Katy Manning

New Doctor Who spin off announced: Tales of the TARDIS

Posted on by indiemacuser

As over 800 episodes of Doctor Who land on BBC iPlayer they will all sit in one place – The Whoniverse.

Welcome to the world where you can find every Doctor, every companion and, terrifyingly, hundreds of monsters that have appeared in Doctor Who. From the 1st November, The Whoniverse will become the official name, and dedicated home, for all shows within the orbit of Doctor Who which will live on BBC iPlayer. With over 800 episodes of Doctor Who content already in the back catalogue, The Whoniverse will launch with a brand new logo, and every piece of Doctor Who content will carry a brand new ident, instantly bringing all the Doctor Who worlds together in one place and it will continuously expand.

The first exclusive content to land in the Whoniverse will be Tales of the TARDIS, a brand new six-part series that reunites beloved classic Doctor Who duos, as they board a very special TARDIS on a nostalgic voyage through space and time.

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Review: Doctor Who – The Return Of Jo Jones

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Review by Cavan Gilbey

Not to sound hyperbolic, but in recent years I have realised the Third Doctor Adventures are my favourite of the solo Classic Doctor ranges, actually of all the solo Doctor ranges now that I think about it. There’s always been an appreciation for interesting slow burn stories, especially more recently with a pair of excellent serials spanning over six and seven episodes respectively. So when this was announced, I was initially very optimistic; who doesn’t want to see Jo get one last bit of reconciliation with her Doctor? But then it was revealed we are getting three hour stories, and my face suddenly looked like I had a dinner plate lodged in my mouth. The hour long stories work fine enough for the New Who Doctors, they were designed to work in that format and thus end up suiting them better. Hell a lot of the Classic Doctor kind of work here, but I think the Third Doctor is by far the least suited overall. If he is the suave spy that he is often characterised as thanks to his frequent conspiracy and mystery based narratives, then surely we need something bigger than hour to get the most out of him. And that is was really hold this boxset back from getting anything higher than a 7/10 for me, I just don’t feel like I get enough out of the concepts presented by the writers here. The scripts are good, but are damaged by having those missing episodes. Which is a shame because this reunion should have felt bigger than it ended up being.

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Review: Doctor Who – Beyond War Games

Posted on by indiemacuser

Written by Cavan Gilbey

Season 6B is something of a controversial subject amongst fans; many like the use of the Doctor as a Gallifreyian agent being part of his punishment prior to regeneration while others see it as undermining the very effective and emotional ending of The War Games (a personal favourite of the regeneration stories, narrowly beaten by Logopolis). Personally I’m relatively indifferent to Season 6B since, or at least until this boxset, it was something that just seemed slightly lame. But now I must admit I am fully sold on telling stories during this sub-season since Beyond War Games is shockingly compelling and some of the best Second Doctor material Big Finish have published in a long long time; not since The Black Hole have I been this enthusiastic about dedicated releases from one of my favourite Doctors.

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Review: Doctor Who – The 8th Of March: Protectors of Time

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Review by Jacob Licklider

The Eighth of March was a special release on International Women’s Day 2019 to celebrate the female characters of Doctor Who, essentially serving as example episodes for various series from (mostly new) female writers: The Paternoster Gang, The Diary of River Song, UNIT, and a story set in the Virgin New Adventures. Here we are, three years later and for International Women’s Day 2022, a three disc follow up has been released in the form of The Eighth of March: Prisoners of Time, exploring Lady Christina, Jenny: The Doctor’s Daughter, a Romana spin-off, and a tribute to The Sarah Jane Adventures with two new writers, Abigail Burdess and Nina Millns and an opening story from Lizbeth Myles (who has been contributing to Big Finish since 2014). Like the previous box set, this is an incredibly versatile set as the only real brief is that there is a female lead and it is set in the Doctor Who universe, giving the writers free rein on what they wish to play with. There also are two female directors assigned to this release, Louise Jameson tackling the first episode while Helen Goldwyn directs the other two, both bringing their distinct style to give each story its own flair.

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Classic Doctor Who actor dies

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British actor Stewart Bevan, best known for his performances in both film and television has died aged 73.

His extensive career include the films Brannigan (1975), The Ghoul (1975), House of Mortal Sin (1976), Ivanhoe (1982), Chromophobia (2005) and The Scouting Book for Boys (2009) while on television, he is best known for playing Clifford Jones in Doctor Who (1973) and Ray Oswell in Emmerdale (1977).

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Review: Doctor Who – Third Doctor Adventures (Volume 8)

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Review by Jacob Licklider

The Third Doctor Adventures for 2021 were announced as two sets exploring essentially every part of the Third Doctor’s run; with Volume 7 exploring the Season 7 team and the space faring version of the Third Doctor during the later half of Season 11, and now we have Volume 8 exploring the Doctor and Jo as well as a UNIT story post-The Three Doctors which much like The Time Warrior and Planet of the Spiders. Volume 8 takes two very different stories and makes them work together in a package much like Volume 7 had to do with The Unzal Incursion and The Gulf.

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Review: The War Master – Killing Time

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Review by Jacob Licklider

What made the first two instalments of The War Master work incredibly well was the decision to have the Master acting as a background character, working his scheme and influencing people to do things that seem to be good before things fall right apart at the end and it turns out the Master’s been in control all along. Killing Time, the sixth installment (though the fifth to be recorded, switched due to the COVID-19 pandemic) places the Master on the Stagnant Protocol. The planet is one that is out of the way and only noticed when people think that it can be taken over for its own gain. Currently there is a viral plague which the government has been inefficiently handling allowing for a new empress to take power with the Master working from behind the scenes. Now, this series was recorded in 2019 before the COVID-19 virus even existed, yet James Goss and Lou Morgan, in writing a science fiction set where the government doesn’t take the plague seriously, and the scientists are trying desperately to find a cure to the variants. In the behind the scenes interviews, the absurdism of Goss and Morgan’s premises for these episodes, as they weren’t expecting a global pandemic to take the world into one where the situation of the Stagnant Protocol is one that we now all know far too well. Even more coincidentally, this isn’t the only time this happened for Big Finish, two main range releases were delayed for similar reasons.

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BBC Re-Releases Doctor Who The Collection Season 10 & 18

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Seasons 10 and 18 of Doctor Who: The Collection are the next two Blu-ray titles to be re-issued in standard packaging after Season 12 and 19.

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Review: Masterful (Celebrating 50 years of ‘The Master’)

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Review by Jacob Licklider

“I am usually referred to as the Master…universally.”

This immortal line, first aired 50 years ago, introduced Doctor Who fans to Roger Delgado and the Doctor’s arch enemy the Master. And now, to celebrate this momentous occasion, Big Finish Productions has brought together all surviving TV incarnations of the Master and a host of others for a three hour audio drama, ‘Masterful’. Released 50 years to the day of Episode One of ‘Terror of the Autons‘, there are two editions of this release; the standard three disc edition and the limited eight disc edition which contains a disc of bonus features, an original audiobook by Trevor Baxendale, and two previously released Short Trips. This review is only looking at Masterful the story (see our Terror of the Master review here) So, should you buy Masterful? Short answer, yes, of course you should, James Goss provides three hours with a brilliant cast pitting Master against Master, playing to each incarnation’s strengths and giving listeners a real treat to see how dysfunctional each incarnation can be when forced to cooperate. Continue reading →

Third Doctor’s adventures to get Blu-ray release

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Doctor Who: The Collection’ returns with Season 8, featuring Jon Pertwee as the iconic Time Lord.

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