The Doctor Who Real Time Marathon

SNAKEDANCE  (Part One)  18/01/2023  Well, that was a massive improvement on last week, and promises to be fairly good at the very least by dint of being a sequel to last year's Kinda . Aboard the TARDIS, Tegan dreamt about a cave mouth shaped like a snake's head - a dream she's had regularly but can never remember. Turns out the Mara remained inside her head, hiding, and used her to return it to Manussa, its planet of origin over which it ruled until about 500 years ago when it was destroyed by the (Human) Federation. There's been a Federation colony there ever since, currently ruled (in the Federator's absence) by his posh wife, Tanha, and somewhat snobbish son, Lon. The background to Manussa, whose original society was replaced by the Sumaran Empire for several hundred years, was rather nicely delivered via a basic summary from Nyssa (reading from one of the TARDIS's books) and some very naturalistic conversation between Lon and Tanha, later joined by the Dire

  ARC OF INFINITY  (Part One)  03/01/2023  So here we are! Season 20; two decades of Doctor Who (well, in November, anyway). The wait for this season seemed to take ages, and judging by the amount of dust I had to brush off my journal, it has been! They seem to have pushed the boat out for this one - location filming in Amsterdam, Time Lords, an Anti-Matter being intent on taking over the Doctor's body. That last one wasn't lost on me. Given it's exactly ten years ago (Shit - is it really that long???) since the Third Doctor encountered Time Lord legend Omega in a world of Anti-Matter for the 10th Anniversary, I suspect this adversary (filmed in negative, which I quite liked when it was revealed he was Anti-Matter) who is colluding with a so-far-anonymous traitor on the High Council of Time Lords is one and the same, despite having been destroyed in The Three Doctors . Obviously, since we have Time Lords we have Gallifrey, and it seems a rather beige place, very similar to