Review: Doctor Who: The Reality War

Sorry it's taken me a bit of time to get to reviewing the climax to the latest season of Doctor Who. Blame too much else happening in my life!

But here we are at last, and despite a couple of weeks wondering how to approach the review I'm still no closer, so I'm just going to start typing and see where it all takes me.

Fundamentally, the episode had too much to do. Russell T Davies had decided to try and bring together all the threads from Ncuti Gatwa's second season, but also to introduce aspects of his first season, and to try and bring together the concept of the 'Gods' which started in the 14th Doctor specials before that. And on top of all this, there was an apparent change of direction somewhere in there which meant that Gatwa was leaving and so the whole thing needed to end on the usual (traditional?) cliffhanger of a new Doctor coming in. That is a fair amount to try and juggle in about 66 minutes!

Sad to say that I don't think the final episode was wholly successful in its aims. There's just too much to try and sort out. There's too many hanging threads which were not addressed, and this is important as in this day and age of TV series apparently needing to have a 'season arc', if you're going to do that, then it's important that you actually complete the arc and have the whole thing making sense at the end. If you don't then you're going to alienate your audience who then may not come back for more the following season. These endings are important!

Thus not addressing who 'the Boss' is as referred to by the Meep way back, not addressing why the Doctor saw his granddaughter Susan in the episodes leading to the climax, not addressing how this Vindicator device, supposedly invented and built by the Doctor to triangulate routes back to the Earth, ends up being the perfect fit for a giant clock face that the Rani has built (and even has a hand which points the time), but then is also some sort of ultimate weapon thing which can fire power beams to force Omega back to his Underverse place. This was just so convenient that it beggared belief.

And what about all the 'clues' that the Doctor was not in the real world anymore? An entire episode about fiction and imagination 'The Story and the Machine' in which Mrs Flood and Poppy seemed to be stories. Mrs Flood breaking the fourth wall all the time and speaking to the audience ... nothing came of it all.

The Rani's plan, as discussed in my review of the previous episode, 'Wish World', also made no sense whatsoever. She wanted to create a world based on the wishes of Conrad (who we discover here learned from the Doctor's little lecture, and created the world were people were nice to each other) so that the Doctor could doubt it, and that doubt would crack reality and release Omega. And why did she want to release Omega? So that his DNA could be used to repopulate the Time Lord race as they are all infertile from the Genetic explosion during the Time War. Twice the Doctor refers to Omega as a Time Lord, but he was never this - he was a Stellar Engineer who detonated the black hole which then gave the Gallifreyans the power they needed to become Time Lords. Omega himself was thrown through the black hole into a universe of anti-matter where he stewed and plotted and lost who he was, becoming an entity of matter created by his own mind. He was not a Time Lord.

As someone in the episode commented, why not use the DNA you have: the Rani's and the Doctor's? But that wasn't going to work for some reason as they are sterile. But the Rani is a genetic scientist and genius (even if she seems to have inherited some of the Master's craziness here) and so couldn't she create Time Lord babies in test tubes if she had the DNA?

In and around all this jiggery pokery we have the mystery of Poppy - supposedly the child of the Doctor and Belinda while in Wish World (except that neither could actually remember having her or bringing her up - we just have to accept that this is the case) but then, because reality shatters, Poppy isn't the Doctor's child at all, and even though he gets Susan Triad to create a handy (and impossible) Zero Room at UNIT HQ and puts Belinda and Poppy in there so they don't get affected when the Wish is cancelled, Poppy still vanishes shortly after.

What I really didn't understand about this sequence was that everyone else remembered everything that had been the case, but that was now not the case (like the actor Ernest Borgnine not being dead), but could not remember Poppy being there, or anything related to her. And this included the Doctor (who usually can remember stuff from alternate timelines and so on as he's a Time Lord). Only Ruby could remember, but there's nothing to explain why this would be. It just is. So Ruby has to convince the Doctor that Poppy being missing is one of those 'glitches' and he decides to use his regeneration energy to force the universe to slip a gear and to set things back right again.

Of course once he does this, Poppy does now exist, but she's still not his child. She's Belinda's. And we further discover that she is the reason that Belinda wanted to come home on 24 May - as Poppy and Belinda's mum were waiting for her. This all seems a very weak and 'normal' reason. And it's backed up by lots of clips of Belinda explaining to the Doctor all about Poppy - clips that we didn't see in their respective stories. I wondered whether the clips were recorded at the same time as those stories which would mean that Davies had this ending in mind all along, or whether they were reset with the same costumes and CGI backgrounds and so on while the final episode was being recorded. I guess it doesn't really matter, but it was a nice way of showing how reality had shifted and that things were now not the same as before.

On this subject though, how many beings lost their lives or just ceased to exist because the Doctor jogged reality over a cog. Maybe more actors are now dead who were not before. Maybe more were alive who had been dead? The Doctor doesn't seem concerned about any of this.

His and Belinda's reactions too when Poppy is being erased and Ruby is trying to let them know seemed callous and harsh. Not like the Doctor at all. He and Belinda are just self-obsessed with where to travel to next, even ignoring Ruby and the obvious pain this was all causing her. 

There's just so many elements in the episode which don't make sense when you think about them. Kate uses a chip embedded in all the UNIT personnel to 'wake them up' and to bring them to UNIT HQ. But they are all in the Wish World. UNIT is only reverting back to the real reality because Anita is keeping the Time Hotel door open. So in the Wish World, why would these people have a UNIT chip? And why would it work? Shirley 'didn't exist' in the Wish World but she was obviously there and functioning, if not realising that she had been a UNIT officer. And Mel? Well she did exist in the Wish World ... and Rose (Donna's daughter), well she just appeared from nowhere as Conrad had literally made her vanish as she was trans. And how did Mel ride her scooter through London and up into UNIT HQ, up in the lifts (or did she take the stairs) and then drive straight into the main control room without anyone questioning it? Was it just the control room which reverted to real reality or the whole building? Didn't it have any security at the front entrance? How did she get it through the revolving doors and turnstiles? Too much is just handwaved away and shortcut in the narrative for it to really make sense. You just have to smile and move on - it's not meant to make sense, it's just nice and dramatic.

So opposite the giant clock in the Rani's bone palace we have a giant Gallifrey logo. Not sure why. And then it changes to the symbol that Omega had on his costume in 'Arc of Infinity'. And then it's a doorway to the Underverse. And then Omega is there, but rather than being a powerful and vengeful creature of thought, he's a giant CGI monster (as Sutekh was) and he's so big he can't even get through this doorway! They didn't think that through did they. So he scoops up and eats the Rani with no apparent ill or beneficial effects. The other Mrs Flood/Rani grabs the Time Ring (she never had a TARDIS, apparently the Doctor has the only one) and vanishes off somewhere else. I guess she lives to fight another day. 

But why was she swanning around dressing as all the Doctor's previous companions? Was this solely because in 'Time and the Rani' she pretended to be Mel to try and trick the newly regenerated Doctor who was confused at the time? There was a reason for it in that earlier story. I got that she was monitoring the Doctor and making sure the Vindicator thing was doing what it was supposed to, but why dress as his companions?

And if you've got a Time Ring that can apparently take you anywhere and anytime, then why do you need a TARDIS anyway? If you really want one then you could just use the Time Ring and go in time and space to somewhere where you knew there were operational TARDISes (the Master's? The Monk's? The War Lord's SIDRATs? The Doctor's? The Daleks'?) and just steal one? When you're talking about a Time Machine, how can there only be one left? Have all others been erased from all of time? If that happened then the whole of the Doctor's past history would be rewritten if there was no Master and no Dalek time machine etc etc ... so it doesn't seem likely.

And while we're back on the whole Rani plan thing, why, at the end of 'The Robot Revolution' did we see fragments of the Earth floating in space, suggesting that the Earth has been destroyed on the 24 May? The plot at the end suggested that the 24 May never came as the world 'reset' at the end of the 23 May and the only day they all ever lived in Wish World was the 23 May. Was this a suggestion that if Omega had emerged and run riot then the Earth would have been destroyed on the 24th? And the Doctor's actions stopped that happening and thus when the Wish ended, it all carried on (mostly) as it had been before, but then the Doctor jumped reality a little more ...

And then we get to the ending. There's lots of speculation online as to what happened, what the 'original' ending should have been - that it involved Susan and a party or something - that there were hasty remounts and material recorded late in the day ... all sorts of stuff. But of course we can only really judge on what we actually saw.

For reasons I can't recall, the 13th Doctor appears in the TARDIS and gives the 15th a bit of a talking to, advising him on how to make the regen energy into the TARDIS thing work, and then she vanishes off again. Then the Doctor fires his regeneration energy into the TARDIS which causes reality to skip. But then the Doctor is about to actually regenerate, so he puts it off so he can be sure that Poppy and Belinda are safe ... and then he's off in the TARDIS. He wants to have a witness to his regeneration and so turns to Joy - the lady from 'Joy to the World', the Christmas Special, who became a literal star - and he blasts his regeneration out into the universe of space (where does all this energy go I wonder. I thought the point was to turn it inward to make him regenerate, not to allow it all to escape ... but anyway) and he regenerates.

Next thing we have Billie Piper saying Hello! But the end credits don't credit her as the Doctor, just 'introducing'. What a strange way to end the episode. Especially when, if you can believe half of what is talked about on the interwebs, there is no interest from Disney in more Doctor Who, and the BBC is trying to find another partner to continue it.

Why do that? Why introduce an apparent new Doctor which a new production partner might not even want? It seems very strange. Unless of course the new Piper Doctor has a role in the forthcoming The War Between Land and Sea series? Or all this internet gossip is just that and there is a new season or Christmas Special in the offing and something will resolve there.

However on this occasion I doubt it. There are too many loose ends and elements introduced which are then skipped over for me to be wholly convinced that there is any game plan at work here. As I said at the start, for a series arc to work, it has to be an arc, it has to make sense in the end, and the season needs to come to a conclusion which is worked for and which doesn't feel like 'stuff happens because'. Sadly for the Gatwa years, this seems to be the main takeaway.

Looking back over the individual episodes though, for the most part I have enjoyed them all. There's lots to like, some great performances, good and interesting ideas, and some absolute standout drama. Possibly my least favourite was 'Rogue' as I just can't get on with the Doctor falling in love with someone he just met. Yes he can care about others, he can try and make things better for them. He obviously loves and cares for the people who travel with him as he develops a bond with them as a result - it would be hard not to care for someone you have so much shared experience with. But the Doctor going all googly eyed over someone he (or she) just met just didn't sit with me. I felt the same about 'The Girl in the Fireplace' where the Doctor falls for Madame de Pompadour.

I loved Gatwa as the Doctor. Bags of charisma and energy, and he seemed to put his all into playing the role with gusto. I enjoyed Ruby and Belinda, again great performances and the actresses were believable in their respective roles. Even if Ruby's story last season was a little too 'normal' as well. She found her mother ... nothing unusual ... the whole season-long mystery of who she was and why she was abandoned as a baby wasn't a mystery at all. It had nothing to do with anything.

And so we come to the end of another era in Doctor Who's long history. Another Doctor has come and gone ... maybe to come back as a surprise guest in a future story ... maybe not. I have no crystal ball to tell me what the next few years will bring. Maybe Doctor Who will be back with another streaming company (I've seen Amazon mentioned) with a new Doctor (maybe Billie Piper, maybe not). Maybe there will be another 'hiatus' and we won't have any more Doctor Who on television for the next few years (except maybe a made-for-preschoolers cartoon version, and I have no idea what the BBC is thinking on that score. I fear it will be dreadful with only the name and perhaps some characters in common with the show I love. It certainly won't get pre-schoolers wanting to watch the live action version, and if they do then they will be in for a shock!)

There will continue to be the fans of course, endlessly creating new audio dramas and books (for as long as the BBC wants to license them for). And even if the official licenses drop away, there will be fan produced adventures and books and audios and dramas. Technology is such that it's much easier to do all these things now than the last time the show went off air.

So it's probably going to be an interesting and exciting time ahead. I hope I manage to stay around to enjoy it!

***

And if you enjoy my ramblings, please check out a new book I have coming from Bedford Square Publishing on October 9. Called WHO ME! it's my Doctor Who Memoirs ... my life in Doctor Who!

Signed copies are available from me direct: https://samantha-lee-howe-ltd.sumupstore.com/product/who-me-david-j-howe-signed-hardback

And it's also on Amazon UK :)

Review: New Doctor Who Books

There's four new Doctor Who titles on the pile to review, so here goes!

First up are two new novels in the BBC's hardbacked fiction range. At this time these focus on whoever the current Doctor is, and so these two have Ncuti Gatwa's 15th Doctor as the lead, and while Spectral Scream features Belinda Chandra as the companion, the other, Fear Death By Water has no companion.

Spectral Scream first and I really enjoyed this tale by Hannah Fergesen set mid-way through Gatwa's second season, and sort of slotted in as another adventure following 'Lux'.

The Doctor and Belinda arrive on a planet, Sooz, where an eternal dance party is taking place. The Doctor gets his Vindicator reading, and Belinda notes someone looking remarkably like Mrs Flood, her next door neighbour, watching him. However things start to go awry when a psychic 'scream' echoes around, sending the time travellers off to investigate.

They arrive on planet Stenlar One Zero Six Five lower-case f, which is supposed to be uninhabited but which hosts a multitude of vegetation and fungi ... and some humanoids who have become symbiotic with the fungus. It's all very imaginative, and the plot continues to twist and turn as to what is going on, what the 'scream' is, and how the Doctor needs to untangle it all.

I could believe in the Doctor and Belinda, and the other characters are also well drawn. The plot has a lot of event crammed in, and I liked the movement of the characters throughout the story. A good, engaging read!

Onto Fear Death By Water by Emily Cook, and sadly it's not a patch on Spectral Scream. It reads more like one of the other series of books that Penguin are publishing, Icons, where the Doctor meets various 'famous' characters from history. Here it's Grace Darling, whose work rescuing ships and sailors initiated the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. The Doctor is inexplicably visiting a museum devoted to the RNLI in 2000 and meets a young Emily. He then realises that a barometer belonging to Grace Darling is emitting Artron energy and so goes back in time to explore.

It transpires that some creature is inhabiting the seas and that it has an affinity with Grace, and so the Doctor is able to help some aliens as well as the creature and Grace, and all ends happily ever after. Except that Grace still dies in 1842 from TB aged only 26. It's a tale of ships and windswept seas, and I'm not sure what relevance the title has as no-one seems to actually fear death by water, although Grace alludes to it on one occasion.

I found it all rather simplistic, with a straightforward plot, and a 'the Doctor meets ...' premise which rather weighs down the Icons series as well. Lovely cover though!

Both of these books are also available on Audio. Spectral Scream is read by Michelle Asante while Susan Twist tackles Fear Death By Water.

The third fiction title is Doctor Who: Frankenstein and the Patchwork Man by Jack Heath, and this is in a third series of titles that Puffin are publishing, and these riff on older, well known works of literature, and include the Doctor in the action somewhere along the way. They are not copies of the source material, but new stories which take characters and leads from them, but go off in their own direction.

The source here is Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, and I think everyone probably knows the basic plot if not from the book, but from the myriad adaptations and expansions that there have been over the years.

Here we have the ninth Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) and Rose (Billie Piper) in an adventure on Earth involving a strange stitched together creation powered by something called Voltigrades. There's Vincent Frankenstein who is trying to bring life back to deceased matter, and a plot that just whisks you along at a madcap pace. 

I think of the three fiction titles reviewed here, this was my favourite. Heath manages to cram a lot into the book, and it's scary and horrifying as well as surprising and action packed. Everyone gets something to do, and the solutions don't come easily. In many ways the novel, despite being published by Puffin (a children's imprint), is more grown up than the novels published under the BBC imprint.

A good tale which recreates well the exhausting helter-skelter of the ninth Doctor's TV season.

The final book is another tome of puzzles, The Official Doctor Who Puzzle Book by Dr Simon Fox. It's basically a book of code-type puzzles, but there are several different types. Finding the connection between four words; putting names and phrases back together again; putting clues together to find the final entry; mathematical calculations using clues to the numbers ... a lot of mind-bending fun basically.

Review: Doctor Who: Wish World

As I start this review of the Doctor Who episode 'Wish World' I note that this is the 500th post on this blog!  So yay to me!!!  I hope you, constant reader, have been enjoying the ride!

Anyway, back to the plot, and we're here to look at the 'Wish World' episode of Doctor Who ahead of the finale to the season (which is available tomorrow, 31 May 2025!).

I have learned over the years to be very wary of these two parters, as inevitably the ball is dropped and the second part never/rarely fulfils the promise of the first. I think the writers tend to set themselves too high a bar, working towards an amazing cliffhanger which then doesn't pay off. And in a way this is what we have here. The previous episode ending with the Doctor and Belinda in the TARDIS and the TARDIS doors explode inwards ... and this episode, in classic Steven Moffat style, starts with something totally different, ignoring all that has gone before.

I'm not going to relay the 'plot' as the whole episode is just a concept and trailer for the Rani's plan, which she reveals in some detail towards the end. And it's a plan worthy of the Cybermen in it's complete complexity for something which you would think should be quite simple.

So.

The Rani apparently survived the Time Wars and the destruction of Gallifrey and all the Time Lords along with it. As did the Doctor, of course. Oh, and the Master too. Oh, and probably some other Time Lords somewhere also ... it's the thing you see with time travel, you can never be quite sure of what 'reality' actually is. And this is what this episode is all about.

The Rani is a Time Lord, and presumably she has a working TARDIS and this is how she, in her Mrs Flood guise, popped up all over the place in each of the episodes this season. So if she has a working TARDIS, and she wanted to go find the progenitor of the Time Lords, Omega, isn't the obvious course of action to go back to a time when Omega was alive and stop him from detonating the star which created the Time Lords' power and banished Omega to an anti-matter universe in the first place ... or let him do all that or she would never have been in the first place, but then rescue him at some point before he was banished?

Instead, the Rani has this crazed plan to kidnap a baby, who happens to be the God of Wishes (and who creepily chuckles the 'Giggle' cadence) and who can literally make anything happen. All you do is kiss the baby and your wishes come true, whatever they are. She grabs the child back in 1865 and so could have changed the world then if she so wanted.

Enter Conrad from the earlier episode. Now he is a conspiracy theorist, believing all the irrational theories and ideas which populate the internet. 'Reality' is not good enough for him, there must be some higher reason for everything to happen - coincidence and 'just because' is not a reason, there is always someone pulling strings, some fiendish plot to remove all the currency, to create a pandemic, to want people to be vaccinated, to kill Kings and Presidents and popular actresses, and to start wars. The simple answers are not enough, and you're obviously not 'doing the research' to find out the truth if you're happy to accept what millions of scientists have researched for decades over what some chap in his basement on YouTube says.

With this as our character, I have a problem believing that his 'wish world' would be a perfect one where everyone works 9-5, is happy, lives in cookie cutter houses, is married with a child (well, not everyone as obviously Mel, Ibrahim and Kate are not married) and who listens to Conrad on the TV telling 24x7 'fairy stories' about 'Doctor Who'. In this world there are no conspiracies, everything is as you see it, and you're not permitted to doubt anything - actually the opposite of how Conrad was set up in the first place. He was nothing but doubt - he even refused to believe when a Shreek was about to kill him. I have a problem rationalising his character here, and also the world he created.

But doubt is the key to the Rani's plan. She has got Conrad to create this world precisely so that the Doctor will doubt it, as the doubt of a Time Lord has more power than the billions of humans. Even so she has some very cool looking beings called Seekers who seem to be monitoring and measuring the levels of doubt in the world. With the Doctor's doubt, she can crack through Conrad's 'reality' and open the gates to somewhere called the Underverse, which is where Omega is trapped.

But if this is the case, and the Rani wants there to be doubt - as much doubt as can be generated - to ensure that the Underverse is accessed, then why have everyone shutting doubt down at every turn. People report their friends and family for having doubt, and the police come and take them away. Having doubt is forbidden. You are not allowed to question. Again, completely the opposite of Conrad's whole worldview, and completely against what the Rani's plan is.

Anyway.

The Rani gets the Doctor back to her bone palace towering above London and, as in Conrad's world he cannot remember anything, she has to explain everything to him. And so he starts to remember.

But there's another trap. As the Doctor remembers (and is remembering who you are and that all this is fake actual 'doubt'? Not really. If you KNOW the truth, you do not doubt at all. So again this getting the Doctor to remember is actually working against the Rani's plan.) she gets him onto an outside balcony which she has rigged to explode off the main building, and so the episode ends with him shouting that Poppy, his daughter, is real as he plummets to the ground, which is itself collapsing and disintegrating as the Underverse is breached.

So ... killing the Doctor. That would 100% stop him doubting I would think. And thus the Rani's power source would be abruptly cut off. Not really something she wants if she wants to rescue Omega.

And 'Poppy is real'. Is the Doctor saying that Poppy is a real baby as he met her on the spaceship in 'Space Babies', or that she is his real daughter? So Susan's mother? And a Time Lord herself? At this point I've no idea what this meant. Maybe we'll find out next week.

It's always hard to review the first part of a two part story as you don't know what is significant and what is not. You don't know where the story is going or, of course, how it's going to play out, so all you can do is discuss and ruminate on what you have seen.

There are some cracking visuals here. I love the idea of incorporeal giant bone dinosaur things roaming London, although quite why Conrad wants them there I have no idea. Surely they don't fit in his vision of a perfect world? The bone palace is neat and as mentioned I loved the design and look of the 'seeker' creatures. Very much shades of the 1980 Flash Gordon film I felt. All the 'perfect world' stuff sadly left me a little cold and just wanting it to get on with things, but I understand why it's all there: to establish what's going on before we get all the backstory explanations.

One element which did work was the idea that anyone who didn't fit Conrad's idea of being 'right' is basically invisible, and thus unaffected by his worldview. So all the disabled and the dispossessed are living around those with jobs and happy families, but they are ignored and invisible to them. It's the sort of thing Conrad would probably like to see happen.

I felt the brief appearance from Rogue (from 'Rogue') was silly. Sending a message from a Hell Dimension ... how did he do that? And how did the Doctor receive it if he's in a world of Conrad's creation? Was it a fake from the Rani to get the Doctor to doubt more? In which case how did she know about Rogue in the first place? Susan is also seen on the screen, with the same questions.

A final comment harking back to my last review. Are there any non-ardent fan viewers who would have a clue who Omega was? He first appeared in the 1973 story 'The Three Doctors', and then again in 1983's 'Arc of Infinity'. Some great powerful Time Lord is perhaps the essence/assumption of what we were told ... I hope they're not forgetting that Omega was NOT a Time Lord, and was NEVER a Time Lord. Before he detonated the star, Time Lords did not exist ... and this became the basis for his anger and seething rage at the Time Lords. That he missed out and his brothers abandoned him. He actually has no power himself, just the power of his mind to create worlds and imaginary servants ... Sounds familiar.

The two faces of Omega ...

Anyway. We'll all find out tomorrow! I'm off to watch some yellow mugs fall through the table. Great fun!

Review: Doctor Who: The Interstellar Song Contest

I suppose it was only a matter of time before Doctor Who did a riff on the Eurovision Song Contest ... but at least they didn't go the whole hog and have the Doctor actually appearing in it! Juno Dawson's tale takes a different tack as the TARDIS arrives on a Space Station, the Harmony Arena, where the 803rd Song Contest is taking place. He gets his final reading on the vindicator and Belinda and he settle down in a VIP booth to watch the show. It's puzzlingly hosted by real life presenter Rylan Clark, revived from cryogenic sleep each year it seems to present the show, but would anyone in the year 2925 actually know who he is? Same with erstwhile actor and chat show host Graham Norton, who has been preserved as a hologram to inform visitors to the Song Contest museum on the station. Why not use good old Terry Wogan, who hosted the UK presentation of the contest for many years before Norton took over. And also remember that this is an International contest, so each country has their own presenters and commentators, and as the UK rarely wins, why should the UK's presenters be those in favour or remembered in 2925?

Equally of course this is now the Interstellar song contest, so I guess each planet has its own presenters and commentators? No idea. Nice to see that one of Doctor Who's old monsters from the sixties, named Malpha (and also from that planet according to 'The Daleks' Master Plan') is kin to Liz Lizardo from Lizoko (or some such) ... Or not at all. What do you think?

Malpha?

Liz Lizardo?

Anyway, this is all just the backdrop to a story of the rape and pillage of the planet Hellion by the evil Corporation, who wanted the poppy seeds to allow them to make Poppy Honey (and who sponsor the Song Contest). Once they had the seeds, they destroyed the planet so no-one else could get them as well. Thus survivors from the planet, the Hellions, are out for revenge and one such, Kid, decides to kill everyone on the Harmony Station (100,000 life forms) and everyone watching across the universe (many trillions of life forms) using something called a delta wave to sonically blast them and kill them.

Thus the Doctor has to stop him. And that's basically the episode. There are some nice cameos from Mike and Gary, a gay couple, who just happen to have all the skills the Doctor needs. There's also Cora, one of the singers, and a closet Hellion. And some Corporation service Droids with golden heads, looking a little like the Slabs from 'Smith and Jones'. There's a touch of 'Four to Doomsday' as the Doctor uses a confetti cannon to blast himself back towards Harmony, and in a moment of extreme coincidence, straight into an airlock that Mike and Gary open for him. How did he know where that precise airlock would be? Or that there would be people there to open it for him? No idea.

While all this is going on, and it's a good plot ... exciting and rolling along nicely ... the Doctor suddenly, while floating, freezing in space, gets a vision of an older lady in the current TARDIS control room. She tells him to 'Go Back!'  But who is she? It's not explained in the episode. The Doctor's mother perhaps? A memory? And go back where? To the TARDIS? To Gallifrey? To the Space Station?

Of course we fans will recognise the lady as the current incarnation of Carole Ann Ford, and that she is presumably playing a much older version of Susan, the Doctor's granddaughter, a part she played way back in 1963/4. But would a general audience know this or even have a clue? I doubt it. We were told about Susan last season of course, so they would perhaps know the name ... but it's not used in the show, only in the end credits.

Anyway, the revived and rescued Doctor gets back on Harmony, and manages to get into the control room and destroy the delta wave device. He also starts beating up Kid ... his hearts full of ice from Kid's callous disregard for life, no matter what triggered it. Susan reappears in his mind and tries to get the Doctor to stop, but it's only his reunion with Belinda which makes him stop. Kid is then dragged off somewhere for his crimes.

The Doctor then arranges for all 100,000 life forms to be brought back to the Station and, one by one at first, revived by the very handy Gary and Mike. Then he somehow converts the VIP pods into revival rooms and they can do more lives at once. All this is somewhat hand-wavy and 'it just happens' but in actuality, would be impossible to do. To pick on just one element: all the life forms were propelled out of Harmony by the gravity (sorry, mavity, they're still doing that!) bubble bursting, but the laws of outer space mean that they would all just keep on going, farther and farther away, at the same speed. So by the time they come to try and retrieve them, they would be miles and miles away and spreading out!

It then goes all Eurovision: The Legend of Fire Saga, a simply superb Will Farrell film which riffs on the whole Eurovision thing. Cora takes to the stage and sings a song of her people (which is strangely not translated by the TARDIS). At the end there is silence, but then Mike and Gary start clapping and soon the whole audience is cheering and applauding. This echoes the end of the film where a similar thing happens when Amy Adams sings her Icelandic song.

As we draw to a close, the Doctor tries again to get to Earth on, or I suppose before, May 24, but this time the TARDIS' internal lights go red and the Cloister Bell rings, warning of disaster. And then the TARDIS doors explode inwards!

The titles start, but then stop again as we've not quite finished. By another extreme coincidence, in 100,000 life forms saved, the very last one is Mrs Flood. But she has a trick up her sleeve and bi-generates into another, younger woman. They are both the Rani, the new one being the definite article so to speak, words which echo the Doctor after regenerating into the form of the fourth Doctor in 1974. But, again, who is the Rani? She last appeared on the show in the debut outing for the Seventh Doctor in 1987 ... and never mentioned thereafter, so why should the audience have a clue who she is? She was played by Kate O'Mara back in the eighties, but Archie Panjabi does a good job as the younger Rani, but at this point, all we really know is that she's another Time Lord (so the Doctor is not the last of the Time Lords as he keeps saying ... even though that's not true anyway as isn't the Master still out there somewhere? Last seen trapped in the Toymaker's gold tooth, which was retrieved by a mystery person at the end of 'The Giggle'.)

It's all a little puzzling to be honest. So Mrs Flood was the Rani all along, a Time Lord. Presumably therefore she has her own TARDIS and can travel in time and space - hence her cropping up in the past ('Lux') and the future ('The Well') and on alien planets and so on, ending up in 2925 on Harmony Station. All to ensure the Doctor has powered up the vindicator. But what is her plan?

We shall find out ...

Review: Doctor Who: The Story and the Engine

So we start to edge closer perhaps to what has been underpinning the most recent years of Doctor Who. Many people had pointed out that there seemed to me some 'meta' element to the stories, with characters breaking the fourth wall and generally events taking a more fantastical approach.

With 'The Story and the Engine' we have, more or less, a remake of the sixties story 'The Mind Robber', wherein a writer had been trapped in a Land of Fiction, and this self-styled Master of the Land of Fiction wanted the Doctor to take over his role and position there so he could escape, on the basis that the Doctor had a lot of stories to tell. The twist being that the Doctor had to be careful not to 'write' himself into any of the Master's own stories or he would become fictionalised and could then never escape.

Well, I was totally expecting the Barber to want the Doctor to replace him here, but that didn't happen. Instead we get a rather nice little story within stories, where the Barber is an ancient of some sort, the power behind the gods we have heard of as he refined their stories so that they could be retold and thus keep the gods alive (very much shades of Neil Gaiman's American Gods), and he uses the barber shop as a method of capturing people with good stories so they can tell them while he cuts their hair (which instantly regrows allowing it to then be cut again). Why he is doing this is to feed 'the Story Engine', a metaphysical creation of a heart within a brain in the back of the barber shop which is itself being carried on the back of a giant spider. It also somehow powers the spider.

There was so much story thrown at us here that I couldn't jot it all down or get it all, so I'm not sure where the spider was trying to get to, but the Barber's endgame is to destroy the Story Engine and thus the gods with it! But this would cause much disruption and so the Doctor needs to find a solution.

The whole thing though is completely tied up with the Doctor's own adventures. There's a woman there, Abby, the daughter of Anansi (the spider god) who the Doctor once won in a bet and then rejected (this was when he was the Renegade Doctor, and we see a nice cameo from Jo Martin as that Doctor). Also, the Barber has tales of rocket ships ('The Robot Rebellion') and a cinema ('Lux') which suggests that these were stories rather than 'real' adventures. Mrs Flood cleverly appears in a story the Doctor tells about Belinda ... so is she something in this fictional realm also? Belinda meets Poppy from 'Space Babies' in the market outside, further suggesting that the Doctor has been walking in 'fiction' for some time now.

Rather than the stories and characters doing battle as in 'The Mind Robber', here the Doctor is for some reason linked to the Story Engine (as the Doctor was linked to the Master Brain in 'The Mind Robber'), and we see clips from many of his past adventures, past Doctors and so on ... and the sheer number of them causes the Engine to overload and explode ... meanwhile the Barber sees sense and opens the door so his captives can escape, similar again to 'The Mind Robber' where the destruction of the Master Brain causes all the 'captured' fictional characters to go their own way.

I found this episode well made and interesting, far more cerebral than perhaps the previous episodes in the season. It has a lot to say about the nature of story, and the nature of gods and how to survive they need the people to sing their songs and tell their stories ... and should we be drawing a parallel with the Doctor here that he needs the fans to sing his stories and his adventures for him to survive? I don't know. The performances were all first rate, but I struggled to capture who anyone actually was - what their character names were. I probably need another watch through to see if I can get them a second time.

The plot too was muddled and hard to follow. I'm not sure why the TARDIS convulsed every time the barber shop door opened and closed and the Story Engine's power supply dwindled. I'm not sure why Abby had to intricately create the map for the labyrinth behind the barber shop into the Doctor's hair (another call back to 'The Mind Robber' where the Doctor has to navigate a labyrinth). It was a nice touch though. Also, while the Doctor claimed to have visited the barber shop before to see his friend Omo, I assume it wasn't at that time a collection point for stories for the Engine? So when did it become that? When did the Barber take over ... and what was the Barber using as a collection point up to then, given that this spider machine thing, the gods and the stories had to have been around for centuries!

Despite this, the episode is visually rich, and fascinating in its blending of stories and whatever 'reality' is at this point. Elements may or may not become more important or return later in the season, so it's hard to try and figure out what the endgame might be for all this ... but there's certainly elements of messing with the Doctor's timeline and his 'story'. The ongoing mysteries of Mrs Flood and Belinda. Hints of greater powers being at work. And of course perhaps more of the pantheon of Gods. It's all building quite nicely.

Review: Doctor Who: Lucky Day

'Lucky Day' is another Doctor-lite episode, and, like last year's '73 Yards' this focusses on Ruby Sunday, with brief appearances from the Doctor at the start and the end.

It's New Year's Eve 2007 (it's not clear if this is 2006 into 2007, or 2007 into 2008) and the Doctor and Belinda arrive in London as the New Year fireworks are going off). The Doctor takes a reading with his device, and they meet a lad called Conrad who sees the TARDIS appear. Conrad is eight years old at this point, but this event triggers a life of trying to find out more about the TARDIS (in a similar way to Clive in 'Rose', except that Clive was essentially harmless).

Flash forward 17 years - which is 'last' year - so in 2024 (taking the 2007 year as mentioned) and Conrad again sees the TARDIS and witnesses the Doctor and Ruby battling a creature called a Shreek. He gets green gunk on him and learns from overhearing the Doctor that this is how the Shreek marks it's prey for the following year (it only hunts on one day a year). Ruby (who seems to be having an adventure with the Doctor set between 'The Devil's Chord' and 'Boom') who was also marked, is given some antidote by the Doctor.

Thereafter Conrad spends a year searching for Ruby, eventually finding her and wooing her, making her think he's falling for her ... only for her to discover, after a terrifying night where it seems a whole pack of Shreek are hunting for Conrad (as he failed to take the antidote that she gave him), that these Shreek are fake, being played by Conrad's friends, and that Conrad is in fact denying that any of this ever happened and using his podcast to spread misinformation about the various alien incursions, with UNIT being at the forefront of his attack.

His lies gain traction and spiral outwards, gaining him news time and protests taking place around the world. People would prefer to believe the lies than the truth of the situation.

He infiltrates UNIT HQ and live-streams Kate Lethbridge-Stewart and others holding guns on him. He refuses to believe any of their talk is true, and demands that she reveal what UNIT is really up to, so Kate, in a last ditch attempt, releases the original Shreek which they had kept in storage, and it attacks Conrad. But he still refuses to believe!

We end with Conrad locked in a cell, when the Doctor visits and materialises the TARDIS around him. Sadly even the Doctor's little 'talk' cannot sway his mind that it's all tricks and the Doctor puts him back where he found him.

But the governor of the jail appears - it's Mrs Flood! - and she lets him out! I wonder how this then plays into the forthcoming events?

If you wanted a Doctor Who with a 'message' then this is it! But what staggers me is that this episode was written one or two years ago! And yet the whole theme: of there being 'bad actors' out on the internet who believe and spread conspiracy theories and lies with little or no actual evidence, and then refuse to believe the truth even when it is presented to them in black and white is more relevant now than ever before.

This is the current nature of the world in 2025. People believe their own versions of 'the truth' and violently and stringently refuse to acknowledge that there might be an alternate view, or that they might be wrong. Those doing the deliberate misleading hide behind their computers and pump this toxic rubbish out into the world ... maybe they're political opponents, maybe they're foreign disruptors, maybe they are contrarian bots ... maybe all of these and more ... I have no idea. But there are also those with no particular agenda who have been taken in and fooled by others ... believing everything they are told or read in the dingy corners of the internet, and dismissing facts and evidence from scientists, doctors and many others who have no reason to lie, and every reason to keep the facts in the public eye.

And it's dangerous. People do increasingly become misled by corrupt advisors or those with other self-aggrandising agendas at work. And they share and believe wholly the lies and the misinformation. And they spread. And they cause harm.

It's a brilliant, brilliant episode to hook into the narrative and to give voice to the concerns and the problems that this can cause. Absolute kudos to Pete McTighe for writing it, and to Russell T Davies for getting it on air. It truly is an episode for our time. It picks up themes from 'The Giggle' and runs with them! I guess there will be people out there who believe that Conrad is the hero here, and everyone else is wrong for trying to stop him ... but that's the whole point of the story!

Jonah Hauer-King as Conrad is superb. He plays the part to elicit our sympathy at first, and then when his motive is revealed, he is a thoroughly nasty piece of work. Not just misguided, but a true ignorant and dangerous monster of the first order. My sympathies were with the Shreek, an excellently realised creature, terrifying, but really just following its own urges. 

In fact all the cast are exceptional here, with no weak links at all. Even the Doctor manages not to cry - not that he's in it much - but his speech at the end to Conrad is very pertinent. 

'Cowards weaponise lies!'

Indeed.

I think we all know people who have gone off down the rabbit holes and usually we just delete and block them (well, I do!) ... but there are sadly those around with greater power and ability to influence others. So being able to sift through their lies and false assumptions becomes paramount in a world which is increasingly subject to the general public just believing what they see and read without checking.

I also like the idea that UNIT has a containment facility where they keep all the nasties they capture. I wonder just what they've got in there ... and what might happen if they escaped one day ...

Overall this is another very strong episode in a season which has already presented three excellent adventures in a row. I wonder if they can keep this level up to the end.

Review: Doctor Who: The Well

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS SO PLEASE STOP READING IF YOU DON'T WANT TO BE SPOILED!

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OK THEN ... YOU WERE WARNED ...

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Doctor Who has enjoyed several 'sequel' stories over the years, most often of course featuring (and because of) the popularity of the monster that featured in the first one. Thus we have 'sequels' featuring Daleks and Cybermen and Sontarans to name but three. There are others of course: The Meddling Monk returned for a second outing in the season following 'The Time Meddler', the Yeti were back for another outing in the season following 'The Abominable Snowmen'. Sil was back the season following  'Vengeance on Varos' ... you're sensing a theme here ...

In 'New-Who' there have been some returns with quite a distance between the new and the original appearance. The Autons and the Nestene Intelligence returned in 'Rose', 34 years after 'Terror of the Autons'. The Macra were back in 'Gridlock', a mere 40 years between that and their first appearance in 'The Macra Terror'. With 'The Well' we are treated to the return of an enemy from 2008, just 17 years ago. To put this in context, it's a little like the Sensorites turning up in 'State of Decay'! 

Let's get to the story though, and it's a cracker. The Doctor and Belinda are still trying to get back to Earth using this 'vindicator' device, and so the TARDIS lands on a space ship, but not before the pair get changed out of their gear from the previous story and into some rather natty spacesuits which just happen to completely be the same as those worn by a bunch of marine-like soldiers who are about to descend to the surface of the planet below. That TARDIS wardrobe is darn clever like that!

No sooner have they left the safety of the TARDIS than the Doctor and Belinda are completing their suiting up and jumping out of the ship to arrive safely on the planet surface. The Doctor does his vindicator thing, and then they're off exploring with the soldiers.

We're totally in Aliens territory here. There's a mining operation which they have lost contact with, a missing crew, and a blasted planet. So they explore and find a lone individual, Aliss, who is deaf, but who seems to be the only surviving person there. All the rest of the crew apparently went mad and killed each other. Except Aliss.

All the mirrors are broken as well, and, it seems, no-one has heard of the Earth. They are far in the future, and whatever happened to the Earth on 24 May 2025, it wiped the planet from existence.

So they try and work out what happened. Belinda starts seeing glimpses of something behind Aliss, and the Doctor discovers that this was a diamond mine before the star was destroyed. He further discovers that Planet 6767 used to be called Midnight ... and he has been here before (in the story called 'Midnight').

So they now have a dilemma. They want to save Aliss, but the mystery creature has latched onto her and is always behind her. Anyone who ventures behind her is violently killed. And also, the creature wants to get off the planet ... so they can't take Aliss with them.

A solution presents itself when the Doctor, using the fact that for some reason the mine runs on mercury, blows some holes in the pipes behind Aliss to create a huge mercury mirror. This allows them all to run ... but the creature is also fast and latches onto one of them again - this time it's Belinda! The Doctor tries to get it to switch to him, but no dice. Thus the marine commander Shaya, shoots a hole through Belinda, just missing her heart (we have been told several times that she is a crack shot), and the creature switches to Shaya, who then runs to the mining shaft and falls down it, apparently taking the creature with her.

But then, as the remaining marines return to their ship, one of them seems to have something behind her ... the creature has escaped the planet!

As a story 'The Well' is excellently put together and is quite claustrophobic and scary. As I say, it's very much influenced by the film Aliens  and I also caught a sense of 'The Waters of Mars' episode of Doctor Who which has a similar bleakness to it, and a noble suicide at the end.

Where it fell down for me was in the realisation of the threat. In 'Midnight' the plot revolved around this unseen, unknown entity which could take over a person, making them speak the same thing as someone else the creature wanted to possess - the Doctor fell into that trap! Whereas here it's completely different. The creature lurks always right behind someone on their back, and anyone who goes behind them is killed. Maybe the thing got fed up with there not being anyone to take over by the speaking thing and changed the way it attacked?

But also, given that we are many hundreds and thousands of years after the events of 'Midnight', how long does this thing live? And why didn't it attack the mining works when they were first set up? Why wait until now? Maybe they found it deep in the planet's surface and brought it to the surface while looking for diamonds?

The mercury thing was a nice idea, but very convenient when they needed a mirror to try and break the thing's influence on Aliss. I'm also not sure why Aliss being deaf was significant. There was something to do with people it attached itself to being able to hear the thing whispering, but what was it saying? And why was that important? Not sure. 

For an entity which wants to get off the planet, killing everyone violently would not seem to be the best approach to be honest. Why not lay low and wait for a ship to arrive and then get on it? Much easier.

And the Mrs Flood moment? This comes at the end when the Senior Officer of the marines bizarrely turns out to be Mrs Flood (remember this is in the far, far future) who is interested that the Doctor was using a vindicator. Why, we have no idea! So is Mrs Flood a series of splinters like the last of the Jagaroth (from 'City of Death') ended up as - that story also had a time fracture which is what happened to Belinda in 'The Robot Revolution'? Is she a time traveller who is stalking the Doctor? At this point ... I've no idea.

Overall, another superb episode of the show, with a great setting and some stellar performances from all concerned. 

News: New DOCTOR WHO book!!!!

It's been twenty-seven years!  Twenty-seven years since I was last commissioned by an external publisher for a new Doctor Who book. In that time I set up Telos Publishing, and of course we published some of my books, like The Target Book and The Who Adventures. I also self published two volumes of my Doctor Who reviews, called Then and Now (available from https://samantha-lee-howe-ltd.sumupstore.com/search?search=David+J+Howe)... but this is news of a totally new book, from a new-ish publisher in town!

BEDFORD SQUARE PUBLISHERS ACQUIRE TITLES FROM HUSBAND AND WIFE

Editor-at-Large Maxim Jakubowski is thrilled to announce the acquisition of two strikingly different books by a married couple. USA Today bestselling author Samantha Lee Howe introduces a smart and seductive new cosy crime series, Mel Greenway Investigates, while David J Howe – renowned Doctor Who authority – shares a heartwarming and delightfully geeky memoir, Who Me!

Maxim says 'It's not every day you get the pleasure of acquiring two very different books from authors who happen to be husband and wife! I've long been a fan of Sam's fast-paced and cinematic USA Today bestselling writing, her new series introduces a gutsy British heroine and sleuth of the first order. While^.  David's memoir of how the iconic TV programme changed his life is a monument to geeky charm and Terry Pratchett-like in tone, and will become indispensable to its millions of fans.  

Samantha Lee Howe says:

'I've always been fascinated with post-War thrillers and I love quirky independent investigators, so combining the two fed straight into my passions. In addition, I have christened this novel "co-sexy" as its cosy crime, but mixed with simmering and sexy undertones, all filleted with the twists and turns and unpredictability that I know readers enjoy in my novels. I hope readers will love Mel as much as I do!'

In contrast, David J Howe's memoir is a nostalgic, emotional, and often humorous journey through a lifetime spent immersed in the world of Doctor Who.

'It seems like I've lived my whole life to be able to write this book,' says David J Howe. 'I often say, if you cut me you will find Doctor Who written through my flesh like the words in a stick of rock! I feel that many readers will find echoes of their own lives in the pages, and it's superb that a shared appreciation of a television programme can bring so much love and hope into the world.' 

For both titles, Maxim Jakubowski acquired World English Language rights from Camilla Shestopal at Shesto Literary.  

Bedford Square can be found at: https://bedfordsquarepublishers.co.uk/

David J Howe is at: www.howeswho.co.uk

Samantha Lee Howe is at: www.samanthaleehowe.co.uk

The plan is to publish Who Me! in October 2025, so watch out for it!

Review: Doctor Who: Lux

Way back in the late sixties, Doctor Who presented a story set in the Land of Fiction. 'The Mind Robber' included the Medusa, a Unicorn, Clockwork Soldiers, the Minotaur and a strange man named Gulliver ... Doctor Who is no stranger to episodes which push the boundaries and play fast and loose with 'reality' as we know it. And so 'Lux' is the latest entry to go down this route and to present a story which is very inspired by the TV series Sapphire and Steel as well as allowing the characters to have a little fun with the nature of film and television.

Unlike 'The Robot Revolution', 'Lux' is fairly simple. At a cinema, the Palazzo, in 1952 in Miami, Florida, a stray beam of moonlight reflects off a spoon and joins with the light from the projector and brings a cartoon character called Mr Ring-a-Ding to life. The character then traps the patrons of the cinema in a strip of film where they live on forever.

Unable to get to 24 May 2025, the Doctor decides to try and use a circuitous route, and so arrives in 1952 to find the cinema locked and chained, and segregation in place (the cinema and the coffee shop across the road are 'whites only'. The Doctor being the Doctor ignores this, and gets some information from a lady in the coffee shop, before he and Belinda break into the Palazzo to confront Mr Ring-a-Ding.

Turns out that he is one of the Pantheon of Gods mentioned by the Toymaker, the God of Light, and introduces himself with the laugh from 'The Giggle'. He turns the Doctor and Belinda into animated versions of themselves, and they have to try and work out how to escape.

I liked the idea of giving them 'depth' by adding emotion and backstory to their 'characters' which brings them back to themselves, but they're still trapped in the 'film'. In true Loony Tunes/Screwy Squirrel style, they break through the screen at the front and are confronted by three fans of Doctor Who ... it's all gone proper meta with them arguing that the best story was 'Blink' and that they love the show. But the Doctor and Belinda have to return to the screen to continue the fight, so they do this and end up back in the cinema, where they call on the projectionist Reg to burn the acetates and destroy the cinema. He is encouraged to do so by his dead wife who he had a reel of film of, and the explosion blows out the back of the cinema and allows sunlight in.

Mr Ring-a-Ding bathes in the light and grows larger and larger until he grows so large he eclipses the Earth and floats off into space! It's a little strange as it left me wondering what Mr Ring-a-Ding's plan was ... he could never, by his own admission, leave the cinema because the sunlight would do this, so what was he hoping to gain?

So the Cinema is saved, and the people trapped in the film strip are returned to life and leave to find their families and friends. All is good.

Except that Mrs Flood is there again, telling people the show ends on 24 May ...

This date is quite clever at this point, as it's when the penultimate episode of this season is expected to air ... so how did they know that when they made the show a year or whatever ago. I suspect plans for this season have been in progress for some time, and this included the air dates ... and maybe, just maybe, all the fan 'noise' at the moment predicting doom and gloom and the show's cancellation and whatever (Doctor Who must be the only show on television where a proportion of the fanbase actively campaigns for it to be taken off air. Very bizarre!) is smoke in the wind, and there is a plan ... the BBC, Bad Wolf, Disney and BBC Studios just aren't prepared to reveal it as yet ... all part of the fun and games of the season.

We shall see!

So here I loved this story, It's simple to follow, a neat idea, and riffs on another of my favourite shows. Mr Ring-a-Ding is marvellously created, and I liked how he became 3-D as he drew in the Doctor's energies (but how much energy does a bi-regenerated Time Lord have? Quite a bit it seems!!) and Alan Cumming's vocal talents for the character were superb.

The subsidiary character of Reg was nicely played, and the whole segregation thing was more throwaway - it didn't probably need to be there at all - but overall the effect was very pleasing. Even the fourth wall breaking and the meta-playing was OK for me. The three Doctor Who fans were a little stereotypical (recalling the character of Whizz Kid in 'The Greatest Show in the Galaxy') but one had exceptional taste in wearing a 'Telos' T Shirt. Thanks Russell! Overall again it worked ... achieving something that probably only Doctor Who could achieve in this day and age.

I'm reminded of the episode of UFO where they end up running around the real TV Studios where the show was made ... but is there an episode of any science fiction TV show where the characters actually meet the actors who play them ... in a very meta way? Some alternate dimension type thing? I'm sure people will let me know if there are.

A great second episode for this season. Clever and self-aware in a way rarely seen in Doctor Who before.