With a new era fast approaching and the last still hot on our lips, now feels good a time as any to do like the Fourteenth Doctor and take the time to think some of that through. The last month has seen something truly ground-breaking for Doctor Who by having a production team that started a whole phase of the show’s history return to bookend it and launch something considered separate and new to what came before. It would be the equivalent of Verity Lambert returning to write the coda on classic Who with her take on Survival before sitting down to work on The TV Movie the following month. Some may disagree with the idea of another new Season 1 as a matter of principle. They would be right to say that, unlike the end of the McCoy Years and the Wilderness Years that followed, there is no true gap between the two as there certainly was when Series 1 launched in 2005. The format this time also appears to be largely the same, albeit with fewer episodes each season and a determination not seen before to ensure regular outings each year. But what is abundantly clear both from the statements of the new team and what we saw narratively towards the end of The Giggle is that this is a new era by design.

The Third Great and Bountiful Doctor Who Empire begins here, like it or lump it.

The Giggle ended the ‘Nu Who’ era of the show with bombast and, once again under the stewardship of Russell T Davies, no shortage of controversy. The tone of a 21st Century show written by Russell T Davies (It’s a Sin) shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone paying attention but his journey from ‘Doctor Who Saviour’ to ‘Doctor Who Destroyer’ amongst the darker and more embarrassing members of our fandom has been particularly quick and decisive this time around. The trio of Tennant-led specials en masse proved to be a smorgasbord of tastes with both fans and general audiences too. Critical reviews, discourse on Twitter, lengthy debates on The Doctor Who Companion itself (my email notifications continued for days after I’d chosen to exit the discourse) and from viewers I know personally seem to provide a consensus that most have liked at least one of them, and that many have strongly disliked at least one of them too. There seems to be a fairly even distribution of which individuals consider to be the good episodes, which tells us a lot about them by itself.

Lucky enough to avoid any feeling that could described as strong dislike or anger thus far, I’m pleased to say that I found enjoyment within each of them to different degrees. That’s not to suggest I can’t see where those that do find things to dislike are coming from though. Gratefully, unlike the previous era where quality often felt far from assured, the standard of these was largely high from a production and writing point of view. Other than some criticisms of deux ex machinas (nothing particularly new from Davies or Doctor Who in general there, it must be said), clunkiness in The Star Beast, and some (unjustified in my opinion) unkindness about the quality of the CGI in Doctor Who’s first wholly green screen endeavour in Wild Blue Yonder (did they not see the 1970s blue screen equivalent to compare?), most of the polarisation has appeared to come from what the stories did wrong narratively rather than the style and finesse by which they went about it. Russell has of course been far from subtle with his messaging early on and far from hiding from controversy (as many hoped he would) has appeared to gleefully flirt with it at every turn, both socially and in the way he addresses and changes Doctor Who lore. My initial reaction following the conclusion of The Giggle was that it had more to say than the other two combined. The depth of ideas and themes made it a real thinker and also the most worthy of the mantle of the 60th anniversary banner.

That’s not to say that any of the three were perfect or even good storytelling at times. Whilst the nuance seen early in The Star Beast was beautifully done and will hopefully educate many on what trans experience must be like, the later stages of the episode did occasionally creak under the weight of the message which was being delivered. We’re fairly used to on-the-nose storytelling on the back of the Chibnall era but the ending of this story would have made even him blush at times. But that’s not enough to make it a bad thing. It was a discussion starter. Many will have discussed it since — people who may have either disliked or felt alienated by the idea of trans identity for fear of the unknown or who may have been scared to discuss it for fear of rebuttal. Mothers and fathers will have seen the acceptance offered to Rose from her loving family. It may have shown them the way to be in those situations. It may save lives. It’s sometimes easier to remain silent on things which we don’t fully understand for fear of getting it wrong or sounding silly or stupid. It’s important for these stories to be told to allow these discussions and to find ways for society to move forward. The fact is that the first mainstream ‘issue’ stories most often are on the nose. When Cathy Come Home came out in the 1960s, it was hardly subtle about addressing the welfare state. EastEnders, which has usually existed somewhere between the deplorable and the exquisite throughout its long history (often in the same episodes), has tackled gay relationships, teenage pregnancies, historical child abuse, rape, HIV, stillbirth, and dozens of other challenging topics over the decades and almost always with broad, obvious, and performative (though occasionally incredibly well researched) storylines. They don’t have to be delicate to be important or powerful. They exist to break the ceiling on what can be done or said and to allow more nuanced stories to run where they initially stomped. None of those stories had Twitter (or X, if we must) to contend with, and largely they all benefited from that. It will be hard to put that particular genie back in the bottle unfortunately.

The Star Beast and The Giggle were strong modern-day parables about the way that we treat each other. The first dealt with what it felt like to be different in the 21^st Century, while the latter addressed how difficult it has become to have challenging conversations within the last few years. I found myself in a self-reflective state on upon the conclusion of the latter, asking myself why the potential backlash to the first should worry me more than the other. For those still who somehow missed it, The Star Beast dared to take on the complex as you care to make it issue of trans existence. Visiting my in-laws in Northern Ireland between specials one and two, it didn’t take so much as the car journey from the airport to hear remarks about the wokeness of a trans character appearing in ‘even Doctor Who’. It made waves and I’ve no doubt that was completely the intention. If RTD is reporting correctly and the story has so far been seen by over 9 million worldwide since broadcast, then it’s done the show no harm at all and may well have had many of those viewers and more talking.

While there’s a perhaps a nuanced discussion to be had on when or even if sci-fi should be the medium for such home based discussions, I’d be quick to call such thinking out on a base level at least. Sci-fi exists as a medium on the backs of those who wanted to teach modern lessons to societies without threat of abuse, punishment, or imprisonment from their governments. Animal Farm, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Frankenstein, Brave New World, and The Handmaid’s Tale would never have flown over the heads of those they satired and critiqued if they had been told in common terms. They would never have been successful and so, we would never have learnt from them. While traditionally sci-fi has admittedly handled the outstanding and large while soapboxes handle the minutiae, it was Doctor Who and Davies himself, following the strong example of the USA’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer, who in 2005 realised that the most effective way to make sci-fi saleable to mid-noughties British audiences was to make them more human and family-driven. It really shouldn’t have come as a surprise that he’d continue where he left off when he came back.

The second special was more traditional Doctor Who fare than the others and mirrored well against past adventures like Midnight and to a lesser extent Heaven Sent. It will both live and die by those comparisons, and by how one felt about the larger-than-life special effects. In it, we saw an open and closed monster story which allowed both the Doctor and Donna to exorcise some personal demons. The excellently performed short scenes where the Doctor acknowledged the harm of the Flux and the Timeless Child may have been as meta as it gets for critics of the previous era, though I do think their inclusion helped give weight to the bygone narrative somewhat as well.

It was otherwise completely inoffen… you what? They cast a person of colour as Isaac Newton, a historically confirmed pasty Caucasian? Get my lawyer on the phone! I jest of course. They had to do something to raise Tory blood pressures that week and I’m glad it did the trick. I’ve asked Isaac about it, and he said he was fine with artistic interpretation but wanted the record correcting on one or two matters: he was 44 at the time he discovered mavity and felt that Curtis was far too young for the part. And at a whopping 6’5 he felt that he was far, far too tall. ‘Well, Isaac’, I said. ‘Don’t you worry. You know what they say? What goes up must come down!’ I’ll get my coat.

In the hours and days that followed the third special, I had a few questions to consider about myself too. Why did I allow my enjoyment of the first episode to be affected more by what people may have thought than I did the third? Both had very strong things to say and the latter is, if anything, more direct with its criticism of so many of us. The revelations ‘in Whoniverse’ are arguably even more disagreeable for some. To address the societal implications first, I think it comes down to this. Sad though it is, everyone will take some positivity from The Giggle’s message about society, even if they differ on what they feel that message was. At the present time, as the episode satires, many do take up regular battle stations about ‘big issues’ saying the unsayable without regard (usually from behind a screen). And society does feel divided by buzz issues that would not have been as inflammatory as they are now a few years ago. Amongst the many hateful anonymous keyboard warriors, there are noteworthy examples of public figures and politicians who make the anger feel far worse and who normalise it. The rabbit hole of the now repetitive and well-publicised discourses that dominate the national consciousness (but seemingly very few of our actual lives) appears to be all consuming for many and the ‘issues’ seemingly grow to define those that spend so much time in a fury about them.

Regardless of what side of angry debates these incredibly dedicated few decide to spend so much of their spare time fighting for, they, as the episode portrayed so correctly, do indeed believe that they are absolutely right and that the ‘other side’ is absolutely wrong. Both will likely take a false solace from the episode’s message against cancel culture and a world where nobody will listen to them. Those of us in the middle will sadly nod at the accuracy of the statement. I realised that criticising a fundamental issue of 2020s life and our seeming inability to have grownup discussions anymore is a less controversial thing to talk about than the first special’s stance that trans existence is valid. That’s a hell of a thing.

Acknowledging that cancel culture and mob rule are a symptom of both extreme sides’ inability to listen should tell us that we’d be more sensible to take a more nuanced and calm view of the things that make them so angry. And that we shouldn’t let them dominate our airwaves or discourse. Unwrapping it too much and too openly, however, can place one directly in the firing line and few want to risk entering these battle zones. Very few are brave enough to be the first out of the trenches. Many have jobs which would make doing so a significant risk. That is, unfortunately, where we are. Most seem to share a good understanding of the problem but are afraid and frustrated about how to combat a discourse so openly hostile. Sadly, we don’t have a UNIT-sanctioned laser beam to magically solve the issue for us in real life. But in both cases, at least Doctor Who has given us a reason to think and talk about it.

The story of The Giggle itself is hurt most by an overabundance of ideas that I don’t think necessarily played well together on first viewing. In that respect, it’s arguably the closest thing to a Moffat script that RTD has ever delivered and, like with a lot of the Moffat’s best work, it often serves the viewer better on repeat watches. It was fantastically written, produced, scored and, especially, shot and directed. The emotional scenes all hit, the transitions were excellent, and the scary scenes in the Toymaker’s realm were the first thing my partner felt the need to shield our young daughter’s eyes from in her short, but inevitable, journey as a Doctor Who fan (or Doctor Do as she currently calls him). The story was well paced and the special effects were all excellently rendered. The Toymaker scenes in the second act are potentially the most out-there Who has ever been, as was the Spice Girls dance sequence. I’d compare the design flourishes in places to the beautiful artistic direction of Star Wars‘ The Last Jedi compared to the rest of that series, though thankfully the story beats and pacing were far less contentious.

If The Giggle’s initial threat was a parable for society, the conclusion (and specifically the Fourteenth Doctor’s ending) may have been a one aimed squarely at fans of the show. The message would appear to acknowledge how difficult things have been lately and kindly suggests that we find time to process our own strong feelings about the series. It works to an extent because we do appear to have ‘suffered’ for our love of Doctor Who for a long time. I’ve never been active within a Doctor Who fanbase that hasn’t been fiercely divided about what makes the show good or important. Footage of Panopticon conventions in the ’80s and ’90s and negative quotes in fanzines about 1976’s The Deadly Assassin would seem to prove this has gone back much further.

The idea that the Doctor has been through so much and never allowed himself to look back offers an interesting contrast to the fanbase too as we rarely appear wholly happy in the moment watching the show and often feel the need to look back to what has been for validation on what it should be now. Often, this even extends to how fans view themselves as well. ‘Who am I without the toys?’ the Doctor says. Who would we be without Doctor Who? I admit I find fixation on how good it used to be particularly self-defeating. I can reflect on how the 13th and 14th Seasons of Classic Doctor Who and the 4th and 5th Series of Nu Who were the best the show has ever been until the cows come home, but it’s only to my benefit and to those my who my view equally validates.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t talk about or remember our favourite stories. Far from it — if it brings us joy, and it often does, then there’s no problem with it. But if it’s getting in the way of how we or others enjoy what’s coming out now then I think it’s far from helpful. Nothing will bring those times back and neither will new stories stop them existing. It’s why I continue to refuse to get hung up on the Timeless Child. The older stories are not under threat. They’re mine and yours (if you want them), unedited and unchanged, and they will be forever. This story seems to want to persuade us to take the time to digest our memories and, like the Doctor, deal with our feelings to allow ourselves to move forward. The alternative is fixating and allowing it to define who we are today. It’s a healthy message for both those looking ever forward for fear of looking back and for those stuck in the past that made them. Its most potently a fundamental reflection on who the Doctor has been since 2005, with the ever-present desire to hold onto the past while creating new relevance often stopping Doctor Who from being as creative as it was in the long gone past.

In 2007, Spider-Man was in a place so continuity bound that the executives at Marvel felt it had lost much of what had made it the sensation it had become. For this reason, they gave the series a soft reboot with a story called One More Day. The story was known internally to be so controversial a concept in its inception that the chief editor, who wrote irregularly at the time, wrote it himself in order to take the flack. It was widely panned by critics and caused absolute uproar within the Marvel fanbase. A deal with Mephisto saved Peter’s Aunt May after she had been shot and restored his secret identity at the cost of… pretty much everything else. Spider-Man, long married to Mary Jane would now be single. How dare they? Decades of storylines were thrown under the bus. How abhorrent. The creative team apparently considered it a necessary move as it allowed them to trim all of that baggage (not just Mary Jane for the record; she returned in due course) to tell more exciting stories moving forward. The ending of The Giggle will certainly prove divisive too, and I’m still unclear about how a feel about the Fourteenth Doctor remaining on modern day Earth (more on that later), but Ncuti will be a more level, more balanced, less tortured — in other words a more ‘classic’ Doctor than he’s been allowed to be in the last 20-odd years due to this decision. I think it will be a good move. Just as RTD once invented a trauma through the Time War to allow his new Doctor to display pain and angst, this will do well to allow his current Doctor to exist without it for a while. Once again Tennant can be the Doctor who regrets while this new one can, more fairly this time, afford to forget.

If I had one major issue with The Giggle when it aired, it was how much it left unexplained. I shouldn’t need to refer to commentary tracks, regardless of how well sign posted they are, to fully understand a new concept which should have been explained on screen. Just as RTD’s comments on Davros were more difficult for many of us to process than the recent Davros appearance was itself, his words here will likely cause many more ripples than the episode itself going forward. I think this is perhaps done on purpose, but that’s not a great excuse in terms of effective storytelling. I wasn’t left with the impression that these will be things particularly addressed immediately (if ever) on screen. Leaving gaps for others to fill or reinterpret along the line may well be the smarter move long term, when compared to something overtly clear and difficult to misunderstand or rewrite, like the Timeless Child. The implication of his words outside of the episode itself will allow fans room to reconsider continuity. We were the target of his words and we’re the only ones who care about making things work or fit. But I like my stories to speak for themselves and I do see it as a negative for the episode itself.

For casual viewers who don’t care about pesky timeline alterations, it must be said that bi-regeneration doesn’t require a lot of further examination to allow them to continue to enjoy the story into the new era. It happened; it, we were told, had been a mythical something the Doctor already knew about that then happened to have happen to him. Is this, like the Toymaker’s appearance here, something that was allowed to happen due to the invocation of salts on the edge of space and time? Would this have happened differently otherwise? What other doors may have been opened this way if so? All are good talking points but straightforwardly, it doesn’t break any rules or contradict anything. Bi-regeneration was always there, we just hadn’t heard about it before, like so many things before. Sure. Let’s roll with it. It was nice to meet the Fifteenth Doctor a little early and it, in a way, maintained the ‘multi-Doctor in an anniversary’ theme well, while offering a vastly different take on it.

The specials went to great lengths to introduce us to what would appear to be an ongoing supportive cast. I found comparisons to the introduction of this new UNIT reminiscent of their initial introductions in The Web of Fear and The Invasion back in the 1960s. We had a couple of notable but effectively nameless soldiers in the shape of a Benton or a Yates as well as meeting our new central team. Kate Stewart, back once again, was joined in these specials by new Scientific Advisor Shirley Anne Bingham and her alternate universe bestie Mel Bush, or Melanie-Mel for all of you Hebe Harrison stans out there. No, I’m not going to explain it. You all have Google and Big Finish accounts, right?

Kate was great in this story. Arguably as great as she’s been since her 2013 introductions in The Power of Three and The Day of the Doctor and at least since her Cyberman mic drop in Death in Heaven, Jemma Redgrave was finally allowed to perform in the way we know she is capable. Kate’s slowly equalling her father’s tally for Doctor collecting (The Brig met Doctors One to Nine if you include expanded media) and she’s now met Doctors Eleven through Fifteen face-to-face. Her best moment here was the brief but powerful moment that she wasn’t herself. The hate and evil that she spouted while out of control should reground us somewhat when we’re thinking our wildest thoughts, or assume prejudice is something that only other people possess.  If that’s a negativity that can be unleashed in an unthinking Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, immaculately raised, and educated, and one who’s dedicated her life solely to the protection of others, what atrocious behaviour must we all be capable of when we abandon thought and decency? She became the person The Daily Mail, The Sun, and The Telegraph want us to be in that moment, and it reminds us why it’s important for someone in her position of power to be so reserved and considered in their approach.

Shirley and Mel were welcome additions for different reasons. Even after two specials, I feel we’ve barely scratched the surface of Shirley. Her display of Bond-esque heroics in episode one was matched by her savviness and resolution in episode three. Mel’s return admittedly felt rather more shoehorned in. I’ve found little valid story reason to why she of all companions should or could be there, nor anything within her onscreen back catalogue which would make fans desire her of all companions to return. Furthermore, while the intentionally simplistic ‘just because’ reason we received on screen did, at least, do well to remember that Mel wasn’t initially dropped in 20th Century Earth when she left, it becomes more confusing when you know that she returned to travel with the Doctor after she left us on screen. She had many further adventures in books and on audio, the last of that long arc coming out as recently in 2018. Her most recent work with Big Finish came out this year, albeit stories set in an earlier place in Mel’s personal timeline. It’s nothing new for TV to ignore expanded media of course but does bear particular mention in this case as those stories (and Bonnie’s performances in them particularly) are what endeared Mel to us and made her likable, or at the very least bearable, in the first place. My reception to her coming back was infinitely softened by these stories to the point of being glad to see her return again in The Power of the Doctor last year, so it seems a little strange considering how much Langford has put into to rehabilitating the character in the last 23 years to so freely cast that all away. Like with many aspects of this story, little thought will have been given to expanded media, and that is a shame even if I do realise how few people it will relatively affect.

Further cluster bombs to the non-existent Doctor Who canon includes the entire history of The Toymaker, who had previously returned to face the Doctor quite a few times before The Giggle. They met in Endgame and Relative Dimensions in the comics, Divided Loyalties in the books, and, despite missing the TV rematch they were promised thanks to Michael Grade, made the audio and novel cuts of The Nightmare Fair. On top of those, and perhaps the most grievously, is the early John Dorney Big Finish masterpiece Solitaire featuring the Eighth Doctor and Charley as well as the Seventh Doctor adventure The Magic Mousetrap. The Giggle promptly and firmly insists that only The Celestial Toymaker can possibly have taken place, effectively wiping all those stories off the board regardless of how much one bends over backwards. Unless they happened after. They could have happened after, right? He escapes the case and goes back on the Doctor’s timeline to cause havoc. The Doctor doesn’t remember for… reasons. That works… Right!?

On top of that, despite giving due credit to the creators, The Star Beast makes no attempt to help include the original The Star Beast comic within continuity, arguably wiping the first black companion Sharon from the archives. Not so much as a nod to ripples or history repeating itself. I am, of course, on the whole, being flippant and insincere when it comes to Russell’s wanton destruction of Doctor Who continuity. As I said earlier, nothing actually changes those stories. We still have them and we always will. But these are the things we do undoubtedly allow ourselves to get hung up on. Why do I waste so much time worrying about how a current story affects what’s gone before? I suppose it’s because I care about them. But common sense does interject occasionally.

It should come as no surprise, then, and getting back to the point at hand, that one needs to stretch a little harder to remember the numerous adventures that a younger Mel, having already parted ways with Glitz, travelled for some time with the Seventh Doctor and Ace before finally being dropped off once again in the audio medium. Can it be that after her soft betrayal of the Doctor backfired she, sadly, in a down and out state decided to chance herself on ‘sleazy even for the ’80s’ Sabalom Glitz once again? Oh, how sad and how hard that must have been for her to go through. At least she was able to laugh at his alcoholic death in the long run. Bless. And how old is she supposed to be now if he died at 101?!?

Her baffling return not withstanding, and canon moan over for now, I enjoyed seeing her again. With her computing skills finally put to some use, she was arguably more Mel than she’s ever been on screen before. She had good chemistry with both Doctors, and I expect RTD will look to her EastEnders work more than her first Who TV stint to work out how to best use her going forward. Why did he choose her though? Well, one may look to the first Doctor Who story RTD wrote. No, not Rose — no, not even Damaged Goods, but Mind of the Hodiac, a story he wrote and submitted to then producer John Nathan-Turner as an 18-year-old. The non-commissioned script, recently adapted by Big Finish, featured Mel and the Sixth Doctor. It may well be that Russell has a sweet spot for the character for that reason alone. As with many others in this new ongoing line-up I look forward to seeing more of her, particularly with her status as an orphan being pushed. Will we somehow finally get elaboration on that unseen TV story which depicted her first adventure with the Doctor? It’s a story already told in novel form but as I’ve gone to great pains to point out, I don’t suspect that will get in the way too much. Okay, I’ll stop,

Our new Doctor, Ncuti Gatwa, was spectacular from the off. When the regeneration started, I was thrilled. Finally, a Doctor regenerating halfway through a story, I thought. Who would we credit this story to in the future? And you thought Colin Baker leading the last serial of Season 21 was confusing… Whose face will go on The Collection set?! The weirdness of the initial imagery of the bi-regeneration aside (Ncuti becomes the first Doctor to defeat a villain in his pants), it was a lovely surprise to see the two in action together, sharing the stage. Every line Ncuti delivered was assured and he was as much the Doctor in his opening moments as any has been before, even beating Matt Smith to the punch, despite Smith’s first episode being (in my opinion) the best of all time for proof of concept. He was funny, sassy, emotional, beautiful, giving, and strong, and I cannot wait for another dose.

The bi-regeneration. Right. As I previously noted, I am very happy with the decision to ‘move on’ the Fifteenth Doctor to a fresh start. The consequence of this however is the Fourteenth Doctor’s continued existence. If The Giggle annoyed you, this will probably be the reason why. Not only are there two separate David Tennant Doctors now among us (albeit in different realities) but one is now on present day Earth. Furthermore, if the commentary is to be believed, there are now several other Doctors now roaming around (different realities? Pocket dimensions? Who knows?) due to all the Doctors allegedly now doing the same thing. In other words, RTD has suggested, when the Fourteenth Doctor bi-regenerated, all the Doctors did. So, a Hartnell who didn’t regenerate exists after the Second Doctor now bi-regenerated from him. Versions of Tom and Colin Baker are bashing around somewhere too, post-demise. And a Matt Smith, maybe not for long in that case given that he aged to death. It’s a good get out of jail card for any future appearances but does it make even a shred of sense? It needs a lot of continued thought if you want to be too literal with it. The Doctors we saw in Tales of the TARDIS — yeah, they’re bi-regenerated Doctors. Okay, sure, but hold on, does that mean there were two Doctors at the conclusion of The Caves of Androzani now? That certainly wasn’t within the text of this story or of that all time classic. He (the Fifth Doctor) may have had some words to say about the Sixth’s negative words about him, the treatment of the companion for whom he had just died, and almost definitely about Six’s choice of attire. And which one got to keep the celery when they split in half?

It’s very convoluted and it’s not an idea I like thinking about too much for fear of risking headaches. Also, if that happened every time does that mean that there is not one (Ten), not two (Ten 2, of the hand), not three (actual metacrisis Ten), not four (Ten 3 of his actual regeneration) but five (Fourteen) David Tennants roaming about time and space? Surely that would push even Ten’s ego too far? The world would implode purely from the self-interest! No, it doesn’t bear thinking about. But I doubt it was meant to be. As with The Star Beast’s Donna ‘let it go’ reasoning, and like One More Day, I don’t think creators want us to think too much about these contrived things, but for us to just go with it for the freedom it will allow us to enjoy going forward. Fair enough. Let’s deal with it internally and move forward. Allons y! I’m sure such sound logic will be enough to put the issue to bed for the fandom once and for all.

I wouldn’t spend too much time worrying about whether this new version, being considered separate as it is, will be disrespectful of what’s come before. The third special gave us many Easter eggs and references for us to nerd out over if we chose to, and with Mel continuing into the Gatwa era its very clear that this isn’t simply about saying goodbye to the past. Along with classic references to Mavic Chen and obviously the Toymaker himself from the First Doctor’s era, the trial of the Second (or perhaps the Sixth?) Doctor, exile on Earth, the eyebrow communicating Delphons and ‘Here we go again!’ from the Third Doctor, Sarah, the Key to Time, and Logopolis (the Fourth Doctor), Adric (the Fifth Doctor), Mel (the Sixth Doctor), and the Gods of Ragnorak (the Seventh Doctor), we also received mentions of the Time War (the Eighth/War Doctors), Mel’s delivery of the word ‘Fantastic!’, and Fifteenth’s reference to Rose (the Ninth Doctor), Allons-y, Trinity Wells, the Archangel Network, the essence of the Master in an object picked up by a woman and a sort of regen fakeout (the Tenth Doctor), the Pandorica, The Giggle serving as a subliminal message similar to the Silence in Day of the Moon, and River Song (the Eleventh Doctor), an indirect reference to the Doctor being President of Earth when he granted permission to use the weapon (the Twelfth Doctor) and the Flux (the Thirteenth Doctor). On top of that, we had an on-the-nose (and totally valid) criticism of the Moffat companions’ non-deaths through the art of puppetry. I’m sure it wasn’t ill meant but you can admit to yourselves now that those were unsatisfactory endings. Enough time has passed. You can do it. We’re all here for you.

Right. To finally address the elephant in the room. Should there ever be two concurrent Doctors and should the Doctor ever settle down? Firstly, I think you could argue that all the Doctors are existing concurrently all the time anyway. They travel time and happen upon places. They never check in advance to make sure they won’t bump into each other, do they? The reason given for Amy and Rory being irretrievable from the 1940s was that there was too much time travel there in that time and place; at least a decent amount of that is due to the Doctor alone in stories that we’ve already seen. The real issue in this arises through Tennant being a ‘grounded’ Doctor akin to the Third, living in one era consecutively albeit in possession of a working TARDIS this time out. He can use the TARDIS as a holiday home and make short trips but what happens when, as it so often does, Earth is invaded the next time? You get this contrivance in comics and spinoffs all the time. How can we justify the main protagonist not stepping in when the stakes are so high? Where are the Avengers or the Fantastic Four when the Sinister Six have destroyed half of New York with only young Peter Parker to stand in their way? Furthermore, it’s possible that his ‘niece’ (lovely touch by the way) Rose will be returning in the future to star alongside Ncuti and yet is also taking trips to Mars with the Fourteenth Doctor. And Donna may be joining UNIT, should Kate get her way. Why wouldn’t she call on her bestie when the dung hits the fan? Surely the logic of his staying in sub-retirement to process things won’t stand up to the potential destruction of Earth. The main question is will all of this not potentially overshadow the Fifteenth Doctor? I’ll put it this way. We’re all fans of Ncuti and want him to stand by himself. He will. He’s amazing; I’ve never loved a Doctor this early. That’s a fact. I’m itching for more of him and he has nothing to worry about when it comes to being overshadowed. He is magnetic. The potential problems within the story will have answers. Just trust RTD not to be an idiot. He’s done alright so far.

But should the Doctor ever settle down? Probably not. It would be a terrible ending for the show if it were being rested, for example. Different question: should the Doctor ever take some time? I’d refer to a certain Sherlock Holmes spending time with his bees or an Alain Quartermain on his ranch in Africa. They always come back for another story when we need them. The Doctor already has; we’re seeing him: Ncuti Gatwa is that Doctor. I think RTD makes a valid point with his message about the Fourteenth Doctor. The Doctor, and we, have been through so much. The last 18 years have been hard going for a variety of reasons. Many wish the last five of those hadn’t even happened. The Moffat years dragged us through a rollercoaster of barbed wire fences. Some Classic Who fans still don’t see Davies’ relaunch as the same show. It’s time to draw a line. Stop suffering with the Doctor. Stop, as I alluded to earlier, comparing the apparent failures of the present to the past. Nothing will ever beat nostalgia. Just relearn how to enjoy your favourite show again or pick an opportune time to jump off. None of us will ever see the ending, after all. Nor should we. Doctor Who will and should last forever. RTD has given us a perfect excuse, should we need it. Retire with your memories. Retire with your Doctor, even. Nothing will change them or what they mean to you. Doctor Who will never end, but Davis has given the show another very good semi colon with this ‘ending’. The next few episodes will represent a whole new chapter.

Questions for the future include… (deep breath) who the Toymakers legions are, who the lady who took the gold tooth/Master is, which Master is it anyway, why does it absolutely have to be Ryan Gosling and how devastated will I be if it’s literally anyone else, who is the Meep’s boss, who else did the Toymaker battle and will they return now he’s locked away, who is The One Who Waits, will the 14th Doctor eventually actually regenerate into the Fifteenth Doctor who will then be cast back in time (rehab in the wrong order) or will he be go onto the become The Curator, are there now two different TARDISes or is the jukebox version with wheelchair accessibility just a future version, how do the Guardians and the Eternals fit in to all this, do they even, why are the Goblins singing exposition at us, when will they release The Meep plush toy, how long will the Fifteenth Doctor have been the Doctor when we meet him again, how many outfits will he have in episode one alone and by how much will he beat Pertwee’s costume record by the time Season 1 is all said and done, is Doctor Who a musical now, who is Ruby Sunday, who is Anita Dobson’s character? Okay. Enough to keep us going then. I cannot wait for The Church on Ruby Road!

As part of Doctor Who‘s 60th anniversary, and the franchise’s expansive future, nearly every episode currently in the archive (plus some missing, represented as animations) is available on the streaming service, BBC iPlayer.

That’s Classic Who, New Who (or NuWho, if you will), Doctor Who Confidential, The Sarah Jane Adventures, Class, and Torchwood, at your fingertips.

But where should you start? Here are some of the best and most underrated stories from each programme.

The Best Episodes of Doctor Who

Here are some of the best stories from Classic and New Who, including some overlooked treasures.

The Daleks: The very first story with the Daleks, and the second Doctor Who story.

The Aztecs: A superb historical in which the First Doctor’s companions discover that you can’t rewrite history — not one line!

The Dalek Invasion of Earth: The Daleks have taken over Earth! The second Dalek tale effectively kicked off Dalekmania in the 1960s.

The Time Meddler: The first pseudo-historical, in which we meet the Meddling Monk, a fellow Time Lord affecting human history.

The War Machines: The First Doctor takes on new companions, Ben and Polly, and fights an AI in contemporary London.

The Tenth Planet: The first Cybermen story, and the first regeneration!

The Power of the Daleks: Patrick Troughton makes his full debut as the Second Doctor.

The Tomb of the Cybermen: Lost of many decades, this four-parter was found again in the early 1990s.

The Ice Warriors: These Martian menaces are introduced to Doctor Who.

The Web of Fear: The Brigadier makes his debut, amid the Great Intelligence’s bid to take over Earth using his Yeti.

The Invasion: One of the best Cybermen tales ever.

The War Games: A sprawling epic which results in us finally meeting the Doctor’s people…

Spearhead from Space: The introduction of the Autons and Nestene Consciousness is a perfect jumping-on point, and kicks off a season of wonderful tales.

Doctor Who and the Silurians: Find out who originally ruled the Earth.

Inferno: A terrifying tale that explores another universe — and shatters the world.

The Three Doctors: The first time multiple Doctors meet, to celebrate the 10th anniversary!

The Green Death: A tearful end of an era. With complimentary giant maggots.

The Time Warrior: Hello to the Sontarans… and Sarah Jane Smith.

The Ark in Space: Doctor Who does Alien before Alien.

Genesis of the Daleks: Learn how the Daleks originated — and how the Time War began.

The Seeds of Doom: An all-consuming threat emerges from the permafrost.

The Face of Evil: The Doctor meets his new companion, Leela… who thinks he’s “The Evil One”.

The Robots of Death: One of the best stories ever, focused around an unsettling murder-mystery.

Horror of Fang Rock: A lighthouse on an isolated rock results in an edge-of-the-seat battle against a shape-shifting alien.

The Pirate Planet: Fantastic ludicrousness from Douglas Adams.

City of Death: More fantastic ludicrousness from Douglas Adams — this time, in Paris!

State of Decay: In another universe, the Fourth Doctor comes up against horrifying vampires.

Kinda: A trippy existential crisis for the Fifth Doctor.

The Visitation: A classic monster-of-the-week tale set in 1666.

Earthshock: The surprise return of the Cybermen, and a truly shocking ending that shows there are consequences to travel in space and time.

Enlightenment: Incredible ships float across space in order to obtain the ultimate prize.

The Five Doctors: The 20th anniversary special, taking us to Gallifrey.

Frontios: A moody serial in which the ground eats the dearly departed…

The Caves of Androzani: Often called the greatest Doctor Who story of all time.

Vengeance on Varos: When will our obsession with reality TV end?

Revelation of the Daleks: On Tranquil Repose, an old evil finds solace in recycling the dead.

Terror of the Vervoids: A good old fashioned Agatha Christie-esque murder mystery.

Remembrance of the Daleks: The Seventh Doctor and Ace visit London in the 1960s, where two rival Dalek factions are at war over something the Doctor hid there…

The Happiness Patrol: A wonderful but weird tale in which everyone has to be happy — or else.

Ghost Light: Confusing? Brilliant? Or brilliantly confusing? It’s up to you to find out.

The Curse of Fenric: A must-watch Seventh Doctor classic which examines the relationship between the Time Lord and his companion, Ace.

The TV Movie: The Eighth Doctor makes his mark, with an adventure in San Francisco, on the verge of a new millennium.

Rose: Doctor Who returns to TV, with a Ninth Doctor and new titular companion.

The Unquiet Dead: Charles Dickens meets ghosts — at Christmas.

Dalek: The last Dalek (ahem) meets the last Time Lord (ahem) in existence.

The Empty Child/ The Doctor Dances: A thrilling and memorable two-parter which has forever tainted the words, “Are you my mummy?”

Bad Wolf/ The Parting of the Ways: The Ninth Doctor bids adieu in a massive battle with the Daleks.

The Christmas Invasion: The Tenth Doctor sleeps for a bit… then beats the invading Sycorax with a simple sword fight.

Tooth and Claw: A werewolf wants to sink its teeth into Queen Victoria.

The Girl in the Fireplace: A heartbreaking tale of love, spread across the centuries.

The Impossible Planet/ The Satan Pit: A poisoned planet orbits a black hole, in this, one of the very best Tenth Doctor stories.

Smith and Jones: A fresh and gorgeous new run for the Tenth Doctor begins with the introduction of Martha Jones.

Gridlock: A beautiful parable plays out in the undercity of New New York.

Human Nature/ The Family of Blood: The Doctor turns human in a bid to escape the brutal Family.

Blink: A Doctor-lite episode that introduces the Weeping Angels.

Silence in the Library/ Forest of the Dead: We meet the doomed River Song, while she, the Doctor, and Donna Noble escape flesh-eating piranhas of the air…

Midnight: The focus is all on the Doctor here as an unseen alien presence latches onto the visitors of a diamond planet.

The Waters of Mars: A base-under-siege spectacular, made even scarier by the Time Lord Victorious.

The Eleventh Hour: Matt Smith ushers in a brilliant new era of Doctor Who.

The Time of Angels/ Flesh and Stone: The Weeping Angels are back; so is River Song. But who is she?!

Vincent and the Doctor: A beautiful story, in which the Eleventh Doctor and Amy Pond meet the tragic, talented, and tormented painter.

The Pandorica Opens/ The Big Bang: A glorious series finale which reinvigorates the programme once again.

A Christmas Carol: Arguably the best Christmas episode ever.

The Impossible Astronaut/ Day of the Moon: The Doctor dies, and we meet the creepy Silence.

The Doctor’s Wife: The troublesome House introduces us to the Doctor’s true love.

The Girl Who Waited: Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill give two of the best performances in Doctor Who history.

The God Complex: Faith is tested, as the TARDIS crew’s fears are exposed.

The Angels Take Manhattan: A tearful farewell to Amy and Rory, as the Weeping Angels take over New York.

The Snowmen: The Eleventh Doctor meets Clara amid a wintry adventure with the Great Intelligence.

The Bells of St. John: The Eleventh Doctor meets Clara again, amid a thoroughly-modern adventure with the Great Intelligence.

Hide: A classic haunted house with a Stone Tape twist.

The Day of the Doctor: The 50th anniversary special, voted the best Doctor Who story ever.

The Time of the Doctor: The Doctor is dead. Long live the Doctor.

Listen: The Twelfth Doctor exposes his fears of being on his own. That is, if he really is alone…

Mummy on the Orient Express: The Doctor and Clara must defeat a killer they can’t even see.

Flatline: In Bristol, a 2D monster is determined to prove a multi-dimensional threat.

Last Christmas: Dreams become reality as the Kantrofarri give people’s faces a big hug.

Under the Lake/ Before the Flood: A terrifying time-twisting story with a base at the bottom of the ocean under siege from ghosts.

Heaven Sent/ Hell Bent: Peter Capaldi gives a startling turn in this meditation on grief.

The Pilot: The show gets another breath of fresh air with new companion, Bill Potts.

Smile: An underrated joyous gem.

Oxygen: A tense thriller which highlights that every breath brings us closer to death.

Extremis: Everything is a lie.

World Enough and Time/ The Doctor Falls: The Doctor, Bill, and Nardole realise the gravity of the situation as they witness the genesis of the Cybermen.

The Woman Who Fell to Earth: Jodie Whittaker debuts as the first female Doctor.

Rosa: Ryan Sinclair and Yasmin Khan are inspired by the life of Rosa Parks.

Demons of the Punjab: A historical story set during the Partition.

The Witchfinders: Another solid historical with a great mud monster… and some very human monsters too!

Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror: Highlighting an often-overlooked historical genius with his mind set firmly on the future.

The Haunting of Villa Diodati: A brutal Cyberman inspires Mary Shelley.

Village of the Angels: The Weeping Angels return amid the Flux.

The Power of the Doctor: The Thirteenth Doctor bows out, during a whirlwind of cameos.

The Best Episodes of Doctor Who Confidential

This BBC3 show took viewers behind the scenes between 2005 and 2011. Here are some of the best, although there are loads more fantastic episodes of Doctor Who Confidential.

Bringing Back the Doctor (Series 1, Episode 1): Learn how Doctor Who returned to TV screens in 2005.

The Daleks (Series 1, Episode 6): The Daleks are back! Well, one of them is anyway. For now…

The Dark Side (Series 1, Episode 7): An interesting look at our relationship with the media, focusing on The Long Game, but naturally also setting up Bad Wolf (not that we realised that when it aired).

The Last Battle (Series 1, Episode 13): A history of the Time Lords and the Daleks, yes, but most importantly, Christopher Eccleston’s final Confidential.

Script to Screen (Series 2, Episode 4): An inspiring journey, charting the full genesis of The Girl in the Fireplace, from draft to readthrough, filming to post-production.

The Writer’s Tale (Series 2, Episode 7): An in-depth chat with writer, Mark Gatiss (The Idiot’s Lantern).

You’ve Got the Look/ Religion, Myths and Legends (Series 2, Episodes 9 and 10): Confidential doesn’t do two-parters really, but this pair, accompanying The Impossible Planet/ The Satan Pit, is as perfect a thematic exploration as the show gives.

Finale (Series 2, Episode 14): Yes, there’s a lot of emotion as Billie Piper says goodbye to Doctor Who, but this is also quite a joyous episode, in the wake of the Daleks and Cybermen meeting.

Music and Monsters (Series 3, Episode 1): Only loosely linked to The Runaway Bride, this special actually delved into Doctor Who: A Celebration, the 2006 Children in Need concert.

Meet Martha Jones (Series 3, Episode 2): As Martha was such a breath of fresh air in Doctor Who, Freema Agyeman proves to be for Confidential.

Do You Remember the First Time? (Series 3, Episode 10): Sometimes called the best episode of Confidential ever, this is a love letter to the show as a whole (including 20th Century Who) and to BBC Television Centre, presented by David Tennant, who also makes his directorial debut.

Kylie Special (Series 4, Episode 1): Oh heck, Kylie Minogue on Doctor Who!

The Italian Job (Series 4, Episode 3): Charting the overseas adventures of the crew as they film The Fires of Pompeii.

Shadow Play (Series 4, Episode 9): The best thing Confidential does is make you think of the challenges and fun of production, specifically the bits that would never cross your mind otherwise — case in point: lighting in Silence in the Library, where shadows are so important…

Look Who’s Talking (Series 4, Episode 10): Behind the scenes on one of the most brilliant productions of Doctor Who, Midnight.

The Eleventh Doctor (Series 4 special): Confidential was so important, this episode aired on BBC1 and introduced the world to the Eleventh Doctor, Matt Smith.

Allons-y! (2009 Special): David Tennant’s last day on set (until the 50th and 60th) and Matt Smith’s first.

All About the Girl (Series 5, Episode 2): Looking at how the art and design departments created Starship UK in The Beast Below.

Eyes Wide Open (Series 5, Episode 4): Behind the scenes of The Time of Angels, but also looking at The Adventure Games.

Death in Venice (Series 5, Episode 6): Though The Vampires of Venice was filmed in Croatia, Confidential took writer, Toby Whithouse, to Venice itself to investigate the plague and vampiric reports with Venetian Historian, Francesco Da Mosto. An utterly fascinating episode.

Extra Time (Series 5, Episode 11): Series 5 of Confidential saw the show doing some really unusual and brilliant things, including, here, sending Karen Gillan to discuss the prime meridian, the nature of space-time, and time travel with Dr. Aderin-Pocock and Marek Kukula.

Alien Abduction/ Out of Time (Series 5, Episodes 12 and 13): All the challenges of filming the Series 5 finale (which also inspired by book, The Black Archive: The Pandorica Opens/ The Big Bang!).

Christmas Special 2010: Exploring A Christmas Carol, with the script readthrough proving a great jumping-off point.

My Sarah Jane: A Tribute to Elisabeth Sladen: This special, often considered part of Confidential, says a sad farewell to the one and only Elisabeth Sladen.

Breaking the Silence (Series 6, Episode 2): Filming in America!

Bigger on the Inside (Series 6, Episode 4): Neil Gaiman essentially presents an episode of Confidential.

Heartbreak Hotel (Series 6, Episode 11): This episode is particularly thought-provoking (with a discussion on the parallels between the Doctor and the Minotaur in The God Complex) and joyous, with Whithouse bringing his children on set to meet Matt Smith.

When Time Froze (Series 6, Episode 13): The last ever episode of Doctor Who Confidential.

The Best Episodes of Torchwood

Running for four seasons, Torchwood had great highs and depressing lows. Here’s what to want the best view of this Doctor Who spin-off. These are intended for adults only.

Everything Changes: Gwen Cooper is thrown into the grim and gritty world of Torchwood.

Ghost Machine: The team investigate a horrific murder as they’re seemingly thrown into the past.

Small Worlds: Sapphire and Steel creator, P. J. Hammond, gives us a terrifying take on fairies.

They Keep Killing Suzie: The team has to resurrect their departed comrade/enemy, Suzie Costello.

Out of Time: A displaced trio from the past have to find their ways in 2007, discovering that the future isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. The best of Series 1.

Captain Jack Harkness: Learn more about Jack Harkness. No, not that Jack Harkness.

Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang: Jack returns to Torchwood after the events of Doctor Who Series 3, but have things changed too much?

To the Last Man: The Torchwood team’s relationship with death is examined once more when they have to bring back a cryogenically frozen soldier from the First World War.

Reset: Martha Jones is temporarily recruited to the team.

From Out of the Rain: Two celluloid film stars escape into the real world.

Adrift: The best of Series 2. A haunting and emotional reminder that travels in time and space don’t always end well.

Fragments/ Exit Wounds: The Series 2 finale tears the team apart.

Children of Earth: This is technically Series 3 in its entirety, but you can’t separate individual episodes as it’s one five-part story — and the absolute best of Torchwood.

Miracle Day: The New World: Another season-long story, which is considerably less enjoyable than Children of Earth, but there are still some decent episodes, notably this opening part.

Miracle Day: The Categories of Life: The mid-point in Series 4 also gives us one of the most shocking and terrifying cliffhangers.

Miracle Day: The Blood Line: The season conclusion, in which we find out why no one on Earth (except Captain Jack) can die. Farewell, Torchwood.

The Best Episodes of The Sarah Jane Adventures

The best Doctor Who spin-off? There’s no question: it’s definitely The Sarah Jane Adventures. Each story is comprised of two episodes.

Eye of the Gorgon: A superb take on a classic myth, and tackling the subject of dementia in a compassionate and smart way.

Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane?: A deal with the Trickster means the Third and Fourth Doctor companion is erased.

The Lost Boy: The Slitheen are back, claiming Luke Smith, Sarah’s son, as their own.

The Last Sontaran: The first story of Series 2 picks up in the wake of The Sontaran Stratagem/ The Poison Sky.

Day of the Clown: Bradley Walsh proves absolutely terrifying in a tale that also introduces new character, Rani Chandra.

The Mark of the Berserker: Clyde Langer is one of the best characters in the Whoniverse; here, the focus is on him as he finds his estranged father, Paul.

The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith: When Sarah finds herself in the past, she’s given the opportunity to meet her parents.

Enemy of the Bane: Notable for introducing the Black Archive… and bringing back Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart!

Prisoner of the Judoon: Series 3 opens with the return of this memorable Doctor Who alien searching for a deadly fugitive on Earth.

The Mad Woman in the Attic: In the future, a young boy stumbles upon 13. Bannerman Road and meets the titular mad woman: a shattered Rani Chandra…

The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith: David Tennant guests as the Tenth Doctor — the last thing he filmed as this incarnation of the Doctor until the 50th anniversary.

The Nightmare Man: Julian Bleach’s creepy character haunts Luke as he prepares to leave for university.

Death of the Doctor: Matt Smith guest stars as the Eleventh Doctor in this glorious tale which also brings back Jo Jones (née Grant)!

The Empty Planet: Rani and Clyde find themselves the last humans on Earth.

Lost in Time: A possible Time Lord scatters Sarah, Rani, and Clyde through different time periods.

The Curse of Clyde Langer: An exploration of homelessness, better than you’d find on adult TV, let alone CBBC. Probably the best SJA story ever.

The Man Who Never Was: And the story goes on…. forever.

The Best Episodes of Class

An underrated spin-off set at Coal Hill School was ultimately axed, but there’s plenty of goodness to be found in this eight-episode series.

For Tonight We Might Die: Peter Capaldi puts in a guest appearance as the Twelfth Doctor.

Nightvisiting: A spooky night-time visitor strengthens the character work in this ragtag team of students.

Detained: The class are held in a nightmarish detention.

The Metaphysical Engine, or What Quill Did: An episode focused on Catherine Kelly’s Miss Quill, probably the show’s best character.

The Lost: The series ends on a truly shocking cliffhanger which is yet to be picked up in the Doctor Who universe.

Special Mention

K9 & Company is also on BBC iPlayer (and is, of course, available on DVD too), and, as the first Doctor Who spin-off, is well worth a watch!

Tales of the TARDIS reunites Doctors and companions across six nostalgia-filled episodes, launching the so-called Whoniverse with new stories for Steven Taylor and Vicki, Jo Grant and Clyde Langer, and the Seventh Doctor and Ace, to name just a few.

Feel free to add more suggestions in the comments section below!

A few years back, I wrote a list of 10 underrated Hammer Horror films to watch throughout October and the Halloween period. Now, a few years later, I’ve seen a lot more — mainly ones that people don’t always look favourably on. But in these movies listed below, there are some brilliant moments and themes and films that show just how creative the creators at Bray Studios were — here for you to enjoy over the dark winter months. (Or whenever: Hammer is for life, not just Halloween!)

1. Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter (1974)

Captain Kronos manages to successfully blend Hammer vampires with the swashbuckling feel of some of their earlier non-traditional horror films. Dr. Marcus has to call Captain Kronos — an old army friend — to his home to investigate a number of deaths related to rapid aging. It doesn’t take Kronos and his aide Grost long to discover a family of vampires who are draining the life from their victims to prolong their own.

Seen as a successful release at the time, Captain Kronos has also gone to become a cult classic amongst fans of the horror genre, thanks to its mixture of frights and swashbuckling action. Written and produced by the creators of The Avengers, Brain Clemens and Albert Fennell, it featured a number of stars including one of the original Avengers, Ian Hendry, as well as actors Caroline Munro, John Carson, and Wanda Ventham, with Horst Janson as Kronos, though Julian Holloway provides the voice for the character.

Kronos was supposed to herald a new franchise for Hammer that never happened with the studios closing down after its release but it’s been revived in novels and a series of comics from Titan. Thanks to its cult status, like the vampires he fights, Captain Kronos never really dies.

2. The Quiet Ones (2014)

Hammer had made a big comeback a few years prior to The Quiet Ones: films like Let Me In (2010), The Resident (2011), and The Woman in Black (2012) had brought them back as a big player in the horror genre. The Quiet Ones took its inspiration from a real life experiment in the paranormal field, The Philip Experiment, which was designed to see if people can communicate with fictionalised ghosts through the human will. Basically, do we bring things into existence through our sheer force of will and word of mouth or is there a real spirit world waiting for us?

The Quiet Ones, filmed primarily in the house used for Day of the Daleks, sees Professor Joseph Coupland having his university funding pulled on his experiment so he takes his students to a big house in the country to secretly continue his project. One of his students, who suffers from a psychological disorder, begins to see Evie and while the Professor continues his unethical experiments (despite his students pleas to stop), they discover that Evie is more real than they first thought.

The Quiet Ones is a creepy and often uncomfortable watch. It’s hard to see how the Professor treats his students and the cast put in great performances. Of course, one of the main highlights is seeing Styles’ House, even if it does look rundown as if the explosion at the end of Day of the Daleks were a real one. If The Quiet Ones proves anything, it’s that Hammer can still deliver the scares, even if it does still sometimes rely a little too hard on its past glories.

3. Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde (1971)

The early 1970s saw the earlier quality of Hammer beginning to slip. However, there were a few instances where real inspiration struck; one such film was Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde, which was the studios’ third take on the famous story from Robert Louis Stevenson. We’ve got Dr Jekyll creating a potion that unleashes a darker force within him. This time though, Dr Jekyll, played by Ralph Bates, turns into Sister Hyde, played by Martine Beswick, and the film is helped by the fact that the pair look alike.

And while the original novel poses the question of who is worse, Dr Jekyll or Mr Hyde, the script makes it pretty clear for most of it: Sister Hyde is certainly trouble, but she’s only killing those who have wronged her and Dr Jekyll. For modern audiences, there are plenty of LGBT+ themes. But amongst other elements of the film, which somehow manage to incorporate Jack the Ripper and body snatchers Burke and Hare, any LGBT+ themes don’t get much exploration.

Despite being one of their later works, Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde is an inspired movie, taking the original text and doing something wholly original with it. Credit must go to the director too, who stops things from being gloriously over the top, playing the movie straight for the most part; and as good as Bates is in this, Beswick steals the show.

4. The Evil of Frankenstein (1964)

The Evil of Frankenstein is the third movie in the Frankenstein franchise and breaks ties with the continuity of the first two, crafting a completely new background and history for our favourite Baron, played once again by Peter Cushing. When Baron Frankenstein and his assistant Hans have to leave their new house and return to Karlstaad, the Baron’s original home, they decide to sell some of the castle’s antiques to make enough money to continue their experiments. However, they find their castle ransacked and are discovered again, forced to flee once more. They take shelter in a cave where the original monster, having been frozen in ice after the altered climax of 1957’s Curse of Frankenstein.

The new origins have more in common with the 1930s Boris Karloff films and one wonders why Hammer felt the need to reinvent the Creature’s creation, but following an encounter with a magician called Zoltan, who the Baron uses to help the Creature recover while implanting hypnotic suggestions, he finds the Creature has been used in Zoltan’s evil plans. It’s an interesting take on the Baron who finds himself the victim of someone else’s machinations this time around, as Zoltan gains more and more power.

But the film belongs to Peter Cushing who gives a stellar performance as Baron Frankenstein as he is forced to pit his wits against Zoltan to save not only his reputation but also his home of Karlstaad. While we’re a few years away from Frankenstein Created Woman, which sees the Baron actually having to face up to the consequences of his actions, the seeds for that are planted here, posing the question of whether or not Baron Frankenstein is a bad as his reputation suggests.

5. The Vampire Lovers (1970)

The Vampire Lovers is another example of Hammer in the early 1970s beginning to experiment with their output and trying for something different. Based off Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1872 novella, Carmilla (an excellent book if you’ve never read it), it begins the Karnstein Trilogy, a series of films focusing on characters from the vampiric Karnstein family — the other films Lust for a Vampire and Twins of Evil are also decent outings and notable for their inclusion of lesbian themes.

On its initial release, The Vampire Lovers was met with mixed reviews: while some people found it flat and boring, other people praised it because it moved away from the older Hammer tropes and focused more on character and world building than blood and gore. It’s for that reason that I really enjoyed it, with Ingrid Pitt’s Carmilla falling in love with her host’s daughter, while drinking the blood of those around her. She also wraps Kate O’Mara’s Governess around her little finger too, leading to a brilliantly staged ending where Carmilla has to choose who she really wants.

Of course, it’s Hammer, so all vampires must be evil, but there are elements in the script where Carmilla is genuinely misunderstood and while some scenes push Hammer’s later mythos of ‘blood and bosoms’, The Vampire Lovers, for the most part, is an intelligently and sensitively written film which makes for a rather chilling if slightly erotic Hammer classic.

6. The Woman in Black (2012)

I first met The Woman in Black when I read the book for my GCSE studies way back in 2010 and since then I’ve both been terrified and in love with the book, originally written by Susan Hill. There had been a previous and frightening ITV adaptation in the 1990s but Hammer seemed like the proper home for The Woman in Black as it plays to all its strengths: there’s a terrific gothic set design and plenty of original twists on the novel — some hated that because they played fast and loose with Hill’s original, but I really like it because it proves that even after they came back Hammer still has it in them to create something genuinely terrifying.

Keeping the titular Woman in Black in the background for most of the movie sees the film pay homage to the fantastic stage play and makes for an unsettling watch as it gives Eel Marsh House a change to be a character in its own right.

My friend, who isn’t bothered by horror films, told me this is the only one he’s seen which genuinely unsettled him and plagued his thoughts long after watching it. Daniel Radcliffe easily sheds the shackles of Harry Potter here as the hero Arthur Kipps, and as good as films like Let Me In were, it’s The Woman in Black which really made Hammer shine, proving they can still make an effective ghost story. There was a sequel, The Angel of Death set during WW2 which was good and featured the late great Helen McCrory, but the 2012 original is easily one of modern Hammer’s best.

7. The Reptile (1966)

In the mid ’60s, Hammer Horror were really hitting their stride: every movie they made turned into magic and money. The Reptile is no different. Produced off the back of The Plague of the Zombies, it shared the same location, sets, and cast in a cost cutting measure. Despite that, visually The Reptile looks amazing, the sets and locations, with many outside scenes filmed at Frensham Ponds where Doctor Who filmed The Highlanders the same year. Jaqueline Pearce as the titular monster is an instantly iconic Hammer creation and it’s here that the trope of a quiet English village hiding a sinister secret that could kill them all is really cemented.

While it feels a lot slower and moodier than Plague of the Zombies, there are plenty of moments to make the viewer squirm, especially as the reptile venom courses through the blood stream of its victims which even now, nearly 60 years later, looks and feels incredibly visceral. The Reptile ignores Hammer’s previous shocks of blood and gore and is a lot more dignified, observing the idea of self-destruction with a religious man destined to lose his daughter whose fate he wished upon her. It’s an incredibly cerebral film with a iconic monster.

8. The Gorgon (1964)

Another reptile here, this time it’s a creature with snakes for hair as Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee come up against The Gorgon. Fans of The Sarah Jane Adventures will see how the story, Eye of the Gorgon, is based off this movie, which drips with atmosphere. Originally submitted as an idea from a Canadian fan, writers John Gilling and Anthony Nelson Keys expanded on the initial notion and developed a script, which saw Hammer hiring a ballet dancer as the Gorgon because it needed to glide as opposed to walk.

The Gorgon has a totally different feel for a Hammer film, as it moved away from Frankenstein, Dracula, and The Mummy franchises, but it looks glorious as the money made from the other films was spent on the set design. While some might find the storyline simple and predicable, especially by modern standards, the visuals are a treat and director, and Hammer stalwart, Terrance Fisher handles things with ease, delivering all the thrills and chills in a way where everyone comes away without egg on their faces. And it’s nice to see Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee getting to portray roles other than those they would become iconic (and in Lee’s case, typecast) for.

9. The Mummy’s Shroud (1967)

It’s taken me a little while to come around to The Mummy’s Shroud. I first saw it a few years ago on the Horror channel. I wasn’t overly impressed. However, I recently brought the Blu-ray version of the film and got a new appreciation for it. While it doesn’t stray too far from established tropes in other mummy films, The Mummy’s Shroud plays out like a slasher film, with the creature bumping off characters in a variety of ways — strangulation, knifes, acid, and hooks; ways that would make Michael Meyers or Freddie Kruger blush. On its release, some people didn’t like this way of finishing characters off, especially in comparison to The Reptile which gave us kills left to our imagination.

While there is no way of disguising that this is one of Hammer’s lower budget outings, the movie does boast horror icons such as Andre Morell and Michael Ripper in leading roles as well as legendary stunt man, Eddie Powell as the Mummy. Powell would famously break his ankle on the set of Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. and would go on to play the titular Alien in the Ridley Scott films.

And if that weren’t enough, Roger Delgado also features here in a role not too dissimilar to the Master. Was this plot another one of the Master’s plans all along…?

10. Countess Dracula (1971)

Countess Dracula features a story based on the myths and legends of a real life person, Countess Elizabeth Bathory, a noblewoman who was accused of brutally murdering dozens of young girls and women in her lifetime. If true, then she would be one of the earliest recorded serial killers of all time.

Ingrid Pitt brings the Countess to life, though her voice was dubbed over for not being English enough, despite her real-life counterpart being Hungarian. The Countess hires female staff, and when they displease her, she disposes of them in various gruesome ways and then bathes in their blood to keep herself looking young. Once again, Hammer found a different way of using the vampire legend, rather than just neck biting — no fangs on offer here.

Amongst the literal bloodbaths, there is a story about vanity to be enjoyed here — someone so desperate to stay young forever, that this film still feels relevant in today’s era of anti-aging serums and creams. While we can forgive the ending of the film slowly running out of energy along with the Countess, Pitt does a marvellous job and it’s no wonder that she would play vampires very regularly throughout her career, thanks to her powerful performance here.

Coming out as a blood sucking double bill with Vampire Circus, which would feature future Doctor Who companion Lalla Ward, Countess Dracula doesn’t have the same innovative quality that Circus does, but given how production had to be suspended and the movie made out of the filmed footage with Circus, Countess Dracula revels in its court intrigue and humour, which balances the horror well, making Countess Dracula certainly one of the most underrated films in Hammer’s long dynasty.

Happy Halloween…!

As much as we might wish they would, our favourite actors can’t just survive on Doctor Who money alone. They have to take other jobs and this is often how they are brought to Doctor Who, having been seen in other things beforehand or going on to have a brilliant career doing various jobs in the theatre, film, or on television. Given the time of year, maybe now is the best time to go and watch some horror recommendations to see what some of our favourite actors get up to when they aren’t travelling through time and space…

Patrick Troughton: The Omen

Heralded as one of the greatest horror movies of all time, The Omen tells the story of a young boy called Damian who may or may not be the antichrist in human form. When he’s adopted by Gregory Peck and Lee Remick, they soon find that strange things are going on in their house: a nanny kills herself, a birthday party goes drastically wrong, and their pet dogs seem to go insane. With everything seemingly surrounding Damian, they find themselves in need of a priest.

Here’s where some spoilers inevitably creep in…

Enter Patrick Troughton, who gets plenty to do here as he tries to help the family but who pays the ultimate price for trying to help. His death scene is quite possibly one of the most iconic in all of horror history. And for more Doctor Who action, then David Warner is also here, giving a terrific performance though he finds himself decapitated as the Devil moves against him.

Wendy Padbury: Blood on Satan’s Claw

Wendy Padbury has been pretty vocal in the past about how working on Doctor Who limited what work she could get after leaving in 1969. Luckily though, Blood on Satan’s Claw went a long way to shedding the typecasting. When a small farming community find body parts in their harvest, they quickly find out they belong to the Devil. If that weren’t already bad enough, the children of the village are slowly being taken over.

Often described as one of the earliest, and finest, examples of folk horror, Blood on Satan’s Claw is known for one of the most infamous scenes in early British horror, thanks in part to the fact that there weren’t the censors there are now. Wendy Padbury’s character is led to the ruins of an old church and then the children gang up on her and proceed to assault her. Looking back on the film, the director has said he thinks he went a little too far and even now, despite the fact it’s only implied, the scene still holds the ability to really shock. If you live in a sleepy little English village then Blood on Satan’s Claw is a must watch. And keep an eye out for a future Master in the form of Anthony Ainley who plays the village’s troubled vicar…

Jon Pertwee: The House That Dripped Blood

Released during the Third Doctor’s tenure on screen, The House That Dripped Blood was an anthology movie, surrounding the titular house. We see four different residents move in and their lives being destroyed by events surrounding the home. Jon Pertwee, alongside Ingrid Pitt, stars in the fourth and final story. Pertwee plays a troubled actor who has been cast in a horror movie about vampires, in a nod to Christopher Lee’s later distaste for playing Dracula. He purchases a cape from a strange shop and finds that every time he wears it, his reflection vanishes. What he doesn’t realise is that he’s slowly being turned into the vampire he loathes playing. And to make matters worse, Ingrid Pitt is also a vampire and her scene where she rises from her coffin cemented her as a genre icon. Plus I’ll watch Ingrid Pitt in anything!

Tom Baker: Vault of Horror

Another anthology film, this time taking its inspiration from the EC Comics series of the same name, Tom Baker stars in the story, Drawn and Quartered as a painter called Moore, who is penniless and living in Haiti. When he discovers that his paintings have been sold for shocking amounts of money by critics who told him his artwork was awful, he turns to Voodoo to get his revenge. Other segments in Vault of Horror revolve around standard horror tropes like vampires and reanimation, and themes like mysticism and the occult; Drawn and Quartered is the best of the bunch as Moore begins to kill his victims by painting their deaths!

And for more Tom Baker goodness, he also appeared in Frankenstein: The True Story but he was also one of the writers behind the fantastic Witchfinder General, with Vincent Price as the infamous Matthew Hopkins.

Colin Baker: The Asylum

Released in 2000, The Asylum saw a girl called Jenny delving into her past, believing that as a child, she was responsible for the brutal murder of her mother. The film received a mixed reaction on its release, but Colin Baker makes the first of a couple of horror movie appearances here as Arbuthnot, starring opposite Ingrid Pitt and her daughter Steffanie. As Jenny is trying to figure out what is happening to her, Baker chews the scenery as the Northern Estate Agent Arbuthnot who turns full on Norman Bates at the end; the image of Colin Baker, drenched in blood and mumbling “I’m sorry Mother… I didn’t mean it,” is a strangely disturbing one that will stick with you for a long time.

You can also see Baker in The Ghosts of Borley Rectory, which finds the ghost hunter Harry Price investigating the Rectory during his stay with some scary ghostly nuns.

Sylvester McCoy: The Owners

Sylvester McCoy is miles away from the Seventh Doctor in The Owners, starring alongside Masie Williams in this home invasion movie. When Williams’ character Mary, along with a few of her friends, break into the home of Dr Higgins, played by McCoy, on the understanding there is a huge stash of money in a safe, they soon find themselves with more than they bargained for. When the Higgins family return home in the middle of the theft, they let the group tie them up and threaten them to open the safe. But the family is more twisted than they realise and when the safe is opened, Mary finds her sister imprisoned inside, having disappeared a few years beforehand. The Higgins family turn out to be serial killers and Mary and her friends have just stepped into their trap.

Okay, maybe this does sound like the Seventh Doctor — certainly the version from the Virgin New Adventures — but McCoy puts in a delightfully twisted and disturbing performance, miles away from the Doctor. Masie Williams makes for a great foil opposite him too: it’s good to see Ashildr and the Doctor together again.

Paul McGann: Alien 3

In typical horror franchise fashion, the Alien films got continually worse as they went on, and Alien 3 certainly doesn’t reach the heights that the previous films did; however, it does boast some brilliant set pieces and a few genuinely creepy moments.

Sigorney Weaver’s Ripley crashes onto a planet that’s one giant penal colony. McGann plays a murderer called Walter Golic, a far cry from the Eighth Doctor he would play in a few years’ time. Golic becomes obsessed with the Alien after he has an encounter with it earlier in the film. That obsession then puts their escape plan in jeopardy. McGann is genuinely frightening in this film as someone who will slaughter anyone without any compunction. And McGann isn’t the only Doctor Who actor in this film: guest stars include Brian Glover and Danny Webb, who starred alongside Colin Baker and David Tennant’s Doctors. And don’t forget that John Hurt is the first person seen on screen to be the victim of the Xenomorphs in the first Alien film.

Christopher Eccleston: 28 Days Later

When a rage virus sweeps across the country after eco-terrorists destroy a lab in Cambridge, Jim wakes up in a hospital, you guessed it, 28 days later. He finds a country torn apart, where most people have succumbed to the virus with a few groups of survivors littered around. When Jim and his friends arrive at what appears to be a safe haven, they soon discover that Christopher Eccleston’s Henry West, a major in the army, has designs on his friends’ bodies. With the future of the human race at stake, West has taken it upon himself to make sure that babies are born pronto. Eccleston is pretty sadistic here, and gets the point across that this safe haven is anything but pretty early on; for much of the film, he teeters on the edge of insanity before eventually succumbing to it at the very end. While this was the breakout movie for Cillian Murphy, it ultimately belongs to Eccleston who steals the show, easily being the best thing in any scene.

And Eccleston also does a tremendous job in The Others opposite Nicole Kidman. And that is a terrific film too.

David Tennant: Fright Night

In a world of many reboots and remakes, 2011’s Fright Night is a great example of how to do an original justice, forging its own path. With a great performance from the late great Anton Yelchin as our hero Charley Brewster and Colin Farrell as the vampire Jerry, Charley has to turn to Peter Vincent, a late night television magician and personality, for help.

Tennant steals the movie as Vincent — he’s funny and camp but not incapable of having some heartfelt moments. There are moments where the Tenth Doctor comes out to play in his speech mannerisms and actions but he does a tremendous job at making us love an unlikable character, and goes a long way to making what would have been a decent movie, a great one.

Matt Smith: Last Night in Soho

What can I say about Last Night in Soho apart from, if you haven’t seen it, then you really, really should? It’s fantastic. Matt Smith plays a evil pimp Jack who lies to Anna Taylor Joy’s Sandie and promises to help her get onto the stage with her excellent singing voice. It doesn’t take long for Sandie and another girl, Eloise, long to realise that Jack isn’t the promising agent she had been led to believe he was.

Diana Rigg also makes her final ever appearance here as Eloise’s lodger and the reveal as to who she really is still makes for a great moment even if you’ve seen the movie multiple times: she flips on a dime and the movie kicks things up a notch for a climatic ending where the ghosts of the past meet the sins of the present. Oh and Matt Smith is fantastic too, even if occasionally it’s quite hard to not see him as the Doctor.

Peter Capaldi: World War Z

Zombie movies are a dime-a-dozen nowadays: as overdone as the Daleks are, they provide some cheap thrills but don’t really hold the same power as they did way back in Night of the Living Dead, or even further back in films like White Zombie and I Walked With A Zombie. World War Z, then, should be given some credit for trying to do something different — there’s no explanation as to where the creatures have come from and the film shows the survivors trying to find a cure, not just trying to escape the flesh eating monsters.

Peter Capaldi isn’t involved until the third act, where — following a plane explosion — Brad Pitt’s Gerry finds himself at the W.H.O. facility as their head doctor. Unfortunately, he doesn’t last long, turning into a zombie while trying to save everyone’s lives. He’s one of the best things in the film and, much like his tenure on Doctor Who, will leave you wanting more!

Jodie Whittaker: Attack The Block

A few years before taking the reigns of the TARDIS as the Thirteenth Doctor, Jodie Whittaker was fighting an alien invasion in a very different situation as predatory alien invaders storm a council estate in South London on Guy Fawke’s Night. Whittaker plays Samantha who witnesses not only an alien meteorite crash-land in her council estate but also a drug deal going wrong. When she has to join forces with the drug gang, they find themselves in a battle to the death with the invading forces.

It’s hard to believe that this film is a horror comedy but Jodie Whittaker does a tremendous job here, working excellently alongside John Boyega and one wonders why she seemed to sometimes struggle so much with Doctor Who. A cult classic with a distinct English flavour, Attack the Block is a very fun way of spending a Hallowe’en night.

And That’s Not All…

Other Doctor Who actors have appeared in horror films too…

Before becoming Rose Tyler, Billie Piper fought ghosts in Spirit Trap; Sheridan Smith and Russell Tovey found their homes under attack in the fantastic Tower Block; and Miranda Raison faced heaven and hell in AfterDeath. Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, and Penople Wilton faced zombies in Shaun of the Dead; with the late great Tony Selby, Honor Blackman and Michelle Ryan facing them in Cockneys vs Zombies. Shaun Dingwall faced ghosts in The Forgotten and killer trucks in Hush; while Freema Agyeman and Eve Myles fought vampires in Eat Locals. Derek Jacobi made for the perfect host in The Host, while Karen Gillian tried to prove the supernatural was real in Oculus. Arthur Darvill saw the midnight hour in Minutes Past Midnight; while Pearl Mackie faced crashing planes in Horizon Line; and Matt Lucas faced a maze from hell in The Labyrinth and parasites in Cold and Dark.

So with all these recommendations, there’s no excuse not to watch some scary movies this coming Hallowe’en!

Orwell’s Nineteen-Eighty-Four has a strong connection with Doctor Who. Winston Smith has been played on radio by Christopher Eccleston and Patrick Troughton, on film by John Hurt, and by Peter Cushing in the 1954 television adaptation. Peter Capaldi reads the audiobook for Penguin.

While all the dramatisations have their merits, the Cushing version is by far the best. It was a product of the partnership between the extraordinarily talented producer / director Rudolph Cartier and the writer Tom Nigel Kneale. They were responsible for Quatermass, which has a strong claim to be the father of Doctor Who. Nineteen-Eighty-Four was made between the first two Quatermass serials. (There were only three, with a year or more between each. Tonally and thematically, Quatermass has enormous similarities to Who.)

Kneale once said that television in its earliest days was seen by its makers as an inferior medium to radio; it was just thought of as ‘radio with pictures’. It was pioneers like Kneale and Cartier who realised television’s full potential.

Arguably, they are more responsible for the development of early television drama than anyone else. Their insight, and the innovations they brought, essentially became the bedrock for how TV drama was understood and made for the next 40 years. That includes classic Doctor Who, of course.

It was Cartier who realised that television drama need not be confined to the electronic studio. He was responsible for the idea of filming exterior sequences and dropping them into the studio work as and when they were needed. This soon became standard for TV drama – and, of course, it was the format for the majority of classic Who. Barry Letts later commented that television drama’s mixture of film and video gave it a distinctive feel; for the audience, it was somewhere between theatre and film. It had the virtues of both but it was essentially different.

However, Cartier and Kneale were hampered by one thing: videotape was still in development and was unavailable. So, while the film sequences could be pre-recorded and edited, the electronic studio work could not.

Nineteen-Eighty-Four had to be performed live. The original broadcast went down so well with the viewers that a repeat was scheduled for the following week – and that meant they had to do the whole thing again. Live. Well, live apart from the filmed sequences, which could be re-used. It was this repeat performance that was preserved, rather to the chagrin of Peter Cushing, who felt that the cast’s second performance was not quite as good. But, as the first was never filmed, we’ll never know for sure.

Filmed? Yup. Before the advent of videotape, this was the only way of preserving television programmes. An adapted film camera was placed in front of a monitor and the whole thing was, well, filmed. The process was called telerecording and the results were not always great. There was an inevitable drop-out in picture quality.

The picture itself could flare or occasionally turn negative; if an insect got onto the monitor, a fly’s antics could be preserved for all eternity. And this actually happened, sometimes. Part two of The Quatermass Experiment (1953) guest stars a happy bug who sits on the Professor’s face for a good few minutes before it flies off.

Telerecording was used to preserve Quatermass and all of Sixties Doctor Who. While videotape had arrived by 1963, it was expensive and the tapes themselves had to be reused to save money; all of black and white Doctor Who has come down to us from the telerecordings, not from the original videotapes. (The telerecordings were used for overseas sales of Who; it was sold around the world on film, not on video.) The telerecordings of The Quatermass Experiment were deemed to be unsatisfactory and so the decision was made after the second episode not to bother with the final four parts. Maddening. Fortunately, Quatermass II and Quatermass and the Pit survive in their entire, telerecorded glory.

Sadly, the print of the Cartier-Kneale Nineteen-Eighty-Four is often poor. How much of this is down to the primitive video cameras in the studio is unclear, but it certainly looks as though the version we have doesn’t represent telerecording at its best.

If you can forgive the picture quality: is Nineteen-Eighty-Four any good?

Absolutely. It’s flawed and it’s dated, but yes, it’s superb. We’ll come on to that in a minute; we’ll just digress a bit more about the state of television at the time.

Introducing VERA

So, electronic studio work had to be performed live. No videotape machines were available yet.

Videotape was only invented three years before Nineteen-Eighty-Four, in the States in 1951. The earliest machines were plagued with problems: they were unreliable and the tapes themselves were staggeringly expensive. Because of the differences between American and UK television formats, the BBC decided to develop their own system rather than to adapt the American one. (Another motive was doubtless some sniffiness about the British – huzzah! huzzah! – being able to do a jolly sight better job than a lot of Johnnie Foreigners could possibly manage.)

And thus was VERA conceived and brought to birth.

VERA – the Vision Electronic Recording Apparatus – was proudly shown off to the viewing public by Richard Dimbleby on Panorama in 1958. It was a lot cheaper than telerecording and the tapes could be reused. So, by the time of An Unearthly Child, VERA was only five years old.

Five years. So if Doctor Who had begun five years earlier, it would have been transmitted live. Well, we might be sniffy about the picture quality in the first seasons of Who, but this just emphasises that its contemporary production values truly were state-of-the-art. (I tell you that this astounding new videographic recording device is a technological marvel, Chesterton!)

Extraordinarily, the Beeb was quite stuffy about using its new toy in the early days. They took the view that television should be live and it was cheating to pre-record things. (Well, maybe it’s not so daft. Even today, there are curmudgeons like me who don’t really like watching videoed theatre plays because a recording is no substitute for the live experience, dammit, sir. Perhaps their thinking was similar. Drama must be live; recorded drama is no substitute.) One of the earliest programmes to be videoed was Hancock’s Half Hour in 1960. Even so, some directors still preferred live drama; Thirty Minute Theatre was still going out live as late as 1968.

As you may know, early video editing was crude; electronic editing came later, towards the end of the Sixties. Before then, you had to stop the tape, hope you’d got the right place (you couldn’t see the picture on the tape itself, remember, so you had to guess), slice it with a razor blade, and then stick the bits back together with sticky tape. You even had to use a microscope to make sure you’d aligned the tracks correctly. As a result, the Hartnells were made with as few edits as possible; despite the fact that they were recorded, they were performed as close to live as they could be. Mervyn Pinfield prided himself on recording entire episodes without a single edit; some episodes of The Space Museum were performed like a theatre play, with the cast performing the action from Scene 1 right through to the cliffhanger without a break. Fading the picture to black gave you more chance of slicing the tape in the correct place as you had a few seconds’ grace to get to the right bit.

The Production

Above: Julia (Yvonne Mitchell), Winston (Peter Cushing) and O’Brien (Andre Morell). Morell’s prolific career included an appearance in Doctor Who as Marshal Tavannes in The Massacre. Peter Cushing went on to play — well, you know what he played.

So much for the astounding technical boffiny stuff. Let’s get back to Nineteen-Eighty-Four.

As I’ve said, it’s dated. Television drama dates more quickly than films do; films from the 1960s look better to our eyes than contemporary TV programmes. I’m not sure why. One reason is probably the picture quality. Another is the (massively) lower budget for television, and the fact that the retakes, editing, and the careful lining up of each individual shot available to the film director simply couldn’t be done on television as there just wasn’t time. A film in the Sixties had six weeks to shoot in; Nineteen-Eighty-Four had less than two hours. A film then had time for post-production; Nineteen-Eighty-Four had no post-production whatsoever. Acting styles change, too. Stanislavski’s method acting technique – ‘becoming’ the character you play, rather than impersonating them – was less common then than now. So the acting styles can seem a bit artificial to us today because we’re not so used to them.

That said, there are some superb performances, particularly from Cushing and from Andre Morell as O’Brien. (Four years later, Kneale and Cartier were to use Morell again, as the third and definitive Quatermass. He had been offered the part for the original serial but he turned it down.) Cushing is perhaps a little too posh as Winston, but standard English, which was plummier in its pronunciation then than it is now, was normative for actors in the Fifties. Perhaps Morell’s performance is slightly superior; his O’Brien is a superbly realised combination of intellectual and thug. The double act between him and Cushing, especially in the torture scenes at the end of the play, is hugely effective and genuinely horrifying.

Good support from a young Donald Pleasance as Syme; Yvonne Mitchell as Julia is effective but, again, a bit too posh. The novel’s sex scenes are, of course, toned down for a television audience. Winston and Julia enjoy a chaste hug in the room above Mr Charrington’s shop, rather than any explicit disgracefulness. The sex is implied rather than depicted. Similarly, much of the violence in the novel is toned down for the play.

By the time of the broadcast, only the first printing of the novel was available; it sold 25,500 copies. So, the television version introduced many more people to George Orwell’s work: over seven million saw it (though I can’t verify whether this figure is for the first showing, for the repeat, or for both together). Predictably, one of the reactions was outrage: questions were asked in the House, the production was condemned as obscene, sadistic, prurient, and pornographic. As would later happen with Mrs Whitehouse, such criticism totally missed the point. The problem, of course, with a drama that condemns viciousness and violence is that it has to show viciousness and violence precisely in order to condemn it (cf Vengeance on Varos). An unlikely but strong defender of the play was Her Majesty the Queen; she and the Duke of Edinburgh thought Nineteen-Eighty-Four was splendid. Good on them.

Kneale’s script was later remade by the BBC in 1965, with a completely different cast and production team. It was thought to have been lost in the Beeb’s senseless purge of its archive; miraculously, a copy was discovered in 2010 in the States. As far as I know, this version hasn’t been released on DVD or Blu-ray, and isn’t available anywhere on the internet. If anyone knows where you can get hold of a copy, please do write a note below in the comments section.

The Novel

The script of both the 1954 and 1965 versions is very faithful to the original novel (not true of all adaptations), so I’ll digress a little by saying a bit about the book itself.

It’s a masterpiece, of course, and even though Orwell wouldn’t have recognised it as an example of the genre, it’s essential reading for any understanding of the development of science-fiction as a form.

Masterpiece though it is, the novel is also flawed.

Some of the plotting is odd. Exactly why, for example, does Winston come to think of O’Brien as a hidden ally, or even as a potential saviour figure, and how come O’Brien seems to know all about this later on? Julia’s falling in love with Winston seems pretty unbelievable: she’s barely met him, and how she knows him to be a secret rebel and therefore a potential lover – well, it isn’t really explained and it doesn’t really work.

Actually, I think the problem with the novel is that Orwell is much more interested in world-building than he is in the actual story. There’s a huge amount of detail about how Ingsoc and Newspeak work, and while this is all breathtakingly imaginative and effective, it does feel as though the story itself is secondary. As a result, Winston and Julia are a bit colourless: representative figures rather than real people. I have the same problem when I read Tolkein: he seems much more interested in the society that he’s created than in the actual narrative. (And this is a fault of some Doctor Who stories too: the ideas behind the story are primary, while the characters placed within those ideas are secondary.)

Dystopian fiction was rather in vogue in the Forties. To take an example: That Hideous Strength, the final volume of C. S. Lewis’s science fiction trilogy, was published in 1945, four years before Nineteen-Eighty-Four. That Hideous Strength is almost forgotten now; the story’s about the attempts of a crazed scientific sect to set up a new (and exceptionally vile) society on Earth.

Oddly enough, Orwell reviewed Lewis’s novel and Lewis reviewed Orwell’s. Neither liked his rival’s work much. There may have been some professional jealousy going on here: you rather wonder whether each wished he’d written the other’s book. That said, Lewis and Orwell were fundamentally different writers; they had little in common. Lewis’s novel had an overtly Christian worldview, which can sometimes be intrusive and heavy-handed; Nineteen-Eighty-Four was overtly atheistic. Lewis despised atheism; conversely, Orwell didn’t think much of Christianity. Orwell made a fair point in his criticism of That Hideous Strength, though, when he said that the moment you introduce the supernatural into a narrative, it becomes predictable: the heroes can’t lose because they’ve got God on their side. Conversely, Lewis found Nineteen-Eighty-Four’s unremitting horror to be unconvincing: he thought the cruelty was so overdone as to verge on the silly.

(Having said all that, I marginally prefer Lewis’ novel. Both books feature a proposed totalitarian and joyless society, but arguable Lewis’s work is much deeper and multi-layered. There’s goodness to balance the evil, and Lewis’ work has the stronger story. The characterisation’s much better, too: Wither, Frost, Miss Hardcastle, and Mark Studdock are much more effective and believable characters than are O’Brien and Winston. Nineteen-Eighty-Four is so unremittingly horrifying that it’s the literary equivalent of eating a broken glass sandwich. Also, it does seem to be the case that totalitarianism isn’t as easy to maintain as the world of the novel suggests. Studies of Nazi Germany and the nastier communist regimes show that outward conformity and inner rebellion are actually common; it’s only the minority who fully sign up to the regimes’ ideology. In reality, Winstons are common, not rarities. And anyway, That Hideous Strength can be very funny and, shallow though I may be, I think that’s a strength. But I have been known to be wrong!)

Nineteen-Eighty-Four and Sixties Who

And a few concluding thoughts…

“What We Watched” is meant in part to shed light on Doctor Who, especially on how it would have been received by the contemporary audiences. After all, that’s who it was made for; Verity Lambert and David Whittaker didn’t make Doctor Who for us. Comparing Nineteen-Eighty-Four and An Unearthly Child (and other stories from Who’s early years) highlights a few things.

In terms of production values, An Unearthly Child is far superior to Nineteen-Eighty-Four, even though they’re only separated by nine years. Nineteen-Eighty-Four has no editing. The shock cut between Jacqueline Hill entering the police box and arriving in the control room of the TARDIS could not have been achieved without videotape and without editing. A similar shock transition between two sets simply couldn’t have been achieved in Nineteen-Eighty-Four. So yes, that edit in Who’s first episode looks crude today and yes, the picture jumps, but it represented a major technical advance.

Nineteen-Eighty-Four was live, and that meant all the sets for an entire feature-length play had to be crammed into the small studio at Lime Grove; as a result, some of them were tiny: little more than props placed in front of black drapes. An Unearthly Child was also made at Lime Grove, but the sets are much more sophisticated (and much bigger, too). Fewer are required because the running time is shorter, and the studio space can be used more effectively. The TARDIS set, taking up almost half the studio, was groundbreaking. There is nothing even remotely to touch it in Nineteen-Eighty-Four, either in terms of design or in terms of scale. The look of An Unearthly Child is far superior. The effects work is far better, too. Nothing like howlaround was available to Rudolph Cartier – but you can bet he’d have loved it and would have used it if it he could.

The acting style seems also to have moved on. While Jacqueline Hill and William Russell may seem a bit stilted to our tastes, the leads are nothing like as stiff and plummy as the leads in Nineteen-Eighty-Four. And the violence in Doctor Who has always been criticised: Za’s smashing Kal’s head in with a rock and Susan’s attacking Ian with a pair of scissors led to outrage from the TV Must Be Nice brigade. A quick look at Kneale’s play shows that audiences were by now familiar with horrifying images and most of them don’t seem to have been bothered by it. Nothing in Who compares to the torture sequences in Nineteen-Eighty-Four. Even for the original audience, the violence in ’60s Who must have looked pretty tame.

So. Nineteen-Eighty-Four deserves a watch. It’s still very good; even today, almost 70 years later, it remains the best dramatization of Orwell’s novel. It’s massively better than the John Hurt film. It still has the power to shock, and the performances, in the main, are very impressive; indeed, it’s worth watching for Andre Morell alone. The story has lost none of its power.

But… if you fancy seeing Cartier-Kneale at their best, and you want to watch a series which had more (and immediately obvious) influence on the development of Doctor Who than anything else – if, in fact, you want to watch the greatest science fiction drama ever made, in any medium, then get hold of the BBC’s original production of Quatermass and the Pit.

Just don’t watch it with the lights out.

It’s terrifying.

NOTES:

Ever anxious to stop people watching things they’ve already paid for through their licence fee, the BBC has insisted that YouTube can no longer host Nineteen-Eighty-Four. It is, however, easily to be found on dailymotion.com and the DVD can still be tracked down by a careful search.

Oh, and here’s the radio version starring Patrick Troughton:

And the Christopher Eccleston version in two parts:

I’ve been determined to take in as many Doctor Who filming locations as I can recently following my successful trip to the village of Charlton, used in Terror of the Zygons. This time around, I’ve visited three different locations, Brighton Beach, Lakeside North Harbour – formally the IBM building and then Fraser Gunnery Range.

The Leisure Hive

Used in the opening scenes of The Leisure Hive where we see the Doctor relaxing in a deck chair in what looks like freezing weather, while Romana and K9 are taking a stroll. You might be worried that it would be a tough location to spot, but actually it’s pretty easy.

If you leave the train station and head down the main road to the beach, turn left and walk along until you reach The Queen’s Hotel. There, you’ll notice you’re pretty much wedged between the two piers, one still working, one just the metal shell, left to fall apart out at sea. When you find The Queen’s Hotel, then go straight down on the seafront and everything is pretty easy to spot.

The TARDIS would have been on the left-hand side, while the Doctor relaxes on a deck chair.

Romana and K9 walk along the water’s edge with the ruined pier behind them. When Romana gets bored and throws the beach ball into the water for K9 to get, without thinking, she is seen walking up the shingle in front of The Queen’s Hotel. Of course, the shingle has shifted and changed over time but you can match up where she then legged it back down along the beach thanks to some strategically placed chimney pots on the left hand side of the hotel. There is also some curved windows on the left hand side which you can see behind her, when she rushes to help K9.

Assuming everything was filmed in front of the hotel, then the patch of water where K9 explodes would be directly in line with the hotel; however, one patch of water looks very much alike another so I can’t be 100% certain. Again, assuming all the filming took place in virtually the same place, the scenes of the Doctor sitting on the sea front would now be on the promenade pathway; there are a number of shops and galleries with rounded entrances which are behind both the Doctor and Romana, but look out for ones with slats that go diagonally and not vertically because these are the ones behind the pair.

Brighton Beach was also used in The Sound of Drums when Martha rings her brother to warn him about the Master. I couldn’t actually work out where this was filmed but I have a feeling it was further right, more in line with the shops than the hotels on the front. There isn’t a lot of Brighton in The Leisure Hive, but it’s still fun to stop and have a look around — you never know, you might stumble across a man in a long scarf and a woman in a sailor’s costume carrying a robot dog!

Revelation of the Daleks

There were a few locations used to film Revelation of the Daleks. The forest scenes were filmed in Queen Elizabeth Country Park, while the wall that the Sixth Doctor, and Peri walk along looking for a way into Tranquil Repose, is the back of the Goodwood Estate. But I think finding that might have to be a summer-time stroll!

However, the most iconic location for this story is the IBM building in Cosham. Now, it’s called Lakeside North Harbour. If you’re like me and you have to take public transport, the two best places to stop are Donaldson Road opposite the dodgy St. George Playing Fields or Hilsea Lido. I would recommend the Hilsea stop because Google Maps doesn’t seem to understand how underpasses work to get you from one side of a giant roundabout to another… Also, if you are at Hilsea, turn to the right and follow that pavement all the way along and you’ll quickly come across the left-hand side of Lakeside. I went a bit around the town first, thanks to Google Maps, so I came out in the gigantic car park!

Once you reach Lakeside, if you walk all the way along the front of the building, the iconic location is pretty easy to spot — it’s as far right as the public are allowed to walk, though you might need to be careful as you can only enter the buildings with a lanyard (and I did think a couple of times people or security were possibly keeping an eye on me).

The first thing you’ll spot is the great big glass structure, minus the pyramids on top which the building sported in the serial. The pond in the front is home to a couple of swans and ducks that you might not want to get too close to either! Looking at this section of the building on the left, you can see where the statue of the Doctor was that the Doctor and Peri inspect before it collapses down on the Doctor.

It goes to show how good director Graeme Harper is because it’s only a small part of the building they used to film but, thanks to the close ups and mid shots, it makes it feel like the whole building was used. A good example is a close of up of Nicola Bryant as Peri, which you can match up, thanks to the reflection of the right hand side building. Nowadays, it has a tree planted pretty much where Peri would have once stood.

I would have taken some more photos are the right-hand side as this is where Clive Swift as Jobel would walk to try and ‘comfort’ Peri when the statue of the Doctor falls on the Doctor. However, as I felt like people were watching me, and I wasn’t too sure of what was inside the building (that might end up in my photos), I didn’t want to push my luck. I may give it a few months and then make my way back to get some more photos with screenshots to help me…

One final picture I took was from Peri calling out to the Doctor about the toppling statue — this is where you might meet the slightly aggressive swans and ducks, so be prepared! But the path is the same as it was in the 1980s with the odd bit of set pieces around, possibly strategically placed to hide signage and steps and doorways. Peri would have been stood almost in line with the ducks in this photo, while the Doctor is in the distance in front of the steps.

The old IBM building, now Lakeside, is a great place to visit and I think it is open-ish to the public; there is a massive car park and lots of people going around taking photos holding keys to homes. The building has tax offices as well as being home to head office of the company I work for, something I didn’t know about until talking about my visit later! Obviously I don’t want anyone to go round there and get arrested taking photographs but if you get a chance to visit then definitely visit this iconic location.

The Sea Devils

Following my trip to Lakeside, on the same day I wanted to visit Fraser Gunnery Range which was famously the navy base in the Third Doctor adventure, The Sea Devils. If you want to walk, then it’s an hour and half away from the Lakeside Building but if you’re like me and your feet are tired, then you need to walk back to Hilsea Lido and then use Bus stop M. It’s a First bus — take it to Bransbury Park in Copnor. You’ll know you’re on the right bus because it should take you past Portsmouth Football Club and Stadium.

Getting off at Bransbury Park, you’ll need to walk almost the entire length of Bransbury Road, then cross and walk the entirety of Henderson Road. It’s a walk that’ll take about 20 minutes but the back of the Gunnery is pretty easy to spot once you’re about halfway there. Once you get there, there is a large green park, but if you take a right turn by a children’s playground, you’ll actually be walking up the road that the Master and Colonel Trenchard would have taken to get into HMS Seaspite. You’ll notice the big gates at the back which once upon a time would have just been a barrier.

If you’re feeling particularly brave, you could even risk getting closer to see some of the interior locations including the area that Trenchard’s cart pulls up at, and where the Master salutes the navy personal walking past. Signs warning of guard dogs and trespassers put me off getting too close, and I advise you against going near too.

I was also a little dismayed at what a state the building was in. Each of the buildings just seemed to be the four walls and the ceiling; there are no doors or windows left, and graffiti is everywhere. It’s a shame to see such a great location that many people don’t know about having fallen into such disrepair.

Following the path to the right, it’ll bring you out onto Eastney Beach itself, and walking along the line of the property, you’ll find two big metal gates. I don’t know if they are the same ones from the serial, but here, it’s easy to spot all the other locations. There is a porch area outside of which the Third Doctor, Jo, and Captain Hart exit and spot the Sea Devils. The main gates are also open for the final episode thanks to the big fight between the Navy and the Sea Devils.

Looking down along the beach, you can spot where the Sea Devils would have come running, when Hart is in the giant gun firing on them, sending them sprawling with a series of explosions and then on the other side, there is a distant building which sees the Master running from it.

Of course, the beach has changed a lot since filming took place in the early 1970s and what I was walking along was actually sea defences — so be careful because it’s a bit of a drop down, should you fall. Also be careful because where the Gunnery is, it’s now, to my shock and horror, a nudist beach! I was walking around this section of the beach taking photos and happened to look down, trying to match up where the hovercraft dropped off Jo and some more military personal: it also happened to be right where a man was lying stark naked in eight-degree weather! So this is perhaps not a location to take the kids, but if you ignore the naked people, then it’s another great filming location on the South Coast. And as not many stories were filmed near me, it’s nice to find these little places that not many people either know about or bother with.

Other locations used for The Sea Devils were No Man’s Land fort, now a hotel in the Solent; and elsewhere on the Isle of Wight, somewhere I might try and visit in the summer.

So that’s three more locations ticked off my list. I think my next trip will be Arundel Castle where Silver Nemesis was filmed. I’ve been there loads of times and know where filming took place but strangely, I’ve never taken pictures around there. Honestly though, I don’t know what’s scarier, Cybermen or naturists? Had they been there when the Sea Devils came ashore, it certainly would’ve been memorable…

I’d had to miss out on the last DWAS event at Riverside Studios which was about The Daleks’ Invasion of Earth. Luckily though, I was able to make their second event there which saw the surviving two episodes of The Crusades played on the big screen, in a similar way to the BFI events, plus a couple of guests to meet afterwards.

I live miles and miles away from London so making a trip there has to be worth it; the train tickets alone from where I live are pushing £50 and for any Doctor Who event in London, the train is the most expensive thing. So I decided to get the most out of my day and got there about 10am — the event started at 2pm and for some foolish reason, I walked from Waterloo station to Riverside Studios in Hammersmith!

Now, it wasn’t an entirely terrible idea: I’d never seen the Mall in real life before; or Buckingham Palace of which I got a few nice pictures of. I walked the entirety of Hyde Park and then Kensington Gardens — which offered a view of, I think, The Royal Albert Opera House and then I walked through Kensington, which wasn’t as posh as I thought it would have been and then into Hammersmith. When all was done, I had walked 7 miles! (It’s a good job I quite like rambling as a hobby…)

For anyone who lives near or in London, somewhere like Riverside Studios probably isn’t much of an attraction, but for someone like me, who lives in the back of beyond, it’s much more of a pilgrimage and so seeing the place they filmed a lot of 1960s Doctor Who was quite breath-taking. To think I was walking in the footsteps of William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton, as well as their companions and many other actors, was exhilarating. And Riverside seem to be proud of their connection to Doctor Who with three dedicated plaques outside. One lets you know that between 1954 and 1974, Doctor Who, Hancock’s Half-Hour, Blue Peter, and many other programmes were made there. Another one is about Verity Lambert, the first producer and creator of the show; it was also unveiled by The Doctor Who Appreciation Society. And a final one says that a number of iconic scenes from Who were filmed there including the first regeneration and the Daleks emerging from the Thames underneath Hammersmith Bridge.

And speaking of Hammersmith Bridge, that was my next port of call. I think I’ve found where the Dalek emerged from the Thames now, matching up the bridge supports to what we see behind the Dalek, but it has all changed since filming in the early 1960s! It was very exciting to see and I do sometimes wonder what people around me must be thinking, seeing someone taking pictures of really random areas, but maybe they would be as interested as me in knowing this was the spot that one of the most iconic shots from the entirety of Doctor Who was filmed…

Meeting up with my friend Maria from The Doctor Who Big Blue Box Podcast, we caught up quickly and then went into the event. For those who don’t know, Riverside is no longer a studio lot, but a cinema with the upper floors having been converted into flats. Taking our seats, we settled in to see what the afternoon had in store. One of the first things we saw going in was Julian Glover’s costume for Count Scarlioni in City of Death and then in the cinema room, the costume he wore for Richard the Lionheart in The Crusades which were amazing to see!

It began with an introduction and then the first episode entitled The Lion. I’ve seen people complaining about the quality of the footage we were seeing but it was explained at the beginning that this was the condition the episodes were found in when the original tapes were discovered. Obviously, this quality wouldn’t have been good on the DVD or Blu-ray releases; it’s a curio and only the two episodes, so the lines on the screen, the crinkles, and cracks added to the experience, as if this were a version of the story that we hadn’t seen before.

Another problem with The Crusades is that it’s pretty racist, with many white actors being in black-face or made to look like they’ve come from The Holy Land. And while this obviously isn’t acceptable and I’m sure that really, it wasn’t incredibly acceptable back in 1965 either, I was pleased that it didn’t distract people from viewing the story. We know better now but we have accept this was how television was made in the days of the likes of The Black and White Minstrel Show.

Once the first episode had finished, Robert Dick took to the stage to interview two of the surviving members of the cast, namely Maureen Lane, who played one of Lady Joanna’s Ladies in Waiting but more famously a batton twirler in The Macra Terror; and Cleo Sylveste who was one of El-Akir’s concubines. Sylveste has recently been interviewed by Doctor Who Magazine and was recently awarded an MBE.

It was an… interesting interview, with Robert having to drag the answers from the pair. In fact, one might be forgiven for thinking that they wanted to be anywhere other than at this event. It didn’t help that they both only appear in the two episodes of the story which are still missing but the chat did pick up towards the end, with Robert talking to Cleo about her rekindling her singing career. To give Robert credit, he did try to get things from them — he asked what it was like working on Doctor Who, if they ever met the main cast behind the scenes, what other things they had filmed at Riverside, how their careers started, and if they ever wanted to be anything else other than an actor. It wasn’t a long 45 minutes but I think, given how little they seemed to answer questions, any longer would have been too long.

Episode 3 of The Crusades — The Wheel of Fortune — was up next and I’d forgotten just how dark this story was with much of the action seeing Barbara having to hide from El-Akir’s soldiers who are burning down houses trying to find her. She is hiding in the house of a man who hates Saladin and is only too happy for her to take shelter so long as she promises to kill his daughter should she fall into El-Akir’s clutches. People say this is a children’s show but this is certainly much darker than anything aimed at children.

If anything, Episode 3 made me really appreciate the strength of David Whitaker’s writing. This feels like an entire world, where the Doctor, Ian, Barbara, and Vicki are at the mercy of actions taking place around them. Jaqueline Hill doesn’t get too much to say or do here, despite being the main focus of the episode but the warm round of applause at the end of the episode, which ends on her terrified face, did nearly make me cry. I wonder if Hill, who sadly passed away many years ago, would be happy to know that something she made nearly 60 years ago is still enjoyed by people who are too young to have seen it originally and that that it can still earn a massive round of applause in a cinema?

If the chat with Maureen Lane and Cleo Sylveste had been a bit of a drag, then the chat with Julian Glover who played Richard the Lionheart in this story was the exact opposite. I have met Glover before; he was the guest at the BFI’s showing of City of Death, and he was just as animated here as he was then. Glover still has the power to command a room full of people. He spoke a little about City of Death, mainly how annoyed he was that everyone else got to go to Paris and all his scenes were filmed in Television Centre in London, and that the original actress to play the Countess was to be his future wife Isla Blair. But he was primarily there to speak about his work on The Crusades. He said that they never thought of the show as a children’s show — they treated it like a Shakespeare play. We know that Who was filmed as live, with no breaks in recording, he described how challenging it was making sure everyone was in the right places at the right time. And they had filmed it at Riverside Studios!

Glover also described working with the leading man, William Hartnell, which he said wasn’t a happy experience. Hartnell wasn’t too pleased with the casting of Glover or Jean Marsh who played Richard’s sister, Lady Joanna, thinking them far too posh because of their RADA background. It’s strange he would have this opinion of Jean Marsh who, in a few stories’ time, would become one of his companions, Sara Kingdom. Glover said that he and Marsh would normally spend a lot of time together, feeling like they couldn’t really talk to the main cast because of Hartnell’s behaviour. Ultimately, this helped though as it sold them as brother and sister.

Talk then turned to Glover’s work on his recently released book Cue to Cue which, with its plethora of pictures, he described as toilet book, and to his son Jamie Glover who is also an actor and who played William Russell in the 50th anniversary docudrama, An Adventure in Space and Time. I have to be honest, I hadn’t registered that he was Julian Glover’s son, but in this case, it’s apparent that acting runs in the family; Julian said he was pleased that his son had chosen this career despite explaining how difficult it can be.

It was during the filming of his second Doctor Who, City of Death, that Julian Glover received the call asking him to play the baddie in the James Bond movie, For Your Eyes Only, and he revealed how originally he was reluctant to take the part.

With the chats and the surviving episodes done and dusted, it was then time for a meet and greet at the end; everyone there was queuing to meet Julian Glover and while I was going to grab an autograph from him, I also grabbed one from Maureen Lane and Cleo Sylveste as I genuinely want to meet as many people from Doctor Who as I can possibly can. And while they were still quiet and didn’t really say much, they both seemed happy enough to sign a quick autograph for me.

The queue for Julian’s autograph was a long one, but it did eventually start moving and I brought a copy of his book which worked out cheaper than getting a signed photo. He seemed delighted to know my name, saying that you don’t meet many Jordans now. I said, actually I suppose you don’t; I’ve only ever known one other Jordan in my life! I’m looking forward to reading his book, having given it a quick flick through — it’s not an autobiography; instead, he looks back at periods of his career he feels most proud of and periods he doesn’t. It’s all mixed in time-wise but no doubt will make for a great read.

All in all, this was a wonderful way of spending a Sunday afternoon. I got to make the long, long, long pilgrimage to Riverside and watch Doctor Who on the big screen with other fans, and meet three people who made a big enough impression to be remembered for their contributions to a show now in its 60th year! The next event at Riverside is The Moonbase, on the 12th August. I believe there is also a chance to watch their first event, which was recorded, for The Daleks’ Invasion of Earth in July. If you’ve got a free Saturday and want to spend it with other Doctor Who fans, then Riverside is just the place.

And you can order Cue to Cue now!

Like the slasher sub-genre in horror films, Doctor Who has always had a large LGBTQI+ following. But why? It wasn’t until the show came back in 2005 that we had openly gay characters in the TARDIS. Indeed, throughout the original series, which ran between 1963 and1989, things were very different, even down to the fact that the producers didn’t really like the Doctor hugging companions for fear it might imply there was some hanky-panky going on behind those Police Box doors. We’ve had a few companions and characters who are openly gay or whose sexuality is pretty fluid like Captain Jack, River Song, Jenny and Vastra, Clara, Bill, and Yaz. Even at the end of the original series, Ace was believed to be bisexual. But having supporting characters being openly gay is pretty rare so with not much in the way of representation, just why do so many in the LGBTQI+ community love Doctor Who?

Before we start, I want to state that this isn’t an attempt to be a social justice warrior. The subject of LGBTQI+ topics will always be a tough pill for some people to swallow. All I ask is that you read with an open mind. I’m not going to say that there haven’t been any LGBTQI+ characters in Doctor Who and I’m not going to sit here and write that some of the messages in the show haven’t been a little too preachy. And I’m certainly not expecting anyone reading this to agree with my thoughts and opinions. What I do hope is this is going to be a fun look at Doctor Who through an LGBTQI+ lens and that it will look at aspects of the show you might never have considered before.

When I first started writing this, I wondered where to begin. Should I go back to 1963, or start with the 2005 revival and work backwards? In the end, I decided that, like all great stories, it’s best to start from the beginning — so let’s cast our minds back to the junkyard of 76 Totters Lane and the discovery of the strange machine that can move anywhere in time and space…

The UK was very different in 1963. It was still illegal for two men to be in a relationship; that would later change in 1967 but even then, there were people who worked behind the scenes who had to hide who they were. One person who had to do that — though it was known to the original producer and creator of the show, Verity Lambert — was director Waris Hussein, who helmed both the opening story, An Unearthly Child and later story, Marco Polo. Speaking a few years ago with The Doctor Who Fan Show, he said that Doctor Who was originally created as an adventure series to be watched by children; discussions on LGBTQI+ themes didn’t exist in the same way they do now and there would never have been room in these stories to have those conversations. But there were chances to have characters interpreted in a certain way. Looking at Marco Polo, he said the villain Tegana, glad in tight black leather with his hair slicked back, as opposed to Mark Eden’s square jawed portrayal of explorer Marco Polo, could be seen then as a sort of fantasy figure for some gay viewers. For Hussein and his experience with Doctor Who, this was the only way these themes could be included in the show.

1965 saw actor Max Adrian guest starring as King Priam in The Myth Makers. Adrian was an openly gay man who had been arrested in 1940 for the crime of ‘importuning’, a charge at the time used to target gay men. At the time, even something misconstrued as a flirtatious smile could result in this charge and Adrian served three months in prison for this. Unfortunately, there are stories of William Hartnell being horrible to Adrian at the time because of this. As much as one doesn’t wish to bad mouth the original Doctor and the man who played him, Hartnell’s real-life granddaughter has spoken about how sometimes, Hartnell’s attitudes weren’t well received by his cast mates. While I’m not condoning these actions, we do have to remember that Hartnell was born in 1908. The attitudes of the swinging sixties could be very different from 1908; clashes about things like sexualities were bound to crop up.

One might think that there wasn’t any other representation for the LGBTQI+ community in the 1960s but let’s look at the second ever story, The Daleks, the first appearance of the most iconic baddies — if not only in Who, but surely one of the most iconic in all of science fiction: the Daleks. In 1963, it had been just over 20 years since the beginning of World War II, which saw the Nazi party trying to exterminate anyone who didn’t conform to their ideals. How terrifying would have it been for viewers to hear the word “Exterminate” being chanted over and over again, especially on what was described as a children’s show?

Ignoring the Daleks for a moment, the other species in that story are the Thals, cousins of the Kaleds — (what’s that an anagram of?) who the Daleks are trying to destroy with another neutron bomb. The Daleks have no reason to pursue the Thals, other than they are different from them and the Doctor isn’t going to have that. From the second televised story, there is a strong sense of justice about the Doctor, doing what’s right; treating all life in the universe with respect has been a large part of the Doctor’s character as well as a driving force for the show, even in times when LGBTQI+ themes couldn’t be included. This is possibly why so many people from different communities and walks of life love the character so much.

Looking at the Daleks and their desire to exterminate anything that isn’t like them, this can most definitely be looked at in a way that reflects how LGBTQI+ communities have been treated. Let’s not forget who the Daleks were based on and their xenophobia was inspired by the Nazis’ anti-Semitism. Nothing about the Daleks’ inspiration is subtle. Much of British television throughout the ’60s and ’70s was stuffed with antifascist themes. The heroes of many shows were up against fascists and Nazis — one can’t get a more perfect example of a villain. The Daleks have always been a great way of teaching viewers the dangers of fascist ideals. Throughout the early 1960s, the Daleks were the ultimate villain, constantly trying to kill anything that isn’t like them.

The Daleks are a nice segue into the Cybermen. While the Daleks are racist pepperpots, it’s always been pretty easy to defeat them: just round them up into one place and blow them up. The Cybermen, however, prove a bigger threat — in the real world too. The Cybermen’s ideals, making the universe the same, is perhaps even more dangerous. As the Cybermen famously say in The Tomb of the Cybermen, “You Will Be Like Us.” To further explore this point, let’s look at this line of dialogue from Doomsday:

“Cybermen now occupy every landmass on this planet. But you need not fear. Cybermen will remove fear. Cybermen will remove sex and class, colour and creed. You will become identical. You will become like us.”

This desire to remove what makes one an individual is more terrifying than anything Doctor Who has created elsewhere. The idea that you will become a corpse walking around in a metal suit is terrifying. The Daleks are the ultimate fascists; the Cybermen could also be viewed as an example of communism taken to the extreme. While they want to remove individuality, they also want to become the ultimate equality. No one is different; no one will have more than the other; there are no more emotions and everyone looks the same, which could be seen as a much more radical idea of a communist society.

Before this turns into a political chat, LGBTQI+ communities around the world couldn’t survive without individualism. You can destroy every Cyberman but their ideology will always survive them. It’s an ideology that is still shared with many individuals, countries, and cultures around the world — that everyone should conform to the societal norms laid out by centuries of history. People should be allowed to be whoever they want to be, wear what they want, look how they want, marry and love whomever they want. But as with laws around the world, this doesn’t seem to extend to the LGBTQI+ community. And those societal norms are much like the Cybermen’s need to convert all living matter into versions of themselves, that anything different should be destroyed. Again, much like the Cybermen’s ideologies, so long as there is bigotry and prejudices in the world, there will always be the dangerous seeds of hatred and jealousy.

In 1967, things began to change (even if they didn’t get much better), with it no longer being illegal to be in a relationship with another person of the same gender. But the Doctor continued to fight for justice no matter who you were. One might think there wasn’t any representation throughout the 1970s. At first glance, this could prove true but let’s look at one of the shortest running companions and a line of dialogue from one of the most popular stories from the show’s history.

In Spearhead from Space, we are introduced to Liz Shaw, who becomes the Third Doctor’s companion throughout his first season. Brave and intelligent, she works as a scientist for UNIT, though reluctantly. Of course, like Waris Hussein had said of the 1960s, the 1970s didn’t really leave much room for LGBTQI+ themes or character development. But this changed in the 1990s — or the Wilderness Years as some call them — when a series of hour-long films, written by Mark Gatiss, were released straight to video. These films saw Liz Shaw working for PROBE with her boss Patricia Haggard. Not only did these films feature the first same sex kiss between two men in Doctor Who continuity, but in 2014’s PROBE movie, When to Die, we see Liz now in a relationship with Patricia, making her the first on-screen companion to be depicted as gay.

Then there is the famous line from City of Death. The Fourth Doctor tells the Countess, “well, you’re a beautiful woman – probably.” Many fans have taken this line to mean that the Doctor is asexual, meaning he has no interest in men or women in a romantic way. This would change in the modern era, but viewing the Doctor as asexual would fit with producers’ interest in making sure that the Doctor doesn’t do too much comforting of his companions for fear of it being misconstrued. Whether you agree or not that this could be what the line from City of Death meant, I’ve always taken it as the Doctor just being cheeky.

By the time the 1980s rolled around, Doctor Who had become loveably camp. It was bright and colourful, full of glitz and glamour. The inclusion of stunt casting under the eye of producer, John Nathan-Turner, certainly added to the air of camp. That sensibility could have appealed even more to LGBTQI+ viewers. The line the Rani shouts at the beginning of Time and the Rani — “Leave the girl, it’s the man I want” — has become a favourite and something said quite a few times at various conventions I’ve been to over the years.

Fourth and Fifth Doctor companion, Adric, was also played by someone who was out, though it was kept from the public. In an audio book, A Full Life, Adric is confirmed to be bisexual as he’s been married to both a woman and a man. Any discussion of a character’s sexuality couldn’t be had in the show, not only because there was no room for it in the stories but also because of a bill in American law that would not allow homosexuality of any kind to be depicted on-screen in a good light. Although this was an American bill and not a British one, it did travel overseas. Knowing this, one might look at the death of Adric with a modern lens and wonder if this was a way of making sure a possible LGBT element didn’t end well. This is just one way to view his death; the story makes it clear he sacrifices himself to stop the Cybermen, but thanks to extended media, this could be a new way to look as to why he was written out of the series in such a fashion.

Keeping with that modern lens, let’s turn to the 1983 story, Terminus. In that story, the Fifth Doctor and company arrive on a ship heading towards the titular space-station. They find out that people are being treated for Lazar’s disease and when Nyssa contracts it, she and the Doctor must work out how to cure it. At the time of airing, one of the greatest crises in LGBTQI+ history was well under way: that of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus or HIV, of which AIDS is the final of the three stages that the virus travels through. Treatment and stigma of those suffering and dying from the virus, whether they were gay or straight, was shocking and similar to the way people in Terminus treat those with Lazar’s. On the surface, Lazars is a leprosy-like illness with one character even shouting, “this is a leper ship, we’re all going to die!” However, it’s hard to imagine that author Stephen Gallagher wouldn’t have been aware of the AIDS crisis then, the first confirmed death having occurred in December 1981.

Things only got worse from there with political involvement really ramping up fear of the disease. The same year as Terminus aired, the BBC aired Killer in the Village, looking at the disease, theories on it, and early ways of treating it, no doubt though many just attributed the name of the documentary to the virus without actually learning how it was transmitted or caught. One way that HIV/AIDS could be caught was through the sharing of needles, notably those used when taking drugs. One could look at the Vanir, the group tasked with keeping the Lazar’s under control, dying from their addiction to Hydromel, an expensive cure for Lazar’s could be another analogy for the ways people believed you could die from AIDS. This is made even more prevalent when we see how the other Vanir treat Bor, an elderly man who is slowly dying from his addiction. He’s treated as an outcast, hated and feared by the other Vanir in a similar way that the public treated those who contracted HIV/AIDS.

Hydromel could also be seen as a precursor to Prep, a tablet now available on the NHS which can offer some protection against HIV/AIDS. Not made freely available in the UK until 2020, like Hydromel it was a drug kept only for those who could afford it. Nyssa then leaves the Doctor to find a way to create Hydromel so that it loses its financial value and allowing people who wouldn’t be able to afford it have access to it in much the same way that Prep is now.

Also opening the 1983 series of Doctor Who was Arc of Infinity, in which we see Tegan’s cousin Colin and his friend Robin travelling around Amsterdam. Fans and viewers haven’t been blind to the homoerotic subtexts here. Robin asks Colin why he’s going to sleep in his clothes and the opening scene has the feel of something from an adult entertainment film. And they had a hostel room booked together, though we don’t know if this is a room with a double bed or singles!

Before we get to the late 1980s, when there were a number of stories featuring LGBTQI+ undertones, let’s have a look at some of the production members, most notably Peter Grimwade and John Nathan-Turner. Grimwade was a production assistant, writer, and director on the show. He penned three stories throughout the Peter Davison era and directed two Fourth Doctor stories from Tom Baker’s last series and two from Davison’s first. He was openly gay. Both his stories from Davison’s first series are considered two of the best directed stories of the 1980s (though of the three stories he wrote, only Mawdryn Undead is particularly good).

Nathan-Turner’s sexuality was publicly known and he was in a relationship with Doctor Who‘s production manager Gary Downie. He was famous for wearing very flamboyant Hawaiian shirts, which made him an instantly recognisable figure. Under his time as a producer from 1980 to 1989, the show gained a rather camp air about it, something that wasn’t notably around under other producers. Perhaps “camp” is the wrong word, but it definitely takes on a pantomime feel during this time. People often criticise him, blaming him for the show’s eventual end, ignoring the input of the then-director general Michael Grade. He doesn’t get enough credit for keeping the show going as long as he did, especially at a time when the BBC was doing everything it could to cancel the show.

There are a couple more moments when characters could be interpreted as being part of the LGBTQI+ community during the Davison era. Some people believe that companion Turlough might actually be a gay character. I’ll admit at first I scoffed at the idea. If anything he was written to be as asexual as the Doctor, but actually thinking about it, Turlough is the first companion where it is easier to read as being homosexual than any other. There have been undertones to previous companions, but there had never been a companion so consistently conceptualized with gay tropes… unfortunately, mostly bad ones. One of them is that he has been exiled to Earth to an all-boys school and is seen leading his friend to temptation and ruin. But in Enlightenment, he is thrown to the ground by a rather strapping gentlemen and is facing someone in leather boots, being told to crawl. (You’re not telling me that scriptwriter, Barbara Clegg, didn’t know what she was doing!) Those boots belong to Lynda Baron’s Captain Wrack, who in rather camp fashion tells him he’s just what she’s been waiting for, before waving a sword around her in a way that would make Leatherface in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 blush.

There is an air of authorial intent from John Nathan-Turner when it comes to the character of Turlough. I’m not trying to use Nathan-Turner as the way that Doctor Who was trying to promote a “gay-agenda” in the 1980s; the producer actually found himself at the end of some terrible homophobia from various fanzines that were published at the time. But if John can’t be taken as one of the reasons for some of the LGBTQI+ undertones in his era, then he had to at least be a party to it. Looking at Turlough, there is little way anyone who knew anything remotely about gay culture at the time couldn’t have noticed that the character was being presented as gay, especially in his first three stories.

It’s a shame, then, that if there were some homosexual themes to the character, most of them were negative: Turlough feels like a stereotype of a gay man, someone who has rather cosmopolitan tastes — the first thing we see him doing is admiring the Brigadier’s car and not really paying attention to anything else; and he’s catty, bitchy, and downright horrible to his friend. He’s rude to Tegan and Nyssa and while the Doctor is trying to smooth the rough edges. Turlough has been in the employ of the Black Guardian, who has been trying to kill the Doctor since 1978. Turlough’s partnership with the Black Guardian could be looked at as an abusive relationship between two men, with Turlough being punished for not completing his tasks. When we look at the end of Enlightenment, with Turlough turning his back on the Black Guardian, we might just view the gift of enlightenment as him realising that the Doctor is a force for good. However, if we take a wider view of the proceedings, including the two stories beforehand, then the gift of enlightenment could be seen as the removal of corruption, something which homosexuality was viewed as during the 1980s. Or perhaps Turlough accepting who he really is?

Towards the end of the 1980s, we come to The Curse of Fenric, featuring two notable characters, Doctor Judson and Commander Millington. Writer Ian Briggs later confirmed that Judson and Millington had shared a romantic relationship in the past and Judson was an allegory for Alan Turing who was chemically castrated, despite his work during World War II, for being gay and who would later kill himself. When the script was accepted, Briggs was told to get rid of the homosexual element, instead channelling Judson’s would-be-struggles with his homosexuality into his struggles with his disability. Briggs would later reintroduce the idea of a previous relationship between the two characters in his novelisation of the story in the early 1990s. But if you know where to look, there are still some subtle seeds that nod to their relationship.

Rona Munro, author of Survival, has also said that there were a number of lesbian undertones to the way she wrote the relationship between Ace and Kara. Unfortunately, the make-up and costumes of the Cheetah People meant that the work actresses Sophie Aldred and Lisa Bowerman did in rehearsals got somewhat lost at the filming stage. There is still one one slow-motion scene where they are running together which definitely has some romantic elements and one that I’ve always taken to mean that Ace fancied Kara.

The most famous of all the ’80s stories to tackle homosexual themes was 1988’s The Happiness Patrol which took a look at Margaret Thatcher’s government and tore it to shreds. There are also a lot of nods to the controversial Section 28, which saw a ban on the promotion of gay themes in schools. Outwardly camp in appearance, The Happiness Patrol sees the TARDIS painted pink and members of the Happiness Patrol wearing bright pink outfits and sparkly wigs. One scene finds members of this society walking in silence in a challenge of this society’s norms through the streets; this could be viewed as an inversion of a Pride event. Susan Q, who becomes Ace’s friend, says at one point:

“I’m tired of… smiling and pretending I’m something I’m not.”

This line is particularly evocative of a conversation that someone might have while coming out and at the start of this story, a man walks up to a sad woman and offers her a card, telling her it is an address where she can be with other killjoys. The man turns out to be an undercover member of the Happiness Patrol and is using a similar technique to real life police officers who would trick young gay men into entrapment for cottaging. And let’s not forget at the end of this story that the antagonist’s husband runs off with another man!

When the show ended with Survival in December 1989, Doctor Who would go into the Wilderness Years, a time from 1990 to 2005 when there were no new episodes of the show, excluding the 1996 TV Movie. Throughout this time, there was a fair bit of LGBTQI+ representation in Who through the expanded media. Books like Tragedy Day, Human Nature, and Damaged Goods featured gay characters; Damaged Goods was written by future showrunner Russell T Davies and saw the Doctor’s companion, Chris Cwej, going out on a date with a man in a club. Chris’ bisexuality was later explored in novels like Bad Therapy and The Room With No Doors.

Another of the Doctor’s companions in the novels was Sam who travelled with The Eighth Doctor. She was also portrayed as bisexual. In Kate Orman’s book, Seeing I, she is seen to have feelings for a number of characters she meets throughout the novel including two men and a woman. And throughout the Eighth Doctor’s series of novels, he was seen to be in various relationships too. The Year of the Intelligent Tigers saw the Doctor in a relationship with a man called Karl Sadeghi and Orman fully intended for it be a romantic relationship. In the novel Dominion, he kisses his male companion Fitz, and later flirts with him in The Eater of Wasps. Most famously, though, for the Eighth Doctor, was a kiss shared between his comic book companion Izzy and a character called Fey. The comic called Oblivion saw Izzy finally accepting her sexuality and planting one on Fey’s lips at the end of the story.

Even the 1999 Comic Relief skit, The Curse of Fatal Death, saw the Doctor intending to marry his companion Emma; he then has to regenerate a number of times before eventually regenerating into Joanna Lumley. This is one of the show’s earliest looks at the Doctor being a woman. Even if the ending is a little heavy handed with Emma breaking off their engagement despite the Doctor still being the same person just with a different face, writer Steven Moffat would continue to include LGBT themes in his tenure as showrunner.

With the show returning to our screens in 2005, the opening story, Rose included the first use of the word “gay”, when the Doctor is flicking through an issue of Heat magazine, claiming:

“That won’t work; he’s gay and she’s an alien.”

Before his work on Doctor Who, Davies had created a Doctor Who fan, Vince Tyler, in his hit series Queer as Folk. And it’s probably not a coincidence that both Rose and Vince shared the same surname — perhaps they were cousins? In the following story, when we meet the glamourous Lady Cassandra, she says at one point that she was a boy at some point in her long, long life. Not all comments went down too well, with Rose telling the Doctor, “it was so gay” while laughing at him, having been slapped by her mother Jackie at the beginning of Aliens of London. It’s a line that hasn’t aged particularly well but was possibly a bit more acceptable when originally filmed in 2004, a time when there were few LGBTQI+ protagonists, and films and television still shied away from showing or exploring these themes.

But Doctor Who‘s first openly gay companion on screen came along in 2005 too: Captain Jack Harkness. One can’t underestimate how important Jack was at the time. Not only was he the first openly gay companion — actually, pansexual is the best way to describe him — none of the stories made a fuss about it. He even gets to kiss the Doctor goodbye in The Parting of the Ways. In context, it’s because he knows he’s probably going to die giving the Doctor time to stop the Daleks, but it does mark the first same sex kiss in the main Doctor Who show. Jack’s sexuality would be explored more in the spin-off series Torchwood where he would be seen to be in a relationship with fellow member Ianto Jones.

Throughout his time as showrunner, Russell T Davies really contributed to the growing LGBTQI+ fan base to such an extent that the 2008 Pride event through London had to be paused so that everyone could watch Journey’s End, the blockbuster finale for Series 4 on a big screen in Trafalgar Square! It is little wonder that the show would begin to include many more references to various characters being part of that community — there was River Song, Jenny and Vastra, and even Clara Oswald, who was said to have smooched Jane Austin on one occasion.

It would take until 2017, though, for the Doctor to have his first on-screen companion who was explicitly only interested in women. That’s Bill Potts, played by Pearl Mackie who has since come out. It goes to show just how different things are now, compared to 1963! Bill met and fell for a woman called Heather who had a star in her eye. Heather would later become the Pilot, a creature made of sentient oil (this is Doctor Who!), and went off to explore the universe, leaving Bill behind feeling heartbroken. However, the pair would be reunited in The Doctor Falls, when Heather rescues Bill after she’s been turned into a Cyberman.

Most recently, companion Yasmin Khan fell in love with the Thirteenth Doctor and while fans seemed to really want the pair to be in a relationship, the Doctor didn’t, preferring them to just stay friends. The Thirteenth Doctor tells her in Legend of the Sea Devils that she wants things to stay the same between them; she has fallen in love with companions in the past and it’s always ended with everyone’s hearts being broken. Some viewers and fans were a little put out by the sudden interest that Yaz had in the Doctor; looking back through Jodie Whittaker’s era as the Doctor, there are seeds scattered here and there, one of the first being Yaz’s mum asking her if she and the Doctor are in a relationship.

Looking at the various spin-offs, we’ve seen Captain Jack and Ianto Jones in Torchwood but there were a number of other instances of LGBTQI+ themes. We meet one of Jack’s old boyfriends, John Hart, throughout Series 2 as well as characters sharing kisses with the same sex. But there have been times in that show when these themes weren’t handled well. One of the first times we meet Owen, he uses alien pheromones to attract men and women and sleep with them not entirely with their consent; later, in the episode Greeks Bearing Gifts, Jack gives a statement that could be read as offensive and transphobic, made even worse by the fact it comes from Captain Jack Harkness of all people.

The Sarah Jane Adventures was to see Sarah’s son Luke Smith come out as gay, had the show continued. Unfortunately, due to the untimely and sad passing of lead actress Elisabeth Sladen, Series 5 was cut short, airing just nine episodes. The short-lived Class would also feature a same sex relationship between its characters, Charlie and Mattuesz.

And now not only have we had our first canonical female Doctor, which could be viewed as the Doctor and Time Lords being gender fluid, the upcoming Fifteenth Doctor is going to be the first to be played by an openly gay man: Ncuti Gatwa.

Doctor Who has come a long way since 1963. From having little to no representation through the classic era, to allegories of Section 28 and HIV/AIDS, to a Pride event pausing for an hour in 2008… Doctor Who has always had something for everyone, no matter what sexuality you identify as, and whatever your creed, colour, or walk of life. Everyone is included: the Doctor could be anyone; the companion could be anyone. Doctor Who has become one of the most diverse shows on TV, and while LGBTQI+ topics might still be a hard topic for some people to swallow, it’s not hard to see why Doctor Who is one of the biggest inspirations to LGBTQI+ people around the world. And long may that continue!

Having attended last year’s DWAS Capitol and thoroughly enjoyed myself, attending this year’s event seemed like a no brainer; since I knew my friend Maria and fellow writer over on The Doctor Who Big Blue Box Podcast was going, I knew I wouldn’t be on my own (not that, this year, had I been, it would have mattered because we made a couple of great new Who chums along the way!).

Arriving as I had last year on the Friday afternoon, checking in at Gatwick’s Crowne Plaza in Crawley was super easy. And as with last year, the room I was put in was really nice, though the man in the room behind me snored so loudly it sounded like a freight train… (People make a fuss about hotel rooms but so long as they’re clean and safe, you’re not spending all day in them, so I don’t really understand the issue sometimes.) Then it was down to the bar where a lot more people had arrived in the short time I had taken to unpack. Luckily, this time, there were more members of staff around so it didn’t take long before people were served and if there is one thing that all Who fans can do, it’s drink!

Meeting with my friend Maria, we spent the rest of the Friday evening catching up as we hadn’t seen each other since last June’s Dalek Movie BFI event and talking about who we were the most excited to see. As with last year, a lot of the fun of sitting in the bar was seeing how many faces we recognised. There were some of the Twitter crowd and people from things like Doctor Who Magazine that I knew.

The event started at 9:45 on the Saturday morning. The first panel was with Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant who were also joined by actor Dean Hollingsworth who played the android in Timelash. I’d never met any of these three but their chat was just as funny and animated as you’d expect. What I really like is that there is someone asking questions but all the panels inevitably end up with the actors just chatting about whatever, and as you’d expect, there were a lot of tangents, but they always brought it back to Doctor Who. It was also very nice that Colin Baker was awarded a trophy for A Significant Contribution to Doctor Who: Colin was speechless, which – given how much he’d chatted in the panel – was quite surprising!

The second panel was with the one and only Steven Moffat who had been announced pretty late into the game and could only do a few hours there as he had to get back to London for the final few performances of his West End show, The Unfriend. We were lucky to get him and certainly lucky to get him in such great form. His chat was very informative, especially when it came to talking about how long he was originally going to stay as the showrunner. Originally, he was only going to do three years, which would have brought him to the end of Matt Smith’s tenure. But he decided he didn’t want to be the person who then hired Peter Capaldi but then not be in charge of this era. He then wanted to go after Capaldi’s first year, but didn’t want to Capaldi to feel like he was leaving because of his portrayal of the Doctor.

Even more interesting was that his final year as showrunner was almost thrust upon him by the BBC who had also originally agreed that the Doctor would regenerate at the end of The Doctor Falls. They then wanted a further Christmas special, but everyone had already left. If they hadn’t have done Twice Upon A Time, they were told they’d lose the Christmas slot. Of course, the irony is that with the Chibnall era, that was exactly what happened. But even with all this drama going on behind the scenes, Moffat still seemed incredibly happy to have worked on the show and gave us some of the best years of the modern era.

I had to miss the next chat as due to Moffat’s short time at the event, I really wanted to get a picture with him and his autograph. Luckily, I was pretty early for each one, the queues moving much quicker than they did last year, thanks to a reshuffle of where the autographs and photo studio were held. Moffat was great with us fans, and I’m really pleased we both look really happy in our photograph! My only issue was the background for the photos was a black sheet, so if you were wearing black or dark colours, the photos look a little like it’s just our heads!

When I got my autograph with him I had a chance to ask him how it feels to know that he’s terrified generations with the four little words, “Are You My Mummy?” He laughed and replied that he genuinely hadn’t thought about it being scary. He always remembered Doctor Who being something scary so just wanted to make Doctor Who how he remembered it. But he was very pleased we all had nightmares!

Following on from the autograph with Moffat, I then moved along to Colin Baker, who had already sung to my friend Maria – the song Maria, and then proceeded to sing a song with my name, though he couldn’t remember the actual words to a song with my name in it! Behind me was a guy called Lewis, who Maria and I got to know as the events went on, the three of us becoming a bit of a gang – Colin commented on what a striking resemblance he bears to David Tennant! Colin was lovely to meet and has just been announced as a guest for Portsmouth Comic Con, an area much closer to where I live so hopefully I get the chance to meet him there too!

Nicola Bryant was next, and I asked her how it felt to be one of only a few companions who got a few holidays out of her time on the show. She replied that she didn’t know how much of it got filmed because they spent more of their time in both Lanzarote and Seville, mucking around!

Monster man Jon Davey was next – not nearly as fearsome outside his Cyberman costumes! I had a couple of DVD covers for him, one of which was Voyage of the Damned in which he played the Heavenly Host. He looked at the cover and said he has some stories about Kylie Minogue (Astrid). She couldn’t navigate the forklift truck at the end, so what we see is a cleverly mashed up selection of shots between Kylie, a stunt double, and people operating the brakes on the back of the machine — and then her almost straddling someone as they pushed the pedals down to make it move. She’d also been stunned at the fact all the people playing the robots were getting incredibly hot in the costumes despite filming taking place in the summer! But he said she was every bit as lovely as you’d imagine!

We then all moved round to the next room, in which sat Kammy Darweish, Dean Hollingsworth, and Katy Manning. Katy was as lovely as ever, laughing and hugging and kissing everybody. I got her to sign my copy of The Sea Devils while telling her about my accidental trip to a nudist beach to visit Frazer’s Gunnery Range to see one of the locations for The Sea Devils. She found this very funny and said that she couldn’t do nudist beaches anymore!

I chatted with Dean Hollingsworth next, getting him to sign my copies of Timelash and The Greatest Show in the Galaxy. Dean lives on Guernsey, one of my favourite places, so we chatted about that, how I’d love to live there, and how nice everyone and everything is. He was a real gent, happily talking away with everyone.

Last up before a little break was Kammy Darweish; he played Kumar, the strange but funny man that helps Yaz, Dan, and Professor Jericho to get back to modern day to help the Doctor stop the Flux. He was kind too — a man of few words but happily chatting to everyone who came by!

Along with a photo with Steven Moffat, I then went along to the big group photo, because due to the autographs, you have to pick and choose which you’d rather do. The group photo consisted of Colin Baker, Nicola Bryant, Katy Manning, Dan Starkey, Sarah Sutton, and Matthew Waterhouse. They were all lovely — Sarah, Katy, and Nicola doing jazz hands behind me, though I’ll admit I was worried one would give me an Emma Peel karate chop!

Then there was a little break — time to stop and relax and digest all the autographs, hugs and kisses from Katy, and chats with everyone before the next panel. Each panel this year, with it being a 60th anniversary celebration, was designed to be a chat with people from each of the 13 different eras of the show

So this panel, about the Eleventh Doctor featured Stuart Milligan, who played Richard Nixon in The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon, and Dan Starkey, who played Strax throughout the Eleventh Doctor’s era. Starkey seemed to be on top form, chatting about his time on the show and working with Big Finish both as an actor and recently a writer for the Paternoster Gang, of whom Strax is a part. Milligan spoke about he very often plays presidents so getting the role of Nixon didn’t feel too odd for him; plus how he longed to be in a western (something I would mention at the autograph table), and then about Jonathan Creek and how a lot of the magic acts were done live, so he had to be trained in how to do it!

Unfortunately, I had to miss the chat with Katy Manning, but if it were anything like last year, she was as animated as ever, never sitting still; from the photos I’ve seen, it looked like an absolute blast. But I was then in the queues for my next round of autographs, this time from Sarah Sutton, Matthew Waterhouse, Dan Starkey, Stuart Milligan, and Stephen Wyatt. I apologised to Sarah for brining my copy of Black Orchid for her to sign but she smiled and said the only reason why everyone else didn’t like it was because she’d got the most to do with two parts, playing both companion Nyssa and her doppelgänger Anne. She was quiet but I get the feeling she’s a quiet person anyway: it’s when she’s with Peter Davison and Janet Fielding that all become much, much more animated. But she was lovely and as Nyssa is one of my favourite companions. Meeting her was a delight. Matthew Waterhouse was a little more of a stranger affair; he happily signed my copy of Earthshock and I told him how I felt that Season 19 was an underrated classic from the original series — he smiled and said a few words but I’ll be honest, it was like trying to pull teeth. He was pleasant enough and it was nice to see him enjoying a few glasses of wine at the bar later!

Dan Starkey was really lovely. I brought along an art print from Doctor Who Magazine which came out at the time to promote The Snowmen. He looked at the photo and said he’d never seen it before and we were chatting about how I didn’t envy him or Neve McIntosh having to spend hours and hours under all that make up. He said Neve took the longest because all the scales had to be put onto the mask and it took forever. But he was really nice, signing my photo: “To Jordan, Sontar-Ho-Ho-Ho: Dan Starkey”

When meeting Stuart Milligan, I asked him about when he’d said he always wanted to do a Western and when he was cast in Who, how did he feel being in a story, set largely in the desert with Matt Smith wearing a cowboy hat and Alex Kingston with holsters and the story having a very Western genre field? He said he was so jealous that he was only ever stuck in the set of The White House and never got to go out and act with everyone else! However, I think he may have been cast in a Western thing coming out soon so hopefully if I’m correct, his dream has finally come true.

And then lastly in the autograph department for that day was Stephen Wyatt who had written and signed both my copies of Paradise Towers and The Greatest Show in the Galaxy. He was lovely. Another man who says very little but seems genuinely happy that both his stories have gone down really well, particularly Greatest Show.

Catching the end of Kammy Darweish and Jon Davey’s Thirteenth Doctor panel, Davey said that when they were filming for The Power of the Doctor, he tried everything he could to get the “excellent” fist in that the ’80s Cyberleader (David Banks) used to do. He said that he was pleased to see in the aired version this take was kept in, making him the second Cyberleader to do the same hand movement. Maybe this could be something all future Cyberleaders do?

It was then time for the final panel, with Andrew Cartmel and Stephen Wyatt talking about their work on the Seventh Doctor’s era. Maria and I had already spoken a few times with Cartmel about his stories, in particular Ghost Light, to which he said no one had any idea what that story was supposed to be about, so I offered my take on it that in some way Light was supposed to be a metaphor for God who came back to Earth to find that what he had originally designed had all evolved, adapted and changed. Cartmel seemed to like this take but said it was a shame that Marc Platt, the author of that story couldn’t come to this event because he was the only one who actually knew what Ghost Light was about!

In the panel, Wyatt was very happy that Paradise Towers has got another look in recent times, thanks largely to Season 24 getting the Blu-ray treatment, though he did say that looking back on it now, despite having some fresh ideas, it did seem a little bit too big for the budget. Nonetheless, he has been really pleased he’s got to further explore that universe again in the Cutaway Comics series, Paradise Lost. Cartmel explained how he’d come to the position of script editor and found all the remains of Eric Saward’s long tenure including a red wine stained desk drawer and made it his intention to try and make Who feel fresh and exciting again; and part of that was in getting new writers like Wyatt and Marc Platt involved in the series. And in that department, they succeeded — I think it was generally accepted around the room that the Seventh Doctor’s era does feel fresh and new with the changing of the guard in terms of new writers, directors, and production crew.

He said even producer, John Nathan-Turner quickly grew to trust him enough that he left him pretty much to his own devices… so long as he never went over budget!

Then it was dinner time and onto the rest of the evening’s events which included the world premiere of Episode 4 of Devious, a fan made film that was originally filmed in the 1990s and was the last thing to see Jon Pertwee playing the Third Doctor. While it wasn’t necessarily my thing, I had to appreciate the time and effort that went into making this; if nothing else, it proves just how much we fans adore Doctor Who! The auction was a lot of fun too, led into by artist Alistair Pearson doing his fantastic Tom Baker impression. A number of interesting items were up for sale — all the money made went to various wonderful charities. Items included a cinema poster for Deep Breath; a replica Necros Dalek Gun; early issues of Doctor Who Magazine then titled Doctor Who Weekly; a big collection of Big Finish items; and my friend Maria won a signed copy of The Face of Evil, signed by Louise Jameson. The evening events wrapped up with a chat with someone who used to be a consultant with the Doctor Who Experience and how he helped with the fantastic Day of the Doctor trailer released in 2013, which featured loads of Easter eggs. Despite it being obvious he had a fair bit to drink by that point, it was fun to see how they made that trailer and it was another good panel.

Then it was back to the bar and more drinking and laughing until about midnight when people started to leave. To be honest, the Saturday had been so packed, I was happy for the early-ish night! Some of the people around were the organisers of the Regenerations event coming up in Swansea and Keith Temple who wrote Planet of the Ood. They were really nice and we had quite a laugh with them. Also interesting was seeing just how many bottles of wine were being taken over to the tables occupied by Frazer Hines and Wendy Padbury.

Getting up earlyish on the Sunday was a bit of a struggle; I felt like I’d slept all night with my fingers in plug sockets! But when the events began, I found a second wind. On the Saturday, I’d been up to my room to put my autographs away, then coming back down in the lift, a chatty American man was asking everyone where they’d come from. I thought this person was another fan, so was chatting away quite happily about my home, Hayling Island. It’s so small, it’s not even on maps! He said he’d made the journey from LA. Still none the wiser, we were laughing and then I exited the lift, wishing him a good day and enjoy himself. It was only at the autograph table later I discovered this man was in fact Matthew Jacobs, writer of The TV Movie!

He was a delight in his panel; this marked his first UK convention appearance and he spoke happily about The TV Movie and his recent documentary, Doctor Who Am I. He went on to explain that he thought for many many years that everyone hated him for the film, despite the fact that a lot of things that fans don’t like — the Doctor saying he was half human, for instance — was a stipulation insisted upon from the major production companies. These are themes that are later expanded upon in the documentary he made but he was delighted to know that people’s thoughts on The TV Movie have changed over the years. He was also a delight at the autograph table, signing both my copy of The TV Movie and then Doctor Who Am I.

The next panel was about the Tenth Doctor, represented by writer Phil Ford, director Graeme Harper, and writer and script editor Gary Russell. This was another informative chat, getting to know how stories like The Waters of Mars came to be. According to Gary, the final design for the monsters, The Flood, was the least scary design; they had had quite a few chats in the BBC offices about what would be suitable for a Saturday evening audience. Harper seemed delighted that a few people he had directed over the years went on to have big acting careers, including Gemma Chan who is now Sersi in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Phil Ford chatted about his work on Doctor Who, The Sarah Jane Adventures, and Torchwood. With all three spin-offs working together, talk did turn to whether or not they thought Doctor Who could be expanded into something like the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Ford told us that each show was dealt with as a separate entities anyway so he didn’t see why not, considering each show had their own budgets and production crews. I had to leave this chat early then to get into the queues for the first of the Sunday autographs being done by Frazer Hines, Matthew Jacobs, Wendy Padbury, Annette Badland, Eric Potts, and Rob Shearman.

Sunday’s queues moved a lot quicker than Saturday’s did, with people trying to keep them flowing; of course, this didn’t stop Frazer Hines and Wendy Padbury from being quite naughty. Frazer was quite quiet, I’d hazard a guess at hungover from the many bottles of wine that kept appearing at his tables on the Saturday evening! But he was charming enough if a little despondent. Wendy Padbury, though, was much more energised, signing my copy of The Krotons; I said I was sorry it was that story, but its the only cover along with The War Games that Zoe is on the cover! She said hadn’t been too impressed by that when she originally found out, jealous that Frazer had featured on loads. But she was lovely to me and other guests, and was joining in with some of the more raunchy conversations I was hearing going around their table.

Rob Shearman signed my copies of Big Finish’s Jubilee and Scherzo; we were laughing at how none of the Sharpie pens ever suited the covers for signatures because you can barely see some of them. I’ve noticed that on my cover for Jubilee — gold would have suited better, I think, but silver is fine too. He was a delight but not too much time to chat because their was a queue behind me waiting to get in. I got Eric Potts to sign my episode guide to Series 1; he was another funny man, happy to chat with everyone and we spoke about how nothing in the world going on now would have happened had the Slitheen still been in charge! Then onto Annette Badland, who was very funny, saying how happy she is that people are still terrified of her, even now 15 years or so on from her being in Doctor Who as a Slitheen.

Next up was another group photo; this time with Sunday’s guests, Frazer Hines, Wendy Padbury, Louise Jameson, and John Leeson. All my friends I showed these phots too described them as looking like I was having family portraits done with my grandparents and extended family. They are brilliant photos by the ever talented Robin, Trisha, and the team from TTL Productions.

Having a quick break, I then joined the end of the First Doctor panel with Verity Lambert’s PA Anna Callaghan and John Gorrie who directed The Keys of Marinus. I’ll be honest: these were the two guests who, while it was great to have them there and they both offered some interesting insights into how the opening year of the show went, both gave the energy that they would have rather been anywhere else. I had a chat with Callaghan later on and said how much I wish I could have met Verity Lambert, the first producer and really creator of the show. Callaghan said how much Verity would have loved these events, seeing all these fans but she never felt like she had done anything particularly special, even though the show is now in its 60th year. She said how she was a quiet lady who loved cooking and eating food from many different cultures and would take her friends out, often treating them.

Then there was a panel with Frazer Hines and Wendy Padbury — I was surprised that they both managed to behave themselves for this! They spent a lot of time speaking about Patrick Troughton and how they all came to the conclusion that they would be leaving the show together, despite Padbury being told she could stay on with Jon Pertwee if she wanted to. Padbury also had a funny chat about the bubble-wrap dress she wore for The Five Doctors and how she couldn’t sit down in it because the bubbles would pop… and people in the production crew would pop her dress a few time. So when they began filming in the day the dress looked quite bubbly, then it gradually got flatter and flatter as the bubbles were popped but she did enjoy wearing it!

Louise Jameson, John Leeson, Anna Callaghan, John Gorrie, Phil Ford, Graeme Harper, and Gary Russell were up next for autographs. Louise Jameson was lovely and thanks to the queue not moving very quickly I got to tell her that The Talons of Weng Chiang was another special story to me as one I would watch very often with my late father along with another of hers, Horror of Fang Rock. She went so far as to say that she’s always so surprised when people say that Horror is one of their favourite stories. I explained that it’s a classic example of everything coming together. Fantastic acting, a tight script and direction, and the isolated lighthouse location come together to make for a truly classic story. I get the feeling Jameson doesn’t know just how great much of her era really is, so if anyone gets to meet her at a future event, make sure you tell her!

Signing my copies of Big Finish’s Spare Parts and Night Thoughts, Gary Russell told me the story of the famous rabbit that is on the cover for Night Thoughts. It was brought from a charity shop and they removed one eye and pulled the other so it dangled out, then they dunked the rabbit in a casserole pot full of coffee to give it that really grubby look. It has sat on a shelf in Russell’s house for over a decade now and he said when you get close you can still smell the coffee on it, something he’s not fond of first thing in the morning because he can’t stand coffee!

I spoke to Graeme Harper about how he’d said he was worried about not being able to direct horror. I told him The Waters of Mars is one of the scariest episodes of Who and that he also did a great job on one of my favourite episodes of Inside No 9. I asked him if using a multi-camera set up for The Devil At Christmas was easy because he was there when they used to make things that way at the BBC. I was surprised to find he said it was harder because he was working with people who would have never worked like that; everyone was used to working with modern hand-held cameras, not great big bulky Dalek-sized cameras. And as a result of that, a lot of what we see on screen for that episode were happy accidents. So if he ever worries he can’t direct horror then he only needs to look at these two episodes to prove how wrong he was.

Finally, on the autograph tables was writer Phil Ford, who signed a copy of The Sarah Jane Adventures as well as The Waters of Mars. I told him that, although it was originally broadcast on CBBC, The Sarah Jane Adventures often felt more adult than Doctor Who and Torchwood in terms of the issues they dealt with. We’ve got episodes about dementia, old age, homelessness, abandonment, child abduction, divorce, grief, and depression, to name a few, and not all of them had happy endings. We spoke about how Russell T Davies had made it clear to the writers he didn’t want the show to always have a happy ending, showing the cruel realties of the real world in a fictional one. The Hammer Horror films are among my favourite productions and we also spoke about how I loved how some of SJA were obviously inspired by these films. Ford said that they always tried to do a horror inspired story with every series and a lot of writers had really latched onto the Hammer films, which have aged enough to not really be scary anymore to draw inspiration from.

Lastly on my autographs and photo sessions was a duo shoot with Frazer Hines and Wendy Padbury, both of whom were still being very naughty and the photo studio had descended into chaos with the pair throwing tinsel at each other; luckily though, they both behaved long enough to have my photo done!

Taking a well needed break, I sat down and waited in the Panoptican room for the next chat, which was from the Ninth Doctor era, with Annette Badland, Eric Potts, and Robert Shearman. It was a fun if brief chat, spent mainly talking about how they are still recognised as the Slitheen. Potts said that after he was in Who, his mum would collect trading cards from children who lived in her town and get him to sign them for the kids. He joked, but he’s probably right about how they’d probably been putting them on eBay! Shearman remembered hearing the news that Doctor Who was coming back but his agent had told the BBC that he wouldn’t be interested in writing an episode featuring “something called Daleks?” And then recalled how delighted he was that he got to write a Target novelisation of this story, when he’d grown up reading the original books in the 1970s and how the novelisation gave him the chance to go back to his draft scripts and meld the story into what he’d originally created and improve on things he didn’t think quite worked.

The final panel was with Louise Jameson and John Leeson — as you’d guess, it was a packed out event. I think everyone who hadn’t had to leave during that day crammed into the convention room. It was really interesting to learn that Leeson had worked as a day judge, ordering people to pay for parking tickets by day, playing a robotic dog by night! He was a delight and allowed us to see the legendary camera that actress Beatrix Lehmann had given him following her guest appearance in The Stones of Blood. His recollections of Beatrix almost moved him and the audience to tears on a number of occasions, and his delight at signing my copy of his first story had already made me a bit emotional so I was a bit a wreck by the end of it!

Louise Jameson spoke about working with Tom Baker, who it’s no secret didn’t get on with her initially but how she was delighted that they’ve become really close friends since then.

Then to a rapturous round of applause and a standing ovation, John Leeson was given an award for his outstanding contribution to Doctor Who, having voiced K9 not only in the original series since 1977, but then when he’s appeared in the modern era, K9 and Company, audiobooks and dramas, and then on The Sarah Jane Adventures.

To say that the applause and standing ovation was well deserved wouldn’t do it an injustice — it obviously means a lot that he knows how well loved he is by the fans. It was still hard to see him cry when Jameson handed him the award; I don’t think there was a dry eye in the entire room. In my short conversation with him at the autograph table and then with him at the panel, I really got the feeling that Leeson is a genuinely lovely, lovely man, and it was an absolute honour to meet him, even if it was only for a few minutes.

And then just like that, the event was over. And what a great weekend it had been.

Of course, Maria and I were up with our new friends until the early hours of the morning, chatting and laughing, probably to the chagrin of the bar staff who started packing up around us! But this is the real delight of these events: it’s the making memories with old and new friends and the stories you can tell afterwards, like Frazer Hines being cheeky with his drinks. This was my second Capitol event and even with the move next year to Birmingham, hopefully this won’t be my last one! These smaller events are the best way to meet our Doctor Who actors: you get more time to talk to them, fantastic panels, and you might even bump into them at the bar afterwards. Again, I was surprised at how nice everyone was, and if you’re worried about going alone, trust me, you won’t be alone for long — we’re all there for one thing: Doctor Who. And once again, this event has proven just how fantastic Doctor Who fans are!

We’re currently awaiting confirmations and announcements regarding “The Whoniverse”. This is Russell T Davies’ master plan to create a new collection of TV shows — and beyond — emanating from the world of Doctor Who. This is not a new concept. Building and expanding fictional universes in television and film has been a thing for nearly 100 years. 

To get a better idea what Russell’s up against, let’s take a look at shared universes in the visual media. 

Over here in the states, spin-offs of TV shows are certainly nothing new. Back in the 1970s, we were insane with spin-offs. All in the Family begat The Jeffersons and Maude, which begat Good Times. Mary Tyler Moore begat Rhoda, Phyllis, and Lou Grant. These are just a few examples out of hundreds. It happened a lot — such was the strength of the primary shows and the strength of the side characters who got their own spin-offs. The stronger the character and creative team behind them, the better the results. And while we remember the successful spin-offs, like Frasier coming off Cheers, many others, like Joey after Friends… not so much. Far more misses than hits.

In cinema, it’s been a strikingly different situation. To successfully create one successful film is almost an anomaly, because so many things have to go just right. You need the right actors, script, director, director of photography, musical score, and producers that help, not hinder. Oh, and MONEY. It is extremely difficult to make a hit film. To create an interconnected cinematic universe is a Herculean feat, and for it to be successful? The nearly impossible task becomes exponentially more difficult. 

Universal films had the only successful cinematic universe for a generation during the ‘30s, ‘40s, and into the ‘50s, and that was thanks to the Universal Monsters. Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, the Werewolf, the Mummy, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and all the various brides, sons, and Abbot & Costello collected together where cinematic crossovers and spin-offs were king. Larger than life characters all inhabiting their own films in one, interconnected universe. 

Sadly, Universal couldn’t follow it up successfully 70 years later, when trying to do it again. They had Tom Cruise in The Mummy, introducing Russell Crowe as Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, but it under performed, and that was it for the “Dark Universe”.

The Godzilla franchise started out strong in the ‘50s, and although things got silly at points during the ’60s and ‘70s, it was another popular franchise, again monster-driven, and interconnected, if not always critically acclaimed. Legendary films has recently re-ignited the kaiju craze with a new interconnected universe featuring Godzilla and King Kong, which has gone over well with the viewing public.

Star Wars, having embarked on their third trilogy, decided to expand their universe with a flashback film called Rogue One, with more projects in the works as well. You could ask: why did the powers that be suddenly start thinking bigger and wider when it comes to the Force? Or why did Universal try to jump start their half century old interconnected universe again? Or why did the Godzilla franchise once again open up shop with Kong? Well yes, Hollywood has shown us that no franchise can ever be allowed to die, or completely fade away. And of course, money is a thing. Even Freddy and Jason had a crossover, and Predator and Aliens have crossed over, and they were variously successful stunts… but… 

Kevin Fiege showed everyone how to construct a quality, interconnected cinematic universe, how to do it well, and how to do it BIG. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is the most successful franchise in movie history by a country mile. Starting with Iron Man in 2008, the MCU has produced around 30 films, bringing the characters from their comics alive on the screen. It has been the monumental achievement in cinema. And here’s the kicker. When they started the thing, they didn’t even have any of their most popular characters to work with. 

No, the X-Men, Spider-Man, and the Fantastic Four’s rights were tied up with other studios. So Fiege and Marvel rolled the dice, started their own studio, took a bunch of their second- and third-tier characters, and made it happen. One big advantage Fiege had was that Marvel comics was one big shared, interconnected universe starting all the way back in the ‘60s (or arguably from Marvel Comics #1 in 1939) when Stan Lee set the stories all in New York City, where all the heroes interacted with each other in all the books. 

So the suits involved with Universal, Godzilla, Star Wars, all took note and dove in — to various degrees of success and failure. Sony, who still has the rights to Spider-Man, eventually played it smart after their Spider-Man efforts continued to sink, and partnered with Marvel to share Peter Parker et al., bringing him into the MCU. More on them later.

And then streaming happened. And Disney happened. Having purchased Marvel and Star Wars, they created the online Disney + streaming service. Suddenly, cinema and TV meshed together in streaming, and the franchises gathered together. Disney wisely let the franchises do their own thing, again, to varying degrees of success. Marvel has its films and streaming series; Star Wars has its streaming series and will venture back into the theatre in future. 

And here, now, is where Doctor Who enters the big picture on Disney +, under the stewardship and creative control of Russell T Davies. 

Now, Marvel has the streaming series, which spun out of the films, which spun out of their comics. Star Wars has their streaming series, various animated series, and comics which spun from the films. Doctor Who has comics and audios that spun from their television series — which will soon also be a streaming series.

So we’re dealing with three different franchises, all coming from different media, to land in the same place. 

At this point, we have to look at the potential for stories, characters, possibilities. How strong are the rosters for each franchise, that they can build more sub franchises and spin-offs? Marvel. Star Wars. Doctor Who.  

Hands down, Marvel wins this competition with about 1,000 characters in their pockets, and creative direction that’s taken even bottom of the barrel, fourth tier characters like the Guardians of the Galaxy and turned them into superstars. The sub franchises are lining up around the block. Even though they’ve taken a couple critical blows in Phase 4, they’re still sitting pretty, as long as they can keep bringing in new, quality creatives for these projects, as they’ve got tons of raw material to work with.

In fact, Marvel’s comic universes boasts some 70,000 characters.

Their big competition, DC, has mostly been an uncoordinated mess with their cinematic universe, but they’re poised to turn things around moving forward with James Gunn, with their less populated but still formidable roster of characters to work with. 

Star Wars has plenty of popular characters, but the majority of them are generations old, as are the actors who portrayed them. They’d have to bring in more new characters to breathe more life into the universe. The Mandalorian had a good start in that direction, while Andor has been critically acclaimed, but it may not be enough. The most recent films and several of the streaming series have taken a lot of critical blows, and yet they also have plenty to work with to right the ship.

To contrast all those crowded universes, Doctor Who has… well, the Doctor. And all of time and space. It’s simultaneously very little, yet everything. 

The American counterpoint to Who would be Star Trek. Another TV series that was very popular in the 1960s, went away, had some wilderness years, came back, transformed itself, travelled across centuries, and gave us some incredible performances, by several different ensembles, with numerous ships, captains and crews, over six decades. The big difference would be the 13 feature films, but in the end, they also ended up streaming new series, to varying degrees of success. But they’ve got more stories to tell, if, like Star Wars, they can bring in more, better talent to maintain their universe and bring it forward in the years to come.

Which brings us back to Doctor Who. Aside from the Peter Cushing films, which aren’t even canon, we’ve got a few anniversary events, two or three old spin-offs, a TV movie, and that’s about it. Marvel can lean on its library of hundreds of thousands of comics and characters. Star Wars can mine every last character from their films and even their animated series. Who has to rely on the main TV show, and the characters that have come to life through it over the past 60 years. 

The big question is, does Doctor Who have the necessary raw material aside from the Doctor to successfully populate a Whoniverse?

With Who, more than any other franchise, everything depends on the creatives. Whereas Marvel’s strengths lie in their comics’ human characters with feet of clay, and Star Wars survived on eye popping effects in their films, both parlaying their empires into juggernauts, Doctor Who had humbler beginnings. No SFX, no budget, not even in colour for the first six years… yet winning the hearts of their fans with a handful of amazing actors working in conjunction with brilliant stories, and an incredible array of monsters and villains. 

After a while, people get jaded and tired of SFX, and not all comic characters are going to charm and excite people. But Doctor Who comes from a different place. Many of us fell in love with it when it had no money, just a wonderful personality. It’s our best friend, as well as our love. This counts for something. So when we assess what will come with this new “Whoniverse”, that will be one advantage. Another would be Russell. 

Another comparison. Sony has the film rights to Spider-Man, and the entire Spider-Man comic world. While the MCU has made the Tom Holland films wildly popular, Sony has had to make their own movies with other, lesser-known Spider-Man properties. Venom. Morbius. Kraven the Hunter. Madame Webb. Rocket Racer. Venom was a big hit at the box office; Morbius was not. No idea how the rest will fare. Sony is basically rolling the dice here, doing films featuring Spider-Man’s villains, trying to turn them into anti-heroes, and it’s a very dicey plan. 

But it’s all they’ve got. They do have the Spider-Verse and Miles Morales in animated form, but on the whole, Sony’s very limited as to what they’ve got to work with as far as bankable franchises. This is no doubt partially the reason they bought Bad Wolf. Sony’s wonderful working relationship with Marvel/Disney has been a win/win for them, and their respective shareholders. Now, Sony has a piece of another legendary franchise in Doctor Who. 

The difference between the limited amount of raw materials on hand for Sony in regards to Spider-Man’s rogue’s gallery, and what’s available in the world of Who is down to who’s in charge of creative. Sony doesn’t really have a dedicated Kevin Fiege or a set up like the MCU for their Spidey division. But for Who, they do have RTD with Bad Wolf. This makes all the difference in the world, and it gives us hope. 

So over the next several months, we’re going to hear a lot about the coming Whoniverse. Some of the ideas may seem exciting, or daft, or rubbish, but it doesn’t really matter as long as the plan is strong. As long as the writing and the creative vision are strong. Yes, our love has got some more money now, but that won’t matter, as long as that personality is still going strong. 

I suppose that we can see the potential for the wider world of Who, spin-offs, and RTD’s approach by looking back to the Doctor-lite stories, such as Blink and Turn Left, where we look into the world beyond the Doctor. There are clearly stories that can be told outside of the Doctor.

In Russell we trust. He has quite a bit of work to do.