TV

Review: Doctor Who – Forty

Posted on by indiemacuser

Review by Jacob Licklider

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic making time feel incredibly compressed, it is now 2022, and with 2022 comes Big Finish Productions’ new format for release, something that had been slowly introduced throughout 2021. Everything’s a three-disc box set and the first release of the year, like the first release of 2021, is a celebratory anniversary set, this time celebrating Peter Davison’s 40th anniversary as the Fifth Doctor with the first of two box sets under the umbrella label Forty. The premise of what is essentially the Fifth Doctor’s consciousness being catapulted across his timeline in no particular order, both forwards and backwards from his second story, Four to Doomsday, to Season 20, and as the brief for the second set implies, Season 21. Unlike last year’s Masterful, Forty isn’t a single story, but a series of interconnected stories with this volume containing the four-part Secrets of Telos and the two-part God of War with the second not currently having all of its story details announced (only one story has a title, The Auton Infinity). The story arc of the sets doesn’t actually get close to an explanation, ending with the Doctor still being catapulted around his timeline. There is a nice thematic through-line for the first set with the Doctor being taken in the first story to a time after Earthshock where he finds out Adric’s fate while going back in the second story to several stories below the young companion’s demise meaning the Doctor has to face the fact that he knows where Adric is going and actively has to move him towards that fate. Continue reading →

Classic Doctor Who monster to return for spring special

Posted on by indiemacuser

The Doctor, Yaz and Dan face a familiar foe in Legend of the Sea Devils – coming this Spring.

A first look at Doctor Who’s Spring special has revealed the long-awaited return of the Sea Devils, a classic monster first seen with the Third Doctor in The Sea Devils.

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Legendary comedic actress Betty White, dies at the age of 99

Posted on by indiemacuser

Beloved actress, comedian and icon Betty White has died aged 99, just weeks before a milestone birthday, TMZ reports.

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Review: The Year of Martha Jones

Posted on by indiemacuser

Review byJacob Licklider

 

The Year of Martha Jones is the third Big Finish Box Set spin-off featuring a companion from Russell T. Davies’ run as Doctor Who’s showrunner. Recorded in February 2020, but not released until December 2021, this release was a long time coming, having been leaked on performer’s online CVs, but it was only announced in 2021. While certain forums have speculated what kept this release on the back-burner for so long (only Tom Baker’s banked releases, which have been kept back for a number of years, and the missing Fifth Doctor/Marc Monthly Range stories, which were pulled due to the pandemic, have had this kind of a delay in even being announced), yet the only concrete development can be gained from the behind the scenes mentioning that it was originally planned to be a four disc set, reduced to three, and that the same month that this was being recorded, Freema Agyeman reprised her role as Martha Jones in Torchwood: Dissected.

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Dan Slott to write new Doctor Who comics

Posted on by indiemacuser

Titan Comics is thrilled to announce that Eisner Award-Winning writer Dan Slott (Spider-Man) will pen three separate annual Doctor Who comic book one-shots.

Dan’s 2022 special will feature the Tenth Doctor and companion Martha Jones, and will hit stores in April.

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BBC re-releasing Doctor Who – The Collection series 26 BluRay

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Season 26 of Doctor Who: The Collection is the next Blu-ray title to be re-issued in standard edition.

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BBC/Demon Records release new Tom Baker Doctor Who vinyl

Posted on by indiemacuser

On limited edition vinyl for the very first time, BBC/Demon Records presents the unique audio adventure that first instigated Tom Baker’s remarkable return to the role of the Doctor since his television departure – Hornet’s Nest.

When Captain Mike Yates is reunited with his old friend the Doctor, he finds him besieged by a powerful race of insects intent on global domination. As the Time Lord recounts his recent adventures across the centuries, it becomes clear that the fate of mankind is in the hands of the Doctor, Mike and the peculiar Mrs Wibbsey…

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The Doctors: The Tom Baker Years Behind the Scenes Volume 1 – Available on DVD now

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The latest ‘behind-the-scenes’ release from Koch Media – The Doctors: The Tom Baker Years Behind the Scenes Volume 1 is available now on 2-disc DVD and is described as the definitive set of interviews with the production team who brought the Tom Baker era of Doctor Who to life.

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Audio Review: Survivors – New Dawn 1

Posted on by indiemacuser

Review by Ian McArdell

New Dawn 1 is the first of two 3-story boxsets which picks up the tale some fifteen years after we last heard from Terry Nation’s Survivors.
Although it eschews a move into double figures, making a fresh start with the subtitle New Dawn, this is effectively the tenth audio series. With six new episodes adding to the thirty-six already released, there’s now more Survivors on audio than were made for television in the mid-1970s, which is a remarkable achievement. However, it’s not the Seventies that we are concerned with here; though it’s not specified, by my reckoning the events of New Dawn occur somewhere in the mid-to-late 1990s.
Abby Grant returns: Fifteen years after she went into hiding, having prized her conflicted teenage son Peter from the clutches of the quasi-military operation he’d become a part of, and despite his crimes, the pair fled.

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Review: The War Doctor Begins – Warbringer

Posted on by indiemacuser

Review by Jacob Licklider

It’s most definitely a coincidence that Big Finish Productions would have two releases within a week of each other that tells its story in a non-linear fashion, but it is interesting that it’s happened so soon after Stranded 3’s What Just Happened? inspired my review to be told backwards. The War Doctor Begins: Warbringer is presented as non-linear in the way each of its episodes are presented, beginning in media res, going to a conclusion, and then flashing back to the beginning to deal with a character’s amnesia. This decision assists in making the themes of Warbringer come front and centre with each of the three episodes having single word titles: Timothy X. Atack’s Consequences, Andrew Smith’s Destroyer, and Jonathan Morris’s Saviour. These titles make the set feel much like three episodes of a complete story. While Forged in Fire also acted as a miniseries, Warbringer is a three-part story. It feels like Atack, Smith, and Morris all had the time to communicate with each other in telling the same story.

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