The Doctor Who Real Time Marathon

  THE FIVE DOCTORS 25/11/2023  Well, that was a lot of fun! Terrance Dicks made a return to pen an anniversary special to rival The Three Doctors and make up for how lacklustre much of Season 20 was. All the Doctors returned - sort of - along with a selection of companions and enemies either as main players or cameos. The TARDIS console has been refurbished, as has Tegan's hair, and both she and Turlough seem a lot more amiable (although that might just be Dicks' writing). They're visiting the Eye Of Orion and Kamelion was conspicuous by his absence, but there wasn't time to consider that since the Doctor's past selves (and Sarah Jane Smith) were taken by a Timescoop to the Death Zone on Gallifrey! First up was the First Doctor, nicely portrayed by Richard Hurndall, who later teamed up with a now-40-something Susan dressed in the rather homely fashions of the post-Dalek invasion 22nd Century. This saw a brief cameo for a Dalek which concluded with it accidentally b...

THE KING'S DEMONS  (Part One)  15/03/2023  I can't help but think this story might have been better placed between Snakedance and Mawdryn Undead  to break this season up a bit. We're back in 1215, a few months from Magna Carta at Fitzwilliam Castle, a mere four hours by horse from London. King John is in residence, being a general pain in the arse to resident Lord, Sir Ranulf, which is very odd because he's also in London (where he's actually documented as having been). The story started off with a jousting match between Ranulf's son and the King's Champion to defend Ranulf's honour. It was interrupted by the arrival of the TARDIS, and King John, weirdly, welcomed the Doctor, Tegan and Turlough as his 'Demons'. The rest of the episode played out slowly addressing the mystery of what was going on which is all very well were it not for the fact that from quite early on it was clear that the King's Champion, Sir Gilles, was in fact the Master in...

  ENLIGHTENMENT  (Part One)  01/03/2023  Wow! Why the hell couldn't the rest of this series have been as good as this? Fantastic lighting, brilliant sets, an amazing script c/o Barbara Clegg (is this seriously the first time the show has had a sole female scriptwriter? WTF have they been playing at???). It had atmosphere in droves, and at points felt wonderfully Sapphire And Steel . The Doctor, Tegan and Turlough were brilliantly written and, although I missed Nyssa during the first few minutes, I'm actually enjoying this dynamic. The first few minutes in the TARDIS were beautifully lit as the power was drained, but somewhat poorly performed due to the presence of Cyril Luckham with his tedious, atmosphere-free repetition and Valentine Dyall's annoying appearance. I know that they're the driving mechanism for the story, but it all felt rather hamfisted compared to how wonderfully creepy the rest of the episode was. And I should have mentioned this before, but why the...

TERMINUS  (Part One)  15/02/2023  So, this story is written by Steve Gallagher who gave us the impeccable Warriors' Gate  from Tom's last season. So far, this doesn't look quite  as beautiful but has nonetheless looked better and displayed more interesting ideas than most of this season thus far. Turlough is still being ordered about by the Black Guardian and has this time been persuaded to sabotage the TARDIS console by fucking with the Space/Time element that was removed and replaced in Arc Of Infinity . This resulted in the TARDIS interior starting to break up (or something) which led to it latching onto a spaceship (due to a failsafe) so that Nyssa could escape being killed by the break up when it (temporarily) spread to her room. Much of the episode was spent with the Doctor and Nyssa, and Tegan and Turlough separately investigating the seemingly abandoned ship. Much like the last story, however, it isn't abandoned. It is, in fact, a ship transporting Leper...

MAWDRYN UNDEAD  (Part One)  01/02/2023  That was an episode which started off incredibly badly but improved as it went along. This story is set at an all-boys Public School and started off with one of the students, Turlough (a ginger kid who just about looks 18 if you squint), and his put-upon mate, Hippo (who is similarly age-affected and clearly meant to be fatter than the actor is... an actor who seems to think that speaking in a higher register will make him sound younger) stole an expensive old car belonging to one of the teachers, encountered a white van in a narrow country lane, and crashed into a field. Firstly, this driving sequence was accompanied by the most god-awful music I've ever heard on the show. I don't have words to describe how unbelievably terrible the score was at this point, but I hope we never hear anything like it again! We then cut to a shot of Turlough watching himself from above, unconscious by the car, against a backdrop comprising possibly th...

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 simi...