Television Heaven's 25th Anniversary Special - the greatest TV programmes of the last 25 years

The preeminent TV review website, Television Heaven, has reached the ripe old age of 25. Laurence Marcus started the site back in December 1999, and under his oversight it's grown through the 21st century to become an exhaustive and ever-expanding repository of televisual knowledge and opinion. I've been writing for it for about half that time, which somehow seems even more astonishing.

To celebrate, Lol has published two extensive articles critiquing the best, most important, and most impactful programmes of the last 25 years. First, I urge you check out his remarkable list of The Most Important Programmes of the 21st Century, examining the five shows he considers the most vital, powerful and game-changing. Programmes that genuinely changed audiences and even the world, using documentary and drama to explore the most important facts and issues of their times.

Following that, Lol has just put up 25 Shows in 25 Years, a collaborative effort by TVH's crew of regular writers. Each of us has been assigned a particular genre of television from which to pick our five must-see shows. Not an easy task, but between us we managed it. John Winterson Richards has chosen his top five historical dramas; Brian Slade chuckles at his favourite five comedies; Jennifer Ariesta tackles modern drama; and Sunday Summers explores the best of Reality TV.

As for me - well, naturally, I was assigned science fiction and fantasy. My picks are right down the bottom of the article, and believe me, choosing just five was no easy task. (One will be pretty damned obvious, but my other choices may surprise you.) Of course, there were many deserving series that had to be left off, not to mention far too many that remain patiently on my watchlist. You'll no doubt disagree passionately with my choices. Don't write in, it's just for fun! Actually, do write in - tell me your top five!

Doctor Who: The Christmas Specials

Available now is my overview of all thirteen Christmas specials from 2005 to 2017, featuring the Tenth, Eleventh and Twelfth Doctors, each one rated for story strength and Christmassy-ness. A nice bit of nostalgic festive rewatching before Doctor Who returns to the Christmas Day schedules with the Fifteenth Doctor.

Read it now at Television Heaven.

WHO REVIEW: The Power of the Doctor

 

SPOILERS throughout!

WHO REVIEW: Legend of the Sea Devils

 Legend of the Sea Devils is only the second Easter special for Doctor Who, which is an oddity since it seems even more suited to that holiday than to Christmas. The last three regenerations have aired on Christmas, yet surely the day marking death and resurrection would be more appropriate?

The last Easter special, 2009's Planet of the Dead starring David Tennant, was an enjoyable but unremarkable adventure that boasted a fun central concept and some lovely location shooting. Legend of the Sea Devils leaves a similar impression, and like Planet of the Dead it is rather overshadowed by the impending climactic regeneration story it foreshadows.

It stands out more thanks to its returning monster. The Sea Devils, making only their third appearance on the programme and fifty years since they first appeared in the appropriately named The Sea Devils. That serial, starring Jon Pertwee, was a contemporary(ish) story, while the belated follow-up Warriors of the Deep (starring Peter Davison and broadcast in 1984) had a futuristic setting. It seems quite right, then, that the aquatic creatures return for a historical adventure, and it suits them well. Warriors of the Deep reworked them as a samurai-like warrior caste, and this seems to have inspired the Eastern setting of this new adventure.

They look fantastic. Like the Zygons and the Ice Warriors before them, the Sea Devils have been updated but kept fundamentally in line with their original appearance. Of course, they look faintly ridiculous, with their bulbous eyes and too-long necks, but if you can't handle a bit of ridiculousness then Doctor Who probably isn't the show for you. Their new outfits are perfect. They combine the pseudo-orientalist look of their eighties reworking with the string vests of their seventies originals, and make them into something actually feasible, while griming them up with an encrustation of barnacles. These old-but-new Sea Devils are gorgeous.

There's not much in the way of character for the Sea Devils, though. Their leader (referred to by IMDB as Marsissus, but nowhere in the episode itself) gets to be suitably scheming and nefarious, but otherwise the reptiles are little more than generic monsters there to swish swords then fall down. They also seem significantly more technologically advanced than the previous clans we've seen, with the macguffin doing all sorts of near-magical things, but then neither the Sea Devils nor Silurians have ever been very consistent in their background or abilities. I did love how they refer to the humans as “land crawlers,” but it was a bit daft that the Chinese was translated as “ocean demon,” which really means exactly the same as Sea Devil.

The human characters fare better, but even there we're a bit short-changed. Crystal Yu is excellent as Madame Ching, the pirate queen who dominated the seas around China in 1807. She's convincingly confident and ambitious, yet has a humility and quiet thoughtfulness as well. She's, quite correctly, devoted to her family, but the real Ching Shih was also the de facto commander of a huge pirate confederation. There's no mention of her husband Zheng Yi, so this is presumably late in 1807 after he died and she'd taken his place as leader. It was only a few short years before pirate dominance in the region was ended, but at this time she was at the height of her powers. Fine, her crew has been captured before this story, but where are the other crews?

Of course, I assume the budget (and Covid conditions) precluded a huge army of Chinese pirates, but in that case why isn't there more focus on Madame Ching herself? She deserves to dominate the plot more than she does. In reality Ching was a formidable and ruthless opponent, and we just don't see enough of that. There just doesn't seem much point using her in a story if it's not going to use her to the fullest extent.

There's the impression that the episode has been cut down from a much longer edit. Some things are minor, but nigglingly missing: where exactly were the TARDIS team going dressed up like in Chinese clothing or, in Dan's case, a pirate costume, in the first place? Others are more significant. When the episode jumps back to 1533 for no reason than to fill in a bit of the plot that could have been covered in the show's usual heavy-handed exposition, there's the impression that this side trip was originally longer and added more to the story. Still, it's a lot more fun seeing Ji-Hun battling a Sea Devil than having him turn up in the main section and explain it all. There are other points where it looks like a scene has been chopped out to streamline things, which makes it pacey but not always entirely clear what's going on.

The floating ship looks fantastic and, pleasingly, even the Chief Devil himself admits it serves no purpose other than to look menacing and impress people. As for the gigantic sea serpent, the huasen, it certainly puts the myrka to shame, but that's another element left outstanding: is that thing still swimming around out there?

Where the episode works best, other than spectacle, is the personal drama between its characters. While I'm not so convinced by the pseudo-parental relationship between Madame Ching and Ying-Ki, the young warrior is well played by Marlowe Chan-Reeves and actually has some decent chemistry with John Bishop. Ying-Chi and Dan make a fun double act and, again, really deserved a little more time on screen. However, it's pretty hard to believe in Dan's sword-fighting skills. Arthur Lee brings gravitas to the out-of-time warrior Ji Hun and works well alongside the Doctor in a touchy but respectful alliance.

However, it's the quiet moments between the Doctor and Yaz that really stick in the memory. The feelings that Yaz openly admitted to, and the Doctor merely hinted at in Eve of the Daleks are thankfully not forgotten. The Doctor, at first, is her usual awkward self, but this passes and there are some honest and tender moments between them. The Doctor's reluctance to allow herself to become that close to someone again is perfectly understandable and in character, and now that we've seen her shoulder some of the stories her impression of Yaz makes sense. Whittaker gives a strong performance in this scenes, but Mandip Gill really stands out.

Although not without its flaws, Legend of the Sea Devils is a fun romp with real heart. It's never going to appear on a list of the series' classics, but it's a decently entertaining way to spend fifty minutes.

WHO REVIEW: Eve of the Daleks

 

Precisely one year after “Revolution of the Daleks,” we get yet another Dalek episode. Are we at overkill yet? The Daleks were nearly done to death under Moffat and Davies, and then we've had a Dalek special every New Year's Day since 2019 under Chibnall (saving 2020, where we had the first episode of series twelve with the Master instead). While it's fair to say we're now at the end of a trilogy, we're seeing the Daleks far too often. Once, maybe twice per Doctor would probably do, since they're just about the only villain each Doctor has to face in order to really count. Thankfully the Daleks were kept at a minimum in Flux, being there primarily to act as antimatter fodder for the Doctor.

All that being said... “Eve of the Daleks” is a cracking episode, easily the most enjoyable special of this era. While they have a particular reason for being there, this isn't an episode about the Daleks. They're simply an easy and recognisable monster to use, requiring little explanation. This isn't a bad thing; this episode rattles along beautifully and while the Daleks could feasibly be swapped out for the Cybermen, Sontarans or Voord, they work very well in the context of the episode. They're not taken too seriously, but after all this overuse, that's probably for the best. They're relentless enough and gloating enough to be menacing, but silly enough to keep this whole adventure light-hearted.

Which is the best way to take it, after all. While it's not the same as having a Christmas special, the New Year's specials have been entertaining, but this is the first one to feel festive. It's actually about New Year's celebrations (the only time since the TV Movie, set primarily on New Year's Eve 1999 but which came out in the summer of '96). An episode in which time counts down to midnight, when events will come to a head meaning life or death is one thing. An episode in which time is constantly counting down to midnight, resetting each time and repeating the nightmare over and over, that's something else. I do love a time loop episode, but by its nature there's a serious risk it cane become repetitive and thus boring. In spite of being virtually a bottle episode, with a limited cast and very limited, low budget location, the episode remains fun, exciting and surprising throughout.

A lot of this is down to the guest cast, who really do carry the episode through much of its runtime. Aisling Bea is by far the stronger of the two, making Sarah, the unlikely proprietor of Elf Storage (surely a holdover from a time when this was planned for Christmas?) a fully fledged character in her first scene. Charming, put-upon and not particularly nice, Sarah is a likeable but deeply flawed person who becomes more selfless, open and accepting with each iteration of the loop. Adjani Salmon is almost as good as Nick, and in fairness he has the harder job. Nick is written as a deliberately strange and off-putting character, and while he's clearly the nicer, more good-hearted of the two, his oddness is designed to be alienating for Sarah and so it comes close to being so for the viewer. It's down to Salmon that Nick is able to become a three-dimensional and loveable oddity, a “weirdo with a good heart.” He's in love with Sarah – and who wouldn't be in love with Aisling Bea? - but his actions come perilously close to creepiness, which at least he recognises. The script gets away with it on the same sort of knowing good will as most absurdly-plotted romcoms, and by the charm of the cast.

The regulars get some of their best material too. Whittaker has to less of the breathless exposition this time, even though this episode is breathless by its nature and requires a fair bit of explaining. I'm really enjoying the more unlikeable side to the Thirteenth Doctor's character that we've seen in recent episodes, and that comes to the fore here: her short temper, her need to be obeyed when the stakes are high, and her apparent emotional illiteracy. It's an interesting and refreshing choice for the first female Doctor, who we might have expected to be more emotionally aware than her predecessors, but the suggestion in this episode is that she's more aware than she lets on. It's an interesting side to the character that deserves more exploration.

Faring very well is Mandip Gill as Yaz, who shoulders a number of the more emotive scenes. Her brief but understandable anger at the Doctor for abandoning her time and again is well-played, but where she really stands out is in the scene where she accepts her feelings for the Doctor. Her gradually admittance to Dan, and to herself, is beautifully played. It's possible this was all planned from the start, but more likely, Chibnall has responded to the chemistry between the two actors and the relentless shipping by fans. Either way, it's a promising development for the two characters, given that it's actually been given time to develop rather than being forced in. Combined with the personal drama of someone coming to terms with their sexuality, it's strong, effective material. While it's unlikely that Yaz will stay on to travel with the Fourteenth Doctor – Davies likely wanting a clean slate when he takes over – it would be interesting to see how the character reacts to a regeneration.

Bishop doesn't get so much strong material, with Dan mostly being the comic relief, something he is obviously suited to. However, his scenes connecting with Yaz and confronting the Doctor are beautifully played, and his moment of bravery against the Dalek is a nice one. His lighter style suits this episode perhaps better than it did the heavier stuff in Flux. A moment, please, to applaud Pauline McLynn, for making the most of a very limited role as Sarah's mum and somehow stealing scenes from the other end of a smartphone.

Plotwise, the episode is slim, but it doesn't need to be hugely complex stuff for a festive one-off. While the story takes some explaining, as noted, Chibnall assumes that viewers are savvy enough to grasp the idea of a time loop from previous sci-fi and fantasy adventures and hit the ground running. (Dan referencing Groundhog Day helps for anyone lagging behind.) The idea to have the loop shorten by a minute each iteration is a clever one, adding an extra element of danger to the concept. While it's true the plot doesn't quite hold together logistically – when do these kinds of stories, really? - it's enough to swallow on the vital first viewing. Wisely, the usual part of a time loop story, where the characters slowly become aware of the loop, is almost completely skipped over. The characters all understand what's happening to them very quickly, which makes the episode far pacier than it might otherwise have been. While it's slightly harder to accept that they wouldn't be a bit more traumatised by being painfully killed by Daleks over and over, it's just about believable that Sarah and Nick would accept the nature of their predicament given the evidence of their own senses.

It's also gratifying to see the Doctor having to face up to her actions in Flux. While there's still a lot of explaining to be done, not least about the state of the wider universe, her actions against the Daleks, Cybermen and Sontarans clearly still happened, and the few remaining Daleks are now out for blood. Not that they've ever needed an excuse to hunt the Doctor down before, but their anger against her is palpable and, frankly, understandable. Try as she might to blame it on the Sontarans, she wiped out three races without a second thought, and there's no other way to see it. As ever, Nick Briggs makes the Daleks sound powerfully intimidating, even as they bitch and complain (and having the Dalek state “I am not Nick!” is funny on several levels – we were shouting “Yes you are!”) The tweaked design of the executioner Daleks is rather nice as well. A direct blast from a Dalek ray is one of the few things that can kill a Time Lord outright, and the rapid-fire machine gun style looks like a good way to ensure it, where it not for a damaged TARDIS taking matters into its own hands by recycling time. We've already seen the TARDIS reset during the events of Flux – a consequence of rewrites not lining up? - but it's a strong enough reason to put the characters in this situation. It's a bit of a pity this wasn't used as an opportunity to redesign the TARDIS interior altogether though, rather than a minor rejig.

Altogether, a solid, very enjoyable bit of fun for the season. Let's give the Daleks a little rest now, eh? Until the next Doctor is well-established at least. We've got the Sea Devils to look forward to next, and they've not been on the screen since 1984. Far more deserving (and don't they look lovely?)

WHO REVIEW: FLUX Chapter Six - The Vanquishers

Well that's the end of Flux, Doctor Who's first season-long serial since the eighties. After six very busy, sometimes confusing episodes, generally highly entertaining episodes, how did that all hang together?

I wasn't wrong. Chibnall didn't manage to tie everything up by the end of part six. There's still a lot of unanswered questions and hanging threads, and that's not necessarily a problem - we still have three specials left to cover the Thirteenth Doctor's final days, and doubtless much of this will be revisited. Still, there are some painfully dissatisfying elements that niggled at the back of my mind throughout.

Let's start with the good stuff, though. This is a belter of an episode for the Sontarans, more so even that part two, giving the ludicrous space goblins a chance to really stand up to the big league monsters. They're still the butt of jokes - Dan Starkey's chocoholic soldier being a very silly diversion - but they work as a serious threat. For once they're the terrifying military force they're always claiming to be. Murdering the entire Lupari people, barring Karvanista, hunting them down on their own ships and killing them one-by-one, winning through sheer force of numbers - that's the Sontaran threat we've heard of all these years. 

The Doctor's peculiar journey throughout, wrestling with the promise of her lost memories, while she is split into three facets who work together and apart to save the universe - excellent stuff. Yes, it's highly derivative of "Journey's End," which had the Doctor and his duplicate save the multiverse together, but it's not a take-for-take rip-off and that was twelve years ago now. In fact, at times it looks like it's riffing on The Three Doctors, and that was in 1972. Whittaker is on fire snapping and flirting with herself - she's had to spend far too much of her time as Doctor talking to herself, but this makes it into a game. That's not to say she doesn't have serious moments as well, and her eventual reunion and confrontation with Yaz is well worth waiting for.

On the subject of reunions, Bel and Vinder's discovery of each other is a lovely moment. Jacob Anderson is great when he gets solid material, and Thaddea Graham is magnetically watchable in all her scenes. Their storyline seems only tangentially connected to the main Flux plot, but watching the events sweep others up in their path is a solid line for the serial to take. In any case, it seems highly likely they'll be back before the end of 2022. Equally impressive is Nadia Albina as Diane, who finally gets to make a contribution to the plot, even if it's not entirely clear why her character is given such unique treatment by the Ravagers. Still, she's a badass, and we could do worse than having her on side the next time aliens come invading. It's a shame we're unlikely to see Kevin McNally back as Professor Jericho, who would have made a fun recurring character in 20th century settings had he survive, but at least Claire gets a resolution of sorts to her story. We still don't get a full rounding off of the Angels storyline, but not everything has to be crossed off.

Yaz gets to be genuinely awesome as well, showing that she always had the potential to be a brilliant lead character once anyone bothered to actually write her that way. Dan fares less well, and I'm not entirely convinced he's essential to keep on as an ongoing companion, but Bishop remains a fun presence. It's good to see Joseph Williamson get some closure to his story, and he's rather more polite now he's in the presence of ladies. There's no explanation given for the doorways through space/time, but again, that might be something else that will be followed up later. Or maybe not. Either way, while being known forever as the "Mad Mole of Edge Hill" is pretty cool, he's hardly "too important to history" to risk, although if he was killed before he'd finished the tunnels they were all standing in that would a tricky paradox to deal with along with everything else.

Other characters fare less well. Kate Sewart is entirely unnecessary, doing nothing much to contribute to the plot. She's just ort of there, seemingly only to give her an opportunity to meet the current Doctor. Craig Parkinson remains icily cool as the Grand Serpent, but there isn't any clear reason for him to be allied with the Sontarans and he seems superfluous. Still, he gets some excellent moments, particularly his complete dismissal of Vinder whom he doesn't even seem to remember - a mere footnote in his life of power-grabbing and murder. His comeuppance is fairly satisfying, but he's likely being kept alive for a return appearance, which should make his story mean more. Assuming he's not another iteration of the Master, that is. He did turn into a body-snatching snake once, after all.

It's in the overarching plot with Swarm and Azure that things really fall flat. While they look pretty striking, there's not been much to the Ravagers throughout, and their plotline just doesn't hang together. Sure, they want revenge, and apparently they're trying to wage a war on space in the name of time, but it's all just words. None of it really seems to mean anything.  Having the Doctor face a vengeful enemy from a time in her life she doesn't remember is a solid idea, but it needs proper attention, and it's lost in all the other goings on. When we finally discover that Time is a some kind of living entity, we're left with even more questions and no sign of any answers. This isn't a first for Doctor Who - the New Adventures had Time as a godlike figure who played a significant role on occasion - but here it's just one too many revelations thrown at the screen.

Finally, we have to address the Doctor's actions in this episode. The Sontarans, in their ruthlessness, plan to use the Daleks and Cybermen to absorb the Flux, wiping them out in the process. Aside from a complete misunderstanding of how antimatter works - something of a Doctor Who tradition, and more than a little Crisis on Infinite Earths - it's a brilliant play on the ruthless warriors' part. The Daleks and Cybermen seem a little gullible to fall for it, but doubtless they were planning on betraying the Sontarans themselves. It's evidence for how monstrous the Sontarans are - and yet the Doctor, instead of trying to save the Daleks and Cybermen, instead uses the Flux to wipe out both race and the Sontarans as well. It's premeditatedly ruthless by even the Doctor's standards. I'm all for the Doctor being a terrifying bastard, but it sits poorly with the idea that her Fugitive incarnation represents a darker side to her. Why, because she works for a dodgy organisation and carries a gun? Did she just wipe out three whole species? 

It leaves the Whoniverse in an unclear and precarious state. I hardly think the Daleks, Cybermen or Sontarans are actually extinct - this is, at my count, the seventh time the Daleks have been conclusively wiped out, and they're not even pretending it's going to last, since they're back in four weeks. However, the universe is still apparently sitting at 90% wiped out, with nothing but Earth and a handful of devastated worlds left. No mention is made of this at all, and the Doctor and co. leave for adventures without considering there's nowhere left to explore. Surely they've got to follow some of this up?

 

WHO REVIEW: FLUX Chapter Five - Survivors of the Flux

 

It's the penultimate part of a six-parter, traditionally the time when all the questions got answered and we settled down for an action-packed finale. This isn't the classic series though, and Flux is very unlike a traditional Doctor Who six-parter. Each episode has had a distinct feel and new content, keeping things as fresh as in any of the always varied modern series while still building towards a single narrative finale.

At least, that's what we're expected. Given that “Survivors of the Flux” continued to drop new revelations on us even as it was answering earlier questions, it's by no means certain that this will all tie up by the end of episode six, “The Vanquishers.” There is, after all, a new episode to come less than a month later, plus two further specials as we continue in 2022. It's a bit of a mug's game reviewing serialised stories episode-by-episode, and half of my questions and ideas will be rendered nonsensical by the time the story finishes, but one thing I am confident in saying: this won't all be over next week.

“Survivors of the Flux” doesn't hang together as well as the previous couple of episodes, and has a distinct feeling of being a bit rushed. The impession I get is that this was originally several episode, but the continued shortening of the season due to COVID restrictions and changing plans at the BBC meant that a lot of storylines got squashed together here. However, Chibnall pulls it off, giving us a rather baffling but highly enjoyable episode. Doctor Who, as I have said many a time, rarely makes sense, and the trick is getting away with it until after the episode has finished. This instalment manages that, keeping everything moving and ratcheting up the intrigue and excitement so that there's no time to go “hang on...” until you've settled down to beddy-byes later that evening.

The adventures of Yaz, Dan and Jericho could happily have stretched to a six-part serial in themselves. A tenner says we get a short story collection on this by the middle of next year. Yaz has now settled down to her status of leader of the team, a substitute Doctor leading two middle-aged white blokes around and generally being rather awesome. Having her pick up her spirits and resolve by replaying the Doctor's message in times of stress is a nice touch. In the end, though, their mission, to discover the vital information of the Earth's impending doom, seems to be forgotten halfway through. Instead, they switch to trying to let Karvanista – still 117 years in the future for them – their location. Why they've suddenly become determined to get off the Earth by any means necessary isn't clear, nor how they expect to go about it, as even the dog-faced space pilot readily notes that he doesn't have a time machine so can't pick them up. No doubt this will be explained away in part six. However, you have to wonder just how the trio financed their way around the world on their myriad adventures, given that none of them had any resources to call on in the 1900s.

Bel and Vinder's story continues on in the background, reconnecting with the grand narrative towards the episode's conclusion. While I'm certain we'll see the star-crossed lovers reunited, I'm not sure just how they're going to fully integrate them back into the story. Bel hasn't met the Doctor at all and Vinder remained an outsider even as he was pulled into events with Yaz and the Doctor. I'm not sure how they'll get their resolution with the little time we have left, which leaves me wondering if they'll stick around as new companions after this serial ends. I still have a worrying suspicion about Bel's baby's eventual identity, but I'm not going to voice it here since I'll either be made to look a fool or, worse, proven right.

An unexpected turn of events comes as the Grand Serpent returns – itself not a surprise, but the manner is a sudden twist. Seemingly a contemporary, albeit alien, character in 2021, he appears in the 1950s at what is revealed to be the early days of UNIT, allying himself with Robert Bathurst's posh army type and then murdering him rather unpleasantly. (“Your career's finished Todhunter, you big lig!” we shouted as he died, because once you've been in Red Dwarf you are forever tarred with the smeg brush.) A lot of questions a raised here. Presumably the Serpent does have a time machine, rather than merely being very long lived, given that he is apparently here in the past after he was a galactic ruler in the present. The history of UNIT seen here doesn't quite fit in with what we've seen on screen over the years, and the valiant attempt to tie in the events of The War Machines only complicates matters further. All these little asides, and that vocal cameo by the Brigadier himself, are lovely, but don't actually add up to anything coherent, but then, UNIT dating has always been a notorious mess. If anything, making it worse seems rather in keeping. It's nice to see Jemma Redgrave back as Kate Stewart, as well, after an absence of six years. It helps tie everything together into one big, long adventure. As fun as it is to see Kate hoarsely taking down Prentis, aka Mr G. Serpent, you wonder why a military officer in charge of an alien-fighting group doesn't have, I don't know, some kind of gun that might be useful against him? When they dissect the body afterwards and find it made out of snakes she's sure to be backed up.

The assassin sent after Yaz's team sports a serpent tattoo, which naturally suggests he is linked to the Grand Serpent, but I can't help but note the similarity to the Third Doctor's tattoo seen immediately after he arrived on Earth, post-regeneration. In reality it was Jon Pertwee's own navy tattoo, but no shortage of fan theories have arisen. Could the Doctor have been linked to the Grand Serpent in that mysterious period between The War Games and Spearhead from Space? Then we have Steve Oram's increasingly bizarre performance as the eccentric Joseph Williamson, with Team Yaz finally catching up with him and his network of tunnels that lead to doorways through space and time. With everything tying together in unpredictable ways and nods to the past everywhere, it's tempting to try to link everything together, no matter how unlikely.

Meanwhile, outside the universe, the Doctor hatches from her stone prison and faces down the mysterious lady in the hat, who turns out to be Tecteun, the universe's nastiest foster mother. Having the mysterious mastermind turn out to be, essentially, the Doctor's mum is a bit of a let down but quite an obvious move, and there was bound to be a confrontation with her eventually. While Whittaker is impressive in these scenes, they fell a little flat to me. Tecteun's motivation was all over the place. To begin with, we learn the Division – or just Division now, it seems – are destroying the entire universe because the Doctor has interfered with it too much and it's the only way to be rid of her and start from scratch. This seems, even given the Doctor's inflated status over the years, to be insanely over-the-top. There must be something more behind it. Then Tecteun tries to bribe the Doctor into joining forces with her in the next universe by promising her her memories back, which goes against the Division's entire stated motive.

This is all fairly baffling, and unfortunately shows up how difficult it is to accept the Division as the all-powerful force they're made out to be. Retconning in something like this is always going to show up some logistical flaws – just look at trying to fit UNIT into the programme's complicated history – but by making the Division the secret power behind pretty much everything, it's hard to accept they're really what they say they are. I can accept that they had operatives all over the Time War, for instance, or that the CIA were really a front for them, but you have to ask where they were when Rassilon, Davros or sundry others were trying to destroy the entire multiverse. Events which were only stopped by the hated Doctor, of course.

Still, on its own terms, the Division is an intriguing and powerful threat, albeit one that has seemingly sown its own destruction in the form of Swarm and Azure. We're still in the dark on their exact motive, beyond good, old-fashioned revenge. A war between Time and Space sounds cool, but it doesn't really mean anything. We shall see though. Events are coming to a head, and it looks like next week everyone will be involved.

One final thought: it's quite right that the Doctor would refuse to accept her memories and the safety of the Earth in payment for allowing the universe to end, and that she'd vow to save the universe and get her past back, thank you very much. Does the Doctor really want that past back, though? While the Fugitive Doctor hasn't been portrayed as significantly nastier than their familiar incarnations, there have been hints at something far worse, especially considering they apparently worked for the Division for centuries. Are they just memories in the fobwatch, or, as in previous uses of the chameleon arch, is there an entire identity and biology in there that will overwrite and destroy the Doctor's existing persona? Does Chibnall have the guts to wipe out the universe and the Doctor's identity and start again? Probably not, but it does leave the Doctor with an interesting dilemma.

WHO REVIEW: FLUX Chapter Four - Village of the Angels

Doctor Who: Flux is improving week on week, with the twisty and interesting “Once, Upon Time” followed by a gripping episode that combines the best of time-hopping weirdness with good, old-fashioned spookiness. The Weeping Angels are, of course, one of the most popular and inventive monsters ever featured in Doctor Who, and there's still little enough of them that their inclusion here is exciting in the way that the return of the Daleks and Cybermen aren't. Even the Sontarans, while it was a treat to have them feature properly for the first time in ages, aren't as clever or unique a concept as the Angels. Interviews with the cast suggest a palpable excitement in having them appear. There hasn't been a full-on Angels episode since “The Angels Take Manhattan” in 2012, and since then their more minor appearances in “The Time of the Doctor” and Class have been throwaway. Big Finish have been using them plenty, of course, because Big Finish don't get the rights to the concept and not do it to death, and there's been a positive response to the mobile game The Lonely Assassins. Still, “Village of the Angels” feels special, not only because the Weeping Angels are such a brilliant monster but also because the episode is straightforwardly high quality in a way we haven't really seen lately.

Given that the Angels are the quintessential Moffat era monster, it's unsurprising that the episode has a very Moffat-y feel, more so even than last week's, with an almost storybook vibe to the creepy village with its old-fashioned inhabitants. After from the exemplary “Blink,” though, the Angels never quite worked as well even with Moffat writing, their simple but ingenious central concept being added to until it became diluted and overcomplicated. Here, though, everything builds more naturally. It's assumed that, if you're watching this, you've probably at least seen “Blink” on iPlayer and probably know the basics from the previous years, with a few reminders that you mustn't blink and that “the image of an Angel becomes an Angel” dropped in for good measure. Now that the excessive abilities introduced in “The Time of Angels” are fully established it's easier to just get one with it and have them come for the Doctor as a truly relentless threat.

Without wanting to be too harsh, this episode feels like a first draft than a lot of this era's stories. Maxine Alderton's clearly a real talent and while we don't know how much of this is hers and how much is Chibnall's they clearly make for a good team. I loved “Once, Upon Time” but there were still persistent issues such as the clumsy exposition and the sometimes weak characterisation of the Doctor. These are cleaned up here, with Dan's role as exposition engine lampshaded and the Doctor being a proactive force while also allowing her to be terrified and wrong-footed by the Angel's attack. Last week I felt that Whittaker was better when playing the Fugitive Doctor than her normal incarnation, as it was simply stronger material, but here she gets to be a verison of her Doctor that really works.

Yaz gets to actually be a police officer, bringing skills and an approach that other characters simply wouldn't try, in her attempt to track down the missing girl Peggy. It's a bit obvious that, when a mysterious old lady starts wandering around muttering about these things happening again, they're going to be revealed as the same person after a time jump, but it's still effectively told and played. The guest cast are uniformly good, but plaudits especially to Annabel Scholey as Claire. I'm still not going to be surprised if she's revealed to be an iteration of Clara, but right now she's plenty interesting enough as a forthright and capable woman who happens to be a powerful psychic and is stuck living more than fifty years in her own past. There's enough promise in that for a whole series in itself. Kevin McNally is almost as good as Professor Jericho, a delightfully old-fashioned sort of character who absolutely fits with the haunted village vibe.

There are still logical flaws in the Angels concept, such as no one taking the obvious route of at least trying to take turns blinking. The visual of people being crumbled to dust if they contact an Angel a second time is chilling, although I suspect it contradicts what we've seen in previous stories (I'll have to go back and rewatch to be certain). I love the concept of a premonition of an Angel constituting an image, thereby rooting itself in Claire's mind, although by this logic anyone who's ever seen an Angel woould have one living in their head as a memory. It's easy enough to voerlook this though when there are so many striking concepts so well put across, including the uplifted village plucked out of space and the idea of a rogue Angel. The Doctor actually comes off rather badly, refusing to listen to such “a creature,” but the Doctor's more interesting when they're morally dubious and a bit of an arsehole.

The Division is becoming a far more interesting idea than it first appeared, where it was basically the Time Lords' CIA under a different name. Now it seems to be a much bigger, multi-species concern that employs a whole phalanx of Weeping Angels to maintain time. The Doctor's (apparently) accidental crossing of her own time stream in “Fugitive of the Judoon” seems to have linked her present to her past working for them, even before she went actively looking for information on them. It's always a bit tricky to apply logic to a time travel narrative like this, since past and future mean nothing to someone travelling across the whole of history on a whim, but there's generally been a impression that time active beings usually meet each other in the the correct relative order. Obviously this isn't always the case, but here it looks like the Doctor's interacting with her forgotten past has upset the chronology rather badly. The Judoon came for her and now the Division have come for her, and who knows, maybe even the Flux is a result of this.

We end with one of the best cliffhangers in recent memory, and whether it makes sense or not it's a fantastic image (as well as hinting towards the idea from The End of Time that Angels began as cursed Time Lords). We even get a mid-credits scene, MCU-style, following up on Bel's subplot. Thaddea Graham remains one of the best things in this series and is more than capable of maintaining her own storyline, but I am looking forward to Vinder catching up with her and their reconnecting with the main narrative.

Next week looks to be throwing even more elements in but hopefuully will begin to tie this all together. We've only two weeks left for this serial to be, if not resolved, at least satisfactorily climaxed.

WHO REVIEW: FLUX Chapter Three - Once, Upon Time

SPOILERS! 

Now that was by far the best episode of Doctor Who we've had in a long while. As much as I enjoyed last week's "War of the Sontarans" in the main, I wasn't as blown away with as some fans were. "Once, Upon Time," on the other hand feels like a genuinely new and interesting approach to Doctor Who, a dreamlike wander through the main characters' lives that raises as many questions as it answers. Crucially, though, it feels like we're finally getting somewhere, and there's a resolution coming, even as new elements are still being placed on the board.

While Chibnall's dialogue still includes some clunky exposition, particularly from the Doctor, on the whole the script is more polished, and both stranger and easier to follow than previous installments. Throwing the Doctor and her friends into their timestreams is a clever way to explore them and the ongoing plot, while setting up little hints of the upcoming story. Given the chance to play different roles as they step into other points in each other's lives, the actors are given a chance to really show what they can do. Whittaker and Gill are especially good in this respect, with Whittaker in particular showing just how naturalistic and charismatic she can be when given the right material. 

Jacob Anderson stands out in a different way. We don't really know him as Vinder yet, so having him appear as other characters doesn't have the same impact, especially considering he just poses as other soldiers. However, we finally get some exploration of who Vinder is, what his background is and what drives him. A noble soldier punished for doing the right thing, Vinder is a genuinely strong character, and while it's arguably too late in the day to give him focus like this, at least it's finally happened. Anderson is great given a chance to do more than simply react to things, giving a strong and subtle performance as the morally torn young man. In his flashback we also have some nicely sketched-in worldbuilding, as the Grand Serpent (a wonderfully selfish and grandiloquent Craig Parkinson) manipulates the politics of a distant part of the galaxy. I suspect we'll see more of him, and even after Vinder's story is done he could happily return as a villain for the Doctor to face.

Bishop isn't as good in his various roles, but he brings enough charm to the proceedings to make up for it and he gets more material to make Dan three-dimensional, after the fluff of episode two. He has strong chemistry with Nadia Albina's Diane, and all this hints that there's more going on with his character. Why else would the Ravagers abduct Diane to pressure him, and why is Joseph Williamson's plans on Dan's virtual doorstep so important? Dan seems far to proactive and ready a time traveller to just be some ordinary bloke. Perhaps his mysterious ex-fiance will be revealed as someone significant? Then again, perhaps not. Regardless, I hope this is all careful foreshadowing and not just sloppy writing.

The mystery of the Doctor's timestream is more interesting though. It's clever switching the Doctor in for a different version of her own character, with a genuinely surprising appearance by Jo Martin as the Fugitive Doctor, at a point presumably prior to the events of "Fugitive of the Judoon." We finally get a look at this Doctor working for the Division and being as ruthless as we've been told she is. The planet Time, under siege by the Ravagers, seems too visually similar to Gallifrey for it to be coincidence, and the Mouri too like the old image of the Time Lords as godlike beings ruling over time for it to be unintended. Perhaps the Time Lords usurped the Mouri, and they are now returning since the Time Lords are gone again? It's hard to be sure with all the jumping around time, but clearly there's a link there. More mysterious still is Barbara Flynn's character, seemingly a powerful but uncaring being who is bothered more by the Doctor's conduct than the end of the universe (or rather, "this universe," intriguingly). I'm plumping for the White Guardian, but that's just my fan brain trying to make links. Still, if the universe were ending, the Guardians would be expected to take notice.

Among the best things in the episode is the lovely Thaddea Graham from the sadly cancelled The Irregulars. She's likeable and impressive as the swift, smart and assured Bel, a survivor in the post-Flux universe linked, perhaps a little predictably, to Vinder. Facing down a platoon of Cybermen and sneaking past a phalanx of Daleks, she could give the Doctor a run for her money, and I suspect we'll be seeing an great deal more of her. On the subject of familiar monsters, I liked the use of Daleks and Cybermen as an aside, showing just how dire the situation has become with the universe on the brink and its most ambitious powers fighting over the rubble. Equally, there's some good use of the Weeping Angels, livening up Yaz's otherwise not-terribly-exciting scenes and reminding us of the mystery of Claire and her link to the Doctor. Are the Angels a threat or would they benefit from time being repaired? We'll see their gameplan next week. 

Easily the strongest episode of Doctor Who: Flux so far, "Once, Upon Time" balances the usual Doctor Who timey-wimey nonsense and silliness with an arresting mystery and some gripping scenes. It's a shot in the arm for the series and makes me look forward to episode four.

WHO REVIEW: FLUX Chapter Two - War of the Sontarans

 After the frenetic first episode, Flux settles down into something a little more focused. We're still very much in the "chuck stuff at the screen and see what sticks" stage of the proceedings, but there's more time spent on the individual settings so it actually feels like we have some story here rather than mere set-up. 

Having lost Bob Baker - creator of my two favourite fictional dogs - and enjoyed some online looks back at his Who career, it occurs to me that Chibnall is very like the Baker and Martin duo in his approach. He has excellent ideas and an eye for an arresting visual, but not always a solid idea of how to make a story work around these concepts. Chibnall's weaknesses are largely in dialogue, particularly exposition, and plot logic. Doctor Who has never been particularly big on plot logic, but the better stories have been the ones that can distract you from the lapses with wit and panache. Chibnall... doesn't always display those qualities.

I'm trying to get the negatives out of the way before focusing on the good side of this episode. It's one of the Thirteenth Doctor's best and some people are really raving about it, but when it's good like this the weaknesses just jar more. There's some shocking dialogue here, most notably the crashing exposition bombs from Dan and his parents. Dan actually comes out with a line like, "So she's a real historical character, but these Sontarans aren't?" Nobody speaks like that unless they're watching something like Doctor Who. Unless Dan is going to be revealed as some kind of metafictional viewer stand-in, and if he manages to pull that off then hats off to him, then this is just bad.

Equally there are some huge lapses in plot. The Flux, which apparently destroys everything, dumps the damaged TARDIS in the Crimea in the 19th century and plops her passengers down with it. Fine, no problem, it's not like everyone was going to die anyway and the Flux is still a mysterious and unexplained phenomenon. But then some other wibbly effect shifts Dan back home and Yaz seemingly randomly to the temple where Vinder has also appeared, and the Ravagers are infiltrating. Why send them all to the Crimea in the first place if you're immediately going to scatter them again? And why not at least try to throw in some technobabble and a reason for the coincidences into the script, just to pretend you care about plotting.

Jacob Anderson seems lovely but his character has yet to really do anything to make a mark. Was Vinder always in the mix here or did he replace someone else? Is he occupying Captain Jack's role now that Barrowman's persona non grata? Because his character is so generic right now he could be anyone a bit spacey. I hope he gets some proper material soon. At least Yaz is still benefitting from being the lead hero in her sequence. The temple stuff is pretty fascinating and looks incredible. I don't think I'm alone in assuming the Touri and the Planet Time will tie into the Doctor's secret origins, and I'm at least looking forward to finding out what that's all about.

The big triumph of this episode is the Sontaran intervention in the Crimean War. The visual of the Sontaran army battling the British in Sevastopol is wonderful, just the thing Doctor Who is made for. Sara Powell is rather perfect as Mary Seacole, another in this era's commendable line of female figures from history recreated by a talented actress. As with Nora Khan and Ada Lovelace before her, Seacole doesn't get enough time or exploration to really show why she was such a remarkable individual, but she works well as the latest one-off pseudo-companion. 

The newly-old Sontarans are spot-on. Dan Starkey still gets to play various clones, but it's Jonathan Watson as commanders Skaak and Riskaw who really steals it. A gruff Scotsman is somehow just right for a Sontaran warlord. It's gratifying that, while he's made the Sontarans into a major threat again, Chibnall hasn't forgotten that they're also funny. (The horse line is priceless.) 

On the other side, though, the stuff in contemporary Liverpool is pretty dire. Bishop remains thoroughly watchable, in spite of being lumbered with puns that made even me wince, but the plotting around it is totally sloppy. Sontarans mowing down British soldiers before being destroyed in a desperate act of vengeance? That's one thing. One Scouser taking out an invasion fleet with a wok? Taking things a bit far. Even Donna's "Back of the neck!" triumph didn't take things that far. There's also some massive logistical problems with the Sontarans invasion of time. Having them replace Russia and China in history raises huge questions but works, but when we drop into modern Britain the implication is that they've been ensconced as the rulers of Earth ever since. Yet we then learn they've only been there two days. In which time they've set up a national curfew and already generated a resistance movement. 

There's plenty that doesn't add up yet, but that's fine, we're still learning about the mysteries of the story. Things like this are frustrating though. It's a pity, because this is solidly entertaining, with Whittaker at her most Doctorish and some great moments. Yaz looking at her wrist and silently taking in her WWTDD note is perfect. She doesn't need to read it out and translate it; it's only later that Swarm spells out "What Would the Doctor Do?" for the five people in the audience who didn't get it, and this serves to reinforce how he is familiar with the Doctor and their effect on their companions. Chibnall can do it, so it's doubly frustrating when so much clunky material makes it through.

WHO REVIEW: FLUX Chapter One - The Halloween Apocalypse

Well, that was pretty good. It's hard to say how well it holds together yet, as part one of a six-part serial, the first such structure for decades. (The last time Doctor Who did a six-parter was 1979's TheArmageddon Factor, unless you count Shada's animated redos, but this is more comparable in length to the 12-part epic The Daleks' Masterplan in 1965-6.) 

To be honest, the episode was a bit messy, but this isn't necessarily a bad thing. It jumped all over the place, setting up elements then dropping them to move onto something else, but that's the job of a first part. No one complained when Game of Thrones visited half a dozen different groups of characters per episode with seemingly nothing to do with each other then forgot about half of them for weeks at a time. The proof will be in the pudding, as it were, when we're six weeks in and see if it makes any sense.

"The Halloween Apocalypse" gives us a few firsts. It's the first time we've had a proper overall title for a season since the series came back (the only time other than 1986's The Trial of a Time Lord, and that didn't have episode titles). Beginning series thirteen, it's the first time the Doctor number and series number have matched (unless you're working in a continuous run of seasons since 1963, in which case its season 39, and that's three thirteens so it still seems to fit). It's the first time the series has done a Hallowe'en special, although "The Waters of Mars" certainly felt like one.

It's not as if the episode really feels particularly Halloweeny, really. Other than the reliably spooky Weeping Angels, who had a brief appearance, nothing in this episode is especially ghostly or ghoulish, but then again, it's Doctor Who, so we still have plenty of monsters. And so many monsters! Everyone's turned up, it seems, or will be soon if the trailers and rumours can be believed. Like the Ten/Thirteen team-up in games and comics, there's a temptation to be cynical here: get some popular monsters from the series' heyday back to win back a few viewers. But wasn't it ever thus? Did anyone moan when RTD revamped the Daleks, the Cybermen and the Master for his new vision of the series? Hell, in "Rose," he practically recreated elements of Spearhead from Space shot-for-shot. 

Just the same, the tacked-on Hallowe'en element isn't really any different to the arbitrary Christmassy setting of "The Husbands of River Song" or the entirely pointless Easter egg scene in "Planet of the Dead." It's a hook, nothing more. It's, frankly, a poorer hook than "the universe is ending," as the Whoniverse encounters its own Crisis event that's wiping out planets everywhere. With that in mind, it seems justified that every monster is turning up. And hey, the Sontarans are back, looking like they did back in 1973. A direct update that remakes the classic look with modern methods and realism. More importantly, they're still funny, which is an important a part of what makes the Sontarans work as the clone armies and the probic vent.

I like John Bishop, and while he's hardly the greatest actor the show's ever hired, he's hardly the worst, and he does what he needs to: play the most Liverpudlian bloke in history and be jolly nice. It's interesting we've got an actually, genuinely poor person in the TARDIS, not another essentially middle-class companion. Dan (a fine name) is a decent sort in a shitty situation doing his best to help out and keep his chin up. 

I'm disappointed that we don't get more time with Jodie and Mandip running the show, though. An all-woman team in the TARDIS has never happened, so a Thirteen-Yaz team-up would be interesting to watch. The glimpse we get though, in the unapologetically silly opening, suggests they've been doing this for a while (there's the space for Big Finish's inevitable run of twelve boxed sets) between seasons. At last, Mandip gets to do something with her character, being proactive and impressive instead of just reacting and asking questions. Jodie seems more dynamic too, and I really feel we're missing out on not keeping the smaller TARDIS team for longer. Still, I like that Dan is the damsel in distress and that the two women have to come in and rescue him. 

As for the various new aliens... Karnavista is fun. I like that he's just an ordinary bloke doing a job he's not keen on but he's going to get it done, and the Doctor just keeps hassling him. The serious daffiness of an alien dog for every human dovetails into the reveal of the Flux, the infinity wave coming for the Earth. It's intriguing that Karnavista is, or was, part of the Division, which we'd assumed to be a purely Time Lord organisation.

As for our big bad... well, it's not Davros, in spite of every fan and his aunt's assumption because of the sunken eyes. Swarm (surely that name suggests a composite creature of some sort) is a gnarly skull-faced crystalline guy, apparently imprisoned by the Division donkeys ago. What do you want to bet the Doctor helped lock him up? Are we supposed to know who he is or where he's from? The first thing I thought was Eldrad, but that seems unlikely. Is Chibnall enough of a fan of the Eighth Doctor Adventures to link the Doctor back to the crystalline skeletons of the Council of Eight? Even more unlikely, but it would be hilarious.

Swarm gets out and goes on a little drive to Scandinavia, where he kills some guy who likes chillis and reverses the disguise of a human into his mate/sister/partner-in-crime, whatever, Azure. Swarm's intimidating enough, but the big reveal that the nice lady is actually another crystalline skeleton is a bit of a pointless twist. We don't care enough about her or her husband for it to mean anything, and we don't know enough about Swarm and Azure for the reveal to make an impact. When Ruth turned into the Doctor or O. was revealed as the Master, it was a shock, because the characters had been built up enough and the reveal meant something. This is just... stuff happening.

Claire's story is more intriguing. It's a pretty straightforward update of “Blink” so far, except that we're seeing it from the Doctor's perspective instead. We've a full-on Weeping Angels episode coming, so we'll find out some more then, but right now, it was an effective little tease. Is Claire perhaps being set up as the next companion? We've also the weirdness of Dan's crush Diane being abducted by Swarm and Azure with what seems like some vengeance in mind. This all suggests something much bigger underneath what we're seeing. Everyone has secrets this season, it seems. Is Dan just being cool when he jokes he has a mate with a TARDIS bigger than the Doctor's, or is he hinting at something?

“The Halloween Apocalypse” is, essentially, a string of set pieces introducing various characters and settings. Not much to say about Vinder yet except we know he's going to be a major character. We've still got the real-life mystery of the tunnels under Liverpool's Edge Hill, the promise of Mary Seacole next week and a Sontaran invasion in the offing. So far, it's largely style without substance, but that's OK for a opening episode. It's all flavour. We just have to see if the resolution backs it up.

I'm surprised and delighted

 So, with a few moments to catch up, let's reflect on the big news of the Doctor Who world: Russell T. Davies is coming back as showrunner. I think I can speak for pretty much everyone when I say that this is unexpected. After all, RTD stepped down as showrunner almost twelve years ago, with his involvement in Doctor Who's wider universe continuing just a few years further into the Moffat era, with Torchwood: Miracle Day and an instalment of The Sarah Jane Adventures. He did a few bits of extra material for the lockdown, novelised Rose, and has given Big Finish his earliest script submission for a dust-off, but essentially, it looked like he was done with Who.

And yet, he here is. Quite how the BBC persuaded him to come back is unknown, although I imagine a substantial amount of money was involved, but beyond that, it's not like he's struggling for work. RTD is, if anything, a hotter property now than he was in 2003, when the Beeb basically brought back Doctor Who just to get him on staff. One thing he's said before in interviews is that he'd come back if the series was in trouble, and I think we can probably assume that this is what's going through his mind. 

The degree to which the Chibnall era of Who is failing has been blown out of proportion. Series eleven did rather better than the two before it, and while the twelfth series hasn't fared so well, concerns over ratings dropping over the course of each season aren't so significant considering that this happens with every run, sometimes with an upturn for the finale, but not usually a major one. TV ratings have dropped across the board, with traditional television struggling in the face of high-budget streaming productions on Netflix and Amazon. That said, I think it's hard to argue that the series' writing hasn't gone downhill, or that public and fan perception of the series has deteriorated. Some of this is down to sexism against Whittaker's Doctor and the "anti-woke" backlash, and some of this is down to the fact that the series has been on for a long time now so simply isn't as fresh and interesting as it once was. 

Nonetheless, as much as I've enjoyed the recent series, the standard isn't as high as it once was. Chibnall, although full of excellent ideas (and I, in the main, like the Timeless Child reveal), isn't anywhere near as strong a writer as RTD or Moffat. There were always duff episodes in a season, but with fewer episodes each time, there's less room for filler. The six-part thirteenth series really has no excuse to be anything other than excellent, and it has to be said, bringing RTD back, with a big announcement before S13 has even started, suggests a lack of faith in Chibnall's approach on the BBC's part . 

The programme has become very inward-looking in recent years (with S11 being a noticeable outlier), like the original run did in the eighties, which is potentially alienating for the general audience. What RTD did back in 2005 was relaunch a programme that had largely been forgotten, and that was thought of by those who remembered it with mockery. (Except for us true believers, of course.) RTD made that show relevant again, reinventing it, ditching what didn't work and keeping the essentials, slowly drip-feeding the audience with the more outlandish and geekier elements as they were slowly converted. A new, modernised and streamlined approach is exactly what Doctor Who needs again.

Of course, RTD has done this once. Can he do it again? Series one to four were very of their time and the approach was running out of steam by the time Tennant and RTD left. A redo of this would be just as tired as the current series. However, this is Russell T. Davies we're talking about. In fact, this is his whole team, with Jane Tranter and Julie Gardner as well, both essential to Doctor Who's comeback in 2005. This isn't merely a BBC production now, but a co-production with Bad Wolf, their production studio, named for, of course, the running mystery phrase in that first series. Judging by such recent series including It's a Sin, Years and Years and A Very English Murder, though, RTD's work is better and more daring than ever, and with his own studio involved, he'll have more creative control than ever.

In other interviews, RTD has expressed a frustration at doing Doctor Who before the rise of the streaming TV phenomenon, saying how he'd approach it like the Marvel Cinematic Universe. While I don't think we're really going to get spin-offs for Nyssa or Jo Grant (that's what Big Finish is for), a more serialised Doctor Who as part of a larger, interconnected universe could well be the order of the day. That said, RTD has spoken at length about how the workload of Doctor Who alongside its spin-offs (although the first two series of Torchwood were largely run by Chibnall, as it happens) nearly finished him. I hope he isn't taking on too much again out of his love for Who.

I assume the odds of Olly Alexander as the Fourteenth Doctor have been slashed again - although I'd still prefer Lydia West or Omari Douglas if we're going for a Sinner - but really, we have no concrete idea about what Doctor Who will look like when RTD takes back control in 2023. Exciting times again.

Where Doctor Who could go from here

 So, it's official: Jodie Whittaker and Chris Chibnall are leaving next year. After five years, but only three seasons, we'll have a new Doctor and a new showrunner. It's about par for the course for a Doctor, and Chibnall has stayed in charge for about as long as Russell T. Davies, albeit with far fewer episodes under his watch. It's confirmed that we'll have a single serialised story next year (originally announced as eight episodes, now apparently reduced to six), followed by three specials next year which will see the big changeover.

I'm sorry to see Whittaker go. She's not my favourite incarnation, by any means, but there have been moments of brilliance from her. Her first episode showed so much promise, but since then I haven't felt she's really had a fair crack of the whip. She's still not had her "I am the Doctor" moment where everyone stops doubting her. Chibnall... well, I was very concerned when he was appointed showrunner, but was willing to be proved wrong. He's managed that, to an extent. Certainly, there's been some great stuff these last two seasons, and it's not hit the depths I was worried it would under Chibnall (except "Orphan 55," which was appalling), but it's never held together the way even the weaker seasons under RTD or Moffat did. 

Who we have as showrunner next is completely up in the air. Pete McTighe seems to be the popular choice, and he could be very good, but I'm unsure what to expect from him. Mark Gatiss is a possibility; he's been "too busy" to write for the show lately, apparently, but might be tempted to act as showrunner. It would doubtless be a very old-fashioned take on the series. J. Michael Straczynski has put his name forward, which is interesting. He didn't get anywhere when he did the same for Star Trek, but his timing was bad (the Abrams movie was on the horizon), and while I'm no big fan of Babylon 5, I'd love to have him on the strength of his work on The Real Ghostbusters. The biggest barrier is probably his being American. Funny to read people bitching about Chibnall's "woke agenda" and also championing JMS. If they think it's going to be less woke under him, they should watch Sense8 and rethink their stance.

We should probably get someone British but not another white bloke. The Britishness of the series is a big part of its appeal overseas, but we need to mix it up - get some different perspectives. As for the Doctor, I imagine we'll have a non-white actor at last, although I think it's likely they'll have a man in the role. Having the lead be a POC and a woman would be too big a step for the BBC to risk, I suspect. But then, who knows?

Every fan, of course, has their own foolproof plan for how to revamp the series. While we're all doubtless miles off what we'll get, here are a few ideas for how things could progress.

The serial approach

I was thinking of writing an article on my view that a more serialised approach to the series was the way to go... and then they announced Series 13 will be a single serial. This seems eminently sensible. While there have been serialised elements in the series since 2005, it's still been largely standalone stories of one or two episodes that sometimes cross-reference. Television, particularly streaming exclusive programmes, has embraced the serialised format that encourages binge-watching. American Horror Story, Stranger Things, Star Trek: Picard and the Marvel series all take advantage of this. 

Individual episodes can be simple chapters of the story, or individualised instalments that add up to a greater whole. The serial doesn't have to be long; Loki ran to only six episodes in its first season, and was essentially a version of Doctor Who with a budget. There's two ways to go with this: a single serial per season, as with the above examples, or a series of serials each year, more like the old Doctor Who model. Oddly, slipping back to the older model, with more episodes of shorter runtime, might be the best option, allowing the budget to be stretched effectively but making a significant impact. Each serial could even be made available all at once, rather than the once-a-week model that is starting to become old hat.

The TV movie approach

At the other extreme, we could have something akin to 2022's promised set-up, with a few feature length specials per year. Sherlock did something similar, but reduced its footprint by bringing each run of three out in a two-to-three-week period. Spreading the movies over the year could make Doctor Who more of an event series, with ninety minute, self-contained adventures with a big budget spend. An expanded universe of support series, such as we had back in the RTD days with Torchwood and SJA, could maintain interest between releases.

The sidestep approach

Plenty of people have been calling out for Jo Martin to be cast as the Fourteenth Doctor, and its easy to see why: she made a huge impression during her brief appearance in "Fugitive of the Judoon," presenting a completely different way to do a female Doctor and, it pains me to say, rather overshadowing Whittaker. However, I feel many fans' reasons for wanting this is so that it would retcon the Timeless Child reveal by removing the implication that Martin is a pre-Hartnell Doctor. Unlike some, I'm a fan of this new element of the show's mythology (although the execution was rather flawed), feeling that it opens up all sorts of new avenues for the series to explore. That doesn't mean we can't have Martin back as the star of the show, though. Rather than regenerate the Thirteenth Doctor straight away, we could step back in time for a couple of years and explore the Fugitive Doctor's adventures as she works to undermine the Division. Again, though, would the BBC risk a black woman headlining their show, given the vicious reaction so many fans have had to the more diverse series so far.

The anthology approach

Every time a Doctor leaves, some fans start clamouring for their favourite actor to come back to the role. David Tennant's hardcore fans insist the series can only survive with him back in the role; others think it's beyond time that Paul McGann's Eighth Doctor has a proper series. This smacks of backwards-looking self-sabotage. The series needs to move forward to survive, not get mired in the past. And yet... one way it could work is a spell of one-off serials or series, each with a different lead actor. Whether they were in the main continuity of the series, or slipping into alternate realities, this could give earlier Doctors the chance to come back for a brief spell, and for big name guest actors to take a turn at the role without committing to a long-term contract, as with John Hurt's star turn in the fiftieth anniversary special. 2023 could star Jo Martin, 2024 Paul McGann, 2025 someone entirely new.

The ensemble approach

We're used to the series focusing on the Doctor, with a companion or two or three, and maybe the occasional Doctor-lite episode centred on a different character. It doesn't have to remain this way, though. Many sci-fi and fantasy series have large ensemble casts, with no clear lead, or a lead that shares the limelight. Many viewers feel the three companion set-up of the last two series was a mistake, and while many episodes have struggled to find enough for all the characters to do, this hasn't always been the case ("Praxeus" sticks in my mind as an episode that managed the various characters successfully). The larger ensemble shows tend to work around this difficulty by having longer runs and focusing on a couple of characters per episode, with the others running background duty or or even disappearing for a week or two. For my money, DC's Legends of Tomorrow might be the best template for this approach to Doctor Who: a relentlessly fun and very silly time travel series with characters from throughout time and space. Doctor Who could use new or established characters this way to manage a long season of varied adventures.

The reboot approach

Having built up almost sixty years of (often contradictory) continuity, it could be argues that it's time to wipe the slate clean with Doctor Who. The opportunity to start afresh, cherry picking the best elements of the previous adventures but jettisoning anything unwieldy or unappealing could make the show more palatable for new viewers. The showrunners could even go for an "Ultimate Doctor Who" style series that goes back to the programme's roots, retelling the earliest stories in a more modern style. 

On the other hand, this just seems unnecessary. Doctor Who is a series that essentially reboots itself every few years anyway, without ever actually cutting off the past altogether. Anything the current showrunner wants to ignore is happily forgotten, leaving them with decades of material still to draw on if they want, while recasting the lead and restyling the show. Still, dropping all references to the past, at least to begin with, could make the show fresher and less alienating. The weight of the series' past continuity has becomes overwhelming in recent years. That doesn't mean that the past has to be overwritten, though, simply that it can be left alone for a few years. 

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: The Ninth Doctor Adventures - Ravagers

SPHERE OF FREEDOM 

CATACLYSM 

FOOD FIGHT

It's still hard to believe that Big Finish have secured Christopher Eccleston for their Doctor Who audios. We probably have the pandemic to thank for that, since, as Eccleston said, it's a paying gig, and the sort that can be done remotely while screen and stage work is in a major lull. Still, I don't think anyone ever seriously expected him to return to the role, and while he's never likely to work for the BBC again, it's great to have him back in any capacity.

What's interesting about this set, which is made up of a single three-part story even though it's presented as three individual adventures, is that the Doctor isn't the brooding character we thought we might get. Given that Eccleston cited the quality of the scripts as a major reason for his taking the gig, it was safe to assume we'd be getting some of the heavier weight stuff he's best known for, all the more since these sets seemed to be set before the beginning of the 2005 TV series. Many of us expected a Doctor still weighed down by the guilt of the Time War, the broken character we glimpsed in "Dalek" and "The Parting of the Ways." 

What we get, though, is the grinning, goofy Ninth Doctor that it's easy to forget was actually the majority of Eccleston's performance in the role. This is the Doctor who has a powerful lust for life. Yes, this is his way of avoiding facing his past, and there are elements of the damaged Doctor there - a reluctance to trust, a reactive attitude when things go wrong. Overall, though, this a Doctor who's a pleasure to be with, and hearing Eccleston bring him back to life is a joy.

For better or worse, Ravagers is very much a standard Big Finish release. It's easy to imagine any of the Doctors from Fourth to Tenth arriving and having this same adventure. This is hardly surprising, since it's Nick Briggs writing and directing again, so a certain stylistic sameyness is inevitable. Maybe this is better, though, than some epic designed to showcase how different the Ninth Doctor is to the others. The difference comes from Eccleston's performance, not something forced into the story. In time, of course, we're going to be subjected to the rollcall: we've already had meetings with the Cybermen and the Brigadier confirmed, and Eccleston has expressed interest in doing stories with River Song and the Master. We'll get a multi-Doctor story somewhere along the way, and it'll be great to hear this Doctor interact with his fellows (in fact the only TV Doctor we haen't seen or heard meet another incarnation). For now though, this is just a fun adventure, not an exercise in ticking off a list of Doctor Who-must haves, or an event release. Just having Eccleston back is event enough.

Indeed, had this not been Eccleston's big return, it's easy to see this release being overlooked. A timey-wimey tale that utilises alinear storytelling and the characters experiencing events in different sequence, it's sometimes hard to follow due to the lack of any visual or prose clue to tell the times apart. The eponymous Ravagers are an interesting idea but fail to make an impact as monsters. Camilla Beeput is great as Nova, the one-off companion for the story, the sort of gobby young woman the Doctor immediately takes a like to, even if she is a bit of a generic assistant sometimes. Jayne McKenna is solid as Audrey, the sympathetic villain with a very un-villainous name, but she's never going to jump to the top of the memorable villains rundown.

No, this isn't groundbreaking new Who. It's a solid adventure that features Christopher Eccleston jumping back into the role, a return for one of the greatest Doctors ever, and for now, that'll do nicely.

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: All Flesh is Grass (Time Lord Victorious)

Well, this is the big one. It's the epicentre of the Time Lord Victorious storyline, the return to full length prose by the Eighth Doctor, the unprecedented team-up of the Eighth, Ninth and Tenth Doctors and a right royal monster mash to boot.

In the the cliffhanging final scene of The Knight, the Fool and the Dead, the Tenth Doctor, beginning his crusade against the Kotturuh and death itself, is confronted by the Eighth Doctor on a Dalek warship, and the Ninth Doctor on a vampire coffin-ship. This ties in with the DWM comic strip and with the Big Finish audios, the latter of which I haven't got round to yet, but it's all easily pieced together with the brief exposition from the Eighth Doctor and Brian the Ood. You could enjoy this plenty as a prose-only event, but grabbing the other formats builds a bigger picture. I'm less clear from the story here how the Tenth Doctor comics and the Dalek cartoon fit in, but I think they're knock-on effects of the Tenth Doctor's disastrous alteration of history here, which has brought his earlier selves back to fight him.

Una McCormack is one of the most prolific modern Who writers. With this novel, she's written for eight incarnations of the Doctor, I think (plus a ton of Star Trek novels and some Blake's 7 material). She gets the Doctor down to a tee, notably the differences and similarities between his incarnations. It's fun having Eight, Nine and Ten together since, while being successive (well, almost) they have wildly different ways of approaching things. The Eighth Doctor here is still fundamentally optimistic but sarcastic as hell, the Ninth Doctor is tending his war wounds and the Tenth is so fundamentally full of himself he knows he's his own worst enemy. I mean, he's literally his own worst enemy in this one, but you know what I'm saying. Yet they also work so brilliantly together. It isn't long before Ten stands down and the three Doctors try to work out a way to get out of this mess without making things worse (and just possibly making things better), and they work tremendously well as a team.

There's a lot of colour in this novel. The Ninth Doctor gets a short-term companion in the form of Ikalla, a vampiress who develops considerably throughout the novel (or perhaps the Doctor just learns to see her differently). Eight doesn't have a companion really, but is accompanied for a good portion by Brian, and also Hector, a spider plant (so that's where he came from! Monstrus Beauty now makes perfect sense). He has some great interplay with the Daleks, particularly the Prime Strategist who's become such a persistent character in Time Lord Victorious. Ten saddles himself with some galactic mercenaries but can't help feeling sorry for them and overpaying. It's like he's trying to prove he's the big bad God of Time but can't help feeling a bit bad about it all the time.

It's a rattling good read, anyway. I mean, it's got a vampire Dalek in it. How can you not love that? 

Placement:

For the Eighth Doctor, uncertain. It's straight after the BF Time Lord Victorious audios, but while they and this show him in his Time War costume, he reads as much younger and more positive here. He's perturbed by the idea of a universe without Gallifrey, but not distraught, so this is surely before the first destruction of Gallifrey in The Ancestor Cell (most new series books would ignore this but given the cross-pollination of ranges going on here I can't believe McCormack didn't at least consider this). I could happily see this placed during the earlier EDAs, especially as he mentions Romana and K9, tying back to the Shada webcast, which is very early on. 

For the Ninth Doctor, in between the penultimate and closing scenes of the DWM comic strip Monstrous Beauty, while Rose is recovering. Some time between "The Long Game" and "The Empty Child," most likely (could be either side of "Father's Day").

For the Tenth Doctor, immediately after The Knight, the Fool and the Dead, itself immediately after "The Waters of Mars."

WHO REVIEW: 12-11 - "Revolution of the Daleks"

 

After a very peculiar year, Doctor Who gives us a special which perfectly fits the times. Which is pretty remarkable, since this was all recorded before lockdown was even on the horizon (aside from a couple of picked up scenes, according to reports, but I couldn't tell you which these were). Aside from the sheer amount of hugging going on – not allowed these days – there's a distinct lockdown feel to the entire story, beginning as it does with the Doctor suffering enforced isolation, and continuing with a reunion with friends she hasn't seen for months. It's serendipity, but it adds something to the episode.

It's an interesting but effective choice to make a special so directly linked to previous episodes. "The Timeless Children" was ten months ago (the same time the Doctor's companions have been waiting for her, which is a nice touch), but the more direct precursor is the last special, Resolution, which was exactly two years ago. Thankfully, the concepts being followed up on are pretty straightforward and easy to grasp if you have missed or forgotten about the earlier adventures. Even the Timeless Child revelations boil down to "the Doctor learned something about herself that she doesn't understand" and this is enough for the special. She's reeling, the details aren't important right now.

The Daleks are the big draw of the episode, of course, but there's plenty of time spent on the Doctor and her many companions. The prison scenes are fun – lovely cameos from some old monsters – but the toll it's taken on the Doctor is clear. She's essentially in solitary confinement for most of her time there, it appears, which we learn has been decades. It's not even clear that she's tried to escape. I mean, it's the Doctor, so you'd expect her to, but she's still dealing with the revelations about herself and it seems she's spent a lot of her confinement just stewing over that. The other big deal of the episode is Jack, making his first proper return to the series after his cameo in "Fugitive of the Judoon." John Barrowman steps back into his role like he's never been away, and he shares a great, easygoing chemistry with Whittaker. Having the immortal Jack wait a full nineteen years in prison so he can get close to the Doctor is wonderful, and shows that he's learnt some considerable patience during his centuries of life (he did spend two thousand years in a grave once after all). On the other hand, having Jack swagger in and rescue the Doctor does make her seem like a damsel in distress, which is not where the Doctor should be at all.

In fact, Jack takes on a lot of the Doctor's role as the fun adventurer for the episode, as the Doctor herself doesn't quite slide back into her usual happy-go-lucky mode, and quite right too. It's wise having both the companions and the Doctor feel each other's absence for some time, although I wonder if the Doctor will ever tell them just how long it was for her. We know the TARDIS has a tendency to take the Doctor to where she's needed rather than where she wants to go, so I feel that arriving ten months late was a deliberate move on the Ship's part. Time for the fam to grow as well. I love how Yaz, Ryan and Graham are still investigating, but aren't immediately up to spin-off series standard. They still need a little time traveller help. Jack has some great chemistry with the team, but particularly with Yaz, who's slotting into the trainee Doctor role that Rose, Clara and indeed Jack all had as their character arcs. As with them, Yaz is clearly in love with the Doctor, but cannily, Chibnall is keeping any feelings the Doctor has for her ambiguous. She's certainly very happy that Yaz isn't leaving...

It's Tosin Cole as Ryan who comes across strongest though, which I admit, was a bit of a surprise. As I said when reviewing Resolution, Cole is strongest with the real life emotional scenes rather than the sci-fi gubbins. It's quite right that it's Ryan who actually sits down with the Doctor and persuades her to talk, and that he's the one who makes the decision to stay on Earth. He's developed just as much as Yaz, but in a different direction, and being the more down-to-earth of the two her naturally elects to stay on solid ground. Cole's magnetic in these quiet, dialogue-based scenes. The only companion who gets short shrift is Graham, a shame considering he's also leaving. Still, his final moments on the TARDIS are lovely. He clearly wants to continue travelling with the Doctor, but stays behind out of loyalty to Grace and Ryan. It's a quiet but powerfully effective moment from Bradley Walsh.

Following up on the Dalek scout from Resolution is a good decision. Everything in the episode is a consequence of previous events, rather than yet another unlikely situation coming out of the blue. The scout design was controversial (because no one's ever happy) but I liked it, but given that it was designed as a kitbash Dalek built on the run it didn't seem like it could be followed up. Having a bunch of humans acquire the remains and use it as the basis of their own Daleks is a clever way of reusing and reviving this new design. The new Earth Daleks work brilliantly, with the scout design built upon to become something sinister and imposing. Sadly, they're rather wasted. We know from the beginning that somehow an actual Dalek will find its way into the drones, but there's virtually no time to see the drones in action before this, or the effect this has on the British populace. Equally, once the drones have been co-opted by the Daleks, we have scarcely any time with them before the bronze Daleks wipe them out.

Still, there's some excellent Dalek action on display. I enjoy how in both episodes there's a focus on how the Dalek is a life form, not just a war machine (even if the Doctor refers to the mutant as "the creature that lives inside a Dalek," but I guess that's just simplification for Robertson). The Daleks are almost as dangerous outside their casings as they are inside, and honestly more frightening. The episode does rerun the previous special a bit, with the Dalek possessing Leo, but this doesn't last long and is more of a way to get from one part of the story to another. Having Leo clone the previous story's Dalek (cannily revealed to have a genetic memory as well, so it can pick up where it left off) is a great way of kicking off the plot, but I feel they missed a trick. Nathan Stewart-Jarrett is excellent as the young scientist, but having him as just a patsy and then killed off wastes him. He could have been a Davros figure, working with the Dalek.

Instead we get Chris Noth back as Jack Robertson from "Arachnids in the UK" nearly three years ago. I doubt anyone was desperate to see him again, but to be fair, he's much more entertaining this time round. Noth hams it up marvellously, and he's written as more deliberately villainous, so he's far more effective as a baddie. However, it's infuriating that once again, he gets off scot free. Surely they're building up a third appearance where he finally gets his comeuppance? Dame Harriet Walter, playing the power hungry politician Jo Patterson, is completely wasted. She's a great actor and makes for a great villain while she has time, but is also killed off far too quickly. I think it's inarguable that there are pacing issues in the episode, with some parts run virtually on fast forward. It brings to mind the seventh series during Matt Smith's tenure, when episodes were run at an absolutely breathless pace. It's certainly a fun, exciting episode, but the plot needs room to breathe as well as the characters' relationships. Still, for sheer spectacle, this is great stuff.

The Doctor's been through a rough time, of course, but she's particularly ruthless here, which, personally, I love. None of that nonsense about claiming to be pacifist or complaining that the other Doctor picked up a gun. The Doctor here tricks one lot of Daleks into coming to Earth to wipe out another lot, in the full knowledge that she'll have to destroy them too. It's a pretty mental plan, but it works, and the ruse of trapping the entire Dalek force in a collapsing TARDIS is brilliant. Again, incredibly ruthless though; that TARDIS is a living being as well. Can't imagine the Doctor's TARDIS was pleased about that.

Finally, we look to the future. We can look forward to an eight episode season this year, a sensible compromise in the face of COVID-19 restrictions. I'm glad we don't have another year without a series, and I'd much rather a shorter one than none at all. I would be very surprised if we don't see Graham and Ryan again, or Jack, and the dialogue around the latter checking in on Gwen certainly sounds like a hint we might see a Torchwood revival of some kind. (Chibnall, of course, was showrunner on the first two seasons of that.)

The sudden reveal post-credits that John Bishop is to join the cast was a surprise, but a welcome one. I enjoy his stand-up, and we've had enough comedians cast in the past that turned out well for the series (going right back to Pertwee, really). We'll see what he's like, but I'm optimistic. Interesting that we're getting another older man in the TARDIS as well. It's been confirmed that he's a new companion, however the BBC made such a big deal before about there being an entirely female TARDIS team for the first time that surely we'll get an episode or two with just the Doctor and Yaz? In any case, Bishop's character is called Dan, which is good news. About time we had a Dan in the TARDIS.

Monster, Monster, Monster

The prison asteroid (a whopping 79 billion light years from Earth, which is absurd) has amongst its inmates a Sycorax, a Weeping Angel, a Pting, a member of the Silence, an Ood, and hiding i the shadows, a Thijarian and a Skithra.

Ryan and Graham are keeping tabs on international paranormal events. They're off to look for trolls in Finland – that has to be the Sontarans we've seen filming, right? - and gravel creatures in Korea.

The Doctor starts a (mercifully short) Dalek civil war here. This is at least the third time she's done that.