I was really upset and annoyed that I had to miss the previous screening of An Adventure in Space and Time and Episode 4 of The Celestial Toymaker (i.e. The Final Test), which was the last of the Doctor Who Appreciation Society‘s screenings at Riverside in 2023. Set for the 24th November, it coincided with a train strike and so I couldn’t make it. But I was really pleased when DWAS announced that another screening was planned because so many people were annoyed that they’d had to miss out and, deciding that I wasn’t going to miss out a second time, I booked a ticket instantly!

The previous screening had included David Bradley and Peter Purves as well as a few extra guests and thanks to my kind friend Maria she managed to grab me an autograph from David Bradley as well as one from Frances White, who had guest starred in The Myth Makers. So I was excited to see who DWAS managed to secure this time around and we weren’t let down. David Bradley’s co-stars, Claudia Grant, Jamie Glover, and Sacha Dhawan were in attendance alongside Carole Ann Ford, director Waris Hussein, and cameraman Dudley Dardby with one of the surviving extras from The Celestial Toymaker. It was a fantastic line up of guests and each time I think that DWAS can’t top the guests from the previous event, they effortlessly do.

Making my way to Hammersmith is slowly becoming second nature to me now, even if the tube can be a little confusing to us country folk! Luckily, I got there with plenty of time to spare and it was a lot of fun to see people enjoying the exhibit of photos that Riverside Studios had put up to celebrate the show’s 60th anniversary last year; there was also really amazing ’60s TARDIS model! It’s always nice to see people that I recognise from other events as well as from Twitter, and I’m pleased, too, that I’m getting better at talking to people, something I wouldn’t say I was overly confident doing.

The event kicked off with a showing of The Final Test, the fourth, final, and only surviving episode of The Celestial Toymaker. It’s a strange story, no doubt let down by the fact the previous three instalments don’t exist beyond their audio recordings and is an incredibly visual story that doesn’t lend itself to being translated into audio. It’s also strange because the Doctor isn’t really in it and while a lot of the plot revolves around Steven and Dodo surviving one final game, they don’t get a lot of screen time. Instead, whole minutes are eaten up by shots of the Trilogic Game, which is an element I’ve never understood in this story.

However as with a lot of these Riverside/DWAS screenings, it gives you a chance to see the show in a different way. I know I always mention it but it’s really interesting to see episodes of Doctor Who without any restoration work done on them, wrinkles and warping and all. Of course, the ending got a huge laugh, with the Doctor foolishly trying one of the sweets from the Toymaker’s realm. I got so into it, I was half expecting the first episode of The Gunfighters to be up next!

But instead, it was An Adventure in Space and Time which originally aired in 2013, a dramatized retelling of the origins of Doctor Who. I’ve only seen this a few times, once when it originally aired, once on a rewatch of the modern era, and then in November 2023 when they released a new version with Ncuti Gatwa appearing at the end instead of Matt Smith. Of course, in keeping with DWAS showing things as originally as possible, it was the Matt Smith version on offer here and so it’s unfortunate that no one has quickly reedited the ending so the CGI places Smith behind the TARDIS console instead of behind it!

Of course, that doesn’t spoil the enjoyment of it and I found myself laughing along with the other fans there. Another great thing about these events — alongside those held by the BFI — is that you notice how funny certain lines or scenes are and often gives you a new perspective on stories. There were a number of brilliant comedic scenes in the beginning of An Adventure in Space and Time which got lots of laughs.

Following the screening, the guests were introduced on stage with Carole Ann Ford adding commentary from the audience, mainly due I think to the lack of chairs on the main stage. Hosted by author James Goss, the guests spoke about their work on An Adventure in Space and Time. Jamie Glover and Claudia Grant talked about how they found it challenging not only having to play William Russell and Carole Ann Ford but also playing Ian and Susan. And how there was a lot more to that than people might think. They both agreed that their work with Big Finish is now a lot easier because they are playing those characters and not the actors and how happy and privileged they feel that they get to continue the adventures of the First Doctor.

They also spoke to the actors about when they met their counterparts to ask them about their time on the show in the 1960s. Claudia said that Carole Ann Ford was incredibly helpful and Carole was in high spirits too, complimenting the performance and how happy she was to see the moment William Hartnell leaves flowers in her dressing room following an argument over money. It was emotional hearing her talking about those memories and how they marked a turning point in their relationship as actors. It was also quite emotional to hear from her how vulnerable Hartnell really was. On screen and from some actors, both main and guest cast, he can come across as a little brash and angry, every bit the grouchy old man he was playing. But Carole Ann Ford described a man who was so desperate to get everything right. That was the reason he took it so seriously, especially when the BBC didn’t — he saw this as his big chance. An Adventure in Space and Time made a big point of him taking the show because it meant he didn’t have to play army personal anymore and Carole reiterated that Doctor Who was his chance to demonstrate to the world that he was a lot more than just an angry army sergeant; he was a talented actor who was the unfortunate victim of typecasting.

Of course, a lot of this is well known information but to hear it from someone who knew the man well made it a lot more emotive. She agreed that William Hartnell could be hard to work with especially as at the time they weren’t aware of him being ill, something which doesn’t show in the first series; but as the show goes on, you can see how unwell he was becoming. Waris Hussein added that he never had a problem with Hartnell — in fact, the hardest time he had was him and producer Verity Lambert trying to convince him to take on the role and he could well remember how frightened he was sat opposite him in the Chinese restaurant. Hussein was quick to reiterate that he never had an issue with Hartnell as an Indian director working for the BBC: all of the hassle he received unfortunately came from those in charge of the BBC. Indeed, it was also tough to hear him talking about how Verity Lambert would get stared at for walking down the office in a time of male producers and directors and she would wear a hat so that she could tell herself that people were staring at her hat and not at her. It’s a reminder of how far we’ve come and how far we still have to go, especially as it’s still a male dominated industry.

Sacha Dhawan spoke happily about meeting Hussein and being invited to his house. When he got there, he saw all the original documents that he still had for An Unearthly Child — it was amazing to hear that they still exist, even if Dhawan didn’t manage to pocket any… which he said he was tempted to do!

DWAS always get good guests and the interviews are always informative; even if it’s the same stories being told again and again, they always find a way of making it feel like it’s the first time you’ve heard it. While I decided to not get a photo with the guests, my friend Maria and I both went to the autograph tables. I decided to get Jamie Glover and Claudia Grant to sign my print with David Bradley’s autograph on it; Jamie was glad to hear about how well Adventure went down and Claudia was chatting to me about the Big Finish releases of theirs, which have gotten better and better — their historical stories are some of the best tales Big Finish has ever told.

Next up was Sacha Dhawan who I was slightly nervous to meet. I was already surprised by how short he was. Both Maria and I said we think it’s because his portrayal of the Master was so larger than life that we assumed he must be the same. But he was a delight to meet, telling me that I had a lovely name. I thanked him and asked him if taking the role of the Master was an easy “yes” or if he had to think about it first. He did say it was a very quick “yes” — he always loved the character of the Master so it was a delight to get to play the role but he was also told by his partner that he needs to work in Doctor Who because it was so fun. What also swung the role for him was getting to spend a few weeks on location in South Africa so he could get a little holiday out of it too! He was lovely to meet and was definitely the highlight of my trip.

Also delightful was Warris Hussein, who didn’t really say a lot but he was pleased when I thanked him for making something 60 years ago that means so much to so many people. He was genuinely pleased by that comment and it’s true: no one then would have thought Doctor Who was going to last beyond the first series, let alone for the next 60 years! Waris told me that we are very welcome; of all the things he worked on, he’s happy that Doctor Who is something he’s the best remembered for.

It was another great event from DWAS with a fantastic guest list. It’s always so lovely to be surrounded by people who have the same interest as you. It’s easy to strike up conversations with people there and it’s lovely to see people you recognise from social media. And of course it’s fantastic to meet the fabulous guests there too! I’m looking forward to seeing what DWAS are doing next at Riverside…

After a few years of waiting, Once Upon A Time Lord has finally been released by Titan Comics. The story is written by Dan Slott who is a critically acclaimed author of The Superior Spider-Man and Silver Surfer for which he won an Eisner award.

His run on Silver Surfer was very reminiscent of Doctor Who and there is a reason for that: Slott is a huge Doctor Who fan, saying it’s his favourite television show of all time. Talking to Starburst in a recent issue, he said:

“Whenever there’s a convention, I ask, “Who’s going to be your guest from Doctor Who?” before I decide to do the convention or not. I don’t abuse my Spider-Man status for anything else really, other than Doctor Who.”

His love for the show began back in the 1970s when PBS started to show entire stories in the late evening. For a fan as young as he was, it was a struggle to stay awake, though his earliest memories are of Robot and Genesis of the Daleks. It wasn’t until his family moved to the UK when he would begin to shop in Forbidden Planet and would pick up all the Target novels, starting with An Unearthly Child all the way through to The Armageddon Factor so he was all caught up on the show. And he could then experience the show the right way, in its serialised format.

Slott also had a lot praise for the return of the show in 2005, saying it made it cool to be a fan again. He went on:

“There are all these very clever things they did – I love the psychic paper. The special effects were better. The idea that he was the last of the Time Lords was really good; it gave him that kind of fun Superman: Last Son of Krypton feel.”

With a comic history spanning 30 years, Slott has never had the chance to write for Doctor Who before, but he worked exclusively for Marvel for the last 20 years. He explained that when he would come to a convention in the UK, the folks from Titan Comics would take him to dinner and try and persuade him to write a series for them.

Unfortunately, his contract with Marvel meant he simply couldn’t. Luckily for Slott and Titan, his contract came up for renegotiation and he was given a little more leeway, and allowed him to do one comic for Titan a year.

The result is Once Upon A Time Lord — a tale that sees the Tenth Doctor and Martha facing off against an alien threat who loves stories. But it plays into every writer’s fears, as he explains:

“The main threat in this story is the storyteller’s dilemma, the Shahrazad problem. Something that every writer can relate to is that you have to keep telling stories, and if the next one isn’t as good as the last, you’re dead. That’s really what it feels like writing a comic book every month! So I wanted the companion who was the best storyteller, and that’s got to be Martha Jones, who walked the Earth telling stories of the Doctor.”

Once Upon A Time Lord is a good little read, and Slott feels very lucky and privileged that he has finally gotten to write for Doctor Who.

He’s also slated to write a further two comic one-shots for Titan so it’ll be very interesting to see how he will tackle different TARDIS teams.

Once Upon A Time Lord is out now.

Ah, Warriors of the Deep. A story that, with a few little tweaks, could have been one of Peter Davison’s best. It holds an infamous place in the history of Doctor Who, thanks to its hasty turnaround, its over lit sets, the Myrka with paint still dripping off it, and some marvellous overacting from its guest stars — it’s no wonder that Michael Grade would one day use this story as a way of bashing the show over the head into its cancellation a year-or-so later.

But somewhere, lurking under the depths, I’ve always thought are the seeds of a great story. If only we could dim the lights on the set, maybe having a little water dripping noise in the background as if the base is being held together with the shoestring budget it was made with… you could hide a multitude of sins, including the pantomime horse-like Myrka, which would probably look more formidable in the near darkness.

To his credit, the late great Terrance Dicks does try his best with his adaptation. And a lot of it is down to the story being freed of its budgetary limitations and he succeeds in making Warriors of the Deep actually feel like there are some high stakes. Thanks to his prose, the idea that there are two opposing power blocs ready to choose the nuclear option comes across as a much greater threat than it ever did on television; indeed, when the Silurians are priming Sea Base 4 for war, I found my attention held a lot more than the televised story manages.

Dicks goes a long way to making this dangerous new world feel real and a lot of world building is dedicated to the opening chapters. Some might find this a little tedious — the TARDIS team doesn’t arrive until about fifteen minutes in — but Dicks sells this world as a dangerous one, with the Silurians and Sea Devils manipulating the undercurrents.

Anyone who has read the original Target novelisation will know that Dicks also tries to clear up some of the stories’ odder elements. The gas used to kill the reptilian invaders at the end is given an actual reason to be used in the Sea Base and the Doctor’s apparent death at the end of the first episode is given a lot more explanation and helps to make sense of why Turlough is so quick to say the Doctor has drowned.

Dicks’ handling of Turlough is a definite highlight: still obviously playing with the character outline introduced in Mawdryn Undead, here he is portrayed as someone who’ woul’d be happy enough to leave the Doctor and Tegan to die if it means getting away and it’s always fun to hear other characters calling out his cowardice throughout this adventure, especially when Commander Vorshak and Security Chief Bulic commandeer him into protecting the base from the Sea Devils.

As with his other Target novelisations, Dicks has a great handle on all the regular characters, and Tegan especially comes across well, though she doesn’t get a great deal to actually do. She really just stands around with the Doctor and gets used as a hostage towards the end; Dicks even smooths over the sticky incident where she finds herself under a door that you wonder why she didn’t see it falling! The other characters here get a bit more to do too, and he does a great of job of selling Nilson and Doctor Solow as baddies. Solow in particular gets a lot more emotional depth than Johnny Byrne’s original script could offer and she feels a lot more real as a result.

One does have to wonder though what Terrance Dicks thought when he was writing this novelisation — this is twice now that Byrne has used some of his co-creations, the first being Omega in Arc of Infinity, and one wonders what he made of it. He certainly seems to be having more fun using the Silurians and Sea Devils than he does in the novelisation for Arc. They feel like a proper threat but there is a lot more depth injected into their actions — they just see humanity as a warring race (they aren’t wrong), so as they say, they “Shall die as they have lived… In a sea of their own blood.” Even that line gets a lot more credence here.

The reading duties for this audiobook fall to Janet Fielding, who played Tegan Jovanka in the original story. She does a marvellous job here, effortlessly bringing the story to life. There are a few more enhancements too: we get some great voices for the Silurians and Sea Devils and it feels like they all joined in with Tegan in remembering this story. Maybe they could now say these Target readings are taken from the Memory TARDIS introduced in Tales of the TARDIS? One tiny gripe was that the name Sauvix did come dangerously close to sounding like ‘cervix’ thanks to the voice modulation…

There can be no denying that the novelisation for Warriors of the Deep is a lot better than the televised version. But if anything, this helps prove that somewhere in the original are the seeds for a great story, something that should have been a triumphant return for these reptilian meanies. Where the serial falls a little flat for me is in all its doom and gloom, having two factions posed to wipe out one another. Doctor Who has done that before and to much better effect; luckily, Dicks’ prose does a good job of exploring it in a way that feels real and not just your bog-standard science-fiction affair. The tale fares a lot better this time around — just imagine those dimly corridors, the sound of water falling ominously around you, and the hideous Myrka lurking in the shadows. You may find you have a great time!

Warriors of the Deep is available now.

Ah, The Underwater Menace. A story which often languishes at the bottom of episode polls and is spoken of in hushed voices by those who enjoy it for fear of ridicule from fellow Who fans. But is The Underwater Menace actually as bad as people think? And with the new animation, is it time the Doctor’s first excursion to Atlantis gets a reappraisal?

Let’s get this out the way: The Underwater Menace is never going to be Doctor Who’s finest hour but it’s certainly not the worst. If you are looking for a fun way to while away a couple of hours, you could do a lot worse than this. The main problem with this story is that it was a rushed production coming in to replace a story entitled The Imps; the serial suffered from a quick script turnaround, a reshuffle of lines to accommodate newcomer Jamie McCrimmon, and being given the smallest studio available at Riverside Studios. It seems like all the odds were stacked against it.

So it was a bit of a surprise, after the apparent death of the animations thanks to BBC America pulling their funding, that The Underwater Menace was next as opposed to a more popular story. Director AnneMarie Walsh said at the BFI screening she was aware that fans would have preferred a different story, but due to not being given a lot of money, they were limited on which they could actually animate. We also know that there is no Disney money involved — the BBC give the team their own small budget.

There are times in this animation where that small budget is blatantly obvious. For the most part, the animation team has done a great job and we should be grateful that we get these releases to complete the missing adventures. And while this is nowhere near as bad as Episode 3 of The Web of Fear, there are some sticky moments here and there, most notably for me the fact that they seem unable to get Anneke Wills’ likeness quite right. It’s not a problem exclusive to this release but what was very distracting was how her mouth seemed to move across her face in a way no other character’s did. It’s only really noticeable in the final episodes when things look a little rushed but one can understand why Anneke Wills isn’t overly fond of these releases.

The script from Geoffrey Orme feels padded throughout and one wonders, had it had the time to be tightened up, could it have been better? There are germs of a good story here: the Doctor arrives in the lost city of Atlantis, there’s a mad scientist trying to raise the city by draining the oceans, and the Fish People, for all the flack they get, are an interesting creation from a makeup standpoint. But things never quite reach their potential: there is no reason as to why Professor Zaroff is trying to raise Atlantis beyond the fact that he simply can, nor why and how the Doctor knows who Zaroff is; and why does everyone seem to know who the Doctor is? One of the Atlanteans, Ara, played by Catherine Howe, seems very familiar with the Doctor and his friends despite not really meeting them until Episode 2. Ara is an interesting character though: at the recent DWAS Riverside Event Sea & Space, Howe — who was a guest there– said there had been some rumblings that the production team were talking about bringing her on as a companion, so it seems that there were plans to move Ben and Polly on pretty early into their time aboard the TARDIS. But this still doesn’t explain why Ara seems to know who these characters are despite never having met them before.

Another issue is that Episode 4 has some repeated animated scenes, most notably where Polly and Jamie are climbing up rocks to find a way out as Atlantis floods. Now, of course, you’ve animated these segments once so why animate them again? But it does make the final episode feel very padded. This is an issue with the script too, which feels an episode too long but simply showing the same shots over and over while the soundtrack plays in the background doesn’t make for interesting viewing. Luckily, they are kept short and those who aren’t paying attention wouldn’t notice.

Ratings at this time were slipping and Patrick Troughton was questioning his time on the show. Michael Troughton, also at the DWAS event, said that his father even blamed himself for the falling ratings, believing that he wasn’t doing a good job as the Doctor. But, if The Underwater Menace does one thing, it’s prove that wrong. Troughton is easily the best thing here, giving a brilliantly charismatic performance and somehow manages to sell how dangerous Zaroff is. He also nails the funny moments, and while this may be the last time the cosmic hobo got to dress up, you can see in the performance that none of those misgivings Troughton had translate to the screen — he completely believes in this and sells every moment.

Also to their credit, Anneke Wills, Michael Craze, and Frazer Hines sell the material, though they don’t really get much to do. Anneke Wills gets a brilliant cliffhanger where she is menaced with a needle, and Craze and Hines get to do plenty of scrabbling through mines, but they all spent so much time away from the Doctor that you forget they are supposed to be a team. That’s not entirely fair; they do all reunite in the middle of episode 3, but then get separated again very quickly.

I did like that the story poses the question of what you’d do if you ended up stranded because the Doctor dies. When Jamie and Polly escape the caves as Zaroff fills them with water, they believe the Doctor and Ben to have drowned and sit by the TARDIS looking incredibly upset. While Polly says they are only in the early 1970s in the opening episode, they are stuck in a part of the world that isn’t their own, surrounded by people who were the enemy and Jamie is a couple of hundred years from his own time. It’s a precarious place for the companions to be so I’ll give Geoffrey Orme credit for having the guts to pose this question in a time when companions were pretty safe and always got happy (ish) endings.

It’s very well documented that both Wills and Craze weren’t overly keen on the idea of Frazer Hines joining them because it meant the number of their lines would be cut in half. And while one can see their point, the lines are divvied up well enough so you really wouldn’t notice. Nonetheless, poor Polly doesn’t really get much to do and while she helps the Doctor capture Zaroff, she then spends the rest of the story screaming, something that shows how dodgy her animated mouth looks. I had never realised how funny Craze is as Ben. There is an excellent scene in the final episode where Ben, dressed as one of Zaroff’s guards, is helping the Doctor to get into the mad scientist’s lab. He has to use passwords to get past the guards and says of the Doctor:

“Of course he’s the prisoner — have you ever seen another berk dressed like this?!”

Troughton plays off this brilliantly, giving the two a fantastic scene together and once again highlighting that there are some great lines of dialogue littered throughout the script.

What the animation helps to emphasise, though, is that the script is an ambitious production, one that the budget and limited studio space just couldn’t accommodate; here, the animation and the soundtrack don’t quite match. While it’s lovely to see the expansive landscapes that animation can offer, there is a definite creepiness to the Temple of Amdo set in the surviving live action episodes that the animation doesn’t capture. This also brings into question the idea of creative license. AnneMarie Walsh spoke about how she thinks these animations capture what the original director would have wanted to do with a bigger budget. Personally, having seen the two surviving episodes, I think original director Julia Smith did a terrific job with the limited space and money available.

The issue of creative license also extends to the new look for the Atlanteans and the Fish People. The Atlanteans sported some very bushy eyebrows in the original, but here they are painted a light grey to make them look more fish-like. Of course, this is a colour production: painting an actor grey wouldn’t have worked in black and white but you may find yourself missing those eyebrows. Similarly, one might find themselves missing the strange makeup for the original Fish People. In the famous swimming scene which saw the Fish People going on strike, the animation doesn’t quite do the scene the justice the original did.

The new design for them too might be quite jarring for those of us who like to watch the animations with the surviving episodes in the correct places. While it’s amazing to see people bringing a new lease of life to the missing stories, I think that creative license should be taken into account here; for some viewers, it might deviate a little too much from the rightly or wrongly iconic look of the underwater creatures.

Another issue to be taken into account here is the handling of the violence in the story. Walsh spoke about how scenes such as Polly being menaced by a needle had to be toned down from the original. Indeed, the original got responses from medical professionals concerned that the needle scene would worry children who were going to hospital for operations. These are valid concerns and we are talking about children, but even nowadays (as psychotic as this might sound), people forget that children like to be scared; while we all have differing levels of things we find scary, I’ve always thought seeing Daleks exterminating people a lot scarier than what’s on offer here.

One moment I would agree with is when Zaroff stabs Ramo with a trident. The animated scene is delivered with close ups on the trident and character reactions — though in the original, we don’t actually see the trident going in, it is a particularly nasty moment that the animation handles deftly.

The animation handles the character of Zaroff well, making him the Bond villain that he deserved to be, by giving him shark tanks and pet octopuses that the original budget sadly wouldn’t stretch to. While the animated Zaroff loses some of the eccentricities from Joesph Furst’s performance, Zaroff comes away well here and actually, seeing the whole story, he’s a much more convincing threat than he is originally.

There is an excellent scene at the end, again edited to tone down the violence, where Zaroff is drowning. Instead of clinging onto the bars and trying to heave himself up against the water, he sees his pet octopus escape and cling onto the lever that will blow up the world. He tries to urge the creature to push it down but it leaves him and he can do nothing but wave goodbye in response. It’s a vastly different moment from the original but feels like one Furst would have happily played.

It also goes a long way showing us what a tragic character Zaroff is. Behind all the bluster and bravado, he’s just a man who has been alone his whole life and when his pet leaves him too, despite the love he shows it, you are forced to wonder if that sort of treatment might turn anyone mad in the end. The Doctor asks him at one point why he wants to blow up the world. Zaroff responds by talking about the achievement of such a feat but maybe the answer is a little more obvious: maybe these are the actions of a man who has been so unloved his entire life, he’s gone insane. If no one can show him love and kindness, then why should anyone else get that with others?

Maybe I’m reading too much into it. As with every Doctor Who story, there will be fans and those who aren’t so keen on what they are seeing. But getting to watch The Underwater Menace will hopefully give people a new appreciation for the story. It still won’t win awards and the animation can be a little clunky and jerky in places, but there is a heart to this story that wasn’t there in the surviving episodes. Orme’s script has some great ideas the budget couldn’t accommodate and while I’m not sure the animation quite reaches the heights of previous releases, this package might surprise some viewers.

Originally released as the last DVD in the Classics range, we were robbed of some extras to enjoy; luckily, this new release has plenty of extras to enjoy, two of which include a making of documentary and an episode of another series which sees Patrick Troughton and Joseph Furst acting together before The Underwater Menace.

There is a surprising charm to The Underwater Menace and things aren’t as fishy as you may think. While this is no Tomb of the Cybermen or Evil of the Daleks, The Underwater Menace isn’t as dull as The Space Pirates. I would even watch this above stories like The Dominators and The Krotons. I don’t agree with previous reviews saying this story is tacky and cheap. Zaroff is genuinely scary and the main cast are excellent here, Troughton putting in an extremely charismatic performance in particular. And while the story might not reach the heights of its ambition, you certainly can’t blame it for trying.

The Underwater Menace animation is available now on DVD, Blu-ray, and in a limited edition steelbook.

Is Donna Noble going to die in the 60th anniversary specials? That’s a question that fans have been pondering since the news broke that both David Tennant and Catherine Tate were announced as returning, respectively playing the Fourteenth Doctor and Donna. After all, the Doctor has told us that, after wiping her memories of her time with him to save her life, if she ever remembers him or their time together, her brain will burn up.

But as we creep closer to the first episode set to air on 25th November 2023, we’re getting more clues as to what is going to happen to everyone’s favourite temp from Chiswick. It’s revealed during Journey’s End that it was Dalek Caan manipulating the timelines to make sure that Donna met the Doctor again in Partners in Crime and from the trailer for the 60th, it seems that those timelines are swirling around her again, this time likely thanks to the manipulations of the Toymaker.

We see Beep the Meep clinging to her leg in bits taken from The Star Beast, as well as a spaceship crashing in front of her, so those things don’t seem to be doing her any trouble, even though when the Master took over everyone during The End of Time, her mind began to overload and she passed out, taking out some of the Master’s duplicates with her. Will that happen again? Well, I’ve got a theory on that…

Given how Donna’s daughter, played by the fantastic Yasmin Finney, is called Rose, that name can’t just be a coincidence. Rose Tyler had a lot to do with Donna during Series 4 so maybe Donna has pulled that name from her memories which have been buried deep inside her head from her encounters with Billie Piper’s character, not just something plucked out of thin air.

In the recently released Tales of the TARDIS, Jamie and Zoe reunited and had their memories given back thanks to the memory TARDIS they found themselves in. In their small segments around The Mind Robber, Zoe reveals she has a son called James, who she named after our favourite Highlander, though she had no real idea where that name came from, until it became clear that those memories the Time Lords wiped from her mind were only blocked, not wiped completely. Small things could creep through from time to time. Perhaps this will also explain where Donna found the name Rose?

As to whether or not Donna will die, we don’t know a lot about the second of the specials, Wild Blue Yonder and given how that story was filmed entirely in the studio, maybe there is something big being kept from us. Could it be the inclusion of another Doctor and that is why the TARDIS leaves them behind? It doesn’t like the temporal anomalies? I think it’s more likely that Donna remembers all her adventures and her mind does begin to burn up. But what she doesn’t know is that her daughter has inherited some of the DoctorDonna, and when the Doctor brings the dying or dead Donna back to her family, Rose is able to bring her back to life, using her portion of the DoctorDonna energy.

(If this actually happens, remember you read it here first!)

Some people have also been saying that maybe she gives her life to save the Doctor at the end of The Giggle, and this is why Ncuti Gatwa’s Fifteenth Doctor looks as upset as he does in some of the promotional material and set photos we’ve had for him so far.

I would love to say that Russell T Davies wouldn’t kill off one of the most popular companions in the show’s history and certainly not during the 60th anniversary celebrations. But with him coming back, he’s clearly got a plan and direction he wants to take the show in; with all the Marvelication that the show is currently going through, maybe we’re going to have some Avengers Endgame levels of emotion at the end? I’ll give the BBC/Bad Wolf and Disney some credit in that we really don’t know what is going to happen: the trailers don’t give much away but my inclination is to say that no, Donna won’t die. That doesn’t mean that things are going to be easy for her. Davies posted on his Instagram when they first announced the pair coming back “Doctor, Danger, dancing, Donna’. Its interesting that the only word that isn’t a name here with a capital letter is ‘Danger’. Could this mean more than just the Toymaker coming back? Could Donna be in danger? The Doctor does tell her in the trailer:

“I don’t know, if I can save your life this time.”

But maybe the Doctor has underestimated Donna, and the DoctorDonna aspect of her that he thought he’d wiped from her mind at the end of Journey’s End is really going to save her and not kill her like he first thought. We’ve only got a few more weeks before we find out!

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!

It’s finally been confirmed, after months of speculation, that Neil Patrick Harris will play the Celestial Toymaker in the 60th anniversary specials, notably The Giggle, also starring David Tennant as the Fourteenth Doctor.

So just who is the Toymaker and why does he have such a hatred of the Doctor? This guide will give you a good idea before he makes his return onscreen since 1966.

Who is the Toymaker?

The Toymaker is a celestial being, who managed to create his own universe after, in some accounts, surviving the death of the old universe along with a handful of other beings. Since then, he could be described as a Rumpelstiltskin-like figure, commanding immense powers and rigging games and deals in his favour. For example, he might “forget” to mention certain rules and/or bend them to see that he always wins. His powers, however, are limited to rules he sets out for any given game, though when a player loses, he controls what happens to his victim (akin to the Grandmaster in the Marvel comics universe). Some games are rigged to kill, like the deadly game he makes Steven and Dodo play against Cyril in his debut story, The Celestial Toymaker (1966), and sometimes he might turn you into a toy.

There are times when the Toymaker will join in with the games, like playing opposite the First Doctor in his Trilogic Game. But the games are always rigged in the Toymaker’s favour. The First Doctor only won by tricking the celestial being, but the Toymaker is immortal and invulnerable so when the Doctor destroyed the Toyroom, the Toymaker wasn’t destroyed along with it — he survived in various forms to take up his deadly games with the Doctor throughout their multiple incarnations.

However, given his powers and immortality, the Toymaker was scared of the outside universe. Whether this was because of his defeat at the hands of the First Doctor or because, as a creature of an old universe, the new is uncertain; either way, when the Twelfth Doctor met him in a comic book adventure, Relative Dimensions, he allowed the Toymaker to create a new toyshop inside the TARDIS before ejecting it back out into space when his old Toyroom broke down.

Encounters with the the Doctor

The Doctor first met the Celestial Toymaker, travelling with his companions Steven and Dodo in the story, The Celestial Toymaker. When the Doctor mysteriously vanishes before their eyes, Steven, Dodo, and the Doctor have no choice but to leave the TARDIS. The Doctor learns that the reason why they have been brought here is because the Toymaker is bored and wants a mind as brilliant as his to play against. While the Doctor has to play the Trilogic Game, Steven and Dodo are forced into playing a number of deadly games before they are able to get back to the real TARDIS.

The Toymaker hints that this isn’t the first time he and the Doctor have met but he left the Toymaker’s domain before he could play a game and that is why, this time, the Doctor has been brought here. The Doctor manages to make enough correct moves to make himself visible and eventually joins his companions by the real TARDIS. Once inside, he uses the Toymaker’s own voice against him, commanding the winning move on the Trilogic Game, realising that to make the final move in the Toyroom would have seen that world vanish and them along with it. In winning against his foe, the Doctor, Steven, and Dodo are set free while the Toymaker’s dimension is destroyed.

The comic, Relative Dimensions, saw him facing off against the Twelfth Doctor and Clara. The Toymaker is seemingly afraid of the outside universe but finds his own one breaking down. The Doctor does however help him make a new one, allowing him to enter the TARDIS and turn one of the rooms into his Toyroom, the Doctor then jettisoned that room from the TARDIS — allowing the Toymaker to continue his games under the impression that he wouldn’t continue to take people from other worlds. Of course, this promise wouldn’t last.

The Doctor also met the Toymaker in Divided Loyalties, when the Celestial being’s body began to break down. Once upon a time, he had taken over the body of a Time Lord called Rallon. The Toymaker then decided to turn Tegan, Nyssa, and Adric against the Doctor, leaving the Time Lord alone so that he could take over his body. All the games came to nothing though, with Rallon fighting against the entity that had taken him over many centuries ago and forcing his body to undergo many regenerations. The shock from this forced the Toymaker out of his body and Rallon died. This had once again destroyed his Toyroom and, with his servant Stefan in tow, the Toymaker fled to Earth and hid in a place called Blackpool…

This is where the Sixth Doctor and Peri encountered him (The Nightmare Fair); now calling himself the Mandarin and in a new host, the Mandarin was controlling a thrill ride, Space Mountain, as well as a number of deadly video games. The Doctor and Peri managed to trap the Mandarin in an impenetrable force field which was being powered by the Mandarin’s own mental energy, meaning that the universe believed that he was finally trapped forever.

But how many times has a villain been believed defeated only to come back when you least expect it? The final encounters with the Doctor come out of order, but while he was still calling himself the Mandarin, he would play chess opposite Fenric (from the Seventh Doctor tale, The Curse of Fenric). But when Fenric very nearly outplayed him, the Mandarin realised that a stalemate against this powerful entity was the only victory he was going to have. But this wouldn’t be his last encounter with Fenric…

Now back to calling himself the Toymaker, his next encounter with the Doctor was in a comic strip called Endgame which saw the Eighth Doctor meeting Izzy. The Toymaker had taken over the village of Stockbridge, using an evil duplicate of the Doctor to try and defeat his enemies. However, the Doctor manages to convince his evil duplicate that he would only ever be a pawn of the Toymaker, a creature never to have a life of their own. While the evil Doctor distracts the Toymaker, the real one uses part of a machine called the Imagineum to create a duplicate of the Toymaker, who drags the real one into the shadow dimensions. With the Toymaker gone and the Imagineum destroyed, Stockbridge, the Doctor, and Izzy are returned to Earth.

This wasn’t the last time the Eighth Doctor would encounter the Toymaker, though, as later the TARDIS was dragged into the Toyroom once again (Solitaire). This time, the Doctor was put into the body of a ventriloquist’s doll, while Charley was forced to take part in the Toymaker’s riddle. However, they tricked the Toymaker and his Toyroom was shrunk to nothing, destroying his current host body. Charley never faced the Toymaker again, though the Doctor would come up against him one final time…

The Doctor’s last encounter with the Toymaker was when the Doctor was in his seventh incarnation. In The Magic Mousetrap, the Doctor and his companions Ace and Hex find themselves in a Sanatorium in the Swiss Alps. With the Doctor’s help, a group of survivors manage to defeat the Toymaker by imprisoning him inside a doll that they they all eat parts of, splitting up the Toymaker and stretching him between too many humans to once again take one host. The Toymaker had regained his powers with the unintentional help of Fenric, who in his rising again had stirred the Toymaker from his dimension. Of course, the Toymaker had been in control all this time, trying to find out what it feels like to finally lose. But a chess-master managed to trap the Toymaker in a perpetual stalemate in his own dimension; the Doctor, Ace, Hex, and a woman named Queenie Glasscock managed to escape after everyone else was turned into wooden dolls.

The Legacy of Toymaker

Despite having only appeared in one televised story so far, the Toymaker seems to have been a popular villain since 1966. Many writers have used him in various stories and each time, the Doctor only just gets away by the skin of their teeth. The Toymaker even had a brief mention in the Thirteenth Doctor adventure, Can You Hear Me?, when she had to face off against some of the Eternals.

The Star Beast, Wild Blue Yonder, and The Giggle are set to air around the show’s 60th anniversary, in November 2023, with the Toymaker being played by Neil Patrick Harris.

But in the meantime, now is the perfect opportunity to catch up with all the Celestial Toymaker’s previous encounters with the Doctor…

Ahead of the game’s release in October 2023, more details have been revealed about the decks available to buy for the Doctor Who Universes Beyond card game.

Alongside the other four revealed decks of cards, Blast from the Past, Timey-Wimey, Masters of Evil, and Paradox Power, now we’ve had Villainous Choice announced, a series of cards which force your opponents to make decisions rather than take action against you. The effect your card has against them is something that benefits you.

One example is the Davros card, which will not only make your opponents lose three life points on your next turn, but they also have the choice to either discard a card themselves or allow you to choose one.

Another card is Missy, who make your opponents either take damage or lets you pick another card and allow chaos to ensue as your turn continues.

The game overall concerns collecting a number of artefacts and tokens, defining how long you can survive. There are a number of characters you can play as from all across the 60-year history of the show, including many of the Doctors and companions.

Originally famous for creating a highly successful Lord of the Rings card game, Wizards of the Coast have now collaborated with the BBC to create a Doctor Who card game in a similar vein, part of the Magic: The Gathering brand. It reminds me a lot of the Pokémon craze from the 1990s in how the cards interact with one another, causing damage to other players’ decks and characters.

While it’s not necessarily my cup of tea, the artwork unveiled for the cards has been stunning so far. Promotional art for this deck of cards include Scaroth in the place of the Mona Lisa and Duggan in the background (from City of Death), promising old monsters as well as the new villains — and depending on how popular this is, there will be more card decks to be revealed.

Set for release in October 2023, Doctor Who Universes Beyond is available to pre-order now.

The Witchfinders was one of the better episodes to come from Doctor Who Series 11, a season in which only a few episodes were my cup of tea. Unquestionably though, one of the best things in that story was Alan Cumming as King James.

In an interview with io9, promoting the American version of The Traitors which Cumming presents, he had time to speak a little about his fantastic guest appearance.

On talking about whether King James was a fun character to play, Cumming replied that he was a very well written character and that a lot of the appeal of playing him was because he was appearing in Jodie Whittaker’s first series as the Thirteenth Doctor. However, what didn’t seem to be fun was being up in Wales in the mud and rain at 2AM…

One of the most striking things about Cumming’s performance was his voice. His accent for the character came from fusing two voices together, Malcom Rifkind and Michael Forsyth, both Conservative politicians. Rifkind he describes as a sidekick to Margaret Thatcher, and this wouldn’t be the first time Doctor Who has made fun of or satirised her government. The Happiness Patrol is the most obvious example, with Shelia Hancock’s Helen A based on Thatcher herself. Cumming described channelling Rifkind and Forsyth as his revenge on the Conservative government, mocking their accents and warping them into one ridiculous voice for a historical figure.

The voice of the character seems to be what Cumming enjoyed the most, getting to say some wonderful lines! And while the bad weather in Wales wasn’t his idea of fun, that was what he signed up for. So maybe the castle for The Traitors might be a little more up his street!