Doctor Who

The podcast, which will start releasing weekly on Saturdays from March 2024, will showcase fan-favourite stories from Big Finish’s back catalogue, presented in episodic, 30-minute instalments.

Each episode will feature a brand-new introduction read by Sixth Doctor star Colin Baker, and will also include behind-the-scenes interviews, with the podcast being available via all podcast platforms, with listeners able to stream it for free with ads.

I like these types of lists because there's always a recency bias. The 7th Doctor was ranked the best in the 90s but now he's viewed much less favorably. I hated the 12th at first and now he's one of my favorites.

Anyway here's Wonderwall

Best - 4th I mean obviously who else could it be?

10th/14th Yes I am combining them

3rd Criminally underrated

12th I absolutely love how 12 is more of a scientist

11th For his first two seasons at least

9th My first Doctor

5th I like the celery bit

1st Bitter old man, it works

15th Too soon to call it but so far so good

2nd Almost as good as the 1st

13th I think Jodie did the best she could with the horrendous writing she was given

7th No strong feelings on him

6th Other than his jacket I remember nothing about him

Worst - 8th That movie was hot garbage I'm not sorry, I don't count his cameos

Actors come and go in the part of the Doctor, it's a revolving door by nature. But it struck me just now how long Nicholas Briggs has been doing the role as his nemeses, the Daleks.

Or rather, I'm wondering exactly how long he has been turning the knobs on the old ring modulator? IMDb gives his earliest Dalek credit as 2000's Doctor who: The apocalypse element, but surely they aren't listing all of his audio plays?

Big finish got the rights to produce Doctor who audios in 1999, were there any Dalek bits by him there — giving him an early silver jubilee this year — or perhaps earlier in unlicensed fan works?

I hope somebody better versed in the extended universe can help answer this. Either way, the fact that Briggs has played the same part in Who productions longer than the entirety of the revived series has been on the air is... monumental.

A shame to see Millie go so soon, I loved her in the Christmas special. Hopefully everything is fine behind the scenes and it's not a repeat of season 1's production

My first episode was Destiny of the Daleks all the way back in the 1980s, which I think was a good episode to start on.

The link is just one recent example of the wild entertainment it it to follow fan conjecture going off the rails from the most spurious of information. So it went like this:

1. Ahead of "Wild blue yonder" one of the announced bit parts was played by Susan Twist. Fans be like "Holy shit, there'll be a TWIST involving SUSAN!"

2. Turns out there was no such storyline in the episode, and Susan Twist is an actual actress who just happens to have the name. Fans quiet down until

3. Susan Twist emerges again in "The church on Ruby Road" as a contemporary concert goer. Fans: "She requested an odd song from the same era that her previous (possibly unrelated) part was from. TIME TRAVELER!"

4. In background footage from the "Imagine..." portrait of Russell T Davies, a framed, fake magazine cover captioned "Susan Triad" seems to feature Susan Twist again. Needless to say, this sparks even more speculation.

I'm not condescending to the people who engage with Who like this, after all RTD is actively teasing fans with snippets of advance information. I just want to let you know that I'm enjoying your fan labour from the sideline. With no new Doctor Who on screen for 4-5 months, I'm lapping it up 🙂

In fact, my own theory is that "Susan Triad" means Susan returns in a coming season as three distinct regenerations — and that we've seen two of them already this December:

• Susan Twist in several centuries-spanning cameos;
• Anita Dobson as "Mrs Flood";
• and finally, obviously, Carol Anne Ford returning for a (last?) appearance as the Doctor's long lost granddaughter.

Oh no, I've been Stockholm syndrome'd. I'm part of the game now!

So the 7th Doctor ended his run in 1989

The 8th Doctor started in 1996

Back to the Future 3 came out in 1990.

Emmett Brown's nickname was "Doc"

He visited Marty in his version of the Tardis (or train).

So I'm calling it. Between the 8th and the 9th, we had the War Doctor.

Between the 7th and the 8th, we had the Mad Scientist doctor.

He travelled around with his companion, Clara, and did science-y stuff.

In my household we've rewatched the latest four specials several times already, and May still feels like a long time away 🙂 So what do you all watch to tide you over until there are new Doctor who episodes airing again?

For a baseline, here are some of the things we've sought out to fill the very specific DW flavour of soft science fiction entertainment:

• Old episodes of Doctor who, obviously. Plus the noughties spinoffs.
• It's almost lazy to mention Star trek, and although we easily and often fall into that comfort rabbit hole I think there are other shows that are more in the Who vein:
• Fringe was an US show that borrows fairly heavily from both Who, X-files, and loads more. I don't think it'll be spoilers to say that specifically the image of Zeppelins to signify parallel worlds is an obvious callback to "Rise of the Cybermen"/"The Age of Steel". And there are a group of characters that seem to be a cross between Time Lords and the Watchers from Marvel comics.
• The ministry of time was a Spanish show about a covert time traveling agency. It has a lot of Who feeling, and time travel of course, but with its own premise that centres it on the rich history of Spain and good humouredly makes fun of Spanish national and regional stereotypes.
• The Lazarus project is along the general outline of The ministry of time — secret time travel authority that keeps history on the straight and narrow — but with its own, convoluted tangle of changing timelines. Only on its second season, this show' time travel shenanigans nearly did my head in, sort of like Dark when that was still good, but at a breakneck, Mission impossible pace.

Those are off the top of my head. What are your timey wimey or otherwise Who-alike go-to shows?

RIP Captain Mike Yates

Share your thoughts, delights, criticisms, and describe your face when

spoiler

the musical number kicked in.

Please honor Bill and Ted's Law: Be excellent to each other.

Just thought it would be fitting building while watching the matching Christmas special!

KIDNEYS!

All finished up

Some media outlets still use Twitter/X as a source for news and opinion, otherwise I wouldn't go near the site. Seeing some of the replies to a trailer for the upcoming Doctor who xmas special, I wonder why somebody feels the need to actively shit on a show they so clearly dislike:

Like most #DrWho fans, I won’t be watching. #DrWho is dead. The doctor is now black and gay, Sir Isaac Newton is now Indian, and the character of Rose is being played by a man wearing women’s clothing. #RIPDoctorWho #DefundTheBBC #DiversityHire

That quote alone has too many levels of wrong to pick over, but it will never not surprise me how little of the show's humanist messages these people have taken to heart.

Edit: Thanks for the "duh, Twitter" responses. I do think it's low hanging fruit to just blame the platform (which is, inarguably, a dumpster fire). Let's talk about reactionary fans instead, yeah?

TL;DR — at age 14, Peter Capaldi was so miffed that another teenager had been appointed by the BBC to run Official Doctor Who Fan Club, he ran a one man letter writing campaign to take over the post and club himself.

An analog era keyboard warrior, Capaldi sounds like he was a bit of a pest in his teens. The appointed Fan Club coordinator, Keith Miller, recalls that Capaldi "haunted my time running the fan club, as he was quite indignant he wasn’t considered for the post."

The linked 2013 article has some letters from show producer Barry Letts' secretary, Sarah Newman to Miller that reflects this portrayal of the Who star as a young pup. Miller ends by quoting a phone call with Sarah Newman following the "exterminated by Daleks" letter:

I asked how things were going with Peter Capaldi. ’Oh god, I wish someone would sort him out.’ Then she paused. ‘Actually, he lives in Scotland too – could you pop over to Glasgow and sort him out for me?’

By all accounts Capaldi was fairly terrible back then, but fortunately he channelled that deep fandom and knowledge of the show rather more constructively into one of the most layered and complex renditions of the Doctor that has graced the screen.

New entry in my blog about media that shaped me growing up - my first memory of TV is the famous cliffhanger to part 1.

I'd maybe still rate it as the best Dalek story but I can't be objective about it really!

I guess he got tired of the same question asked over and over again? 🤣

Since it's unlikely the BBC will be sacking the show runner and exec producer, nor severing ties with Bad Wolf, Eccleston's ninth Doctor is indefinitely benched...

Update:

@[email protected] supplied a link to a recording of the panel, and Eccleston provides a few more details, transcribed below. Just a few minutes in, Eccleston reminisces about looking out for Piper, this being her first big acting gig:

CE: This was pre MeToo, it was pre BlackLivesMatter, it was pre all this mental awareness stuff, wasn't it?

BP: Yeah. […] It was more lawless.

CE: It was lawless, as we found out subsequently.

On the shooting experience of one episode:

CE: We were filming an episode, and because the director was atrocious we ran three hours late. You know, the crew were not happy, we weren't happy.

He says he and Piper were late for the read-through of Dalek because of this, so if anyone is privy to the production schedule they can probably figure out if this is the same guy who was to blame for the exploding sofa...

On the circumstances of Eccleston's departure:

BP: I don't know if you remember this, but when you said you were going, I wanted to go as well.

CE: I didn't know that […] The whole thing was politically manipulated by others. It interfered with our relationship, but that's another story.

On what would be required for him returning to the character of the Doctor:

CE: (without hesitating) Sack Russell T Davies, sack Jane Tranter, sack Phil Collinson, sack Julie Gardner, and I'll come back. So can you arrange that?

Q: Did you find it hard to be associated with the character, given —?

CE: (breaks in) Not at all. I love being associated with the character, just don't like being associated with those people and the politics that went on in the first series. The first series was a mess, and it wasn't to do with me or Billie. It was to do with the people who were supposed to make it, and it was a mess. And the first series of any show […] First series, nobody wants to know. The BBC were like, "We're gonna keep a big distance from this". And then as soon as it was a success, they were all up close going, "I was responsible for that!" but they were all like... at a distance, like "This is a folly" — "Eccleston's folly", "Piper's folly", "Russell T Davies' folly" […] They wouldn't come anywhere near us, and then they'd jump on the bandwagon. Those kind of politics I'm not very good at handling. I can't swallow that shit.

When an audience member expresses hia sympathy at what Eccleston went through on the set:

CE: Listen, it wasn't like being down the pit. It's just politics! Everybody's got a job, you all work with people you don't like. Whether you're an actor, [in] a plastic moulding factory or... You know, a boozer. Listen — I was getting paid a lot of money. It's fine. (Laughs) Please don't feel sorry for me!

Whatever problems existed with some directors on the first series, it was definitely not the case with Joe Ahearne, whose work and aesthetic both Eccleston and Piper wax poetic about; Eccleston has continued working with him and they still have projects in development.

edit — removed the link to the second hand source which was, admittedly, a trash site.

If you're unwilling to earnestly, critically examine/scrutinize your beliefs, and discard them in failing that scrutiny or in light of new information, you are doomed to stagnate as a individual.

An important sentiment in these times of belligerent, entrenched ideologies imho.