The TARDIS is getting ready to take viewers on another thrilling journey through time and space, with some new additions as the show announces the writers who have stepped on board for the upcoming series. Check out details of the new writers below:
Rose Ayling-Ellis MBE will be joining Ncuti Gatwa’s 15th Doctor for a thrilling and frightening adventure in the upcoming second season of Doctor Who, which will air in 2025.
Jon Pertwee’s debut season as the Third Doctor will be the next release to join the Doctor Who Blu-ray collection.
The BBC has announced that the First Doctor adventure and farewell outing for companion Steven Taylor ‘The Savages‘ will get a home release in animated form in 2025.
On Doctor Who Day, The BBC has given us a first look at this years Doctor Who christmas special titled ‘Joy To The World‘.
“There’s always a door like that in a hotel room, a funny locked one…”
Classic Doctor Who story ‘The War Games’ starring Patrick Troughton as the Second Doctor is to receive a spectacular new colourisation. The new version will air on BBC Four and BBC iPlayer on 23rd December 2024…just in time for Christmas.
Review by Jacob Licklider
The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield are entering a new era after the passing of the late great David Warner who was co-lead five of the seven volumes in the range. Despite still being advertised as a Doctor Who range, The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield are going back to having Benny on her own, though with several Doctor Who aliens featuring in the range to keep it connected. The premise of this eighth series is The Eternity Club, one of those series that was clearly thought up as a four disc box set and split into four single releases, though this is slightly easier as The Eternity Club is presented as eight, half hour adventures from different writers. The tone is also considerably different from what has come before, both adventures in this first installment in The Eternity Club are considerably light affairs, playing heavy on the comedy and pastiche elements. The main pastiche is the premise being a Victorian style gentlemen’s club at the edge of the galaxy which is allowing Bernice Summerfield entrance, though her inability to pay member’s fees means that she is being put into the role of a servant for the other members of the club. The club itself is made up of Doctor Who aliens with an association with war, most notably Sontarans, Draconians, and Drahvins. This feels like an idea that later releases are going to play around with more, the second story of this release hints at it with the Drahvins, but it feels like an idea that hasn’t quite been explored. James Goss is at the writing helm for this release and it’s especially interesting to listen to this after Goss’ previous work with Benny. Goss as a writer isn’t always one that I would associate with comedy, but the style here is a more laid back, observational humor about the culture of gentlemen’s clubs with the second half wishing to examine the place of gender roles in the universe for much of the comedy. The directorial duties fall to David O’Mahony who provides a new touch to the series, his style also quite working with the comedy.
Review by Cavan Gilbey
Now I like The Brain of Morbius quite a bit, as I imagine many fans do, but I have never quite understood the frequent clamouring for the eponymous villainous Time Lord to return. He’s a great presence in that debut serial because he was a brain in a jar, seemingly punished by the people of Gallifrey with great anger and viciousness thus leaving him reduced to such a state. His appeal stems from this great mystery about who he really was before becoming a Futurama celebrity head-in-a-jar, putting him back in a humanoid body just makes him essentially another Master or Omega really. Now Big Finish have brought back the character a couple of times, most recently with the Dark Gallifrey stuff giving him a whole three dedicated episodes; which I haven’t heard. But bringing him to the Time War offers up a potentially interesting set of interpretations of what you can do with him; is he a resurrected weapon, a manipulative background player or even a Dalek sympathiser?
After having heard Morbius the Mighty, the latest entry in the War Doctor saga and penned by Tim Foley, I’m not entirely sure of why this story needed to have him as a villain.
Review by Cavan Gilbey
Earlier this year we saw the release of The Quin Dilemma, a story which celebrates the rich audio history of Colin Baker’s Sixth Doctor. Now it’s the turn of Season 22 and 23 to get a homage with The Trials of a Time Lord, a fortieth anniversary celebration penned by the team of Rochana Patel (episodes 1 and 2), Katherine Armitage (episodes 3 and 4) and Stewart Pringle (episodes 5 and 6). Now for context, Season 22 and 23 are among two of my favourites from the classic era of the show so I naturally had a lot of expectations for this story to be a proper celebration of that era. Did it deliver? Yes, and then some!
Review by Cavan Gilbey
It’s been a while since we last saw Toshiko Sato in a Torchwood release, with Naoko Mori last appearing in 2022’s SUV. But we return to one of the more underrepresented members of the classic team with Endgame, which appears like your typical Tosh story on the surface; we’ve got a tech based threat and a cast of characters who spend most of the runtime slightly underestimating her. Now the Tosh audios are a specific strain of stories that I do follow fairly closely, so I’ve usually got relatively high expectations when it comes to stories featuring her. Suckers, Cascade and Instant Karma all show just how interesting she can be when written well, and Endgame makes for a pretty interesting entry in the Tosh line-up.
Firstly I think first time writer for the range Tom Black has a brilliant grasp on the types of threat that feel natural for this series; a simulation of world threatening and extreme situations which goes awry because of mankind’s fatal hubristic flaws. It feels like the perfect story idea for a one hour audio, and Black’s small cast and sense of entrapment really makes the concept come alive. His focus on governmental bickering and inability for arms of state to actually work together for the betterment of innocent civilians feels pretty well chosen given current events, and Tosh fits really nicely in this story as we get to see how her ability to lead and manage a situation are shut down by people who simply believe that their rank gives them rights over others.
However I do think that Tosh is slightly underserved by the story itself, she doesn’t really get to do much until the end when the numbers of participants in the ‘simulation’ have been thinned out a bit. Naoko Mori continues to put in a great performance as the character, oozing professionalism and a strong sense of duty but the story doesn’t quite give her the opportunity to show that off until the final sequence of the episode.
The character that I ended up getting most interested in was Gerard Marsh, as played by Ed White. The supposed creator of the simulation who gets to slowly seem more and more sinister as the plot goes on, with Black writing in some good red herrings surrounding Marsh’s true motivations and morality. White does a good job at playing a dark reflection of Tosh and what she could very easily be had she abandoned her sense of good and justice.
Endgame partially feels like they just needed to get a new Tosh story out but I’m not going to complain about that because it’s generally a good little morality piece. Tom Black sets himself up for being a particularly strong new entrant to the series and I eagerly await to here what he writes next.
8/10
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Review: Torchwood – Art Decadence
Review: Torchwood – The Restoration of Catherine
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