Doctor Who

Review: Doctor Who – Peladon

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Review by Jacob Licklider

The 1963-1989 run of Doctor Who is fascinating in the fact that in the 160 serials (including The TV Movie in 1996), there are few stories that are direct sequels to previous stories, much less sequels within the same production team. Generally the closest you would get are stories like Attack of the Cybermen doing a sequel to The Tenth Planet and Attack of the Cybermen over a decade after the prequel’s release or Snakedance to Kinda and Mindwarp to Vengeance on Varos essentially being extensions of the themes of the previous story, but doing its own thing. The Curse of Peladon and The Monster of Peladon are an oddity as they both share the same setting, several of the characters, and feel like a natural extension of the same story. Peladon being the setting of both is a big factor in why the two stories feel so connected, the sets are the same and it feels like the planet is evolving and changing. The Curse of Peladon aired as the second story from Season 9 beginning at the end of January 1972, so as it is the 50th anniversary of Episode One while I am writing this, Big Finish Productions are celebrating with Peladon, a four story box set revisiting the planet throughout its history as well as continue the spirit of Peladon stories in reflecting the politics of the real world using allegory for a stark contrast of the good and bad of today’s world.

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Doctor Who actor Valentine Palmer passes away aged 86

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On January 10th, Valentine Palmer, best known for his role as Monia in the Doctor Who serial, Day of the Daleks, passed away aged 86, after a short illness.Valentine, born in 1935, was from London but grew up in Buckinghamshire, then moved to Malta and recently lived in Grantham. He leaves five children and six grandchildren. Continue reading →

Season 22 announced as the next Doctor Who – The Collection Blu-ray release

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The first full season for Colin Baker’s Sixth Doctor – season 22 is the next release to come to Blu-ray ‘The Collection’ range.

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Review: Charlotte Pollard – The Further Adventuress

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Review by Jacob Licklider

My first Big Finish Audio Drama was Storm Warning, it was 2014, and Big Finish had at some point previously put the first fifty main range on sale for $2.99. Charlotte Pollard was my first companion and now, twenty years later, Big Finish are releasing Charlotte Pollard: The Further Adventuress to commemorate India Fisher’s Charley Pollard and taking the Eighth Doctor back to his early days. Paul McGann is clearly having a blast in all four stories, giving life to an Eighth Doctor unblemished by the loss of friends or the Time War, something which we haven’t seen since Big Finish revisited the Lucie Miller era in 2019. Whenever they decide to revisit this version of the Eighth Doctor, McGann breathes a new life into the character and reuniting him with India Fisher helps the nostalgia of that era bleed into the tone of each of the stories. None of the stories are particularly dark or disturbing, they all at least reference the arc of the time that Charley Pollard should have been killed on the R-101, but most importantly they allow two friends a chance to perform together for the first time in nearly a decade since the 50th Anniversary in The Light at the End.

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Doctor Who Season 14 gets Standard BluRay re-release

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Season 14 of Doctor Who: The Collection is the next Blu-ray title to be re-issued in standard packaging after Season 26. The set is due for release 26th Feb 2021.

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Review: Doctor Who – Watchers

Posted on by indiemacuser

Review by Jacob Licklider

The Audio Novels range is the newest Doctor Who range from Big Finish Productions, essentially taking over from their original printed short story collections which ran until 2009 when they lost the license to print Doctor Who books. Several of the short stories would find their way as Subscriber Short Trips, four released a year, but with the ending of The Monthly Range and the normal Short Trips range being moved to box sets 2021 saw the introduction of The Audio Novels with Scourge of the Cybermen, essentially released every six months in January and July. The second installment is also an interesting contribution as it isn’t from an established writer, but an actor. Matthew Waterhouse wrote Watchers, a seven-hour audiobook set after The Keeper of Traken and exploring the final days of the Fourth Doctor, in universe, bridging the gap to Logopolis. It is an interesting look at the end of the Tom Baker era from a meta-textual standpoint as Waterhouse uses it to ultimately comment on how each of the three producers during the run produced the show, and especially how stark a contrast Season 18 was in respect to the end of the Graham Williams era. Gone was the previous era’s characteristic humour, brought into stark contract as Season 17 was script edited by Douglas Adams and was an out and out comedy.

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BBC America to stop funding of Doctor Who ‘lost’ stories animations

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The Daily Mirror reported today (12th January) that the BBC plans to no longer animate anymore ‘lost’ Doctor Who episodes due to funding issues.

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Koch Media announces new classic Doctor Who ‘behind-the-scenes’ releases

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The latest Doctor Who ‘behind-the-scenes’ release from Koch Media has been announced, focusing on the second and third Doctors.

The Doctors The Pat Troughton Years Behind the Scenes Volume - PACKSHOT

These sets offer the definitive interviews with the production team who brought Doctor Who to life and sent you “behind the sofa”!

The Doctors The Jon Pertwee Years Behind the Scenes Volume 2 - PACKSHOT

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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

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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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