This is easily the best of the three specials for me. Want more detail…?

In the 24 hours leading up to this story, I kept telling my family “regeneration day!” I don’t know why I get so worked up about that, but I always do. Saturday was no different. You watch regeneration episodes differently – or at least I do. Traditionally, the changeover happens in the last moment of the episode, you get a line or three from the new guy, and then you wait for the next episode. However, I felt something was going to be different this time, and it certainly was… but more on that later.

This episode starts off with a historical event, the first television broadcast. Not like we know it today, but the first televised image by John Logie Baird. This event is tied into the overall plot by the Toymaker, using the image of Stooky Bill (the doll) as part of his plan. It was a nice opening scene between the Toymaker and a guy coming in to buy the doll for use in the experiment. We get an early look at Neil Patrick Harris’ Toymaker: an excellent updating of a ’60s era Doctor Who villain – in fact, only the third Hartnell era baddie to return (the others being Daleks and Cybermen).

I was very much looking forward to Harris in this story, and he did not disappoint. The character was properly creepy, well acted, and despite being dispatched in the end a tad too easily, was very well executed. I could easily see this being the same character Michael Gough played in 1966. I especially loved the look on his face when Donna accused him of cheating. His accent went to a few places, and I loved the scene when he would say loudly in an American accent “Well, that’s alright then!” Very very much enjoyed his performance, and I really hope we see more of him in the future (which, given the way the story ended, seemed like it could be a possibility if they wanted to).

The overall plot was said to be a “worldwide” story, but it didn’t feel like that. It felt like it was stuck in London; we didn’t see much of the events of the Giggle ourselves — we were just told about it. Apparently, the Toymaker put an arpeggio and a laugh into each TV transmission ever made, something that was picked up by everyone, and when activated, changed how people worked. The story said that the Toymaker made everyone believe they were right about everything; an allegory to current day’s society. There were a few digs are current society too with the comment by a politician (under the titular Giggle influence) saying “Why should I care about you?” I liked that part, I just wished it was shown to be a bit wider in scale than it felt. It was during this scene where we got a body double for Wilf, as Bernard Cribbins wasn’t able to film anything here, and the character effectively disappeared at that point.

When the Doctor makes it to the Toymaker’s shop, I laughed when Donna asked if he had his own TARDIS, because I could easily see someone thinking that (bigger on the inside). It felt properly creepy in there, with rooms going to nowhere, dolls that attacked you, and people who were turned into life size dolls — the atmosphere was great. When the Doctor and Donna escaped, and watched the Toymaker’s shop disappear, I got flashbacks to watching Dan’s house shrink into next to nothing from the Flux.

There’s a great scene in the middle of this where the Doctor and Donna are made to watch a puppet show by the Toymaker showing what happened to several companions of the Doctor after Donna’s time. At first, I wondered why they didn’t do more, but these are the ones that “died” (of a sort). The Doctor had an explanation for each, but I adored the puppet show of former companions — it even mentioned the Flux again. Once again, we’re not burying the Chibnall era, but leaning into it. I like that a lot. We also got the follow-up game to the 1960s story, but it’s just a straight up cut of the cards. That’s probably my biggest disappointment with the Toymaker. There’s two games with the Doctor here: one is a simple cut the cards, and the other is playing catch with a ball. Given the trilogic game from The Celestial Toymaker was more involved, these games felt like a bit of a letdown. Of course, the 1960s story had twice as much story time to fill (being a 4 x25 min runtime and this special being one hour). A minor quibble, as they’re all played quite well dramatically. I just wish the games were a bit more involved than they were on screen.

Before I get to the big controversial part of the story, I wanted to talk about some of the fun stuff. While none of these specials played out like a traditional special with parades of old characters and references, we got some of that here. Kate Lethbridge-Stewart appears here again, now making 7 on screen Doctors she’s had some sort of adventure with (the Tenth, Eleventh, Twelfth, Thirteenth, Fourteenth, Fifteenth and War Doctors). Did anyone else think when she walked up to him on the base at first she was going to slap him? Felt that way to me. We very quickly discover that she hired Mel out of that companion support group at the end of Jodie Whittaker’s final story, as Mel is working for UNIT now. The Doctor recognising her was sweet, and there was also a short scene later with Mel talking about what happened post Dragonfire. I loved the name drop of Sabalom Glitz, and saying how he died: a great scene that this old time Who fan geeked out on big time. That she’s portrayed as a computer expert is great, given how the character was originally designed to be in 1986. What I don’t get though is when Mel talks about her family all being gone — I don’t recall any talk of that back in the 1980s, so did I miss something? Speaking of working for UNIT, the scene when Donna Noble talks herself into a job with UNIT was also funny, and makes me wonder if it will get followed up on. Donna and Mel talking over which one of them was the first ginger companion was amusing. I also loved the Toymaker’s dance in UNIT HQ — so much fun, and gave me a bit of the Master dancing vibes (both the Simm and Dhawan versions).

After the dance scene, the Toymaker takes over this huge gun that UNIT has and threatens everyone. He shoots the Fourteenth Doctor with it, and forces him to regenerate. We get the yellow glow and then…. Nothing. Something new happens here. David Tennant regenerates into Ncuti Gatwa, but remains himself. They called this on screen “bi-generation”. The Fifteenth Doctor says “there’s no such thing, it’s supposed to be a myth”, so basically, something Russell T Davies invented. On first view, I was like “WTF is this”, but the more I thought about it, it kind of works. Something new. Now I don’t want this to be the standard going forward, because to this point, regeneration was always a mix of sad and happy. We’re sad that the old guy is gone, and happy for the new guy. That is taken away. I don’t hate this, but it is definitely different. I imagine a lot of fans will get bent out of shape over this, but Doctor Who has always tried new things over the 60 years it’s been on, so why not this? It does give us a multi-Doctor sequence in this episode, which we weren’t expecting, so that’s good.

It does raise some bizarre continuity here. Since the Fourteenth Doctor remains a Time Lord, what will happen when he naturally ages and regenerates properly? We don’t really know, but my guess is that he would turn into Gatwa properly, and Gatwa would come full circle and take off from that regeneration as well. Something that would be interesting to see during Gatwa’s tenure, a double regeneration from the Fourteenth to Fifteenth. This one here is the “too early” one, and the later one would be them catching up? It’s all wild speculation, nobody knows, except perhaps Davies, who obviously won’t play his cards this quickly if that’s what he’s thinking.

Anyway, after that scene happens, we get the aforementioned final game against the Toymaker. If you watch the cut of the game itself, it’s quite obvious the three of them are no good at this game — one of them says as much in the behind the scenes making of. Still, it’s fun to watch, and the Toymaker is eventually defeated. The Doctor claims banishment as his prize, and the Toymaker ends up inside the box that was his house from earlier. Kate says to bury it in the deepest place, surrounded by salt. That’s two episodes in a row they mention salt as a barrier. I wonder if that will come up again.

Speaking of coming up again, as everyone is walking off, we get a shot of the “tooth” that was inside the Toymaker’s mouth, which apparently contains the Master. We get some laughing when the tooth is picked up — this is very similar to the exact same thing we saw at the end of The Last of the Time Lords when someone picked up the Master’s ring (and in the 1980 movie, Flash Gordon). So it’s pretty obvious we’ll get the Master again. But whom? Simm? Gomez? Dhawan? I really want to see Sacha Dhawan’s Master again: he was amazing, and I could go for more.

We then get a scene in the TARDIS with two Doctors talking about how this will work with both of them at once. It’s in here we get a sequence of characters mentioned from the past — which I loved seeing in the final 60th anniversary special. They’re all name drops, mind you; we don’t see or hear any of them, but the list of characters and events we get checked are: the First Doctor, the trial in The War Games, Pertwee’s exile to Earth, The Key to Time, Logopolis, Adric, River Song, Sarah Jane Smith, Rose Tyler, the Time War, the Pandorica, Mavic Chen, and the Gods of Ragnarok. That was quite a fun name drop there. My daughter who was a major River Song fan freaked out when they said that — much in the same way when I heard Mavic Chen!

There’s a little fun wibbly wobbly where we end up with two physical TARDISes (TARDII?) here due to Gatwa’s Doctor and leftover energy from the Toymaker. The new one has a wheelchair ramp; my first thought was “K9 can get in!” but it was Shirley Ann who was overjoyed at the ramp, which I found positively amusing that the Fourteenth Doctor then closes the door on her and doesn’t let her in. There was a comment I read by RTD about this bit saying there is something coming in a future episode which will clearly state these are the same TARDIS, not two of them, so this will get revisited.

The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Doctors say their goodbyes, and the latter takes off to future adventures. The Fourteenth stays behind with the family Noble, along with “Mad aunty Mel”. This Doctor appears to actually “stop”, although to what extent he’s able to stick to that, we’ll see. RTD has said there’s no plans to bring him back, he’s done — and it’s an odd way to finish with a Doctor. It’s never happened before. It’s a super nice scene, but it just would have been better if they could have filmed it with Bernard Cribbins, who was said to be there, but out of shot, so Wilf lives.

The final shots are of Gatwa in his TARDIS taking off to the future. Ncuti stole every scene he was in. I’ve been a Doctor Who fan since 1983 when Peter Davison was the incumbent. Gatwa was amazing here. I thoroughly enjoyed everything he did on screen. When this was over, I truly can say that I have not been this excited about the new Doctor at the end of their first appearance in quite a long time — possibly ever. I really can’t wait for Gatwa’s first episode: we won’t have to wait long — it’s on 25th December!

P.S. On Disney+ here in the states, did anyone notice that if you watched with subtitles on they referred to Tennant’s Doctor as “Tenth Doctor”, and not Fourteenth? Was it this way on iPlayer as well…?

When most people think about the William Hartnell era of Doctor Who, they usually gravitate towards perhaps the first ever story, the first Dalek story, or perhaps his last story. If they’re going a little deeper, they’ll hit one of the other Dalek serials, perhaps a curiosity like The Gunfighters. Rarely do people go over deep cut stories, and especially not one of the several that are missing. But that’s what I wanted to talk about — one of the missing ones, The Savages.

Aired from 28th May to 18th June 1966, this is one where all four episodes are gone. We have a handful of telesnaps to get by with. They’re the source of the reconstruction which is what I watched when I got to this story in my “watch every episode of Doctor Who” project. Because it was a missing story, I didn’t know much about it. In fact, watching reconstructions brings its own challenges as they can frequently be not that good, either from the fact that it’s hard to know what’s going on when the main focus is just audio, or the particular reconstruction isn’t as strong because there aren’t as many pictures here, but this one wasn’t like that. I found that I really enjoyed this story, and really REALLY wanted the thing to exist so I can see it properly, but I can’t.

Spoilers follow…

It’s a very modern-thinking story where two societies inhabit a planet; one is exploiting the other, and the TARDIS crew get in the middle of it. The two “races” are called the Elders and the Savages. The Doctor is initially well respected by the Elders — they massage his ego, and he’s admiring their culture. Steven and Dodo get separated from the Doctor (huge shock there), and they do some exploring.

We learn more about the elders: they maintain their healthy life by literally draining the life force from the “Savages”, leaving them either dead, or severely incapacitated. Once the Doctor learns this is happening, he’s quite aghast and tries to stop the proceedings. In doing that, the Elders realise that the Doctor is of greater intelligence than the savages were, so they decide to put the Doctor in the draining machine, thinking it would give them a massive power boost.

After the Doctor is in the machine, he’s severely affected by the energy drain at which point the elders think they can get more energy from Dodo and Steven, so they are hunted by the elders. The hunt takes up most of Episode 3, and Hartnell is barely in it – this could have been one his famed vacation episodes, but the Doctor, plot wise, was really out of it.

In the last episode, the Savages help Dodo, Steven, and the Doctor. An amusing thing happens to Jano, the leader of the Elders. He has altered due to the draining of the Doctor; he starts acting like the Doctor and immediately realises that what they’re doing is immoral, and assists in destroying the transference machine. There’s a funny scene (I assume) towards the end that shows people destroying the machinery. I get the impression that must have been fun to film, the intentional destruction of the set like that.

There are a few visual shots I would have loved to have seen. Besides the aforementioned destruction of the machine, there was a scene from the start of Episode 1 with spears being thrown at the TARDIS while Dodo and Steven escape. But of course the thing I would have liked to have seen most is the departure of Steven Taylor. He leaves the show at the end of Episode 4. We do have a super short clip of this scene via a fan-filmed 8mm film extract. But it’s not the same as seeing the real sequence.

This doesn’t seem like the kind of story that early ’60s Doctor Who would have pulled off, but this reconstruction left me intrigued and wanting to see more. While I’d be really surprised if this were ever recovered, I hope some day to see it animated at least.  

In the past, I could never call this one of my favorites, but this rewatch changed my opinion for sure.

One small postscript. From a production standpoint, this was the first story ever not to have individual episode titles. It was The Savages Episode 1, 2, etc… vs the way it had been up until this point where each specific episode had its own title.

So it’s New Year’s Day with Jodie Whittaker.  That means it’s time for Daleks. I settled in and watched Eve of the Daleks, a story that very much shows on screen it was produced during a Covid lockdown. That didn’t stop me from enjoying it, but to employ an American term, it was very much a “bottle episode”, with very limited sets, and a very small cast. We had Team TARDIS (the Doctor, Yaz, and Dan) plus two other humans (Sarah and Nick). There were the three Dalek operators, although really it was just one most of the time. There were two other humans, but both had no scenes with any other actors (Mary, Sara’s mum solely on a phone screen, and Karl). But that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy it. In fact, I very much did.

When it was over, I did what I always do – discuss it with a few mates. One of them (Jake) had this to say about the episode…

“By FAR the best thing Chibnall has ever written, Doctor Who wise. It’s head and shoulders above anything else he’s written. Tight, great dialogue, wonderful characters, and a story we’ve never seen before. Tell me a better story he’s done. I’ll wait. Can’t help being sad that the Irish lass can’t be the Doctor herself now, because she was AWESOME. I’d love a sarcastic Doctor like her in the future.”

I sent him back The Power of Three, but he disagreed with me. He went on about Eve of the Daleks.

While I wouldn’t go as far as Jake did in my enjoyment of it, I did like that it was something different. As I said to my wife in the middle of the episode, “this was a small scale story”. It wasn’t one with the Daleks looking to wipe out the universe; they were just going after the Doctor in a single location. It wasn’t an old recycled Terry Nation Dalek idea. Is it the best Dalek story ever? Oh hell no. But one that I very much enjoyed as a standalone. This was basically Doctor Who doing Groundhog day. So much so that Dan even uttered “This is Groundhog Day” in the episode, so they were self aware on that. 

The core concept is that the Doctor has to purge the TARDIS of Flux-related “stuff” (no specific detail as to what), but said purge both explains the “cracks” in the promo photos we saw leading up to the episode, as well as what starts the time loop. The first time loop happens in the pre-titles. It’s the longest one, as these concepts usually are. So much so, we don’t get the titles until nine minutes into the episode. 

Basically, the Daleks claim that the Doctor causes the time loop, and some Daleks were sent to exterminate the Doctor. Which they do several times. The Daleks are armed with a new machine gun weapon, which looks pretty cool – and makes me wonder why that hasn’t happened before. I also think the machine gun weapon went to be an unstated reason why the Dalek exterminations didn’t cause the Doctor to regenerate. Granted, the time loop appears to happen when the five people in the building are killed, so that alone could explain it, as I’m pretty sure the Doctor is always the last one exterminated in a cycle. I realize it’s a nitpick for sure, but the first time it happened I thought, “Hang on, why isn’t the Doctor regenerating”?

One difference here is that the characters regain their memory of the previous cycles – something that doesn’t always happen in these time loop stories. It allowed them to use the cycles as ways to move forward in trying to outsmart the Dalek that was after them. One of the cycles they just walked out in front of the Dalek to move the process forward. I enjoyed that.

Speaking of the exterminations, one of the ones of Sarah gave me an immediate flashback to the finale of Christopher Ecceleston’s run, The Parting of the Ways. Sarah stood there and held her arms out in the exact same way that Captain Jack Harkness did in that episode in front of three Daleks.

There was not an infinite amount of time loops here, the amount of time in the loops was reduced a minute with each cycle – once that was realised, it brought a finality – and that’s when the Daleks kind of let the Doctor know that her extermination was inevitable. Of course it doesn’t end that way, but it does add some tension to the loops to know they’re not unlimited.

One thing that comes up in this story is that Dan has figured out that Yaz as a thing for the Doctor. He corners her about it, and she ends up just crying. He then proceeds to out Yaz in front of the Doctor (a bit uncool) who has kind of a “Uh, what?” kind of reaction. I had immediate flashbacks to Martha Jones here with the unrequited love. It’s not paid off in this episode, so we’ll probably get something about this in the next episode or the finale, where Yaz can have a full-on cry about the Doctor dying. 

One negative to the story is that there were several instances where folks should have been exterminated faster than they were, but only survived due to some “Red shirt level shooting” by the Daleks here.

We progress through various rooms of the storage facility, and find some materials being held there by Sarah’s customers (an unseen “Jeff”) — things he’s not supposed to (including a room full of cans of beans). Some of these things would allow them to destroy the Daleks (and the building). That’s ultimately how they get out. They trick the Daleks with a phone call from Sarah’s mum at which point they slip out of the building and the Dalek then proceeds to blow up the building and themselves. 

Given the materials in the warehouse included fireworks, we got a fireworks show on top of the building collapsing (in a nice bit of CGI). One little throw-in was a character who witnessed the fireworks going off. This character is Karl Wright, played by Johnny Dixon. He appeared in Doctor Who before, in Jodie Whittaker’s first episode, The Woman Who Fell to Earth, being hunted by T’zim-Sha there. It’s an odd deep cut, and I wonder why him. It seems so out of left field, I wonder if he’ll show up again in one of the remaining two episodes.

As I saw written elsewhere, “Sometimes the best things in life are the simple pleasures.” This was a small simple story, but very very enjoyable. I thought the acting was pretty solid all around, too — something that’s not always the case. We got a few laughs here and there, with the Dalek labeling Dan “the inferior human”. While I don’t think it’s as amazing as my mate Jake made it out to be, Eve of the Daleks was a very solid 8/10 for me. 

If the other two remaining specials were written to this level, it will be a good couple of final Whittaker episodes. The first one brings back the Sea Devils who haven’t been a major on screen character since 1984. Looking forward to that for sure.

Finally, one fun little real world thing. After the episode aired, John Bishop tweeted something really nice to read. He said, “Dreams do come true. Had anyone told me as a boy that one day I would be meeting a Dalek on TV I would never have believed them. It was made all the more special by working with such great people on Doctor Who”.  Certainly a nice sentiment to read.

Before I get into this episode, I wanted to point out that going into it, we’re now in the second half the series/story. I was hoping that we would start getting more explanations and less “What the heck is that about?” stuff. Also, this is the big Weeping Angels episode. While the Angels are pretty beloved, beyond their first two stories, they’ve been kind of “eh..” Going into Village of the Angels, I was hoping we’d get more of them like their early stuff, and not the lesser appearances they became known for in their most recent appearances before this episode. Now, about the new one here…

“The Angel has the TARDIS….”

I thought that was a great way to leave off the episode before this. It was a great cliffhanger. In fact, most of the cliffhangers from this season have been great, but they haven’t always had great payoffs (like the payoff from The Halloween Apocalypse being mostly ignored in War of the Sontarans).

Starting off right away, I thought this had a good creepy atmosphere. It might have helped that I started watching it around midnight with no lights on and nobody awake in the house but me! As the various scenes with the Angels happened, I felt they were handled well. I think the overall Angel atmosphere was helped by the fact that the scenes were dark. Segun Akinola gave the Angels their own theme as such – and I really liked that. It popped up several times, and I thought fit the overall vibe. A dark setting, Weeping Angels, creepy music: it just all came together for the right atmosphere to make it work. I think the setting served the Angels better than some other settings they were placed in in the past (a hotel, New York City, etc).

I do like the fact that the story was circular, taking place in the past and the present. In the original Blink story, there was a part of it that took place in the past, but it was less in your face. This seemed more plot driven in the past — more “timey wimey” if you will. For example, stories in the past with Angels, the big fear is they zap you to the past, and the implication is you can live out your life there. But this time, the Angels were in the past where they were sending people to as well. So once you realised they were in the past as well, I thought “uh-oh, a new wrinkle — not safe there, either”. This played out in a big way when we got to the little girl who was being searched for twice: there as a little girl, and also 60+ years later at the same time. There was a scene where the 1901 and the 1967 versions of the same place were together at once. My wife picked up the old woman being the young girl early on; I did not. This was not a single straightforward story. But then Blink wasn’t either — and I loved that about that story, too. One of the new bits here was the “Flaming Angel” (my name). When it happened, it was a great “Oh cr*p, that’s new” moment that just worked.

As usual, the story looked amazing. Say what you will about the Chibnall/Whittaker era of Doctor Who, but it has never looked as good as it has now. A lot of this story was dark, but even that atmosphere looked good. But the lighter stuff had a great look to it. I was especially taken in by the visual effect of the town just “ending” in space.

The story has a bit of the old style feel of Doctor Who, i.e. the “base under siege” — the house belonging to Professor Jericho is the “base” here. He was conducting experiments on Claire, who was sent here from the Weeping Angel sequence back in the first episode. The Doctor, Claire, and Jericho are trapped in the basement of his house, trying to avoid being taken over by Weeping Angels. The Angels eventually took over and forced them out of the basement there. It resulted in a scene that I really enjoyed. The Doctor, Claire, and the professor were trying to escape down a tunnel with several Angels closing in on them. This scene was one of my favorites with Jodie Whittaker. Much as been made of her acting in Doctor Who, and I think this episode in particular (and that scene specifically) was some of her best stuff. I really loved what she did here.

Before I get to one of the big bits of the narrative here, I wanted to touch on a few smaller points that I jotted down when I watched the episode. Just small things I liked for one reason or another:

• The Psychic Paper makes a reappearance. Something I’m surprised wasn’t used more since its introduction with Christopher Eccleston’s Ninth Doctor.
• Loved the callbacks to some other Angel stories besides Blink. The “sand in the eye” that happened to Amy happened here, and the bit about “That which holds the image of an angel becomes itself an angel” was nicely used, too.
• Jericho was a well constructed character. We got a bit of background, he wasn’t a blank slate, and I loved how he wasn’t affected by all the weirdness going on around him. He has a great background (psychic investigation), a past that led to him being “loveless, childless, and hiding in academia for fear of the real world”. He also is quite emphatic in his beliefs. Could be a very strong character to be used in a future something — Torchwood rebooted, perhaps?
• We finally got to see Passenger do his thing. He was coupled with Azure in a scene where they capture a bunch of natives from the planet Puzano where Bel has landed to look for Vinder.
• Second Doctor throwback: Jodie’s Doctor saying “When I say run… RUN.”
• Third Doctor throwback: Jodie’s Doctor saying “when I reverse the polarity of the neutron flow”.
• The Three Doctors callback: the Thirteenth Doctor using “contact” as the action word to set off the mental link between her and Claire similar to what Doctors One, Two, and Three did.
• This was the first Doctor Who episode ever (that I can recall) that had a mid credit scene. I don’t think they’ve ever started the credits before, then stopped them and had another scene. That’s new.
• The actor who played Professor Eustacius Jericho, Kevin McNally, was in Doctor Who before. He was Hugo Lang in the Sixth Doctor’s first story, The Twin Dilemma.

Enough of that small stuff; on to the big part of the story. Some spoilers follow, in case you’ve not actually watched Village of the Angels yet.

A rogue Weeping Angel had embedded itself in Claire’s mind, and was hiding there. The Angel had summoned the Doctor via external forces, and needed her help. The Doctor found this via the psychic link she created between herself and Claire when she was able to talk to the Angel. The Weeping Angels in this episode are a tactical squad working for none other than the Division. The Division reminds me of what used to be called “The Celestial Intervention Agency” in classic Doctor Who — both of them akin to Star Trek‘s Section 31. The Angel tries to strike a deal with the Doctor, saying it can give the Doctor back all her memories that were taken. It’s something that definitely intrigues the Doctor but before they can complete the deal, the Doctor is brought out of the mind-link to deal with real world Angels. But the tantalizing spectre of information missing from the Doctor’s mind is a big juicy carrot; one I wonder if we’ll revisit. Surely it won’t be left in this one scene.

I have a theory about that. It might be controversial, but… When Chibnall did the Timeless Child reveal last year, it dug very heavily into the old fan myth of the “Morbius Doctors” existing before William Hartnell. I wonder if we’re moving towards another reveal like that. My working theory here is that all of this stuff from the past with Azure and Swarm, the Fugitive Doctor, etc., all happened in between Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee. We got the War Doctor in between Paul McGann and Christopher Eccleston since we never saw them regenerate. Well, we never saw Troughton regenerate into Pertwee either. It wouldn’t shock me at all if all of this Division/Angel/Fugitive Doctor stuff would play into the old “Season 6B” theory that’s been floating around for ages. We’ve had a few hints about it (when Swarm mentions “you don’t remember any of this, do you?”), and it would explain a lot of the hints we’ve gotten already about the Fugitive Doctor and not remembering things. If the Time Lords took the Second Doctor into the Division, and then something happened that forced him to regenerate into the Fugitive Doctor, it could work. Especially if the Fugitive Doctor had to be forcibly regenerated into Pertwee and having the Doctor’s mind wiped of all the Season 6B stuff. Depending on how it’s pulled off, I could get behind that.

There are some other small bits I skipped over — like Bel’s and Vinder’s visit to the planet Puzano looking for each other — but this was a pretty minor part of the story, as was the appearance of Azure. Also Gerald and Jean, who were pretty much just there to be cannon fodder for the Angels.

But the ending of the episode? The Doctor turning into a Weeping Angel herself after being betrayed by Claire’s Angel? That scene was quite epic, and when I first reacted to it after the episode was over, I said, “Okay, that ending was bad@ss”.

I REALLY REALLY loved this episode. As much as I loved the Sontaran episode a few weeks ago, I enjoyed this far more. I didn’t see the change to an Angel for Whittaker coming, so when it started happening, I was like “oh boy, this will be fun!” Gallifrey One is coming up soon; I wonder how many Whittaker Angels we will see cosplayed!

A couple of minor nitpicks…

Did anyone else have difficulty hearing things? In the opening sequence when Claire was talking in a different language, I had a hard time understanding; I had to use subtitles. Same thing for the scene where the Doctor has to eject the Angel from the TARDIS by rebooting it. The sound mix felt off there, I had a very hard time understanding that.

Yaz and Dan were pretty sidelined. I mean they had some stuff to do — it’s not like they were twiddling their thumbs for the whole hour — but they were effectively replaced as companions for the Doctor by Claire and Jericho.

I freakin’ loved this episode. It looked great, it sounded great, I loved the acting, the atmosphere — just bloody all of it. The couple of minor plot problems didn’t affect me at all. I thought Jodie Whittaker’s acting was some of, if not the best she’s done in her entire time as Doctor Who. If we had been getting this level of story her first two series, she might not be leaving.

Absolute 10/10 here.

I’ve been a fan of Doctor Who since 1983, and watched every episode the show’s ever put out (862 as of now), even including reconstructions of the lost 1960s episodes. I know probably far too much about this show than one person probably should. In all those episodes, I’ve seen a lot of actors. The show has a habit of recycling actors, but I wanted to write today about some of the best cameos the show has had.

I’m talking proper cameos, where someone is in there for a short amount of time. Not someone like Timothy Dalton, Maisie Williams, Carey Mulligan, or Simon Pegg. While those are all fun, they all played fully realized characters that filled an entire episode (or three). I’m talking about those short “Hey what the heck are they doing there” types. Not the kind of character that “fills an episode”.

With that in mind, here are my top 10 Doctor Who cameos…

10. June Whitfield

A well known British actress having appeared in nearly everything it seems, June was born on 11th November 1925, and she died on 29th December 2018. She’s well known for Abfab, for playing Miss Marple on all of the Miss Marple radio dramas on BBC4, not to mention several Carry On films – and a whole lot more.

In Doctor Who, however, she appeared in David Tennant’s final story, The End of Time as Minnie Hooper who got in a squeeze of David Tennant’s bum when she posed with a picture with him. She was part of Wilfred Mott’s posse who was going off looking for the Doctor.

Minnie was such a fun character, I wouldn’t have minded seeing her back again.

9. Alexei Sayle

Alexei Sayle is mostly well known for his stand up comedy. That’s not something I saw a tonne of here in the States, but I was aware of him when he made his Doctor Who appearance. Alexei was born on 7th August 1952.

His Doctor Who appearance was as “The DJ” in the 1985 Colin Baker story, Revelation of the Daleks. His character had invented a sound wave gun which would destroy Daleks. He amusingly said he was killing them with “Rock & Roll”.

An amusing one-off character, and, given it was a Dalek story, he was exterminated.

8. Ken Dodd

Ken Dodd was a well known comedian; he had been around for an exceptionally long time, and I always knew him as “that bloke who had the perpetually surprised face”. He also sang and was a ventriloquist. Kind of a pop culture person from a prior generation. He died in 2018 (11th March). In an interesting twist, he married his life-long girlfriend just two days before his death. They had been together since 1978.

Anyway, his legend finally hit the screens in 1987 in Sylvester McCoy’s first series of Doctor Who. The story was Delta and the Bannermen. If there ever were story to match the cameo, it was this one. This was a generally light season to begin with, and Delta was probably the “lightest” of the stories. Dodd appeared here as a tolltaker at a space station that the TARDIS came through. Ignoring the silliness of the TARDIS hitting a toll booth, it was a fun little scene.

7. Anne Robinson

Anne Robinson is most well known for being the host of the game show The Weakest Link. It should come as no surprise that her cameo in Doctor Who is related that.

In Christopher Eccleston’s season, the penultimate episode of his series was called Bad Wolf. In that episode, several games were played by the characters, and Rose’s was The Weakest Link. The host of this game inside the show was an Android named “Anne Droid”, a fairly amusing play on her being both an android, and it being, you know, Anne Robinson’s real name. Anne didn’t appear on screen, but she did voice the character named after her.

6. Jonny Lee Miller

Jonny Lee Miller is an odd case. While his appearance in Doctor Who certainly qualifies as a cameo, it’s not the usual kind of “cameo” appearance. To that, I mean someone who you know from other stuff, and then it’s like “Hey, it’s so-and-so in Doctor Who”. In this case, Miller was a kid when he appeared in Doctor Who – 1982’s Kinda. He’s unrecognisable due to him only being 9 at the time. But it counts – so on the list it goes!

He’s known for several popular things, one being Trainspotting. He was also Sherlock Holmes in the 2010’s US version of Elementary, which ran for several years. He has been in a tonne of other things – TV, movie, and stage. But I had to get him in here for the uncredited Doctor Who appearance nearly 40 years ago.

5. Andrew Garfield

Andrew Garfield is on my list for a single reason. Spider-Man. He was Peter Parker in-between Tobey Maguire and Tom Holland. When I looked at his list of credits, I saw a few things I recognised, but I’m not gonna lie on this one. He was the “middle Spider-Man”. That’s why he’s here.

He had a minor character in two episodes of the second series of Doctor Who with David Tennant. He was Frank in Daleks in Manhattan/ Evolution of the Daleks, along with the Doctor and Martha. I didn’t know him at the time — he was just another background actor in Doctor Who then — but when he got cast as Spider-Man, I thought “Hang on, he looks familiar”.

4. Felicity Jones

Felicity Jones was in the spectacularly brilliant movie Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. She played Jyn Erso, and was the primary character in the movie. She was in nearly every scene, and was awesome. She was also in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, alongside the entry right above this one, Andrew Garfield. But I mostly know her for the Star Wars movie; I know little else of her career.

She was in Doctor Who in a 2008 episode, The Unicorn and the Wasp. Her character was Robina Redmond, one of the people accused of the murder in a murder-mystery episode. This is a real cameo, as her Doctor Who appearance was a fairly minor character… although she’s sort of mentioned in the episode title.

3. Bill Nighy

Bill Nighy is someone I know for loads of things. Off the top of my head he was in Love, Actually, he was in the movie version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy as Slartibartfast. He was also in one of the Harry Potter films, in several of the Pirates of the Caribbean films. He’s well known.

In fact, he was offered the role of the Ninth Doctor in Doctor Who before Christopher Eccleston, but turned it down. A side comment, had Alan Rickman turned down his role in Galaxy Quest, I could have seen Bill Nighy doing that one.

He did end up in Doctor Who in 2008 in the most excellent Vincent and the Doctor as a gallery curator who was obsessed with Vincent Van Gogh. It was a short, but very memorable character, but bizarrely was left uncredited!

2. John Cleese

John Cleese is a very well known person, probably only eclipsed by #1 on my list. Cleese is known for all kinds of stuff, but primarily for his work with Monty Python, and as a sort of extension to that, Fawlty Towers. But I know him best for James Bond. 25 years ago, I thought, if Desmond Llewelyn ever retired as Q, they should get Cleese to replace them. Then they actually did it! He was in two 007 movies, one as “R”, and the other as “Q” after Llewelyn died sadly. Then they rebooted the series, and dropped him. But I LOVED Cleese as Q.

Anyway, in Doctor Who, he had a super quick cameo in Episode 3 of the Tom Baker story City of Death. He played (alongside Eleanor Bron) an art critic who was in the Louvre talking about the TARDIS as a piece of art. Bron herself later had a larger role in the Colin Baker story, Revelation of the Daleks. Cleese’s cameo in Doctor Who is super short, less than one minute, and I thought fit perfectly the mood and feel of the season of Doctor Who he appeared in. One of my favourites.

1. The Beatles

The Beatles. How can you know music, and not know The Beatles? I’ve only ever seen one of them individually live, and that was Paul McCartney in 2019, but never mind. How do you not know the Beatles? If you’re a NuWho only fan, you may not know that they had a quick cameo in Doctor Who.

This was way back in 1966 when William Hartnell was the incumbent Doctor. The original – despite what Chibnall wants to think. In Episode 1 of The Chase, the Doctor had this Time-Space Visualiser, and it let them see points in history. It was never shown again outside of this story, but they used it to view a few historical figures, as well as a performance of the Beatles doing Ticket to Ride. The Beatles were never in the program with the other characters; they appeared only on screen, and did nothing more than play Ticket to Ride for 30 seconds, but they were there.

Sadly this clip has been excised from US prints of the story on DVD due to rights issues.

Honourable Mentions

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Colin Baker and Peter Capaldi.

Before both of them had a turn as the title role in Doctor Who, they both made appearances. Colin Baker’s was a little more than a year before he took the role as the Doctor, appearing in the Peter Davison story, Arc of Infinity – the first story of Season 20. Colin took over on the final story of Season 21.

Peter Capaldi’s appearance was in a David Tennant story, The Fires of Pompeii, about six and a half years before he took the role of the Twelfth Doctor. And of course, Karen Gillan was in it too.

There are plenty of other cameos out there, maybe some time I’ll do a second one, but these are my favorite ones – covering classic and NuWho as well.

I have been watching Doctor Who since 1983, coincidentally the same year as The Five Doctors was released. I bring this up because The Five Doctors was the first story I sat down to intentionally watch.

Back in those days, I used to have a friend in High School whose mom liked Doctor Who. I remember seeing Tom Baker’s time tunnel titles – I’d pause and watch that, then go off with my friend and play Atari 2600. Some time later in the year, I found out about the 20th anniversary Doctor Who special (presumably from my local PBS channel), so I decided to tune in and watch one. I thought that would be a good point to start.

So in November 1983, I sat down to watch The Five Doctors on WHYY in Philadelphia (two days before the UK as it turns out), and was pretty confused immediately. Now, I knew it was an anniversary special with multiple variants of the same character (as played by Peter Davison, Tom Baker – briefly – Jon Pertwee, Patrick Troughton, and, largely replacing William Hartnell, Richard Hurndall), so I was somewhat prepared but it was a big ol’ confusing pile of fun for me. 

As I look back on this, more than 35 years later, I cannot recall if some of my memories were from original viewing; there was just so much fun in this story. In the intervening decades, I’ve read a lot from people who say the story has problems: it’s too crowded, nobody got any development, etc, etc. I think it missed the point. For me, The Five Doctors was a celebration of Doctor Who. It was never meant to be The Talons of Weng-Chiang or The Caves of Androzani. It was supposed to be a rollicking good time looking back on the history of Doctor Who. That’s EXACTLY what it was. I found it fun at the time, and now, in 2019, I find it just as good.  

I recently rewatched it – the day that Terrance Dicks died, I put on The Five Doctors that evening. It’s just as enjoyable as it was back in 1983. I still wonder how Sarah (Elisabeth Sladen) fell down that ramp there, but I digress…

At the time, I was blown away by this story, and as time progressed, I learned to love it. It’s not the deepest story you’ll ever see on this show. It’s a nostalgia fest which had to balance four actors in the title role, a fifth that didn’t want to be there, and a recasting of one of the four. You had a dozen or so companions in various states of “things to do”; a handful of old enemies; one of the most “Gallifrey” stories there has ever been; and you could have had a disaster. But it wasn’t. This was written by Doctor Who legend, Terrance Dicks, for crying out loud! In the hands of a lesser writer, it would have been too boring, in my opinion. Dicks made this work, and I told him that at a convention I met him at in the 1980s. I was so tempted, when I thought of Dicks’ best work, to go with something like The War Games (which I really like), but I’ve consistently loved The Five Doctors over the decades, so I go with this as my favorite Terrance Dicks story.

True, a lot of companions stand around doing not much of anything – this is taken to an extreme in the last major scene when Borusa (Philip Latham) mentally freezes Tegan Jovanka (Janet Fielding), Vislor Turlough (Mark Strickson), Sarah Jane Smith, Susan Foreman (Carole Ann Ford), and the Brigadier (Nicholas Courtney) in place, so they have nothing to do in that scene. Several others had very brief cameos – Jamie McCrimmon (Frazer Hines) and Zoe Herriot (Wendy Padbury), Liz Shaw (Caroline John) and Mike Yates (Richard Franklin)… 

But I don’t care about all these things. This is an unadulterated fun story, and one I’ve always loved for that. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, which is really obvious as you watch it.

Speaking of fun, some things here were originated or referenced elsewhere, too:

• The Second Doctor says “Redecorated? I don’t like it” (Said by the Second Doctor in The Three Doctors, the Eleventh in Closing Time, the Tenth in The Day of the Doctor, and paraphrased by the Thirteenth in The Ghost Monument).
• The Third Doctor says, “Reverse the polarity of the neutron flow” – who else? He only said the full phrase once before, in The Sea Devils.
• Richard Hurndall’s First Doctor says, “I’m the Doctor – the original you might say” (again by David Bradley’s First in Peter Capaldi’s The Doctor Falls/ Twice Upon A Time). 
• “The Terrible Zodin” is also mentioned here, and while that character was never actually used, Zodin was referenced in the Sixth Doctor’s Cybermen story, Attack of the Cybermen. Always wished the show would create a villain somewhere named Zodin.
• At the end of this story, the Doctor leaves as Lord President of Gallifrey. That is brought up at the start of The Trial of a Time Lord (according to legend only because Colin Baker brought it up in production meetings).
• The Brigadier and Tegan have a look when they first meet which makes me think of Mawdryn Undead. It’s not explicit, but they had just met recently in that story.
• The cameo with Jamie and Zoe directly references events in the final episode of The War Games.
• The segment at the start of the Eleventh Doctor’s story The Name of the Doctor with Clara Oswald visiting other Doctors has two clips taken from The Five Doctors: A sequence of the Second Doctor running and a sequence of the Third driving Bessie originate in this story.
• The Eleventh Doctor’s final story, The Time of the Doctor also references this story, when the Doctor uses the Seal of Rassilon to decode a Gallifreyan message. He also tells Clara, “The Seal of Rassilon – I nicked it off the Master in the Death Zone”.

I love when shows reference themselves in this way, so I can see The Five Doctors again in those other serials.

The story was re-released on home video in 1995 in a “Special Edition” with additional scenes inserted in, and things tweaked. The one thing I didn’t care for was when the Fourth Doctor was returned, they changed the scene we saw of him being “unstuck”; I liked the one they used originally from Shada that has his scarf hanging outside the TARDIS door. There were some other minor tweaks, like the harp music that the Fifth Doctor plays was changed, and Rassilon’s voice was altered somewhat. Most of the rest of the changes were inconsequential trims and additions.

There was one major thing added to the show’s overall mythos in this story.  This concept did not exist before, and laid the ground for what happened when Matt Smith regenerated into Peter Capaldi. This was the first story that said that a Time Lord can have a “complete new life cycle”. This was the carrot offered to the Master (Anthony Ainley) to help the Doctor by the High Council on Gallifrey. I get the impression it’s some special thing, because if anyone can just get a new life cycle, then Time Lords are effectively immortal, and negating the big thing Borusa was trying to get from Rassilon in this story in the first place.

But here’s the bottom line. The story handles multiple Doctors, multiple companions, and numerous throwbacks to olden days rather well. As I said earlier, it’s perhaps not the most complicated story, but that’s not what this one was about. It was never going to be Blink, Genesis of the Daleks, or the 50th anniversary special. It was a fun romp – a way to look back and characters from the past interacting with the (then-) incumbent crew. I still love it today in 2019 as much as I did in 1983, although I’m no longer confused as to why there were five actors in the title role at the same time.

I realise this review has been kind of rambling, but it’s one of those stories that when someone asks me why it’s good, I just go “Oh bloody hell, just watch it – you’ll get it”.

One question that lingers after all these years though…  When Sarah Jane was returned, did she pick up her purse that was flung on the ground? Or is that what K9 (John Leeson) was doing all this time – guarding her purse by the bus stop?

NEXT: The rise of fandom!

Fifty years ago today was a monumental date in Doctor Who history. It was the original airing of Episode 10 of The War Games – 21st June 1969. This is significant, as it brings to an end the Patrick Troughton era, as well as the black and white era of Doctor Who. The episode also contained the departure of series regulars, Wendy Padbury and Frazer Hines (although legend says they were both asked to stay on and declined).

When Doctor Who returned 6 and a half months later (196 days to be precise), it was a complete and total overhaul. New Doctor, new companion, the show was in colour, the number of episodes per series was halved (roughly). The War Games Episode 10 to Spearhead from Space Episode 1 is about a titanic a shift in tone as Survival Episode 3 was to Rose. It was that different. I have to wonder if viewers in 1969/1970 had the same kind of feeling when Jon Pertwee returned – “Is this the same show anymore?”

The 10th episode brought in 5 million viewers – a high point for the serial was Episode 2 with 6.3m, and the low point was Episode 8 with just 3.5m.

To me, The War Games Episode 10 is what I consider to be “essential viewing” for Doctor Who fans. While I realise the black and white era can be hard to take for fans who only know the 2005 revival, I always push this one. Episode 1 of An Unearthly Child gets a lot of credit for “launching the concept”, but Episode 10 of The War Games (coupled with about the last 8 minutes of Episode 9) was responsible for many firsts in the show’s history as well.

The first time the words “Time Lords” was mentioned was at 16:37 of Episode 9 (by Patrick himself). The first time we see a Time Lord was in Episode 10. The idea that a Time Lord regeneration can be “controlled” in any way was first brought up in Episode 10. The first time we saw Gallifrey was in Episode 10 (although the word “Gallifrey” wasn’t used until much later – 1973’s The Time Warrior in Jon Pertwee’s final series). There was a scene fairly early on where Troughton’s Doctor expounds on some of this stuff, claiming he was “bored” as the reason when asked by Jamie why he left his home in the first place. The claim that Time Lords can “live forever, barring accidents” was first made here, too.

Episode 1 of Unearthly Child and Episode 10 of The War Games are the two single episodes from the black and white era that I will eventually get around to showing people who get into Doctor Who, as some of the basic core concepts are established here. I also will push the last few mins of War Games Episode 9, as they are pretty well connected.

A couple of observations about the plot here. When the Time Lords finally do away with the War Chief, they also nuked his entire planet from existence too. That’s glossed over, but the Time Lords’ solution is genocide? Always felt that was a bit harsh. Secondly, returning Zoe to the end of The Wheel in Space, and Jamie to the end of The Highlanders… Didn’t the Time Lords create radically different timelines? As events originally occurred, Jamie and Zoe had left these spots, so returning them means they carried on with their lives at this point. Things are different now at those points in time. Gotta love time travel games!

Is there anyone reading this article that was around at the time these episodes originally aired? Am I way off or spot on with my allegation of “complete tonal shift” comparable to the 2005 re-launch? Let me know in the comments.

When people think of Doctor Who and Bonnie Melody Lysette Langford, what do they think of? Well, most Doctor Who fans tend to do their best to ignore that. Why? Why do people slag off the Bonnie Langford era of the series? I’ve always wondered that. So I decided to throw down a few words about it.

A few bits of background first. I’m in the United States, and in the mid ’80s, I was living in Philadelphia. We got a lot of conventions there. This was in the prime era when John Nathan-Turner would come over to the US for some convention somewhere, seemingly every weekend.

So it was no surprise, when Bonnie Langford was cast as the next companion in Doctor Who after Nicola Bryant, that JNT brought her over for a convention in Philadelphia. If memory serves, this was before she had filmed ANYTHING on the show. The same kind of thing happened not long after this when they cast Sylvester McCoy to replace Colin Baker.

Anyway, I have several British friends who dislike Ms. Langford, and the general reason I got from them was they didn’t like her as a child actress/singer. I can’t really speak to that, because I didn’t grow up with that. Over here in the States, the majority of Doctor Who actors were unknown to us. Or at least to me. I didn’t know Tom Baker or Mark Strickson, or David Tennant, Jackie Lane, or Bonnie Langford before they did Doctor Who. So Bonnie was just a long line of British actors that I’d never heard of before.

When she came out on stage for that first convention, I didn’t think anything of it. Cute redhead and seems pretty bubbly. Given the way the ’80s were at the time, it seemed a perfect fit. If anything, Doctor Who has always been a product of the time it was made in, and Bonnie Langford fit the ’80s to me.

Another thing people gave her rubbish for was her screaming. She screamed a lot. If memory serves, she has a pretty good scream in every story she’s been in – if not more than one. Vervoids? Screamed at the cliffhanger for Episode 1. Time and the Rani? Screams (A LOT) in the flying bubble. Paradise Towers – screams when caught by Tilda and Tabby. Delta and the Bannerman – screamed when the baby Chimeron hatched. Dragonfire? Screamed when she and Ace were attacked by Glitz’ zombie crew (and when she saw the “dragon”). Okay, she didn’t scream in Ultimate Foe, but that’s a high percentage.

But is that a bad thing? The classic Doctor Who companions of years gone by were known as screamers. Heck, in the old 1960s serial, Fury From the Deep, Victoria’s screaming was the sole reason the main enemy was defeated! I never had a problem with the screaming. If you put Bonnie Langford’s Mel in with the Second Doctor, I doubt it would seem all that out of place. Having said that, it did seem weird to see Mel with Jon Pertwee’s Doctor in Dimensions in Time.

Now, her character wasn’t terribly deep. I can’t think of a ton of things that would define her character. She liked pools, and seemed to be able to get under Glitz’s skin without making him angry. Can’t think of a whole lot more, to be honest. She was, according to the original JNT remit, supposed to be a computer programmer. That never turned up in the show except for one time in Time and the Rani when the Doctor says, “Mel, you’re the computer expert, how about it?” That was IT! Mel’s character was pretty much the stereotypical ’60s female Doctor Who companion. She was there to look good, to scream, and to need rescuing. I don’t see that as a problem; I see it as “Classic Who”. Times have changed in 2019, and things are different, but we’re talking about 1986 here. You have to view things in their proper context.

Some of the novels and Big Finish stories helped change all this by giving her a little more depth, but I’m dealing with only the television shows as aired. They also gave Mel and Sixie their “proper” story introduction as oppose to the “backwards introduction” we got in Terror of the Vervoids. 

The odd thing about Bonnie Langford for me is that I always had a crush on her. What’s really weird about that is she’s not my type. The type of woman I always went out for was basically not her. But for some reason she “worked” for me. My British friends would mock me mercilessly for liking her. I’d try and avoid it, but eventually after a few decades of grief, I just stopped trying to hide it. If you go to Wikipedia and look up Bonnie Langford, the photo for her was taken by me (posted under my nickname of Dopefish). Bonnie’s Dapol figure was one of only three that I had from the ’80s that survives to this day (the other two being the Fourth Doctor and Bessie).

I liked Bonnie Langford in Doctor Who. She may not have been the deepest character and she had an exit worthy of Leela’s (I’m in love and leaving you), but I enjoyed her time on Doctor Who. I’m not claiming she’s going to be the next Sarah Jane Smith or anything, but she doesn’t deserve the reputation she has. Hell, I’d love to see her back in new Who, but I know it will never happen.

Now that I’ve written all this, I’m off to watch Delta and the Bannermen. It’s a light story for sure, but I had lot of of fun, and of course, it’s got Bonnie in it!

Doctor Who Series 1 to 10 – i.e. so-called “New Who” – will be re-released on DVD across three sets for American audiences.
Don’t ever say that signing up for company mailing lists can’t teach you something.
I’m on the BBC America mailing list, and this morning I got an email alerting me to the fact that they’re going to be putting the whole of New Who out again via new packaging. This was the first I’d heard of this set of releases. They’re all set to be released on October 2nd. As I write this, we still don’t have a formal release date for Thirteen’s series this fall. But this is around the same projected time for the start of (or early part of) the new series. There’s nothing wrong with that. One should always market their stuff. But it was a bit of a surprise that I didn’t know about this otherwise.
Anyway, Doctor Who is being broken down into three sets, all of which are DVD only. As far as I can tell, they’re not doing this on Blu-ray. The exact contents of the discs are not known, but it’s fairly likely they’re just going to repackage the existing DVD content. Especially considering the price point, they won’t be putting much effort (if any) into new content on the discs; they’re likely just using previous DVD masters.
Here’s all you need to know:

Set 1 – The Christopher Eccleston & David Tennant Collection

Package Info:
12 DVDs
MSRP – $44.98
UPC: 883929648917
Region 1 Encoding

Climb in the TARDIS for the adventure of a lifetime with this enormous Doctor Who collection featuring every episode of the first two Doctors of the modern era, Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant. Alongside companions Rose Tyler (Billy Piper), Donna Noble (Catherine Tate), and others, it’s a non-stop thrill ride as the Doctors battle all the evil forces of the universe including Daleks, Cybermen, Sontaran, and much more. There are hours and hours of adventure in this 12-disc box set including the stories which introduce River Song (Alex Kingston), Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman), and featuring a guest appearance by Academy Award® Nominee Carey Mulligan. Whether you’re new to Who or a true Whovian, you won’t want to be without this incredible collection!

Available to order now from the BBC Shop and Amazon USA.

Set 2 – The Matt Smith Collection

Package Info:
10 DVDs
MSRP – $44.98
UPC: 883929648924
Region 1 Encoding

Every new Doctor is a perfect place to begin your Doctor Who adventure, and that was never more true than with the Eleventh Doctor, Matt Smith. And with this mammoth 10-disc collection, you can own every Eleventh Doctor episode including the blockbuster 50th Anniversary Special, “The Day of the Doctor.” Whether teamed up with companions Amy and Rory (Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill), the enigmatic River Song (Alex Kingston), or Impossible Girl Clara (Jenna Coleman), whether battling evil Daleks, the mysterious Silence, or the terrifying Weeping Angels, the adventures of the Eleventh Doctor will never fail to electrify. They call the Eleventh Doctor the “mad man with a box,” and you’ll know why once you’ve seen him survive all the epic battles in this unbelievably spectacular Doctor Who collection!

Available to order now from the BBC Shop and Amazon USA.

Set 3 – The Peter Capaldi Collection

Package Info:
9 DVDs
MSRP – $44.98
UPC: 883929648931
Region 1 Encoding

The era of Twelfth Doctor Peter Capaldi is one of the most epic in the rich history of Doctor Who, and this enormous 9-disc collection contains every adventure! Join the Twelfth Doctor as he pilots the TARDIS alongside companions Clara (Jenna Coleman), Bill (Pearl Mackie), and Nardole (Matt Lucas), encountering the mysterious River Song (Alex Kingston), the evil Missy (Michelle Gomez), and a hoard of monsters including Daleks, Cybermen, Zygons, Ice Warriors, and many more! The universe has never been more thrilling than during the era of the Twelfth Doctor, and whether you’re new to the Who or a long-time fan, this is a collection you won’t want to be without!

Available to order now from the BBC Shop and Amazon USA.
All three sets have release dates of October 2nd. This also appears to be a United States only product, as they’re not available for pre-order in the UK.
Whoever put this information together is obviously not a Doctor Who fan. First off, they spelled Billie’s name “Billy Piper”, they incorrectly call the entire race of the Sontarans simply “Sontaran”, and the URL for Peter Capaldi’s package on the BBC site has Matt Smith’s name in there! So yeah, someone not paying attention there on the official press.
If you are someone who already owns this material, then these sets are not for you. However, if you’ve never checked out these stories, or have a friend that could use a really fun and cool gift, then you may wish to look into them. The full cost for all of these sets is only about $125 US Dollars (and that’s full retail price, they’re usually available cheaper than that). Given that’s every Doctor Who episode from 2005 through 2017, it’s a heck of a value!

I started watching Doctor Who in 1983. My first ever story was The Five Doctors, a rather confusing one for a first timer. I was aware of the concept of there being multiple actors in the title role then. What I had not been aware of at that point is multiple actors in the “same role”. The Five Doctors was my first story, and I had two First Doctors in it: William Hartnell and Richard Hurndall.

Where I was living in the US was a hotbed for Doctor Who activity in the mid ’80s. We were the first to get the ’60s Doctor Who in Lionheart syndication then, and I gobbled up the first two Doctors like I would water after being in a desert. It was gold watching these things. Previous to this, my only bits of Hartnell and Troughton were clips used elsewhere (Day of the Daleks, Resurrection of the Daleks, Earthshock, etc). After so many times cycling through Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker, and Peter Davison, I was ready for something new.

I recorded all these on VHS, as they weren’t repeated much. I fell in love with the ’60s black and white Doctor Who, and the first Doctor in particular. I think that had something to do with the fact that there was way more Hartnell than Troughton stories available at the time. That’s got better in the 30 years since, but there’s still more Hartnell out there. Over the years, I came to realize that my favorite Doctor is William Hartnell. The original, you might say.

When I tell Doctor Who fans that, I get a strange look. I’m not old enough to have watched the stuff when it was brand new, and I’m in the wrong country for that. I can never really pin down WHY I prefer the Hartnell stuff. Could be the missing aspect of it. Could be the different dynamic that Hartnell had than any other. I’m truly not sure why, but I love Hartnell’s performance. Sure, he had issues with health and flubs in the latter part of his tenure, but that didn’t matter. I go after any Hartnell story with gusto.

Over time, we started getting additional appearances of the First Doctor, and that’s the reason for this article. Some detail on all the appearances of the First Doctor, and my memories and thoughts about them when they happened.

First Doctor Appearances in Doctor Who

For the sake of brevity, we’re not listing everything from An Unearthly Child onwards; this is purely after the first regeneration in 1966.

1) The Power of the Daleks (Photo)

The first Patrick Troughton story had a brief appearance of the First Doctor’s image. Troughton’s Doctor looked into a mirror, and we saw an image of William Hartnell. I’m a little unclear if this image was filmed FOR The Power of the Daleks, was taken during production of The Tenth Planet, or was just some random image of Hartnell’s face lifted from some other story. I don’t think I’ve ever heard that level of detail.

2) The Day of the Daleks (Photo)

The first of the two Dalek series with Third Doctor, Jon Pertwee had episode 3 end with the Doctor being trapped on a table under Dalek control, undergoing a mind scan. On the screen above, we saw clips of William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton. They were still pictures in the original broadcast version. Some years later on DVD, the special effects were brought up to snuff, and the clips of old Doctors were replaced with much better versions (that moved somewhat – the originals were still pictures), but the scene itself was unchanged.

3) The Three Doctors (Clip and Hartnell)

This was the first re-appearance of previous Doctors in Doctor Who (in the flesh). It was the only other time that William Hartnell himself made an appearance in the show beyond his original departure in 1966. As has been well documented, he was quite ill at the time (and died less than 18 months later). It was something of a minor miracle that he was in here at all. He was confined to a TV screen, and made one appearance at a photo shoot with Troughton and Pertwee. But that was it. He still had some funny lines, and this original appearance is remembered most fondly. Apparently, Hartnell loved it and felt a revived interest in work.

There was also a previously used clip of William Hartnell in this story before his Doctor was “taken out of time” by the Time Lords. This clip was specially filmed for The Three Doctors, at the same time Hartnell joined Troughton and Pertwee for a Radio Times photo shoot. It was not a clip from a previously used episode, so it’s a “new clip”, I suppose.

4) The Brain of Morbius (Clip)

This story featured a mind battle between Morbius and the Fourth Doctor. During this sequence, we saw the previous incarnations of the Doctor (Hartnell, Troughton, Pertwee). For the record, I do not consider the Morbius Doctors to be part of canon (they could just as easily be Morbius’ previous faces).

Still, I’m always a sucker for a reappearance of previous Doctors.

5) Earthshock (Clip)

When Earthshock was broadcast originally, I cannot tell you how many times I replayed the sequence where they showed previous Doctors with Cybermen. It was, back then, the first time anywhere I had seen Patrick Troughton’s Doctor speak or even move. But it also included a clip that has been used multiple times in the overall history of Doctor Who. Hartnell’s “love, pride, hate, fear – have you no emotions?” quite from Tenth Planet was first replayed here. I ate it up.

6) The Five Doctors (Clip and Richard Hurndall)

As previously stated, The Five Doctors was my on ramp to Doctor Who. It was the first time a Doctor had been recast and had a flesh and blood appearance in the show. However, before we got to that, there was an actual clip of William Hartnell’s Doctor. This was part of his speech to Susan at the end of Episode 6 of The Dalek Invasion of Earth. It has been said that producer, John Nathan-Turner wanted to use William Hartnell in some way in the anniversary special, so that’s what they came up with.

However, in the story itself, the First Doctor was played by actor Richard Hurndall. I thought Richard did a decent job with it. He didn’t really try to clone Hartnell’s performance. He basically just played a grumpy old guy.

Hurndall was also the one who originated a line that was re-used many many years later in the final Peter Capaldi story. Specifically: “I’m the Doctor – the original, you might say!” He said that line to Tegan, which I thought was a comical pairing in this story. The cranky Doctor with the cranky companion. The only thing better than that would have been Tegan with the Sixth Doctor (long term), but I digress.

This story was I think, for people who weren’t around for the ’60s stories, their first taste of the First Doctor. I read in a few production stories and books at the time that JN-T had planned to bring Hurndall back a couple of years later for what became The Two Doctors, but Richard himself also died within a year of this story being broadcast, so those plans were scuttled and they used Patrick Troughton’s Doctor instead.

7) Resurrection of the Daleks (Clip)

Resurrection of the Daleks took the concept of retro clip sequences to the extreme. Much in the same way as Day of the Daleks did it, the (Fifth) Doctor was strapped to a table, and, via a mind wipe device, was forced to relive his past through short clips. We got to see rather short sequences of every previous Doctor and companion, going all the way back to the original TARDIS crew in 1963.

This too was a goldmine, as several of those early companions I’d never seen on screen before, just pictures in books. Granted, they were on for, at most, one second IN total, but still. Poor Louise Jamison – Leela got accidentally left out of the sequence when it was being put together, and to date it has never been corrected in any re-issue.

This was also the last time the First Doctor was seen on screen in the classic run of the show.

8) The Next Doctor (Clip)

It took a few years for previous Doctors to be seen on screen in the 2005 revival of Doctor Who. There were hints and references to previous incarnations, but they were never seen on screen until this story. In it, Jackson Lake believes himself to be the Doctor. He finally realizes he is not when the Tenth Doctor shows a sequence of data on a wall from what is called a “Infostamp”, used by the Cybermen. What is projected on the wall is a run through the previous incarnations of the Doctor before David Tennant. As previously stated, I love sequences like this. It did not include the War Doctor, as that concept had not been thought up yet.

9) The Eleventh Hour (Clip)

It didn’t take long for the next appearance of the First Doctor to show up. The first story with Matt Smith’s Eleventh Doctor had a sequence that was not unlike the sequence in The Next Doctor where there was a projected flashback of all the Doctor’s previous faces. This time for the benefit of the villain of the story; that was the on-screen reason. I suspect the reason that sequence was there in the first place was for us.

I did love the scene as I felt it cemented Matt Smith’s performance as the Doctor straight away. It usually takes more than that with me, but he nailed it from the get go.

10) The Vampires of Venice (Photo)

This was a very short appearance, was just a single still photo, and pretty much played for comedy.

We see the Doctor show what he says is his “Library Card” to some of the Vampires of the story – only the picture on the card is William Hartnell’s First Doctor. The (current) Doctor looks at it, and has a look of disgust; the implication is that he hasn’t changed the photo in awhile.

11) Vincent and the Doctor (Photo)

Matt Smith’s first series was a bonanza of clips of the First Doctor. There were four in the series total, this being the third.

The Doctor was testing a machine that showed the true identity of whoever or whatever was scanned by it (as he wanted to it to ID the big bad of the story). The readout showed “The Doctor”, and had a picture of William Hartnell’s First Doctor (as well as Patrick Troughton’s Second right afterwards). The short sequence with the previous Doctors did advance the plot somewhat, but was mostly silly (especially with the Eleventh Doctor sticking his tongue out).

12) The Lodger (Photo)

This is a super-speedy one. In The Lodger, the Doctor butts heads with Craig in order to share information about himself and why he’s there.

During this, we quickly see images of the previous Doctors, including Hartnell, relayed over that scene from The Beast Below with the Doctor clinging onto Amy as she’s floating in space.

13) Nightmare in Silver (Photo)

For a very brief instance, we see an image of Hartnell, followed by the Doctor’s other faces (although again, no inclusion for the War Doctor). This is inside the Doctor’s mind, shared with the Cyber-Planner. It’s the Doctor warning the Cybermen that he could regenerate and burn away any “cyber widgets” left in his body; maybe this is why we don’t see John Hurt’s Doctor. If he’d have been included, it might’ve given away that he’d got no regenerations left.

14) The Name of the Doctor (Clip)

This story shared something with the Monty Python Holy Grail movie. In Holy Grail, I laughed so hard at the credits, I must have replayed them about half a dozen times before I watched any of the movie. The Name of the Doctor had one of the biggest “HOLY CRAP” moments for this fan of Doctor Who: the opening sequence where we get to see the First Doctor with Susan steal a (default) TARDIS from Gallifrey, starting off his adventures.

We actually get to see the Doctor and Susan walk into a TARDIS with their backs to us. Clara shows up and interacts with him, and then he turns around and talks. It really was William Hartnell, who is used in a clip from The Aztecs. He says “Yes, what is it? What do you want?” This was taken from The Web Planet: Invasion, where the Doctor is talking to Prapillus, one of the Menoptera.

The sequence then proceeded to run through all the classic Doctors (even the Eighth, who is in a blink and you’ll miss it appearance). I still get chills watching this sequence five years later.

There was another appearance of the First Doctor later on in the episode when the Doctor is inside his own time-stream, we saw several Doctors running past Clara. None of them said anything, but there was a version of the original there. It was really cool to see the First Doctor again in the flesh like that.

15) The Day of the Doctor (“New” Clip)

And then we get to The Day of the Doctor. The First Doctor was in this less than The Name of the Doctor, but what was here was quite epic.

There’s a sequence towards the end of the episode (“No sir, ALL THIRTEEN!”) where we got all the Doctors. Most of them were just shown in a short clip on a monitor. However, the First Doctor was shown briefly operating his TARDIS. However, we get a very unique moment.

The voice of the First Doctor was NEW. That dialogue (“Calling The War Council on Gallifrey: This is the Doctor”) was not from any previous William Hartnell appearance. It was spoken by actor, John Guilor. He also portrayed the First Doctor (audio only) in the Episode 4 reconstruction of the 1964 story Planet of Giants.

16) The Zygon Invasion/ The Zygon Inversion (Photo)

In one scene in The Zygon Invasion, we are shown a UNIT safe house. When the story first shows us the inside of the house, there is a picture of William Hartnell’s First Doctor on the wall. In the following episode, we see that it’s actually a safe, and Clara (aka. Bonnie the Zygon) opens it to find a laptop (which she believed had the Osgood Box in).

17) The Husbands of River Song (Photo)

Likewise, the appearance in The Husbands of River Song is similar to the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearance in The Zygon Invasion. There’s one sequence when River Song is showing off photos of the various incarnations of the Doctor in photos in a wallet. The first one is obviously William Hartnell’s Doctor.

18) The Doctor Falls/ Twice Upon a Time (Clips and David Bradley)

This is the most recent version of the First Doctor, and what is probably considered the motherload. The story starts off showing some clips from the original 1966 serial, The Tenth Planet with the First Doctor, Ben, and Polly. That morphs into David Bradley and the 2017 reconstruction of events from The Tenth Planet. It was a pretty cool effect, as it went from low grade 480i footage to 1080p HD, where the merge was Hartnell to Bradley.

If you’re reading this, I’ll wager you’ve seen this story already, but David Bradley becomes the third primary actor to play the First Doctor on television. Those three being William Hartnell, Richard Hurndall, and David Bradley. Bradley was bloody brilliant. While Hurndall didn’t try to recreate Hartnell, Bradley did. Given the thrust of this story was that it was inserted into events from 1966’s story, it kind of had to mimic Hartnell’s performance. And I thought Bradley did a bang up job with it. If you saw Bradley in An Adventure in Space and Time from 2013, then this would not have surprised you. He did an excellent job playing William Hartnell in that movie, too.

One thing I really loved was the use of “I’m the Doctor – the original, you might say!” That line was used before, of course; first uttered by Richard Hurndall’s variant of the Doctor in The Five Doctors special. So for Bradley to echo Hurndall, who himself is echoing Hartnell is quite meta.

I hope that’s not the last we see of Bradley’s version of the First Doctor.

Other Stuff

That’s it for the “on-screen” (aka ‘canon’) appearances of the First Doctor. There are a few other things worth mentioning, however.

• An Adventure in Space and Time – Given this was a telemovie “about” Doctor Who, I don’t believe it counts as an appearance of the First Doctor, and is not “canon” as such. Besides, all the “Doctor Who” bits in here were recreations of what transpired from 1963-1966 anyway, and aren’t actual stories.
• The Chase – The Chase is a proper (albeit silly in places) First Doctor story with William Hartnell in it. As part of the plot of that story, the Daleks created a cloned robot version of the First Doctor that they intended to use to take over the TARDIS. As this wasn’t ever really “The Doctor”, it goes in this “Other” list. In terms of story, it was supposed to be an exact duplicate, but it really didn’t look it to my eyes. Sorry about that, Mr. Warwick.
• The 1960’s Theatrical Movies – There were also the two 1960’s era theatrical Doctor Who movies, both with Daleks, and both with Peter Cushing (Grand Moff Tarkin) as “Doctor Who”. These are not canon either, but are an interesting side note for a few reasons. One, it was the first ever colour Doctor Who made. It also had Bernard Cribbins in it (later on Wilfred Mott with the Tenth Doctor). However, they were both effectively remakes of the first two Hartnell era Dalek stories. The final piece of this of course was the fact that “Doctor Who” (not “The Doctor”) was a human who invented the TARDIS. Not the same character, despite taking several visual cues from the William Hartnell Doctor.
• Listen – This one is a bit of an odd one. In this story, the Twelfth Doctor goes back to what we later find is Gallifrey, and to the “hut” that we are led to believe is some sort of childhood home (or at least a place he frequented when running from the Academy). It was first seen with the War Doctor in the 50th Anniversary special. This story shows us a child, which is HEAVILY implied to be the Doctor when he was very very young. That’s never explicitly stated, but this was the message being conveyed. Now, if you assume that’s the Doctor, that means that technically this boy is the First Doctor. But it’s not the Doctor as we know him (yes, HIM) on the TV show. So despite it being “technically” the First Doctor, it doesn’t count in the list above.

So that’s the list of First Doctor appearances on television and movies. I’m not getting into things like Big Finish, as well; there’s too many of them. Besides, the intent here was television, not “all media” as such.

It does make me think that the First Doctor is the only Doctor that we’ve seen that many times inside the context of the show. A couple of the other Doctors appear in the same segments shown above (The Next Doctor, The Eleventh Hour, etc).

Image Credit: Thanks to Daniel Skorka for the wonderful featured image featuring the three First Doctors!