or human rights in general.

A Good Man Goes to War: The fat-thin-gay-Anglicans... Moffat's gay agenda was much bolder than RTD's.

Let's Kill Hitler: Literally attacking Nazis.

Closing Time: Comedy, yes, but with a little look at same-sex parenting.

A Town Called Mercy: This one's about how we treat soldiers after they return from war.

Cold War: If the title and setting aren't a clue...

Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS: I'm sure this one didn't mean to be political, but making the three criminals who are ordered around by the Doctor young black men was perhaps a subconscious statement on someone's part.

Deep Breath/The Girl Who Died/World Enough and Time: For someone who eats meat, the Twelfth Doctor makes a lot of comments about how pigs have feelings and your bacon sandwich once had a mummy and daddy.

Into the Dalek et al: The Twelfth Doctor is distinctly anti-military in the beginning.

Kill the Moon: Comes across, deliberately or not, as a take on the abortion debate, but without ever picking any side of that debate.

In the Forest of the Night: Love the trees.

The Magician's Apprentice/The Witch's Familiar: The old “would you kill Hitler as a baby?” debate.

The Zygon Invasion/Inversion: A serious look at how refugees are demonised by our society when all they want is to live peacefully within it; how so demonising other cultures leads directly to the radicalisation of members of those cultures; how tit-for-tat violence is unending and escalating; ending a rallying anti-war speech.

Face the Raven: More refugee/asylum seeker allegory.

Anything with Bill: You can't make a conscious choice to feature a black lesbian character without it being a political statement. More than ever, this was Moffat saying “this show is inclusive.”

Thin Ice: The Doctor talks long about how our compassion defines how good we are, not how we exploit those weaker than us; then he punches a racist right in the face.

Oxygen: Far in the future, the Doctor dismantles capitalism (allegedly), for treating people as disposable resources.

The Pyramid at the End of the World/The Lie of the Land: Join forces to save your world against a greater enemy. Failing that, fight the system.

Empress of Mars: A look at British imperialism and our treatment of other races. Originally started as a Brexit parody.

The Eaters of Light: A pretty even-handed look at the conflict between indigenous cultures and invaders, and how working for an army does not automatically make one an enemy. Plus, pointing out how LGBT people are in no way a new thing.

World Enough and Time/The Doctor Falls: “Like sewage, and smart phones, and Donald Trump, some things are just inevitable.” “Never read the comments!” Making its allegiance to the left pretty clear here, even before the “stand and fight because it's right” speech.

The Thirteenth Doctor era so far: Deliberately the most ethnically diverse TARDIS team and writing staff in the series' history.

Rosa: An episode about protesting against racial discrimination and segregation, and a warning that we should never get complacent for racism is always there, at the edge of being “acceptable” again.

Arachnids in the UK: A muddled environmentalist message.

Demons of the Punjab: An exploration of cross-religious relationships and the damage that the British occupation of India and the following Partition did to millions of people. Also a look at how easily people can become radicalised.

Kerblam! A look at corporate greed and workers' rights, which somehow manages to come down on the side of Amazon.

The Witchfinders: None-too-subtle attack on sexism and misogyny.

Resolution: Among the Dalek attack, a message on coming together to fight common threats and a poke at Brexit.

Spyfall: Looking at the contribution great women have made to history and how they are overlooked; the danger of corporate greed and commercial control of the media and Big Data; plus Nazis are bad.

Orphan 55: Seriously blunt environmentalist message.

Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror: A little bit on treating immigrants with respect and courtesy.

Fugitive of the Judoon: Perhaps it shoudn't be, but casting a black woman as the Doctor is definitely political. Plus, the Judoon's shoot-to-kill policy when faced with the tiniest assaults is clearly an attack on the US police force.

Praxeus: A better environmentalist message, specifically about plastic pollution.

Can You Hear Me? A reminder that Islamic culture was far more advanced than western culture for centuries, and a discussion of mental health issues. Plus, a pro-police piece for a change.

The Timeless Children: Again, having children of various ethnicities play the Doctor's earliest incarnations is a definite statement.

So there we have it. Doctor Who has been political since the very, very beginning, right through to today. If you can't see it, you've really not been paying attention.

Who Novelisation Quest 4: "The Pirate Planet" by James Goss

"The Doctor rarely slept, and when he did, it was purely for the sheer fun of it, and the delight at the breakfast that would follow."

That's just one of the many delightful and captivating lines that makes this book such a joy. The phrase "Bohemian chutney" sticks in the mind as well, but then, chutney's like that.

After the success of Gareth Roberts's novelisation of Shada, the BBC looked at novelising the remaining serials that had not received the Target treatment. While Roberts would not return, James Goss stepped up, proving himself a perfect match for the silly, satirical style of Douglas Adams. It followed City of Death, my all time favourite story, the novelisation of which I approached with trepidation. Surely it couldn't live up to the original? Well, no, since so much of that serial was in the performances, but it was certainly very good.

The Pirate Planet, though, that's something else. The original is good, of course, an entertaining diversion with a clever idea at its centre, but there's the sense that Adams was trying out ideas and hadn't quite got his style down yet. The concept of a literal pirate planet, appearing throughout the galaxy to swallow up unsuspecting worlds and rob them of their resources is an ingenious one, and just one of many in the story. Add to that Adams's humour, and you've a sure fire winner.

Yet, the story's missing something on telly. Goss refines it, working, notably, from Adams's original script rather than the rewritten version that would make it to the screen (doubtless for budgetary reasons as much as anything). As such, how much of the dialogue and description is from Adams and how much from Goss is never entirely clear, and it's testament to just how perfectly the authors fit together that the join is impossible to see.

There are, of course, many deviations from the broadcast story, but this makes it seem all the more in the tradition of the Targets, the best of which shifted greatly from the televised versions. Indeed, this is quite improved over what we saw. The concepts are tightened, the humour given another draft, and everything just gels.

In this version, Romana is a wittier, cheekier version, more on the way to becoming her next incarnation, even though it is explicitly only her second day aboard the TARDIS. The Pirate Captain is a huge and terrifying cyborg, his body reeking of roasting meat, and his face hidden behind a huge, wire beard. The Mentiads, referred to as Mourners, make a great deal more sense with some further exploration. Indeed, everyone's history is explored, although it's the long-suffering Mr Fibuli who benefits the most from a third dimension. His exhausted waiting-for-god existence adds both pathos and hilarity to the scenes aboard the bridge.

Intriguingly, it's hinted that the Black Guardian himself is behind some of the events, tying the story into the Key to Time narrative better than it ever did when it was actually aired as part of it. A significant addition is the Doctor and Romana's time in the Knowhere. A very Adamsian concept, this is a torture device that assails its victims with illusory horrors, allowing the Daleks a cameo in the story. The only difference to the TV version that doesn't really work is the final cliffhanger, which, rather than having the Doctor dupe his enemies with holograms (and thus reveal a major secret of the story) sees him actually walk the plank and be rescued.

The brilliance of The Pirate Planet led the BBC to employ Goss to novelise Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen, and finally, led to the publication of Tom Baker's own lost story Scratchman, which I will finally get round to reviewing very soon. Also, Jon Culshaw's reading of the audiobook is truly exceptional, and steps it up another level again.


Data: 
First published by BBC Books in 2017
Based on The Pirate Planet, first broadcast in 1978
Audiobook read by Jon Culshaw

The Sixth Doctor regenerates

This is absolutely excellent. YouTube user The Confession Dial has incorporated the last moments of the Big Finish audio The Last Adventure (very much worth listening to) to footage from The Trial of a Time Lord, Time and the Rani and more to create a new regeneration scene for Colin Baker's Sixth Doctor. It's almost a shame that the lunacy of Time and the Rani has to follow it.

Spoilers for said audio adventure, of course, but there's far more to it than just the regeneration. I’d recommend listening to The Last Adventure if you haven’t. Although I imagined the Sixth Doctor looking closer to how Colin Baker looks now (after all, we saw in The Time of the Doctor that a Time Lord can revert to a youthful state just before regeneration completes).

Apropos of nothing, I now have a Tumblr. I tumbl.

"Doctor Who - New Beginnings" at Television Heaven

My extensive two-part article on the debut stories of each Doctor, "New Beginnings," is now available to read at Television Heaven. Part One covers the classic series, An Unearthly Child to Time and the Rani, while Part Two covers the TV Movie and the revival series from "Rose" to "The Woman Who Fell to Earth." Some of these I've reviewed before, in a more individually in-depth way, but here I'm not just looking at how each story works on its own. I'm looking at how the process of recasting the Doctor, and often reintroducing the series, has been handled over the years.

There's also a great article on one of my favourite shows, the original run of The Outer Limits, which started only a couple of months before Doctor Who in the States but didn't make it to the UK until much later. It's by Peter Henshuls and it's rather grand. I'm tempted to try some Captain's Blog-style reviews of Limits episodes someday, as I've done with Star Trek and Space Dandy.