The second season for William Hartnell’s First Doctor is the next release to come to Blu-ray with Season 2.
Dr Who
Review: The Sixth Doctor Adventures – Purity Undreamed
Review by Jacob Licklider
*** Warning: Spoilers Ahead ****
Let’s cut to the chase, Purity Undreamed is a set with a very weird starting point as an audio drama. Following on from Water Worlds and continuing on the development of Hebe Harrison it sets out to introduce several side characters who are attempting to recur, a new villain for the series, and end by setting up next year’s box sets for the Sixth Doctor and Mel (or at least that’s the assumption since they have not been formally announced yet to feature Mel). It’s a three-hour box set that is almost entirely setup from three different writers: Paul Magrs, Jonathan Morris, and Robert Valentine. Valentine is also serving as script editor with producer Jacqueline Rayner, both contributing as guides for the overarching story arcs. The biggest issue with Purity Undreamed comes from something that happens in the third story, setting up the villain which will be spoiled in this review, if you want non-spoiler thoughts then listen to this if you enjoyed Water Worlds as it maintains a lot of what went really well with that set although is a bit inconsistent. The behind the scenes for the second story, Reverse Engineering, reveals that Jonathan Morris had less time to complete the story, implying that another story may have fallen through. Because of this there is a disconnect between how the character of Patricia McBride, played by Imogen Stubbs, is characterised. This is not an issue of action, but of the character’s beliefs as the third story, Robert Valentine’s Chronomancer is a character piece meant to reveal that Patricia McBride is a woman harbouring bigotry going so far as to advocating for eugenics so the future is “better” and without disability.
Continue reading
Ncuti Gatwa to start Doctor Who filming in November
Ncuti Gatwa is set to to start filming his first Doctor Who season this November.
The 14th season of the long running BBC series and the first starring the Sex Education star, isn’t expected to air until 2024, but there’s speculation he could also make an appearance in an anniversary special before then.
Retrospective: Doctor Who – Scream of The Shalka (2003)
Written by Cavan Gilbey
2003 saw the celebration of Doctor Who’s fortieth anniversary, but the show was still off air with only the audio dramas, books and occasional animation on the website to satisfy the demands of fans. Luckily enough it was announced that year that Russel T Davies would be bringing the show back to television with Christopher Ecclestone and Billie Piper headlining the series, but to just slap the cherry on top of this sweet pie; 2003 would see the first completely animated Doctor Who serial called Scream of the Shalka.
Now barely anyone actually talks about this story, mostly because it’s one of the more niche bits of Modern Who history but it does seem to get a hell of a lot of love despite its status as a strange bit of non-canon material. Although it probably now is cannon given the reveal seen in The Timeless Children from a couple of years ago. But putting that garbage aside for a second, Scream of the Shalka is genuinely delightful and is a superbly written story that never overstays its welcome but instead leaves you wanting more, but the only other material we have from this Doctor is a novelisation and a short story (which is pretty good by the way).
So without further ado let’s delve into what makes this story so good, naturally all opinions expressed in this review are my own.
Review: The Diary of River Song – Two Rivers And A Firewall
Review by Jacob Licklider
If there has been a Doctor Who spin-off range from Big Finish Productions that consistently managed good stories while still being very reliant on past pieces of Doctor Who lore, it is The Diary of River Song. Ten series have gone by and only now we have an announcement of a box set with absolutely no returning elements coming out in January 2023. Now luckily the previous nine box sets have had some through line, a story arc or just a simple theme linking all of the stories together, but Two Rivers and a Firewall, the tenth series has a problem, and it’s a big one.
The very first Doctor Who novel to get illustrated rerelease
The very first Doctor Who novel first produced in 1964 returns in 2022 with its own illustrated release!
Continue reading
Doctor Who: The Abominable Snowmen cover art and special features revealed
The cover art and special features of the animated version of the missing Doctor Who adventure, releasing on DVD, Blu-Ray and Steelbook on 5th September 2022, have been revealed.
British actor David Warner, dies aged 80
The veteran British actor David Warner has died aged 80.
The BBC reported that Warner died from “a cancer-related illness” and that his family confirmed the news “with an overwhelmingly heavy heart”.
Continue reading
Review: UNIT – Brave New World 1 – Seabird One
Review by Jacob Licklider
Brigadier Winifred Bambera is a Doctor Who character who is interesting. Appearing on television in Battlefield played by the wonderful Angela Bruce and created by Ben Aaronovitch, had the show lasted past Season 26 there was a good chance she would reappear especially since Andrew Cartmel had what would become the ‘lost story’ Animal in his head as a story at the time. So it became puzzling that in the Virgin New Adventures, while UNIT featured heavily especially in books like Blood Heat, No Future, and Eternity Weeps, Bambera herself would only appear twice, in Head Games and The Dying Days as cameos. The UNIT stories of the New Adventures were more concerned with deconstructing the UNIT family and the Pertwee era as it was the era many of the writers grew up with and were fond of. She had a similar cameo in the novelisation of Downtime by Marc Platt, but after that didn’t appear in any of the novels by BBC Books. Then in 1999 Big Finish acquired the Doctor Who license and begun their takeover of Doctor Who dominating the early 2000s until the revival, yet Bambera only appeared in Animal released in 2011. So it became a surprise with the success of the UNIT spin-off, Angela Bruce was brought back in the second set of UNIT: Nemesis as a backdoor pilot for UNIT: Brave New World, a currently two set release giving Bambera her own UNIT team in the late 1990s post-Battlefield, focusing on incursions from Earth itself and not the standard alien invasions.
Review: Doctor Who Interludes – The Haunting of Bryck Place
Review by Jacob Licklider
The Haunting of Bryck Place is the third and final Interlude for 2022, being a bonus release attacked to The Seventh Doctor Adventures: Silver and Ice, at least as far as announced Interludes go. There could be further installments or bonus goodies with future releases, especially as none of the Doctors have had their second sets released, though their titles have all been announced. This is also the only Interlude to not make use of a new narrator, with Sophie Aldred taking the narration of the story and she does wonderfully, though with her narration you are aware that this is an audiobook and not an audio drama which has been what the Interludes have been marketed as. There is some extra music and sound design, so it is an enhanced audiobook, but still an audiobook and written as an audiobook and not as a scripted drama, using the format to great effect to tell a story cantering on Ace and her growth as a character. Now, using Ace as a character is nothing new, the Virgin New Adventures from 1991 to 1997 kept her as companion for over half the ranges run and Big Finish themselves have done several story arcs exploring Ace, but Georgia Cook’s script does something a little different, explores an early adventure for Ace where the Doctor isn’t attempting to manipulate her for one of his grand schemes.
Indie Mac User 