The Doctor Who Real Time Marathon

THE AWAKENING  (Part One)  19/01/2024  Well, that was all sorts of brilliant! We're back on modern day Earth and the Doctor has brought Tegan to Little Hodcombe to visit her grandfather. Except the local Magistrate, Sir George Hutchinson, has had the village closed off from the outside world so villagers can engage in some celebratory War Games, reenacting the battle that took place there in 1643 between the Roundheads and the Royalists during the English Civil War, Tegan's grandfather (Andrew Verney, a local historian) has gone missing, and there's some very peculiar goings on concerning apparitions from the past. This episode was incredibly well shot and very tightly scripted with some properly unnerving scenes. It's Doctor Who  as a Ghost Story with the perfect locations of a dilapidated church and a quiet, deserted village. It's a brilliant idea having everyone (bar Jane Hampden) dressing up and being involved in the anniversary celebrations as it gives the stor...

WARRIORS OF THE DEEP  (Part One)  05/01/2024  When I saw the words 'Written by Johnny Byrne' at the start of this episode I was terrified we'd get another rehash of The Keeper Of Traken , just like last year's season opener, Arse Of Inanity . However, this was actually a very promising start! The Silurians (Eocenes?) are back, reviving a colony of Sea Devils near Sea Base 4, a military compound on the sea bed, probably the Atlantic, in 2084. This is the kind of shit we should have had last series - proper stand-out returning monsters with a striking, Cold War-style atmosphere and action in the vein of Earthshock . It's certainly well designed! The Silurians have had a makeover, more static than in 1970 but far less rubbery; I just wish they'd done something so we could tell the three Silurians apart! From the brief glimpse of the Sea Devils we got, they too have had a slight, rather less dramatic redesign. The interiors of Sea Base 4 are strongly reminiscent of ...

  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...