Doctor Who (The TV Movie) - 4K restoration

Chapter the 348th, 30 years on, he's still back and it's still about time.

Plot:

The Daleks exterminate the Master (nobody knows why); his dying wish is that the Doctor should escort his remains to Gallifrey, and the Daleks agree to this (nobody knows why). It's a trick though, as the Master has survived as a globular snake-form (nobody knows how). The snake-form attacks the TARDIS, forcing a materialisation in San Fran Vancouver on 31st December 1999 (which used to be the future). On leaving the TARDIS, the Doctor is hit during a street gang shoot-out. A gang member Chang Lee accompanies him to the hospital in an ambulance with paramedic Bruce, but the snake-form Master has also hitched a ride. Because of the Doctor's binary vascular system, the surgeon on call Grace is confused and kills him. In the morgue afterwards, a delayed regeneration kicks in, and a new Doctor emerges. The snake-form meanwhile takes over Bruce's body. The Doctor wanders around a disused wing of the hospital suffering from amnesia, changes his clothes, and then finds Grace. She's quit her job at the hospital because the management are covering up that they treated an alien. The Master meets up with Chang Lee and persuades the boy to help him steal the Doctor's life force. The TARDIS power source, the Eye of Harmony, will help with this plan; when the Master opens it, the Doctor regains his memory. Its power becomes a threat to the world, which will be destroyed at exactly midnight. That's midnight Pacific Daylight Time, presumably. Anyway, there's then a chase, a MacGuffin (the Doctor needs to get a chip from an atomic clock to fix the TARDIS) and a big confrontation. The Doctor saves the world, leaves Grace and Chang Lee, and goes back to adventuring in the TARDIS. To be continued... actually, no, not to be continued, alas.

Context:

This may seem like cheating, as I have already blogged about this one, but I ran out of Doctor Who stories to blog last year and at the time of writing I'm still living through a long gap before they show any more. As a 'wilderness years' style break from creating and posting chronological indexes of my random musings for each Doctor - like the Paul McGann starring feature-length story, this blog post is positioned in between the classic and the new series Doctors - I decided to revisit the Doctor Who TV movie. Its 4K restoration, which I was lucky enough to get a ticket to see at its BFI screening in May 2026, anyway makes it seem like something new. In fact, as we in the audience were told at that screening, it was something new, even something unique - the BFI version was specially made so it could be shown at 24 frames per second (as is standard for movies) rather than the 23.98 frames per second standard of Blu-ray. So - in the nerdiest way possible - we were very privileged that day. Insert joke here about how lucky we were to see a TV movie that was over slightly more quickly.

First Time Round:

See my first blog post on the TV movie from early on in the blog's life for my memories of this story from 1996. Casting my mind back again to those days, I see further evidence of a theme that I'll come back to in the Reaction section below: the TV movie could not possibly be wholly successful because it was trying to please too many different groups. Why, for example, was the sell-through VHS of the movie available in the UK before it was broadcast on television? This was simply because BBC Worldwide had put money into the production's budget, and they wanted to maximise sales before a mass audience got to see the story for free. If one were to set out to make a straight-to-video Doctor Who special, though, one would almost certainly go about it differently to how one would make a special aimed at a BBC1 primetime TV audience (a one-off TV movie aimed at a US audience would be approached differently still, and a pilot for a US TV series differently from that). The upshot for me was having to make a decision about how to experience the story first as a fan. In the 1980s, I had been an excited viewer of new Doctor Who as it aired, and I was eager to be one again (even if for one night only). In the 1990s, though, I had become a collector of Doctor Who as it came out on VHS, and the urge to continue this, with something excitingly new rather than an archive release, was strong. I squared the circle by purchasing the VHS as soon as it became available, but not watching it until after the broadcast. As a small commemoration of this (so small that it would go unnoticed if I didn't point it out); I published my blog post indexing Paul McGann's brief tenure on the 13th May 2026, exactly 30 years to the day after the VHS was originally scheduled to go on sale. And this post celebrating the TV movie's sprucing up has been published on the 27th May 2026, the 30th anniversary of the BBC TV screening.

Reaction:

There's not much I can say about the magnificent restoration that's been done to the TV movie: when viewed in the NFT1 auditorium at the BFI, it looked and sounded amazing. The TV movie always looked and sounded pretty good, though. The restoration can't do anything to fix the script. If the look of the piece is stunning, the narrative just leaves one feeling stunned. Writer Matthew Jacobs for years thought Doctor Who fandom disliked his contribution, but anyone in the know would not blame him: the root cause - as I touched on in the Context section above - is that Jacobs was servant to too many masters. It was too much of a challenge creating something that would appeal to both US and UK audiences (and the executives that represented them) with differing levels of knowledge about Doctor Who and its concepts. The TV movie is the transatlantic equivalent of a 'euro-pudding' movie; this is a term used to describe large-scale European co-productions, where concessions made to the multiple funding sources from different territories result in a homogenised mess. US productions don't suffer in this way as much, because pockets tend to be deeper, but money still needs to come from multiple sources and there still can be the curse of multiple and contradictory exec notes pulling the writer in too many directions. The budget for the production came from four places: Fox, Universal, BBC Worldwide and BBC Television. Much as a UK-based fan viewer might have bristled at too much of a US focus, only Fox had the power to greenlight a series. Producer Philip Segal should have concentrated on pleasing them, and cut - or at least not highlighted - links to the past history of the show. Anything might have happened in terms of the movie's ratings that would have meant there was no future funding from Fox, but at least the pilot would have been coherent.

Some of the truly damaging decisions can't even be blamed on distant execs, but were made by Segal trying to legitimise his story as part of the overall continuity of Doctor Who, pandering to his inner fan. This is not hindsight bias either; even at the time, I was far from alone in thinking that featuring Sylvester McCoy and a regeneration rather than starting with Paul McGann was a terrible idea. This wasn't something insisted on by the BBC (who believed McCoy's years on the original series were a failure), it was all Segal. Focussing on the Doctor's rebirth not only delays the introduction of the star and the main plot, but it also skews the story's focus toward the more esoteric elements of Who lore (regeneration, finite numbers of lives, eye of harmony energy, etc.) instead of something more immediate and accessible like an alien invasion. I was the epitome of devoted Doctor Who fan in 1996, and I didn't care about that stuff, so I'm struggling to think of anyone who would have. Rather than be annoyed at little errors (McCoy holding the sonic screwdriver facing the wrong way, McGann saying the wrong total number of lives a Time Lord has), I was annoyed at anyone thinking they mattered enough to apply clumsy fixes (a blur is applied to the screwdriver, McGann redubs the line). When it's not tying itself up in these knots, Jacobs's screenplay creates some good set pieces, nice lines and good jokes. The casting is perfect, the direction is dynamic. But nothing makes any sense from one moment to the next, and every time I watch, the mounting number of questions this creates in my mind overpowers my viewing pleasure. I've seen the TV movie dozens of times over the years, but the questions keep coming. It's not just questions about Doctor Who continuity either. It can't be midnight everywhere in the world at the same time, can it?! That's just common sense.

Beyond issues with fictional continuity and real world logic, there are character issues. The kiss between Grace and the Doctor is one example. The controversy about the Doctor having a snog has been wildly overstated over the years; I don't remember it seeming too much out of place, even at the time. But Grace's reaction to it - asking the Doctor to kiss her again - doesn't sit well with her attitude before or after the kiss sequence, where she thinks the Doctor is a dangerously unstable individual. The inconsistency in her behaviour throughout regarding how much she believes the Doctor, and how much evidence she's given that he's telling her the truth (a plate glass window goes all wibbly in front of her, that should be a clincher) undermines the moment where she finally picks a side and joins up with the Doctor. This is the sequence with the traffic cop ("Now, would you stand aside before I shoot myself"), which I think is the one truly magic moment of the story. Jacobs captures the essence of Doctor Who in that one scene, and it's magnificent to watch (as long as one forgets anything that came before and after). Every scene probably works better if viewed as a standalone that doesn't relate to any other; even then, though, a lot of the material is very derivative of other sources. It's like a 1990s greatest hits: the paramedic and hospital scenes are very ER, the cover up of alien activity is very X-Files (the skeptical Grace acts as the Scully of the TV movie), the look of the Master is very Terminator 2, the cloister room is straight out of a Batman movie (it definitely has more bats than it does cloisters - it's more of a belfry room). Collectively it becomes a little too much, but it probably made sense to help the uninitiated in the audience orient themselves towards Doctor Who as similar genre fare.

It reads like I'm criticising Jacobs too much, but to reiterate: I think he did the best possible job with the contradictory mission statement he was given, and the same goes for director Geoffrey Sax and the cast. Segal is the one to blame, but it's hard to blame him too much either: the Herculean effort he put in over many years to get this one movie created, and for it to have even the slimmest hope of leading to a series, was almost as much as holding back death and turning back time and all that jazz. It's 30 years in the past now, and Doctor returned to TV as a going concern just under a decade later, so the only tiny trace of blame that can be left is for making something that looks good but doesn't hang together as a narrative. And that's something that's not exactly rare in US television nor in Doctor Who. 

Connectivity:

Like The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot, the TV movie 4K restoration features multiple actors playing the Doctor, one of whom is Sylvester McCoy. Both stories kind-of sort-of feature the Daleks: the comedy short directed by Peter Davison technically features only Dalek operators and props not fictional Daleks from Skaro; the TV Movie just has a voiceover for the offscreen metal meanies, provided seemingly by someone who's never heard a Dalek before.

Deeper Thoughts:

Walker General Hospital patient record for John Smith: the TV Movie at the BFI, 17th May 2026. Fan friends David and Scott, mentioned many times before on the blog, met me early on the Sunday morning of the screening. We took our seats in NFT1, the biggest screen at BFI Southbank. The programme was more packed than usual, and the event was even more like a mini-convention than ever, with a display of props in the building to view after the screening, as well as the usual signing stalls and Quiz of Rassilon event. The quality of the giveaways for the opening quiz was higher than usual, including some exclusive artwork and signed action figure sets. Regular hosts Justin Johnson and Dick Fiddy asked a number of people up to the stage to briefly explain what they'd provided: Al Dewar from toymaking company Character Options, Jonathan Wilkins from Titan Comics, and John McLay, the curator of a Doctor Who art exhibition. The quality of the prizes entailed the questions being somewhat more challenging than usual; does anyone out there know the address of the Institute where the Doctor gets the atomic clock chip (nobody did in the audience at the BFI)? Eventually, they dispensed with questions altogether and gave a prize to someone occupying a random seat number, K10 (as K9 would have been too obvious). A couple of prizes were given to those who'd travelled furthest to be at the screening; these were two American gentlemen, one from Boston, one from Virginia ("Don't give them the Blu-rays" said Johnson to Fiddy, who as usual was on duty delivering the winnings to people in the auditorium,"They might not work").

(L to R) Johnson, Fiddy, Pontiff

Next was the traditional round-up of social media posts about the event. One of which was someone asking whether - if they high-fived everyone in the front row - they would get a prize? "Let's see, " said Johnson, after which the tweeter fulfilled his part of the bargain, and Johnson added "The answer's No". Dear reader, this was just joshing and the game fellow did indeed get a prize. All this took longer than usual, leaving not much time to talk to Reecy Pontiff, author of a book called Leap of Eighth, which sounds like a fascinating guide to Paul McGann's Doctor's extended universe appearances. After her brief interview on stage, there was a sweet video statement from Matthew Jacobs shown. In this, he described the TV movie as "a stepping stone through the wilderness years". Then the main feature played out. There wasn't much in terms of surprising audience reaction, though McCoy's scream during the Operating Room scene elicited a few titters (it ended up cut for the first UK transmission, because of concerns about being too scary rather than too risible). There was also a warm round of applause elicited by the final caption with the dedication to Jon Pertwee, who died a week before the movie was shown on UK TV screens in 1996. Before the first panel, there was time for one more single interviewee to come up for a brief chat. This was Doctor Who props enthusiast James Sutton, who showed off the TARDIS toolkit, sonic screwdriver, and an Eye of Harmony staff from the movie. He also wanted to make a statement about something that had bothered him for years: because the 70s prop replicated for the movie was never used consistently by Jon Pertwee or Tom Baker, Sylvester McCoy has been unfairly maligned for decades. There's no way he can be said to be holding the sonic screwdriver the wrong way round. "A huge relief to hear that," said Johnson archly.

Sutton with original sonic and toolkit bag props

The first panel featured four people who had worked on the restoration - David Palfreyman, who scanned the film reels (twice), colourist Darren Mostyn, Mark Ayres, responsible for sound remastering and mixing, and supervising producer and picture restorer Paul Vanezis. They briefly outlined the negotiations with Universal that lead to 219 film reels being delivered to the UK in October 2025. This was in the nick of time, as much of the celluloid is suffering from vinegar syndrome, and might not have been playable had it been left any longer. There then followed round-the-clock work for the small restoration team, or most of them at least. After a detailed description of the overtime put in by David and Paul, Mostyn said "I feel guilty now only doing 9 to 5!". Vanezis was asked about whether there was any new material found, but he explained that it was a fairly lean production, so there aren't any significant deleted or alternate scenes that haven't been seen before. Everything will be on the Blu-ray, anyway. One thing that will be slightly different is a moment where the broadcast had a flaw because of a scratched negative. This has now been fixed, because it "Takes half an hour to do, unlike in 1996". It was a panel that was heavy on the technical detail, and therefore a little dry, but it ended with an impassioned speech from Ayres about the quality of the production, and Geoffrey Sax's work in particular. To anyone who thought that the TV movie was not real Doctor Who his message was "It bloody well is". The panel was followed by what Johnson referred to only as the last piece of footage to be shown as part of the screening. I assumed it would be a compilation of extras from the Blu-ray as is usual, but instead it was The Night of the Doctor in full, and it was wonderful to see it on the big screen.

(L to R) Johnson, Fiddy, Palfreyman, Mostyn, Ayres, Vanezis

The final panel featured Geoffrey Sax and Paul McGann. Sax began by saying of the restored version he'd just watched that "It scrubs up very well." McGann hadn't sat through the whole thing, and was asked whether he watches himself onscreen, as some actors don't - "I'd rather not". He explained that it has got easier as the years go by. Because of the strong memories of doing the work, he finds watching things he's in more like watching "A film of a holiday rather than following the story". Both Sax and McGann talked about how they believed while working on the movie that they would later be coming back to Doctor Who as a series: "There was an atmosphere of 'we'll reconvene in six months'", "You know the odds, realistically, but you can't work in that spirit". Sax outlined the differences between working on a pilot compared to standalone or episodic pieces. He also talked about Jacobs's script saying that most of it worked, but there was a challenge to create the final Doctor Master confrontation as the script just stated "They fight in a cool and interesting way". McGann added that sex scenes are written like that. This led to a discussion of the kissing in the TV movie. "The K word!" It was pretty chaste, thought McGann, "No tongues or anything". It was pointed out that Eric Roberts's Master also kisses Grace, and that's a lot more full-on. "That's Eric, though, isn't it?!" said McGann. McGann was also surprised that even to this day no Doctor has given a companion a 'frenchie': "Not even Tennant, like?"

McGann comes to the stage to join Sax

Both gentlemen answered in an unequivocal affirmative when asked if they'd have accepted the same job on a production that was just funded by the BBC without US involvement. Though later McGann did speak about some hesitancy agreeing to sign up for Doctor Who back in the 1990s. Had it gone to series, it would have taken at least six years of his life, and would have meant a move to live in Canada for filming: "The Stakes were high... my kids would have been Canadians". In the end, his agent helped him to be comfortable enough to accept the role. This agent was Janet Fielding (who had played companion Tegan in Doctor Who in the 1980s). McGann hadn't even known she'd previously been an actor prior to the Doctor Who offer as it wasn't something she talked about, but she was able to tell him from experience that (as he quoted her) "It ain't going to be like other jobs ... you'll still be talking about it in 30 years' time". Indeed he was. This may be an exclusive, I can't remember hearing McGann talk about it before, or it may have been a joke, but McGann said he is convinced that Philip Segal could not tell him and his brother Mark apart, and that's why both of them were invited to audition for the Doctor role. Sax discussed the practicalities of filming in Vancouver in the cold of January and February 1996. The final goodbye scene of the movie was shot in heavy rain, which gave Grace actor Daphne Ashbrook's hair "a life of its own". Yee Jee Tso, playing Chang Lee, fell into the fountain during that shoot. McGann described Tso as having a Tigger-like energy. Despite its comparatively large budget compared to BBC-produced Doctor Who, the TV movie was still made with speed and economy, with a maximum of two takes for any shot, according to McGann. He acted out a typical exchange: "Could we go for another take? Was it in focus? Yes. No you can't."

(L to R) Johnson, Fiddy, Sax, McGann 

What for me was the biggest exclusive of the day was Sax confirming that the Dalek voices heard at the beginning could have been worse. The post-production dubbing was done by a Canadian firm, The Loop Group, and none of them had ever heard a Dalek. So, what was originally recorded were some very polite Canadian voices chanting "Exterminate, Exterminate". Sax ended up having to voice the Daleks himself: "Some people like it, some people think it's absolutely terrible", "It's my Hitchcock moment... I'm also the chicken squawk". McGann talked a little about the making of The Night of the Doctor: it was shot in a day with writer Steven Moffat furiously rewriting as it was being made, handing McGann pieces of paper with new dialogue. He just had to lie to people (including the other Doctor actors when filming The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot) if asked whether he was returning for the 50th anniversary. It eventually did leak, so the release of the short was brought forward. It was supposed to be a red button extra on the anniversary day 23rd November 2013, but ended up released on McGann's birthday 14th November. Moffat texted McGann "Happy Birthday" when letting him know. McGann thought this worked out okay as instead of being lost in the anniversary hubbub, "It had a week to itself". The final question was Sax being asked whether he was ever asked to work on Doctor Who after its return in 2005. He had worked with people involved in post-2005 Who production before, and was indeed asked to direct a couple of times, but he had clashes on the dates involved. After that, he wasn't asked again. "They thought you were playing hard to get" said McGann. 

In Summary:

A transatlanti-pudding. But a very good-looking one.

The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot

Chapter the 347th, one of the two best things made to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who.

Plot:

It's late 2012, and the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who is less than a year away. The fifth Doctor actor Peter Davison is concerned that the planned TV special will only feature new series Doctors, and starts a campaign for old Doctors to be included too. He recruits sixth and seventh Doctor actors Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy (eighth Doctor actor Paul McGann could only promise to be involved subject to work commitments, and fourth Doctor actor Tom Baker doesn't answer his phone). The three of them protest outside Television Centre; a passing John Barrowman informs them that the special is being filmed in Cardiff. They get a lift with Barrowman, sneak into the studios via the Doctor Who Experience exhibition, and end up performing in the special inside three Dalek props. They celebrate while ignoring a phone call from Russell T Davies, who's also desperate to be involved. In post-production, the scene with the three Daleks is cut, but luckily they were also filmed for a scene where they hide under dustsheets (as the Zygons do in The Day of the Doctor), which makes it to the finished programme.

Context:

At the time of writing, the most recent Blu-ray season box set from the Doctor Who collection has been out about a month; this one showcases the 21st season of the series, first broadcast in 1984. I've been watching the episodes and extras on it continuously since it came out, and I'm only halfway through - it is a very comprehensive ten disc set. One of the extras I have watched already was The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot, Peter Davison's comic short film made for Doctor Who 50th anniversary in 2013. I did touch on this story in passing in the Deeper Thoughts section of the post on The Five Doctors, which I blogged in 2020. Seeing it again on Blu-ray, and listening to the newly recorded commentary on the set, I feared I hadn't done it justice with that fleeting reference, so am covering it as another unexpected extra for the blog in April 2026 (following the two episodes of Dalek Master Plan covered last time).

First Time Round:

One could argue forever about what's the worst or the best Doctor Who story. The Season 21 Blu-ray season box set contains one story (The Caves of Androzani) that has topped polls, and one (The Twin Dilemma) that has languished at the bottom of the same polls. A good few fans, though, find the former a bit overrated and the latter unfairly maligned. Official Doctor Who skits are much less numerous, of course; with less competition, I think there's a good argument to be made that The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot is the best Doctor Who skit. It was probably given a boost on my first watch from coming hard and fast after what is indisputably the worst Doctor Who entertainment show. Again these are few and far between, so there's never been a poll. If there were, Doctor Who The Afterparty would almost certainly come last. On the evening of 23rd November 2013, after having enormously enjoyed The Day of the Doctor anniversary story (another poll-topping story), I switched over to BBC3 to watch the Afterparty. This was a shambolic live show attempting to celebrate 50 years of a television show by being dismissive of most of its stars and interviewing pop band One Direction over the worst satellite link-up ever seen on live television. It did do a good service in featuring the three stars of the comedy skit that was to land on the red button service immediately after the live show, something that might not have been known about by many viewers. To say that the following 30 minutes of comedy were better than the Afterparty is like saying that chocolate is better than a tracheotomy.

Reaction:

Elsewhere on the aforementioned Season 21 Blu-ray box set, there is an interview with companion actor Mark Strickson (who played Turlough in the 1980s) recorded at the Doctor Who 50th Celebration at the ExCeL in London, the day after The Day of the Doctor's transmission. Strickson is a little grumpy from being in the middle of travel to and from his home in New Zealand (and - who knows?! - maybe from being at the Afterparty the previous evening too). Asked what he thought of The Day of the Doctor, he tells the interviewer that it was a good story, but maybe not that great as a celebration of 50 years of Doctor Who. Featuring all the old Doctors just with archive clips clearly wasn't celebratory enough for Strickson, and perhaps many other viewers. What's fun, though, is that - by extending a gag about his taking mock umbrage at this very idea - Peter Davison ends up creating exactly the celebration required. Stuffing The Day of the Doctor with all the surviving classic Doctor actors, many looking markedly different to how they did back in their day, could have been made to work (The Power of the Doctor has a good stab at it a few years later), but it would have been contrived and cluttered. Steven Moffat made the right choice; his insurance, of course, was providing production funding to Davison's comic short; he'd clearly seen that Davison had stumbled across an original and effective way to complement the main anniversary special. It's not just a clever name - the Reboot acts as a nice comic sequel to The Five Doctors, and has the same intent: to showcase as many Doctors, companions, guest stars and monsters as possible. It even has some call backs - the use of Shada footage to explain away Tom Baker's lack of involvement, and Davison getting to say "Sorry - must dash!" at one point.

It's funny too. Though Davison had long displayed comic chops as a performer, he was untested as either a comedy writer or director, but does both extremely well. His co-stars Sylvester McCoy and Colin Baker have also both demonstrated over the years that they can handle humorous material, and with their director they each form distinct and heightened comic personae as themselves (in inverted commas): Peter is a bit grumpy and at odds with the world, Colin is the slightly brash voice of common sense, and Sylvester - in a sweet performance - is permanently bemused. McCoy's delivery of "He probably won't", after talking of famous Hollywood director Peter Jackson's tendency to keep his cast hanging around until he gets a moment of inspiration, is worth the entrance fee on its own. Then there's his almost thrown-away "Got it a bit wrong actually" when he and Baker are both quoting their best Doctor Who lines. This is prompted by McCoy being asked by baker whether he wants sugar in his tea, calling to mind a famous scene in Remembrance of the Daleks ("Every great decision creates ripples" / "In your tea?"). McCoy was filming the Hobbit trilogy with Jackson around this time, which forms a running gag. Watching all these mentions of the director and his work, one doesn't think for a moment that Jackson would actually appear, but then amazingly he does, and even more amazingly we get Ian McKellen in costume as Gandalf too. It's the biggest but not the only casting coup. Getting Olivia Coleman was impressive enough - as is mentioned on the Blu-ray commentary, the joke about Coleman's ubiquity ("I'm usually in everything") has become even more relevant in the years between then and now.

One shouldn't underestimate the casting coups that came from inside the world of Doctor Who, of course. From the commentary, it's clear that a certain guerrilla style was required, with Davison grabbing any opportunities when he could (filming at a real-life convention allowed him to get a very funny scene with Paul McGann, short notice arrangements nabbed a quick scene with Matt Smith and Jenna Coleman, a sheer fluke led to an appearance from Dan Starkey in costume as a Sontaran). A sequence inspired by Davison's regeneration sees Steven Moffat haunted by floating heads of many, many companion actors from Doctor Who's long history whizzing around him. Most are accounted for, though it's a shame that Mark Strickson didn't get to take part in this very celebratory moment. He was in New Zealand during filming, of course, but then so were Peter Jackson and Ian Mckellen! John Barrowman gets a bigger cameo. The revelation of the personal secrets of "Barrowman" ("Don't tell anyone - please") is such an insanely good gag that I won't spoil it for the uninitiated by spelling it out here. It's undoubtedly coincidence, but the action meshes perfectly with the real world of Day's production: Tom Baker doesn't need to join the classic Doctors' protest as he's been cast in the 50th anniversary show already; Paul McGann is up for it but then drops out, off filming The Night of the Doctor. Davison, Colin Baker and McCoy appear in the sets used for Day, and interact with many of the real life production crew playing themselves.

It was only when Russell T Davies appeared right at the end of this story that I realised he had otherwise kept himself completely out of the 50th anniversary hoopla. Maybe he didn't want to steal any of his friend Steven Moffat's thunder. Or maybe he was just saving himself for this triumphant moment ("Quel dommage Davros!"). Everyone is more than happy to send themselves up, and it's all very good natured and fun. Doctor Who's a family show, and the stars and fans alike all talk about the Doctor family; as such, it's appropriate that this is a family affair. Davison's wife, sons and grandson appear in the story. His daughter appears too as well as producing the short, and she ropes in his son-in-law. Georgia Moffat and David Tennant are both hilarious, acting out being put-upon by Davison and reluctantly helping him with his crusade. Colin Baker's family are all present and correct and contribute to another funny scene. The sons of Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee are in small roles within the piece too. It's like the most expensive home movie ever, but is always entertaining enough to justify its existence (rather like the show that inspired it). It truly is the perfect celebration of Doctor Who's history in all its quirky glory.

Connectivity:

The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot, like the two recently found episodes of The Daleks Master Plan, features Daleks and journeys between different locations within one story. If one were to cheat just a tiny bit and include Day of Armageddon (the episode in between the newly found episodes, discovered a couple of decades earlier) they both feature human characters disguising themselves as aliens (the three heroes of the Reboot pretend to be Daleks and Zygons, the first Doctor dons the garb of alien delegate Zephon).

Deeper Thoughts:

More new old Who. After nearly a year of no Doctor Who on TV, spring 2026 brought not only a couple of found episodes, but three stories newly available in novelised form. These new Target paperbacks are clad in the usual stylish design, with evocative cover illustrations by Dan Liles. It may be my imagination, but the paper stock being used feels a little bit nicer than for previous books in the range too. Unlike the last few batches which concentrated on recently broadcast tales, these three adapt stories from 2005 to 2010. The first, Aliens of London, is a version of a story from the earliest season of the relaunched series. It's adapted by long-term Doctor Who extended universe creative Joseph Lidster. In an author's note, he celebrates ticking off a bucket list achievement in writing a Target novelisation. It surprised me that he'd not done one before now, to be honest. He's a good fit for the material (a favourite story of mine, by the way, though many wouldn't share my opinion). Like many a long-term fan, he comes to this book primed with approaches that have been used before for such adaptations. He chooses what I'll call the Malcolm Hulke method: finding or inventing POV characters within the story to expand on the events they witness. This undercuts just one moment: there's a great throw-away line on TV about a character having a "wife, a mistress and a young farmer" that doesn't work as well here because we've had a preceding scene where we've met all three at length. The rest of the time it works. I enjoyed sequences from the perspective of Barry (I'll give nothing more away - it's better to go in unspoiled) and Tosh (Torchwood's part of the action is somewhat expanded from the original). The strictness shown in avoiding any omniscient narration, and some nips and tucks for better flow, mean some details are lost, for example the rising hysteria about aliens that gives context to Jackie's reporting the Doctor and Rose to the authorities.

The inner life of characters like Mickey, Jackie and Harriet Jones brings out the melancholy in the story that TV viewers might have missed.  Lidster's work also nicely dovetails with Russell T Davies's short story prequel "Where Did They Get the Pig?" from a Doctor Who Magazine special in 2025. There's some nods to future stories, like a scene of Captain Jack watching Margaret Blaine escape to the Isle of Dogs at the end. Jenny T Colgan gets to pull the same trick in her adaptation of the Weeping Angel 2-parter from Matt Smith's first season, The Time of Angels. River Song's inner thoughts are informed by the knowledge she has that Amy is her mother, even though that wasn't revealed to the audience back in 2010 (presumably the writer of the TV version Steven Moffat already had it in mind back then). With the full details of River, Amy and the eleventh Doctor's character arcs (which Moffat probably hadn't fully worked out this early) known to her, Colgan is able to be add many nice touches, and she captures all the characters well. There's also a - very nerdy, but nonetheless welcome - reference to Amy somehow being linked to the Pompeiian character also played by Karen Gillan in earlier story The Fires of Pompeii. All the stories adapted this time are 2-parters, so there isn't the need to put in much extra material to fill the page count. Colgan adds an opening section introducing the person that wrote the journals about the Weeping Angels referenced by River and the Doctor; amusingly, this is a person from our present who romanticised the past and sought the Angels out to send him there. He finds once he's living in it that it's very far from being a golden age.

If you want more radical new material, then the final one of the three books is for you. This is Matt Jones's The Satan Pit, based on his own scripts for the 2006 David Tennant story. If Lidster took the Malcolm Hulke approach, then Jones does it like Donald Cotton: he reshapes the material using a framing device where his characters tell the tale in their own words. We join the story after the events depicted on TV have taken place, and the rest of the book is formed of first-person testimonies from the three survivors, Ida, Danny and Zack, to authorities that disbelieve their talk of a magic man in a flying box that saved them. The book acts therefore as both novelisation of and sequel to the TV version. Like Lidster, Jones is rigorous about limiting the action to what these three characters' experience, though at the end there's a clever way of covering the climactic events for which none of them are present. Like Colgan, he makes use of future developments in the series after this story - by the end of the book, the Ood have been liberated (as shown in TV in Planet of the Odd, a couple of years on from The Satan Pit), and there's an addendum connecting to The End of Time. Jones tweaks the characterisations of the guest cast to make them more distinct from one another. Danny becomes a hopeless romantic who rapidly develops a somewhat creepy crush on Rose. Having this as Danny's emotional starting point gives more room for him to mature into as the story progresses. I don't rate the TV version of this story that highly (though many wouldn't share my opinion), but this prose version is much better. The book ends with a courtroom drama climax, the resolution of which will be new to anyone reading, For this reason, and for its more original structure, it's probably my favourite of these latest three books, but all of them are definitely worth a read.

In Summary:

A very expensive home video, but much better than that sounds!

Index: Sylvester McCoy

Sylvester McCoy's Seventh Doctor Stories ...

Season 24:

Time and the Rani

Paradise Towers

Delta and the Bannermen

Dragonfire

Season 25:

Remembrance of the Daleks

The Happiness Patrol

Silver Nemesis

The Greatest Show in the Galaxy

Season 26:

Battlefield

Ghost Light

The Curse of Fenric

Survival

1996 special:

Doctor Who (The TV Movie) and the 4K restoration thereof

Return Appearances:

The Power of the Doctor

Spin-offs, crossovers, and such:

Search Out Space

More than 30 Years in the TARDIS

Death Comes to Time

Honorable Menshes:

The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot (Sylvester McCoy, but not playing the Seventh Doctor)

In Summary:

The clown / arch-manipulator one.

Search Out Space

Chapter the 335th, is - if one's honest - not that ultimate a challenge (it's barely 20 minutes long).

Plot:

The Doctor presents the Ultimate Challenge, an intergalactic game show (presumably beamed out to millions of viewers picking up the signal on their Time-Space Visualisers). The challengers on the show are Ace, K9 and an alien called Cedric (from the planet Quirk according to the ever-reliable internet, but the subtitles on my DVD - erm, I mean Time Space Visualiser, of course - say it's the planet Glurk). Various questions are posed about planetary motion and other aspects of astronomy. Occasionally, the programme is interrupted by commercial breaks. At one point K9 can't answer a question and ends up transported into deep space, where the Doctor rescues him. The final question from the Doctor challenges people to find the key to the universe in 30 seconds. K9 tells him this can't be done, and that's the correct answer. The Doctor has an ice cream, and the programme concludes.

Context:

As you can see in the Milestone Watch below, there are very few Doctor Who stories left for me to cover. I'm also running short on curios like Search Out Space to intersperse with those stories, but there are still a few left that meet my set criteria for spin-off inclusion. To whit... Does it star the Doctor? In the case of this story, that's a definite yes. Was it released as an official Doctor Who or spin-off story (i.e. its not an unofficial fan-made proposition)? Yes. Is there a dramatic context to the story (i.e. it's not just a skit)? It's not just a skit and there is a small element of jeopardy (ish). Was it released with the intention of being the main attraction for audience engagement (i.e. it's not just an extra on a DVD or Blu-ray)? Yes. Like the recently blogged Shada webcast, Search Out Space did end up as an extra on a DVD eventually, but when it first came out, it was the main attraction. Have I already covered it in passing with another connected story? No. That was good enough for me, so I watched it - from the Survival DVD disc upon which it eventually ended up - on my own one evening in late July 2025.

Milestone watch: I've been blogging new and classic Doctor Who stories in random order since 2015, and I'm now approaching the point where I catch up: aside from sideways trips into spin-offs like this, the tally stands at 11 Doctors' televisual eras completed (Doctors 1-4, 7-9 and 11-14), and 37 out of the 41 seasons completed to date (classic seasons 1-18, 20, 21, 23-26, and new series 1, 2, and 4-14). Of the 892 episodes of Doctor Who from An Unearthly Child up to The Reality War, 14 now remain.

First Time Round:

Search Out Space was shown on UK TV channel BBC2 on 21st November 1990, almost a year after the last Doctor Who story proper was shown on BBC1. Circumstances when the 1989 season came to an end were similar to the time of writing this in 2025: without a commission for a future run, there was uncertainty about the programme's future. To get a tiny little bit of new in-character material from Sylvester McCoy's Doctor and Sophie Aldred as Ace (not to mention an appearance from K9) was an early Christmas gift for fans, even though it was just an edition of an educational programme called Search Out Science. For some reason, though, I didn't watch it. I must have known it was going to be on (I was regularly buying and reading Doctor Who Magazine in late 1990). Perhaps, as a serious 18-year old, I thought watching a kids' programme (as opposed to the proper, hard-hitting drama that was Doctor Who) was beneath me. The first time I saw it would therefore have been when the aforementioned Survival DVD came out in April 2007.

Reaction:

Of all the Doctor Who curios I've covered on the blog, this might be the most curious. Search Out Space is very odd for an educational programme: all the questions posed in the course of the narrative, such as it is, aren't answered. What shape is the Earth? What makes day and night? What causes the seasons of the year? They aren't necessarily hard to answer, but the programme was aimed at a primary school audience, so you'd expect there to be some confirmation of hard facts included. Instead, the characters drop hints and give clues, but leave it up to the audience to decide. Perhaps the intention was that it would prompt discussion after viewing with a parent or a teacher. There are meta questions without an answer too. For example: if one wants to engage a young audience, why use characters from a TV show that had been cancelled a year earlier? Twelve months is a long time in a primary school playground. Did any of the kids watching remember as Sylv did his 'standing on a wobbly platform' acting against a green-screen (which he does fantastically well, of course) that he was once a hero who battled monsters? Aside from the very beginning credits (Search Out Science was a strand that presumably searched out lots of different topics in other episodes less memorable to Doctor Who fans), it's all Doctor Who; the Who theme is played immediately after those credits and also accompanies the end credits, and there's no explanation or introduction to explain that these are characters from another series. It's an odd approach to give over an episode on one show wholly to another, and would be odd even if the incoming show was a raging success rather than yesterday's news.

Another meta question without an answer: why get actors in to play specific characters only for those characters to present a fictional in-universe programme? Why not cut out a step and just have Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred present a quiz about space? Instead, nobody breaks character, even though they're not doing things those characters normally do (adventures, monster defeating), but are doing things that the actors who play them have done often (presenting children's television). It saves the programme makers having to write and make a Doctor Who style of story, of course, but it's something of a wasted opportunity: an exciting adventure narrative, even with the low budget that the programme had, would probably have been more engaging than disconnected scenes such as K9 whizzing around London trying to decipher what parts of a star's life cycle various coloured sweets represent, while the others cheer him on in a chaotic and noisy fashion. That bit ends with K9 transported into outer space, so at least the Doctor gets to be Doctorish when he goes to rescue him. Though they don't leave any unanswered questions, apart from maybe 'Uh?', the commercial breaks in between the action - actually a succession of comedic sketches - are uninspired. The programme then ends with another question with no answer. The final challenge is about the "key to the universe". I assumed this was some kind of metaphor, and the answer was going to be 'We don't know the key to the universe, but we keep searching and learning new things' or something similar. Instead, K9 just says that it is "hopeless" and the Doctor grins and agrees. It's a bit of a bum note to end an educational programme with a comment about the hopelessness of trying to discover difficult truths.

This wasn't the very last gasp of the classic era (there was still the extended Children in Need skit Dimensions in Time and the Paul McGann TV movie to follow later in the 1990s) but it's close to the end. Despite Search Out Space's oddness, it is fitting that Doctor Who had come full circle, regaining the educational remit it had when the show started in 1963. Just as Sydney Newman wanted, it is again highlighting scientific concepts to young viewers. 

 

Connectivity:

Both Search Out Space and The Robot Revolution feature at least one robot, and see the Doctor rescuing someone who's been transported off Earth. In both, the TARDIS hovers in space at one point. 

Deeper Thoughts:

Past Masters, Ranis, Sontarans, Yeti, Autons, etc. Search Out Space, as mentioned above, was an extra with season 26 story Survival on its DVD release (Survival being the most recently broadcast Doctor Who story before Search Out Space was shown). Intriguingly, though, it wasn't included on the Blu-ray box set of the season that included Survival, nor either of the other two Sylvester McCoy seasons. (An aside: isn't it nice that Sylv is the first 20th century Doctor to have his entire oeuvre released in an HD format? He was so often associated with being the last of something; it's good that he gets to be first in that particular race.) What could be going on with this missing extra? It might be something prosaic like a lack of space on discs, or an issue with rights. Fandom has a different theory, though. The Blu-rays (with umbrella title Doctor Who: The Collection) are season by season releases that started in 2018; the intention is to create the definitive library of Doctor Who TV stories from the classic era. As well as stories, the collection aims to be definitive in accompanying documentaries and featurettes too: one thing that the makers of the discs have been sticking to is ensuring pretty much everything that was included on the DVDs in the way of extras carries over to their HD disc versions, along with even more value added material. At the time of writing this in summer 2025, they're well past half way done. There are 26 seasons of classic Who, and - as with this blog - the collection has been releasing season box sets in random order. There are nine unreleased seasons (five out of the six black and white runs, a Pertwee season, two Tom Baker seasons and a mainly Peter Davison season that includes one Colin Baker story at the end).

One of the remaining Tom Baker seasons (season 13) was announced in July 2025 to be coming out later in the year; so, there will be a maximum of eight sets left going in to 2026. Or will there? Sylvester McCoy may be associated with Doctor Who endings, but he wasn't the last Doctor of the 20th century; that was Paul McGann in the TV movie mentioned in the Reaction section above. In addition, as well as Search Out Space, there was Dimensions in Time, and the Shada webcast (all also mentioned above). Plus, there were three other webcasts made between 1990 and 2004, the years where Doctor Who wasn't being made as an ongoing series (sometimes referred to as the wilderness years). None of these have been included on any Collection Blu-ray set. The fan rumour is that all these and more are being held back for a 27th Doctor Who Collection set, to cover The Wilderness Years. Could it be true? There's been no official word, but most fans online seem to believe it. There are many mock-ups of box set art and proposed contents lists out there, should you care to look for them. I can understand the desire on behalf of fandom to will such a thing into existence. Looking at an analogous collecting space - the official recorded tracks of The Beatles - one sees a precedent for this 'cleaning up the offcuts' idea. The Wilderness Years box set, should it happen, will be the equivalent of the Beatles Past Masters albums.

The Beatles were in many ways a collector's dream with regards to neatness. Depending on how you judge it, they only had 12 or 13 studio albums. A side of material was paired with the songs from an EP to make Magical Mystery Tour, and another side of material was paired with some orchestral music by George Martin for the soundtrack of a movie on Yellow Submarine. Beyond that, though, there were only enough non-album singles and B-sides, and other odds and sods, to make two volumes of Past Masters collecting up the stuff that wasn't on any other album. These two volumes were first released under that title in the late 1980s (just before Sylvester McCoy bowed out of Who as an ongoing series). Later, to satiate a hungry market, there were a few collections of studio outtakes, alternates and experiments, but the Beatles output when they were a going concern is limited to a maximum of 15 discs. Doctor Who, though, has a tendency to sprawl by comparison. The Beatles as a recording group were limited to four people. Doctor Who, on the other hand, belongs to everyone. If William Hartnell isn't involved, it still counts. It's far from an ordered democracy too, more like a billion spores from many many dandelions being blown into the wind. It was only after about a year from the start of Doctor Who in 1963 that comic strip adventures and books featuring the good Doctor started, and they haven't stopped since. There's then been audios and spin-offs and fan made videos and more besides. So, it's very likely that there could be a 27th box set of Doctor Who: The Collection, there's certainly enough material for it; just don't expect it to be definitive, complete, final or neat. Doctor Who can't be contained like that.

In Summary:

Raises questions that it`doesn't answer, the biggest being Why? (Unless the answer is "To give a tiny little extra something to Who-starved fans".)

Death Comes to Time

Chapter the 322nd, is like an alternative universe version of a favourite science fantasy franchise (but probably not the one you're expecting). 

Plot:

The Doctor and an android companion he's made for himself, Antimony, are sent a message (in a weird way) by another Time Lord, the Minister of Chance. Two Time Lords (the Time Lords don't seem to live on Gallifrey anymore and are only a few in number scattered around the universe) have been killed on Earth, and the Minister wants the Doctor to investigate. The Minister in turn will return to the planet Santine where the Doctor was previously, and help its people against the invading General Tannis, an evil Time Lord. Ace is a prisoner of Tannis but another Time Lord Casmus rescues her, and trains her to become a Time Lord. The Doctor and Antimony work with a UNIT operative Speedwell on Earth, discovering that two vampires are behind the killings of the Time Lords and some other massacres of innocent people in London. The Doctor kills one vampire by allowing it to drink a little of his blood after secretly eating some garlic (yes, really). The other is killed by Speedwell. The Doctor and the Minister then both separately help the rebels of Santine; well, that's the plan, but neither are very effective. Tannis is a step ahead of the Doctor and kills Antimony. The Minister in anger at the rebel leader getting killed lets rip with his superpowers (the Time Lords have superpowers now), destroying many of the invading troops. Tannis has already left, though; he's planning to invade Earth. Tannis finds and kills Casmus. Ace has been given a TARDIS to travel to a planet where she faces a test. She fails, but this is all part of her training. The Doctor meets her and they travel to Earth. The Brig, Speedwell and UNIT have spaceships now and are ready for the invasion. Tannis confronts the Doctor near Stonehenge. The Doctor uses his superpowers (see above) to destroy Tannis at the cost of his own life.

Context:

So, the blog is again veering away from the resolutely canonical, and therefore I must ask some questions of the next story up for consideration: Does it star the Doctor? Yes, he's a little bit sidelined but he's definitely there. Does it have visuals? Yes, they may be basic, but they are present. Was it released as an official Doctor Who or official spin-off story (i.e. its not an unofficial fan-made proposition)? Yes. Is there a dramatic context to the story (i.e. it's not just a skit)? Yes. Was it released with the intention of being the main attraction for audience engagement (i.e. it's not just an extra on a DVD or Blu-ray)? Yes. Have I already covered it in passing with another connected story? No. With a full house of correct answers, Death Comes to Time was cleared for viewing. I watched from youtube where all the audio episodes are presented with Lee Sullivan's accompanying art. This was over the course of a week in February 2025. I didn't try to get anyone else from the family to watch with me; the story is a bit too niche for that.

Milestone watch: I've been blogging new and classic Doctor Who stories in random order since 2015, and I'm now closing in on the point where I finish everything and catch up with the current stories being broadcast serially (which also might be the end of Doctor Who if you believe what you read in the tabloids!). Beyond the handful of blog posts like this one that cover notable spin-offs, I have completed eight Doctors' televisual eras proper (the third, fourth, seventh, eighth, ninth, eleventh, twelfth and fourteenth Doctors) and 34 out of the total of 40 seasons to date (at the time of writing): classic seasons 1, 3-5, 7-18, 20, 21, 23-26, and new series 1, 2, 4-11, 13 and 14).

First Time Round:

In 2001, I was an enthusiastic reader of and contributor to Doctor Who online message boards (see the Deeper Thoughts section of my 2024 blog post on The Scream of the Shalka for more details). The news that a pilot for a new Doctor Who radio series was being made was much discussed there (the driving force behind Death Comes to Time Dan Freedman who produced, wrote, and directed it, as well as his script editor Nev Fountain, were regular presences on the boards at that time). The news was received with much excitement and anticipation. The disappointment when BBC Radio 4 made the decision not to develop a series was short lived, if I remember correctly, as the announcement that it instead would be developed into a webcast on the BBC's Doctor Who website came very soon afterwards. In July of 2001, I struggled with the realplayer software and my dial-up connection and managed to watch all of the first episode. I thought it was okay; nothing that blew my socks off, but I held out on forming an opinion as it was incomplete. The rest of the story landed between February and May 2002, with chunks of episodes two to five becoming available weekly. The real player often crashed, or timed out; again, I may be misremembering, but I believe I then tried an option aimed at those like me with bandwidth challenges to stream the story audio-only. I found the story difficult to follow without the pictures, and I wasn't particularly enjoying what I was able to see or hear; so, I bailed on the webcast version. I tried again with the audio version when it came out on CD in October 2002. It was still a bit hard to follow everything that was going on, but I made it to the end on that go. I have not listened to or watched the story again until now.

Reaction:

At one point during Death Comes to Time, the words of Tim (as played by Simon Pegg) in the TV comedy Spaced where he says "Jar Jar Binks makes the Ewoks look like Shaft" came to my mind, which led to me thinking the following: Death Comes to Time makes The Phantom Menace look like The Empire Strikes Back. Unfair? Maybe a tad, but the comparison wouldn't leave my mind. This is probably because every moment of Death Comes to Time made it clearer and clearer to me that the mythology of Star Wars was its blueprint. The story is replete with space battles, rebels fighting invading troops and the like; those genre trappings are plentiful in many a Doctor Who story before and after Star Wars was invented, of course; Death Comes to Time, though, builds that material into the tale of the dying days of the final few Time Lords (Jedi), who have magical powers because of their connection to time (the Force), with one of their number Tannis (Vader) having turned to the dark side, but there is hope for a future generation as Ace (Skywalker) is being trained to become a Time Lord (Jedi) by old, beardy mentor Casmus (Obi Wan). There is no equivalent to Ewoks included, but this is a con not a a pro, I think, as some additional levity might have better offset the rather doomy tone. The story emerged from plans for a new Doctor Who radio series; as such, it should and did have free rein to be its own thing and not slavishly follow how Doctor Who had been done before. I've tried to bear that in mind when watching. It's complicated, though, by the inclusion of Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred as the Doctor and Ace. They are a direct link back to a version of Doctor Who that came before with wholly different continuity, set-up, rules and tone.

Another complication is that rather than being on the radio for a mass audience where this break from the past might not have mattered so much, it ended up as a webcast on a website made for fans. Fans want Doctor Who to be like Doctor Who, because they like Doctor Who. It's disconcerting as a fan viewer therefore when Time Lords are depicted as a few nomadic souls wandering the universe, bound by a code that prevents them using magical powers; Time Lords were never ever like that. It's mildly irritating when the Doctor and other Time Lords use those magical powers to resolve plot complications rather than their ingenuity, because one key aspect of the Doctor's appeal is his ingenuity. The Doctor does a bit of investigating in the second episode, but at its denouement the villain essentially gives themself up. He does a bit of planning to rescue a child later in the story, but that comes to nothing as the tables are turned on him. The climax of the story and defeat of the Big Bad just involves the Doctor using a magic off-switch to end the plot; it's imbued with a significance that it doesn't deserve, as it's essentially a cheat, by the Doctor sacrificing his life with that action. This ending is another source of discombobulation to the fan viewer, as it means they have to mentally edit out the Paul McGann TV movie from existence. A lot of those fans didn't like the Paul McGann TV movie, and have likely been trying to mentally edit it out of existence since they first saw it; if it were an easy thing to do they would have done it long before. All this adds up to make Death Comes to Time difficult to watch; and, as mentioned above, the technology already presented something of a barrier, so the difficulties are compounded.

It's fascinating in its way too, looking at an alternate universe take on the show; but. it would only be worth the effort if this new take was truly original, or at least engaging. Unfortunately, it's neither. Breaking with the past sets up the expectation that we'll get something new not just a tired spin on Star Wars, and engagement is undermined by there being too much going on. The action is split between the Doctor and Antimony's bits, the Minister of Chance's bits, and Ace and Casmus's bits. The first two of those are populated with far too many characters, most of whom have silly names that aren't enunciated well as dialogue is usually in haste or with explosions happening over the top of it. The battle that's depicted through most of the story's running time is between the Saltines and the Canestens - is that right? That's what it sounds like, but they are a type of savoury biscuit and a brand of thrush cream respectively, so probably not. The third set of bits with Ace's training is terribly dull; nothing happens in that subplot until the final episode, but that doesn't stop the other action from being interrupted through the first four episodes to cut to another sequence of Casmus being gnomic and irritating. Sometimes, often when they were just getting interesting, a subplot disappears for a long period while the others become the focus; elsewhere, though, there are sequences that restlessly cut back and forth between them after only one or two lines of dialogue (this kind of intercutting is a tell tale sign that someone on the production was trying to make two dull sequences seem interesting by chopping them up). Unnecessary cameos by good actors (Jaqueline Pearce, Anthony Head and David Soul each pop up at different points, say a line, then disappear) further muddle things.

Reportedly, Freedman had planned a 13 episode season for radio; perhaps trying to condense down all the ideas he had for that length of run to five parts created some of the problems I've described. The best section is probably the majority of the second part set on Earth with the Doctor hunting vampires. It has no superfluity of characters (arguably, it has too few as it is very clear who will secretly turn out to be undead given that there are no other suspects); it has a nice, grounded character in Speedwell (he's one of a small number of characters in the whole story that's not a Time Lord, alien, vampire or robot). It sees an honest to goodness mystery, albeit a bit of a gory one, that the Doctor has to use his wiles to investigate and address. If it was standalone, was tweaked a bit to make the Doctor more active in the denouement, had Ace swapped in for Antimony, and didn't have such an overpowering tone of pretentious ennui, it would make a great pilot for new Doctor Who for either radio or online webcast. What actually got made is neither fish nor fowl, a duck-billed platypus of a story. If one wanted to avoid doing something traditional, then it should not have starred Sylv and Sophie. It could potentially have worked if it just had the Minister as protagonist, but changed his name: a story with Stephen Fry playing the Doctor is better than one with him playing someone a bit like the Doctor. It also might just have worked if Paul McGann had starred in it, and died handing the baton over to a newly appointed Time Lord companion or the Minister or both (I can't see McGann wanting to star as the Doctor once more just to get killed off, mind). Anyway, time has passed, Doctor Who's back on TV and Death Comes to Time is what it is. It's probably worth it existing just to have the late great John Sessions in Doctor Who. He is having so much fun, unlike any of the others in the doomy cast of characters, and many of his lines are deliciously evil.

Connectivity:

Death Comes to Time and Day of the Daleks both have titles of four words starting with a 'D', and both feature Nicholas Courtney as the Brigadier, plus other UNIT personnel who report into him. Both see significant elements of the series return after five years away from viewers' screens. Sylvester McCoy returned as the Doctor in 2001 after last having been in the series in the TV Movie in 1996, the Daleks returned in the 1972 story after last having been seen in Doctor Who in 1967.

Deeper Thoughts:

Seriously? After being an early adopter of online social communication (see First Time Round section above) I have now, as mentioned in posts passim, given up social media altogether. I occasionally google "Doctor Who" just to check I'm not missing any news about the show, and that recently led me to see an online article published in February 2025 on the Spectator's site, titled "Doctor Who fans - and its writers - need to grow up". Prepare your Max Max Fury Road GIFs because obviously 'That's bait', but I clicked on it anyway. It was a very slightly more thoughtful piece than the usual clickbait; it also wasn't banging on about Doctor Who being woke, as I'd half expected (for those unaware or outside the UK, the Spectator is a weekly news and reviews magazine that's aimed at a highly conservative segment of the market). The writer can't resist a mention of the programme's "woke agenda" but at least has rectitude enough to put the phrase in distancing quotation marks. Mostly, though, the comment piece is a rant about "trash TV" or "pulp TV" (the writer uses both phrases) being taken too seriously. It was prompted by interviews done for the announcement of new writers that worked on scripts for Ncuti Gatwa's second season due to air in spring 2025. One of these writers, Juno Dawson, was quoted saying "Scripting the best TV show of all time is truly a dream come true"; another, Inua Ellams that "[Doctor Who] invited me to dream, to live beyond my reality" and added, "Getting to write for the show felt like touching God". Without social media, I don't know if there was a backlash from the online fan community to the Spectator article (as might have been the intention, at least of the sub-editor creating the headline), but the piece doesn't talk much about fans, anyway. Blame is reserved for the BBC.

Long-term Doctor Who fans are used to articles written by people who don't understand why anyone would like Doctor Who. I don't agree with the editorial slant of the Spectator, but I at least have empathy enough to understand other people might enjoy reading it. There is a nice line in the piece where the writer says "Part of the art of living... lies in knowing what to ignore". He couldn't manage that in this instance, though, because he feels that the BBC as "our national broadcaster" should not present Doctor Who as "a pinnacle of contemporary culture" or "a major artistic achievement" instead of the "mediocre kids' TV show" he feels it actually is. "Not everything need be high culture" he adds. As is often the case, though, he doesn't give examples of high culture, or even of any TV that is not trash; he gives examples instead of children's TV, Top Gear and moments in an old Doctor Who story that are nicely irreverent, not falling into the trap of taking themselves seriously. He also states that "Entertainment is low culture" damning everything on the box, because who is making anything for broadcast - even in news and documentaries - that doesn't aim to entertain the audience at some level? If all TV, including expensive scripted drama like Doctor Who, is trash, then  - guess what - it's all of a level, so comparisons are pointless, a kind of lively arts communism that I didn't expect to see espoused in the Spectator. One could put one's head above the parapet and make an argument that Dickens or Shakespeare are high culture even though they were the popular entertainments of their day, but someone can always disagree and set the culture bar higher. Qualifying high culture becomes such a vanishingly small selection that it ceases to have significance. High and low culture labels therefore have no utility, and the discussion boils down to things that one likes, and things that one doesn't like.

That leaves the question about whether the BBC is right or wrong to hype up the quality of Doctor Who beyond its natural limits. The criticism here I think makes two fundamental errors. The first is to imagine that the content of a single BBC Media Centre press release (let alone the comments of a couple of excitable freelance writers commissioned to work on a series) is in anyway representative of the views or approach of the BBC as an entity, or the people who make Doctor Who as a team. It's a press release, hyperbole is de rigueur. If they could have found a Doctor Who writer willing to say for the press release that they were very excited to be hired to write for a mediocre kids' TV show as they needed the money, I think the Spectator wouldn't hesitate to use that as a different stick to bash the BBC. The second error is in imagining that the content of any TV story, or any dramatic work, is in any way consistent with the process of its making. Creating a comedy requires exactly the same level of seriousness and graft, perhaps more, than making a tragedy. Doctor Who stories (even Death Comes to Time, which was tonally quite dour overall) contain moments of levity and even frivolity. But the people making them can't be frivolous; the massive budget for Doctor Who (a big give-away to those in the know that it's not just a kids' show) and the sheer number of people involved mean everything needs careful, sober management. There's probably moments of fun involved, but never frivolity. One could make up one's own clickbait headlines like 'Overpaid Doctor Who production team needs to take things more seriously' that would spring up over right-wing media if there was ever evidence to the contrary.

  

An instructive example of this was also written about online in February 2025: the Doctor Who story Fear Her had a voice role rerecorded, so it could be returned to the corporation's streaming service, the iplayer. This was because the original voice over was done by disgraced news presenter Huw Edwards, who pleaded guilty in 2024 to three counts of making indecent images of children. The decision to do this was no doubt treated with as much seriousness by those behind the scenes of Doctor Who as any considerations by those looking at any one item of BBC news and documentary archive where Edwards was a presence. Arguably, though, a more delicate job needs to be done by the entertainers. As mentioned above in relation to Death Comes to Time, metatextual distractions that impact an audience's engagement with a drama risk killing the drama altogether. Factual archive will at least have the distance of time and eventually history to potentially ease the sting of what is currently a raw issue. Taking out one acting performance and replacing it with another is risky; the situation with Fear Her was at least made easier by Edwards's performance being rubbish (the new voiceover is better) but it wasn't something that could be done in an offhand manner. In summary: Doctor Who's content should be - and is - relatively light and occasionally irreverent, but that can only be achieved if the people who make it treat it very seriously indeed.

In Summary:

A duck-billed platypus of a story, but not as fun as that sounds.