Doctor Who: Wish World / The Reality War ★★★
It's goodbye Ncuti Gatwa and hello (again) Billie Piper in a convoluted but entertaining finale.
Story 319 Series 15/Series 2 – Episodes 7 & 8 “Once reality is broken on a scale as vast as this, I can see underneath…” – the Rani Storyline In Bavaria 1865, the Rani steals a baby destined to become Desiderium, the god of wishes. The Doctor and Belinda wake up in an alternate-reality version of Earth 2025 as a married couple with a toddler called Poppy. All humanity is now living a lie and in fear of displaying doubt. This Wish World has been willed into existence by the treacherous Conrad, using the baby’s powers, hidden away in the Bone Palace – the base of the two Ranis. It’s part of a grand scheme to magnify the power of doubt and crack reality apart – releasing Omega, the creator of the Time Lords, from the Underverse. The creature is uncontrollable and devours the new Rani. In a battle to get reality back on track, the Doctor restores his UNIT friends to normality and tries to save his new daughter. His actions ultimately trigger another regeneration where his new appearance seems to have the face of Rose Tyler… First UK broadcasts Saturday 24 May 2025 Saturday 31 May 2025 Cast The Doctor – Ncuti Gatwa The Doctor – Jodie Whittaker Billie Piper Belinda Chandra – Varada Sethu Ruby Sunday – Millie Gibson Mrs Flood – Anita Dobson The Rani – Archie Panjabi Kate Lethbridge-Stewart – Jemma Redgrave Melanie Bush –Bonnie Langford Anita Benn – Steph de Whalley Susan Foreman – Carole Ann Ford Shirley Bingham – Ruth Madeley Rose Noble – Yasmin Finney Conrad Clark – Jonah Hauer-King Colonel Christofer Ibrahim – Alexander Devrient Susan Triad – Susan Twist Cherry Sunday – Angela Wynter Carla Sunday – Michelle Greenidge Rogue – Jonathan Groff Otto Zufall – Atilla Akinci Violett Zufall – Leni Adams Poppy – Sienna-Robyn Mavanga-Phipps Lakshmi Chandra – Nila Aalia Devika Babu – Josephine Lloyd-Welcome Val Balham – Hermon Berhane Winnie Petheridge – Sam Lawton Brian Dale – Joshua J Parker The Vlinx – Aidan Cook Voice of Omega – Nicholas Briggs Crew Writer – Russell T Davies Director – Alex Sanjiv Pillai Music – Murray Gold Producer – Vicky Delow Executive producers – Russell T Davies, Julie Gardner, Jane Tranter, Joel Collins, Phil Collinson RT review by Patrick Mulkern “Oh, hello!” Billie Piper – beaming, radiant, back to blonde, miraculously not looking 20 years older than her debut as Rose Tyler – is the new face of Doctor Who. It’s delightful that this two-decade run comes to a stop – or rather an ellipsis – with the very first face we saw in 2005, who was crucial to the success of the relaunch. On screen Piper is credited under “Introducing” – superfluous for a Doctor Who legend who needs no introduction, and it’s telling in what it does not say. Few failed to notice that “as the Doctor” was carefully omitted from the TV credits and the wording of the BBC publicity blurbs. So, it’s another massive tease (hopefully not as tedious as The Next Doctor red-herring with David Morrissey in 2008) and will keep fans dangling while the future of Doctor Who is thrashed out. Another woman Doctor? Will it all end here? Stay tuned… Much as I love it, what we now call “classic” Doctor Who often looks like a misogynist’s playground, with so few roles for women, beyond the underwritten parts for the Time Lord’s companions. Such was the stale air prevalent in sci-fi (and much other drama) in those far-gone days. Now, it has shifted to the other extreme. Not one but two Ranis. UNIT’s personnel are predominantly female: Kate, Shirley, Mel, Susan Triad. Rose Noble identifies as non-binary; presents as female. There’s a glimpse of ancient granddaughter Susan. The new-daughter-but-not-really Poppy who, frankly, it’s hard to care about. A welcome return for Anita from the Time Hotel. Only women feature in Ruby’s background, and likewise Belinda’s menfolk are not deemed screen-worthy. Even the returning Doctors this season and the “regenerated Doctor” are female. It’s a positive move but, in this bulging finale, results in too many women, too little screen time. Each has their moment, but you just imagine them all waiting around on set for their one line. The corollary is that the programme is in danger of emasculation and echoing the heterophobic mindset of so much modern drama. Whither the ordinary straight man? (I am not among their number.) But this finale offers little more than the twisted, wasted Conrad and UNIT’s underused Colonel Ibrahim. The bigger concerns, perhaps, are that Doctor Who is often just too darn convoluted. The Rani duo’s scheme involving babies, wishes, magical kisses, rupturing reality and releasing an ancient god becomes incomprehensible, or at best indigestible. The reliance on nostalgia, churning up the trappings of the past, is also like watching and waiting for an overloaded spin cycle to finish. Old hits often equal old hat. It should be fan-pleasing, but fans are a fickle crowd – with eruptions on a spectrum from unbridled ecstasy to pyroclastic rage. Generally, I found this muddled two-parter entertaining. I’m peculiarly pleased to see Jodie Whittaker back after three years, engaging with Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor. The two Ranis are a comical pair. Impressive Archie Panjabi rocks the vibe of the amoral alien scientist, while Anita Dobson is impeccable, even if I prefer her showing steel to being subservient to her other self. The Panjabi Rani being gobbled by the Omega-ogre is highly amusing, as is the Dobson Rani’s abrupt adieu. “So much for the two Ranis. It’s goodnight from me!” Praise must go to the design work on the Bone Palace. The vast sky-dominating exterior seems to be a homage to Louise Bourgeois’s sculpture Maman, a giant steel spider that was the focus of Tate Modern’s opening in 2000. The interior is gorgeous, with the skeletal detail and the strange “clone-type classiform” Seekers PVC-bonded into their consoles. The Doctor’s skyride on the Rani’s bike is a highlight of this visually stunning production. But it’s goodnight from Gatwa too. He has dazzled with energy and charisma, and brought heightened emotion and a refreshing queer edge to the Time Lord. He’s not the shortest-lived Doctor but has come and gone in under two years. Such a demanding programme, with an uncertain future, cannot hope to retain a thrusting talent who is still building his career. Is it also goodbye to Doctor Who? Surely, it requires a rest and a reset. If and when it returns, it should take from its past what made the series tick in the first place. Doctor Who was avant-garde in concept, sound and design, and was forged by a team of creatives in their 20s and 30s, looking to a weird and wonderful future. Read more: Episode 1 – The Robot Revolution review Episode 2 – Lux review Episode 3 – The Well review Episode 4 – Lucky Day review Episode 5 – The Story and the Engine review Episode 6 – The Interstellar Song Contest review Check out more of our Sci-Fi coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to see what's on tonight. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Doctor Who: The Interstellar Song Contest ★★★★★
A magnificent spin on Eurovision sprinkled with the stuff of legends.
Story 318 Series 15/Series 2 – Episode 6 “Did I just fly through space on a confetti cannon? Camp!” – the Doctor Storyline Welcome to the 803rd Interstellar Song Contest in the year 2925. The Doctor and Belinda are delighted when the Tardis lands in the Harmony Arena space station but, as the entertainment commences, the show is sabotaged and the audience are expelled into space. The hijackers are led by Kid, a vengeful Hellion, whose home world Hellia was pillaged for poppy honey by the corporation promoting the contest. He plans to transmit a delta wave to wipe out the three trillion viewers. The Doctor intercedes with considerable rage, but is having strange visions of his granddaughter Susan. Mrs Flood is revealed to be the Doctor’s Time Lord adversary the Rani. She bi-generates and both incarnations follow the Doctor and Belinda back to Earth... First UK broadcast Saturday 17 May 2025 Cast The Doctor – Ncuti Gatwa Belinda Chandra – Varada Sethu Susan – Carole Ann Ford Mrs Flood – Anita Dobson The Rani – Archie Panjabi Rylan Graham Norton Kid – Freddie Fox Mike Gabbastone – Kadiff Kirwan Gary Gabbastone – Charlie Condou Cora Saint Bavier – Miriam-Teak Lee Sabine – Julie Dray Nina Maxwell – Kiruna Stamell Wynn Aura-Kin – Iona Anderson Len Kazah – Akemnji Ndifornyen Liz Lizardine – Christina Rotondo Jeddy Kine – Abdul Seesay Runner – Imogen Kingsley Smith Crew Writer – Juno Dawson Director – Ben A Williams Music – Murray Gold Producer – Vicky Delow Executive producers – Russell T Davies, Julie Gardner, Jane Tranter, Joel Collins, Phil Collinson RT review by Patrick Mulkern I can’t stick Rylan, not for love or money. An instant turn-off on air. But he’s actually very good in Doctor Who and it made me like him. That’s how strong and persuasive this episode is. Graham Norton I love, and his hologram form here is a lovely answer to the two occasions when he popped up unwanted (thanks to BBC Presentation) in earlier programmes. Now he’s a harbinger of the cataclysm that befalls Earth in 2025. So far, so Eurovision with these two. I was half expecting the ghosts of Terry Wogan and Katie Boyle to manifest. This futuristic, interstellar spin on Eurovision is simply magnificent. From the epic stadium lightshow to the hordes of squealing fans, to snatches of quirky songs in the final to the soaring anthem that Cora sings. Even if the intercut reactions to the gawping cast edge it towards mawkish, Miriam-Teak Lee belts her song out of the arena. Winner of the 2020 Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Musical for & Juliet, she’s great casting here; and perhaps the new songwriting partnership of Russell T Davies, Juno Dawson and Murray Gold should be representing Royaume Uni. The burst of Bucks Fizz’s 1981 winning entry Making Your Mind Up, when the expelled crowds are being saved, is a total hoot. This is a return to peak RTD, channelled through Dawson, who gets sole writing credit. The joy of this episode is that it is, rightly, as camp as… well, Eurovision… but it is also a gripping adventure, simple to follow, with winning and believable characters. Freddie Fox is superb as the fanatical villain “Kid”, a horned beast from the planet Hellia. His motivation and vengeful nature are also clear. Kadiff Kirwan and Charlie Condou are lovely as Mike and Gary, the couple who stop bickering to make a valuable contribution and go weak at the knees in the presence of the Time Lord. Best of all, Ncuti Gatwa really is the Doctor here, fully formed and multi-faceted. Mercurial, in that he’s warm and fun-loving on arrival at the Harmony Arena, but also ice-cold when blasting painful retribution into the squirming Kid. He also dazzles everyone he meets with total conviction. Star quality. This is Gatwa’s finest episode yet. And then we come to Susan. Beautifully filmed, dream-like glimpses of Carole Ann Ford, one of the original stars of Doctor Who in 1963 and 64, now in her 80s. After all the red herrings last year with Susan Twist, how magical to have Susan back in Doctor Who, entering the Doctor’s mind and calling him “Grandfather”. I’ve grown tired of the sausage factory of mystery women in recent times, but Susan is the original enigma at the birth of Doctor Who. The stuff of legends. Read more: Episode 1 – The Robot Revolution review Episode 2 – Lux review Episode 3 – The Well review Episode 4 – Lucky Day review Episode 5 – The Story & the Engine review Episode 7 – Wish World Episode 8 – The Reality War Check out more of our Sci-Fi coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to see what's on tonight. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
The Doctor's trip to a Nigerian barber shop is in need of more than just a trim.
Story 317 Series 15/Series 2 – Episode 5 “You must tell a story, Doctor. You must feed it. It is always hungry” – the Barber Storyline The Doctor lands in Lagos, Nigeria, 2019 to revisit his old friend Omo who runs a barber shop, but Omo and some of his regular customers have gone missing. The premises have been taken over by a sinister Barber, who is transporting them across space on the back of a giant spider, part of an engine fuelled by storytelling. First UK broadcast Saturday 10 May 2025 Cast The Doctor – Ncuti Gatwa Belinda Chandra – Varada Sethu Omo Esosa – Sule Rimi The Barber – Ariyon Bakare Abena – Michelle Asante Rashid Abubakar – Stefan Adegbola Tunde Adebayo – Jordan Adene Obioma Okoli – Michael Balogun Mrs Flood – Anita Dobson Paramedic – Simon Bailey Consultant – Adrian Pang Patient – Tessa Bell-Briggs Market seller – Inua Ellams Security guard – Funmi James Poppy – Sienna Robyn Mavanga-Phipps The Doctor – Jo Martin Crew Writer – Inua Ellams Director – Makalla McPherson Music – Murray Gold Producer – Vicky Delow Executive producers – Russell T Davies, Julie Gardner, Jane Tranter, Joel Collins, Phil Collinson RT review by Patrick Mulkern Doctor Who as experimental theatre. Not a bad idea. You can’t fault the ambition, but the execution... Oh dear. Were this a play put on by one of the more avant-garde playhouses around the country, even the most receptive audience members might start creeping out before the interval. Playwright Inua Ellams had a hit on his hands in 2017 with Barber Shop Chronicles, launched at the National Theatre in London, then remounted around the world to acclaim. The Story & the Engine is a brother to that, in that its action is largely constrained to a barber shop whose customers share stories. The leap is to give it a Doctor Who spin so that the storytelling fuels gods and monsters, with the shop somehow still in Lagos but also on a journey through space on the back of a gigantic spider. Delirious and nonsensical barely cover the spectacle here, and, fatally, it’s hard to fathom what is going on – in actuality or allegory. The contained drama is never for a moment am-dram but it wavers between flaccid and overwrought – despite Murray Gold’s efforts to weave a magical spell. The sense of fable is helped by artistic touches, including shimmering graphics as visual aids. More could have been made of these, displayed full screen. Best is the tale told by Abena about her womenfolk’s cunning strategy of braiding maps into hair to outfox their oppressors. And the Doctor’s new hairdo mapping a maze to reach the heart of the story engine is a clever idea. The glimpses of old Doctors may help snoozing fans twitch back to life, but these are throwaway – even Jo Martin’s in-the-flesh cameo as the “fugitive” Doctor. We were hardly going to get Colin Baker’s Doctor coming into Omo’s for a fresh perm, but she is wasted. A full-on match between Jo Martin and Ncuti Gatwa would be welcome. It is vitally important to have wider racial representation on screen. Ellams’s episode fulfils that aim and hands the Doctor a milieu where he feels he fits in. “It’s the first time I’ve had this Black body... Here in Africa, in that barber shop, I’m accepted,” he tells Belinda. He thrives in the buzz of the bazaar and feels he’s among his people. It’s a delightful moment for Gatwa’s Doctor. It is, however, disingenuous to present Nigeria as some idyll. Significantly, the queer aspect of this incarnation is for once dialled down. He’s not calling any other chaps “Honey” or “Babes” in Lagos. The Sex Education storyline where young Eric (Gatwa) witnessed the difficulties of being gay in Nigeria remains fresh in the memory. The country is no Happy Place for gay, lesbian and trans people. They are criminalised by the state for being who they are, with a maximum penalty of death by stoning. Maybe one message a week is enough for Doctor Who, and there will be gaiety galore in the next episode, but it is a cardinal omission in The Story & the Engine. Read more: Episode 1 – The Robot Revolution review Episode 2 – Lux review Episode 3 – The Well review Episode 4 – Lucky Day review Episode 6 – The Interstellar Song Contest review Episode 7 – Wish World Episode 8 – The Reality War Check out more of our Sci-Fi coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to see what's on tonight. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Ruby Sunday meets a very different kind of monster.
Story 316 Series 15/Series 2 – Episode 4 “I think I’m in shock. Like PTSD. Because what happened last year was not normal” – Ruby Storyline Ruby, now 20, is adjusting to life after her Tardis travels. She agrees to talk on a podcast with Conrad Clark, who encountered the Doctor as a child and has been obsessed ever since. He and Ruby start dating, but when they go away for a country break, it transpires that he has been deceiving her. Conrad is the figurehead of Think Tank, an organisation intent on exposing what they see as the lies perpetuated by UNIT about the alien threat to our planet. Kate is tested to the limit and unleashes the monstrous Shreek on him. First UK broadcast Saturday 3 May 2025 Cast The Doctor – Ncuti Gatwa Ruby Sunday – Millie Gibson Belinda Chandra – Varada Sethu Kate Lethbridge-Stewart – Jemma Redgrave Conrad Clark – Jonah Hauer-King Carla Sunday – Michelle Greenidge Cherry Sunday – Angela Wynter Shirley Anne-Bingham – Ruth Madeley Louise Miller – Faye McKeever Col Christofer Ibrahim – Alexander Devrient Moira Clark – Kirsty Hoiles Young Conrad – Benjamin Chivers Jordan Lang – Kareem Alexander Elsa – Madison Stock Sparky – Paddy Stafford Jack – Blake Anderson Michelle – Aoife Gaston Alfie – Paul Jerricho Derek – Michael Woodford Audrey – Tina Gray Trinity Wells – Lachele Carl The Shreek – Gethin Alderman The Vlinx – Aidan Cook Voice of the Vlinx – Nicholas Briggs Mrs Flood – Anita Dobson Influencers – Selorm Adonu, Calypso Cragg, James Craven As themselves: Reeta Chakrabarti, Alex Jones, Joel Dommett Crew Writer – Pete McTighe Director – Peter Hoar Music – Murray Gold Producer – Chris May Series producer – Vicky Delow Executive producers – Russell T Davies, Julie Gardner, Jane Tranter, Joel Collins, Phil Collinson RT review by Patrick Mulkern Activism can often be characterised by self-righteousness and delusion – whether we sympathise with a cause or not – and Pete McTighe’s script captures that edge tartly. Fans and regular viewers know the fiction of Doctor Who to be completely true. UNIT has been thwarting alien invasions almost yearly since the 1960s. That is true, isn’t it? So we reject and loathe Conrad Clark and his Think Tank, who are clearly wrong. They are, aren’t they? Lucky Day is another diverting spin on this season’s theme of: what is reality? What is fiction? What in fiction is reality? One thing’s for sure: no one messes with Kate Lethbridge-Stewart. Only a fool traduces her organisation and insults her Brigadier father’s legacy. It’s another strong performance from Jemma Redgrave, who’s become a series stalwart since her 2012 debut opposite Matt Smith. Millie Gibson demonstrates once again, as in last year’s 73 Yards, that she can hold focus in a story as the companion alone. While Jonah Hauer-King is also excellent as the duplicitous Conrad Clark – he can play wet and adoring podcaster just as convincingly as the deluded, hostile activist. “It has been a chore getting to know you.” He’s vile. Some of Ruby and Conrad’s stumbling courtship conversations don’t quite land, and the Shreek, while well realised, joins the swollen ranks of forgettable monster of the week. But as a holding-pattern episode, presumably shot while Ncuti Gatwa was elsewhere, Lucky Day keeps the season’s momentum ticking along, and the young Conrad’s sighting of the Tardis and subsequent obsession recall Elton Pope (Marc Warren) in another Doctor-lite episode, Love & Monsters. What’s especially rewarding is that when we do see the Doctor, as he materialises his Tardis around Conrad, Gatwa glows with charisma and righteousness (here fighting “cowards who weaponise lies”), while we can only despise Conrad’s unshifting smugness. Surely, we’ve not seen the last of this nasty piece of work. Read more: Episode 1 – The Robot Revolution review Episode 2 – Lux review Episode 3 – The Well review Episode 5 – The Story & the Engine review Episode 6 – The Interstellar Song Contest review Episode 7 – Wish World Episode 8 – The Reality War Check out more of our Sci-Fi coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to see what's on tonight. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Rose Ayling-Ellis gives us a riveting, nightmarish Aliss in Terrorland.
Story 315 Series 15/Series 2 – Episode 3 “There’s something behind me all the time” – Aliss Storyline Some 500,000 years in the future on the planet 67-67, all contact has been lost with the mining colony of Base 15. The Doctor and Belinda assist the band of troopers investigating the scene. The colonists are found dead, either by gunfire or with their bones shattered – all bar one survivor, Aliss. She is the host of a vile, unseen force that the Doctor encountered long ago when 67-67 was called Midnight. Can Aliss be freed? And why has no one heard of Earth or the human race? First UK broadcast Saturday 26 April 2025 Cast The Doctor – Ncuti Gatwa Belinda Chandra – Varada Sethu Aliss Fenly – Rose Ayling-Ellis Shaya Costallion – Caoilfhionn Dunne Cassio Palin-Paleen – Christopher Chung Mo Gilliben – Bethany Antonia Hanno Yeft – Annabel Brook Kai Sabba – Gaz Choudhry Callo Rence – Luke Rhodri Albie Bethick – Gary Pillai Sal Van Hyten – Frankie Lipman Albie Bethick – Gary Pillai Ulric Dazen – Jermaine Dominique Val Vivo – Amy Tyger Mrs Flood – Anita Dobson It Has No Name – Paul Kasey Crew Writers – Russell T Davies, Sharma Angel-Walfall Director – Amanda Brotchie Music – Murray Gold Producer – Chris May Series producer – Vicky Delow Executive producers – Russell T Davies, Julie Gardner, Jane Tranter, Joel Collins, Phil Collinson RT review by Patrick Mulkern Sometimes when Doctor Who echoes itself, it sings. The plunging mineshaft looks like the massive rim into an abyss in The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit (2006), and the spacesuited troopers being picked off by an unseen menace recalls Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead (2008) or, going even further back, Earthshock (1982). Meanwhile, The Well itself is a form of sequel to another highly popular 2008 episode, Midnight – and arguably superior. This is core Doctor Who when everything comes together: a rattling script, from the moment the Doctor and Belinda are jettisoned into space (Ncuti Gatwa and Varada Sethu have fast become an effective and empathic pair leading the show); and taut direction that keeps up the unrelenting pace, creating unease and jump scares. The Well also benefits from grim and grimy design on a cinematic scale, an unusually creepy score from Murray Gold, and quick characterisation matched by sharp casting that helps bring short-lived people to life – a forte of Russell T Davies, collaborating here with Sharma Angel-Walfall. Whether you saw Rose Ayling-Ellis as Frankie in EastEnders between 2020 and 2022, followed her progress to winner of Strictly Come Dancing 2021, or are completely new to her, she delivers an instantly appealing blend of vulnerability and resolve as the sole survivor on planet 67-67. You can’t help but root for her and hope she can free herself of the subliminal horror that lurks behind her at “midnight”. It's one of those Doctor Who concepts that are really very silly, not to say inexpensive, but also nightmarish and riveting when played with conviction. Ayling-Ellis and everyone else are giving us Aliss in Terrorland. Read more: Episode 1 – The Robot Revolution review Episode 2 – Lux review Episode 4 – Lucky Day review Episode 5 – The Story & the Engine review Episode 6 – The Interstellar Song Contest review Episode 7 – Wish World Episode 8 – The Reality War Check out more of our Sci-Fi coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to see what's on tonight. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Scooby-Doo meets Sapphire & Steel in this animated adventure.
Story 314 Series 15/Series 2 – Episode 2 "We’re going 3D. And remember, whatever you do, don’t make me laugh." – Mr Ring-a-Ding Storyline Miami, 1952: at the Palazzo picture house, cartoon character Mr Ring-a-Ding bursts out of the screen and terrorises the audience, who all subsequently vanish. Months later, the Doctor and Belinda investigate the mystery and discover that Mr Ring-a-Ding is the embodiment of Lux, the god of light, and one of the sinister Pantheon. After he converts the time travellers into cartoons, they must use their wits to break back into reality. First UK broadcast Saturday 19 April 2025 Cast The Doctor – Ncuti Gatwa Belinda Chandra – Varada Sethu Mr Ring-a-Ding – Alan Cumming Reginald Pye – Linus Roache Mrs Flood – Anita Dobson Tommy Lee – Cassius Hackforth Husband – Ryan Speakman Sunshine Sally – Millie O’Connell Renée Lowenstein – Lucy Thackeray Logan Cheever – Lewis Cornay Helen Pye – Jane Hancock Hassan Chowdry – Samir Arrian Lizzie Abel – Bronté Barbé Robyn Gossage – Steph Lacey Policeman – William Meredith Newsreader – Ian Shaw Crew Writer – Russell T Davies Director – Amanda Brotchie Music – Murray Gold Producer – Chris May Series producer – Vicky Delow Executive producers – Russell T Davies, Julie Gardner, Jane Tranter, Joel Collins, Phil Collinson RT review by Patrick Mulkern Doctor Who is often at its curious best when it transcends dimensions. Week in, week out, we witness that with the Police Box/Tardis, but when the writer’s imagination stretches even further with, say, the Land of Fiction in The Mind Robber (1968) or the dimension-straddling force in Flatline (2014), the Doctor and the viewers are obliged to think beyond the box. Lux achieves this superbly. It takes the trappings of cinema projection and celluloid, and capitalises on Disney funds for lustrous animation (actually delivered by British VFX company Framestore), to create an original and increasingly disturbing threat in Mr Ring-a-Ding. He’s like a mix of the Cat in the Hat and an annoying Doctor we haven’t met yet. The entire middle sequence, where the Time Lord and Belinda are flattened into 2D cartoons but then emote their way back towards their 3D reality, is cleverly realised. The Doctor has long existed in cartoon form on the printed page, but these moments in Lux chime neatly with the variable modern-day attempts to animate the missing 1960s Who episodes. Fourth-wall breaking is tricky territory but Russell T Davies masters it here – several times over. The cartoon Mr Ring-a-Ding emerges from the cinema screen and becomes "real". The Doctor and Belinda manipulate and speed up the film frames that constrain them, eventually pushing through a TV screen into the living room of their "biggest fans". It’s an audacious stroke and wittily self-reflexive. When the Doctor asks, "Go on then, what’s your favourite adventure?", his fans say, "Blink, every time." "Not the one with the Goblins?" "Blink!" they insist. Belinda’s disdain for the basic premise of Steven Moffat's classic is hilarious. Even if the outcome of this "bubble" is mawkish, it sets up the quandary: who is real and what is fiction? A theme we’ll no doubt return to this season. Doctor Who has been getting a lot of stick for raising ISSUES! When handled with subtlety, there should be no objection. So praise for Belinda’s awareness (as a nurse) of the fate that will befall matinee idol Rock Hudson decades later. It should also curl the toes of sentient viewers to realise that, had this adventure not taken place in the dead of night, thanks to racial segregation, the Tardis duo wouldn’t be free agents to visit the diner and cinema in 1950s Miami. There’s joy in the dark in Lux. "Honey, I’m Velma," the Doctor tells Belinda ("Fred") as they channel Scooby-Doo to check up on an old caretaker in a haunted cinema. But as they explore the mysteries of light, alternate dimensions and missing persons trapped on celluloid, the vibe veers more towards ITV’s old supernatural series, Sapphire and Steel. With more such material, Ncuti Gatwa and Varada Sethu could become an elemental pairing. Read more: Episode 1 – The Robot Revolution review Episode 3 – The Well review Episode 4 – Lucky Day review Episode 5 – The Story & the Engine review Episode 6 – The Interstellar Song Contest review Episode 7 – Wish World Episode 8 – The Reality War Check out more of our Sci-Fi coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to see what's on tonight. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
If you’re up for a bit of flash-bang-wallop cartoonery, then maybe this episode works for you.
Story 313 Series 15/Series 2 – Episode 1 "We need you as our queen" – Robot Storyline In London 2008, Belinda Chandra has a star named after her by her boyfriend Alan. In 2025, robots from Missbelindachandra One, a world orbiting that star, want her as their queen. Before the Doctor can intercede, Belinda is abducted by the robots in a space rocket. He pursues in the Tardis, but a time fracture means he arrives on the planet six months early. A plan is hatched with the subjugated locals, the Missbelindachandrakind, to prevent her becoming the bride of the controlling AI Generator. It contains a golden being who, it transpires, is the robotised remains of her former boyfriend Alan. He is vanquished by the force of the time fracture, and peace is restored between the people and robots. The Doctor promises to return Belinda home but the Tardis is bounced away. Could Earth have been destroyed...? First UK broadcast Saturday 12 April 2025 Cast The Doctor – Ncuti Gatwa Belinda Chandra – Varada Sethu Alan Budd – Jonny Green Manny – Max Parker Mrs Flood – Anita Dobson Kirby Blake – Thalía Dudek Stefan Haines – Jeffin Kunjumon Tombo – Tom Storey Sasha 55 – Evelyn Miller Scoley – Caleb Hughes Shago – Nadine Higgin Prime Minister – William Ellis Receptionist – Belinda Owusu Voice of the robots – Nicholas Briggs Robots – Stephen Love, Robert Strange, Charles Sandford, Lucas Edwards Crew Writer – Russell T Davies Director – Peter Hoar Music – Murray Gold Producer – Vicky Delow Executive producers – Russell T Davies, Julie Gardner, Jane Tranter, Joel Collins, Phil Collinson RT review by Patrick Mulkern If you’re up for a bit of flash-bang-wallop cartoonery, then maybe this episode works for you. A retro rocket reaching a faraway star remarkably quickly… shiny robots vaporising their victims in mid-air… a gorgeously gold-plated semi-human villain… the cute (only mildly annoying) busybody hoover ("Polish! Polish!") that could put a Dyson to shame… juddery time-distortion effects… and vestiges of iconic Earth design (a black cab, the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty) tumbling through space… Some beautiful visuals have been created. If, though, you’re looking for something novel and meaty to sink your teeth into, you’ll be disappointed. This season opener – at just eight episodes it’s barely worthy of "season" status – is reminiscent of Smith and Jones from 2007. I know that’s a long time ago, but in both episodes the Doctor’s new companion (trainee doctor Martha then, nurse Belinda now) is seen working in a spotless hospital and is soon abducted by marauding aliens. Lumbering, top-heavy, headless robots have featured several times in Doctor Who in living memory. Belinda is the latest in a long line of "mystery women" that the Doctor will have to unravel. From River Song and Amy Pond, via Clara and Missy, to Ruby and her hooded mother, almost every regular female character has had "enigma" stitched into her upholstery. And yet again our diaries are marked with a dooms-date (this time 24th May 2025) that handily coincides with the transmission of the two-part finale. Varada Sethu is fine as Belinda, even if lacking the immediate Wow! factor of, say, Billie Piper and Catherine Tate as soon as they walked on set. "Bel" may take a few weeks to bed in, but then we only have a few short weeks. In the same vein, Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor barely feels like someone we’ve had time to get a handle on. He bounces with energy and wafts charisma but lacks gravitas. He cries – again – but does not communicate the emotion. I’m not sensing Time Lord vibes from Gatwa. His revelation "It’s not AI. It’s AL" thuds on arrival, as does Belinda’s explanation for any cloth-brained viewers of her former boyfriend: "You’ve taken coercive control and made it complete control of the whole planet." Gawd, well, here’s a bad ’un for our times and no mistake. We meet quite a few people in the episode but there are no real persons of interest, unless you count Mrs Flood. Another mystery woman, yes, but anything with Anita Dobson is gold. Even a brief cameo of her standing in a backyard in a housecoat, hair blown wild by rocket engines. I half wish the cameras had followed her indoors. La Flood’s domestic activities are more intriguing than events on other worlds. An abiding image from The Robot Revolution is the x-ray blanket – expensive but thin material revealing big hearts at work but not much else going on internally. Read more: Episode 2 – Lux review Episode 3 – The Well review Episode 4 – Lucky Day review Episode 5 – The Story & the Engine review Episode 6 – The Interstellar Song Contest review Episode 7 – Wish World Episode 8 – The Reality War Check out more of our Sci-Fi coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to see what's on tonight. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Ncuti Gatwa and Nicola Coughlan shine in Steven Moffat's Christmas special – with more than one new star
Story 312 Christmas Special 2024 “A hotel but instead of rooms, time portals? Package deals for all of history’s biggest hits. No wonder there was no room at the inn” – the Doctor Storyline London, Christmas 4042: the Doctor arrives at the Time Hotel, which has portals to hotel rooms and lodgings throughout Earth history. In 2024, a woman called Joy is spending Christmas alone at the Sandringham Hotel in London, but she gets manacled to a deadly suitcase. It contains a star seed that requires millions of years to grow and is key to a plot by the Villengard corporation to destroy Earth. The Time Lord must save Joy but he gets stuck in London for a year, befriending hotel receptionist Anita. Ultimately, after a trip to prehistoric times with the Doctor, Joy is transformed by the energy into a benign star. First UK broadcast Wednesday 25 December 2024 Cast The Doctor – Ncuti Gatwa Joy Almondo – Nicola Coughlan Trev Simpkins –Joel Fry Anita Benn – Steph de Whalley Hotel manager – Jonathan Aris Hilda Flockhart – Julia Watson Basil Flockhart – Peter Benedict Sylvia Trench – Niamh Marie Smith Edmund Hillary – Phil Baxter Tenzing Norgay – Samuel Sherpa-Moore Receptionist – Ruchi Rai Mr Single – Joshua Leese Angela Grace – Fiona Marr Barman – Liam Prince-Donnelly Joy’s mum – Fiona Scott Ruby Sunday – Millie Gibson Crew Writer – Steven Moffat Director – Alex Sanjiv Pillai Music – Murray Gold Series producer – Vicky Delow Executive producers – Russell T Davies, Julie Gardner, Jane Tranter, Joel Collins, Phil Collinson, Steven Moffat RT review by Patrick Mulkern Time really does fly. It wasn’t so long ago that Ncuti Gatwa and Nicola Coughlan were among the stand-out stars in two of Netflix’s biggest hits – Sex Education and Bridgerton – and here they are now, confidently fronting the Doctor Who Christmas special. Though both shine effortlessly as individuals, Steven Moffat’s time-twisting plot doesn’t allow them many moments to sparkle as a duo. Unexpectedly, he lets more chemistry develop between Gatwa’s Doctor and hotel receptionist Anita, played winningly by relative newcomer Steph de Whalley, who escaped all the advance publicity hoopla. She is his true friend and companion in this special. The Time Lord is obliged to spend a whole year with Anita at the Sandringham Hotel, earning his keep and enjoying his sojourn. He admits, “I don’t usually live like this, one day after the other. I always wondered what it would be like.” This Doctor has perhaps forgotten some of his previous Christmas adventures. Matt Smith’s Doctor spent many decades defending the planet Trenzalore in The Time of the Doctor (2013), and Peter Capaldi’s Doctor was shacked up with River Song for 25 years in The Husbands of River Song (2015). No matter: this lengthy hotel booking in 2024 allows Gatwa to show his heart and his flare for comedy. And Anita would be welcome back any time. The sequence where the Doctor taunts Joy, calling her a “sad sack”, forcing her to drop her smile and unbottle her rage is uncomfortable viewing but pointed writing. It culminates by thrusting us back four years to the pandemic, to the point in 2020 when the prospect of spending Christmas together was dangled but then cancelled by the Tory government, when many weren’t able to spend time with their loved ones, whether they were hearty or dying in hospital, as Joy’s mum was. This is the one stand-out, truly emotive scene in this story – in a period of Who when most of the emotion is surface and sound. We’re always on solid ground with Steven Moffat as a storyteller, even as he whisks viewers off their feet for a madcap spectacle, twiddling with time and locales. The heart of Joy to the World, though, is his portrait of four lonely people at Christmas – the Doctor, Anita, Joy and her dying mum. His final flourish – transforming Joy into a benign celestial force, indeed the Star of Bethlehem – is a cheeky, radiant reminder of what Christmas is all about. But maybe Steph de Whalley is another new star too.
Doctor Who: The Legend of Ruby Sunday / Empire of Death ★★★★★
Susan, Sutekh, Bonnie Langford... Russell 'Tease' Davies turbo-blends the Time Lord's rich heritage with Long Lost Family in an eerie and thrilling finale
Story 311 Series 14/Series One – Episodes 7 & 8 “I bring Sutekh’s dust of death” – Susan Triad Storyline The Doctor flies the Tardis into UNIT HQ, determined to solve two mysteries: the identity of Ruby’s mother and the woman whose face keeps popping up in his adventures. The modern version of the latter is tech giant Susan Triad, who is about to launch some world-changing software for free – and Mel has infiltrated her inner circle. Kate allows the Doctor to use UNIT’s time window to re-create the events of Christmas Eve 20 years ago. Wondering if Susan could be his granddaughter and fearing a trap, the Doctor is unprepared to be facing his ancient enemy Sutekh. This god-like being has been waiting aeons for revenge – latched onto and cloaked by the Tardis, evolving, and is now ready to spread his dust of death across every planet the Doctor has visited. As Earth is destroyed across time, the Time Lord, Ruby and Mel flee in the “memory Tardis” to London 2046. The secret of Ruby’s birth is the key to ensnaring Sutekh and hauling him to his demise in the space-time vortex. Finally, on Earth in 2024, Ruby meets her mother and must leave the Doctor. First UK broadcast Saturday 15 June 2024 Saturday 22 June 2024 Cast The Doctor – Ncuti Gatwa Ruby Sunday – Millie Gibson Melanie Bush – Bonnie Langford Kate Lethbridge-Stewart – Jemma Redgrave Voice of Sutekh – Gabriel Woolf Rose Noble – Yasmin Finney Carla Sunday – Michelle Greenidge Mrs Flood – Anita Dobson Cherry Sunday – Angela Wynter Colonel Christofer Ibrahim – Alexander Devrient Susan Triad – Susan Twist Morris Gibbons – Lenny Rush Harriet Arbinger – Genesis Lynea Bailey Sinclair – Fela Lufadeju Colonel Winston Chidozie – Tachia Newall Corporal Alice Sullivan – Jasmine Bayes The Vlinx – Aidan Cook Voice of the Vlinx – Nicholas Briggs Kind woman – Sian Clifford Amol Rajan – himself Roger ap Gwilliam – Aneurin Barnard Louise Miller – Faye McKeever Crew Writer – Russell T Davies Director – Jamie Donoughue Music – Murray Gold Producer – Vicky Delow Executive producers – Russell T Davies, Julie Gardner, Jane Tranter, Joel Collins, Phil Collinson RT review by Patrick Mulkern This is a clutch-your-cushions finale. True, this season only started seven weeks ago and has flown past in a flash. There’s a sense that it hasn’t yet earned a grand showdown, and that with several Doctor-lite episodes we haven’t shared enough time with Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson together. But their story has been running since Christmas 2023, and this two-parter concludes that with a degree of satisfaction. It is also hugely reliant on the programme’s heritage. Susan from the 1960s. Sutekh from the 70s. Mel from the 80s. And UNIT from all those decades. It engenders fan ecstasy for sure, but for new or casual viewers? The showrunner melds it all into a digestible feast and a big-dipper ride. Since Christmas, Russell “Tease” Davies has been dropping hints, feeding red herrings, misdirecting with abandon… breezily generating a vortex of speculation on social media, with some clues so simple (anagrams) that even very young viewers should figure them out. Many are toppled like dominos as the first episode unfolds, but RTD does this generously, amusingly. “S TRIAD spells out… TARDIS,” explains the Doctor, pleased with himself. “Well, obviously,” says Kate, rolling her eyes. “Even I got that,” says Colonel Ibrahim, the 2020s version of 1970s UNIT beefcake Sergeant Benton. The police box’s arrival into UNIT HQ, parking as if it were home, and UNIT’s rise from the ashes are very satisfying. UNIT has been so mucked about with in recent years. Disbanded by Chris Chibnall in Resolution (2019), it was later revived, then razed to the ground by him in The Power of the Doctor (2022). Somehow a “time window” has survived all these events and provides a grainy VHS-quality glimpse of the past. (No one asks if it can handily peep into the future.) It’s a clever device, though, which draws in the viewer as much as the participants on screen, scanning every image, every angle for revelation. It’s beautifully visualised. Episode one an exercise in building tension, drawing us towards a triple cliffhanger, three points of reveal and peril: for the Doctor and Mel at Triad HQ; for Kate in UNIT HQ; and for Ruby in the time window. The snap reveal of Susan Triad’s cadaverous face, the juddering, stealthy approach of the cowled mother figure… the stuff of shivers and nightmares. Full marks for eerie. But for me it doesn’t quite top the exquisite conclusion to World Enough and Time (2017). Not every beat lands in the edit, some of the dialogue isn’t clear. I’m being picky, but I’m vexed by indistinct diction in drama. And it’s not just the usual case of mumbles lost in the mix. I had to replay certain sections and apply subtitles. Otherwise, the casting is extremely strong. Ncuti Gatwa is luminous and magnetic (he could cut down on the blubbing), Millie Gibson totally authentic as the teenage foundling, while Bonnie Langford leaves far behind the rubbishing she received in 1980s Doctor Who with a spirited and subtle performance as Mel, especially when possessed. Jemma Redgrave is commanding but also deeply empathic. Susan Twist has come out of nowhere for me. She’s had to give all these mini-snatches of characters in recent episodes but arrives fully formed as Susan Triad, who’s actually a pleasant human being as tech giants go, innocent of being bait, and she nails that funny Theresa May dance to the podium. For many devotees it’s a total thrill that Sutekh has been revived for the first time on TV since 1975. Pyramids of Mars is a gorgeous Tom Baker-era classic – and can be relished again or anew via Tales of the TARDIS. And in full on BBC iPlayer. How wonderful that Gabriel Woolf, now 91, has revived his most famous, chilling vocal performance. A great actor and broadcaster, his earliest Radio Times credit was for Children’s Hour on the Home Service radio network in 1950. Countless roles and readings followed (including nearly 300 editions of A Book at Bedtime). In 1973, when RT asked readers for their favourite voices, R Shaw of Bolton, Lancashire responded: “The 'golden voice’ on radio or television? There is but one incomparable speaking voice, that of Gabriel Woolf.” This finale is an FX-laden extravaganza. It’s strange that the original jackal head of Sutekh from 1975, though inert and inexpressive, cannot be bettered for pure chills. Our first glimpse of the augmented 2024 version, engulfing the police box, is like a bejewelled, rabid donkey. It fares better in the second episode, given more movement and angles to appreciate how good the CGI is. This evolved Sutekh starts to gain substance. The “dust of death” disintegration of all the Doctor’s allies is excellent too, truly horrifying; as is the realisation that all the planets he’s landed on for fun across time are dying too. You just know it will all unravel and reset – it was ever thus in grandstanding Who finales – and it won’t end well for Sutekh, but it’s clever and actually, to me, very funny how Russell T resolves this. After all his travels with the Doctor, Sutekh has become a Doctor Who fan. This god-like being is reduced to the level of a TV addict, pressing pause on his destructive urges until he too, like us, learns the secret of Ruby’s heritage. And it’s also typical of RTD to wrap up the horror show by the 40-minute mark and make the final act about the Doctor and Ruby. He returns her to where she began last Christmas in a scenario straight out of ITV’s excellent show Long Lost Family, where she finally meets her lovely mum. The ordinary triumphs over the extraordinary. A happy ending indeed. And oh yes, Anita Dobson. A genuine TV goddess. And Mrs Flood. A fairy godmother who sees it all. Read more: Episode 1 – Space Babies review Episode 2 – The Devil's Chord review Episode 3 – Boom review Episode 4 – 73 Yards review Episode 5 – Dot and Bubble review Episode 6 – Rogue review Check out more of our Sci-Fi coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to see what's on tonight. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
The Time Lord loses his heart to a starship bounty hunter in the most gloriously gay episode yet. Happy Pride Month!
Story 310 Series 14/Series One – Episode 6 “Some are saying the best of the season. A triumph! A new standard set. But I think the real estimation of an evening is in the matches made” – Duchess of Pemberton Storyline Bath, 1813: the Doctor and Ruby are enjoying the Bridgerton vibe at the Duchess of Pemberton’s ball, but alien shapeshifters are abroad, killing off partygoers and assuming their identities for fun. The cosplaying Chuldur are being observed by bounty hunter Rogue, who catches the Doctor’s eye and his heart. They join forces to round up the aliens and save Ruby from their clutches. First UK broadcast Saturday 8 June 2024 Cast The Doctor – Ncuti Gatwa Ruby Sunday – Millie Gibson Rogue – Jonathan Groff The Duchess of Pemberton – Indira Varma Lord Barton – Paul Forman Emily Beckett – Camilla Aiko Carla Sunday – Michelle Greenidge Lord Galpin – Maxim Ays Miss Talbot – Nancy Brabin-Platt Mr Price – David Charles The portrait – Susan Twist Housekeeper – Debra Baker Crew Writers – Kate Herron and Briony Redman Director – Ben Chessell Music – Murray Gold Producer – Chris May Series producer – Vicky Delow Executive producers – Russell T Davies, Julie Gardner, Jane Tranter, Joel Collins, Phil Collinson RT review by Patrick Mulkern What a way to celebrate Pride Month! This is the gayest episode of Doctor Who to date – and that takes some doing after The Devil’s Chord only a few weeks previously. It’s wonderful that under Russell T Davies’s stewardship the programme has the confidence, and yes the balls, to present something this gloriously gay. And under the watchful eye of investor Disney. I wouldn’t want it every week but I quite enjoy it when the usually indifferent Time Lord is sweet on someone. This is nothing new. William Hartnell’s Doctor was smitten with Aztec lady Cameca 60 years ago, Paul McGann’s version kissed Dr Grace in the 1996 TV Movie, David Tennant’s Tenth Doctor fell for Madame de Pompadour in 2006, and River Song captured various Time Lord’s hearts – especially Peter Capaldi’s. They spent a night on Darillium that lasted 24 years. Now with Ncuti Gatwa as the dazzling lead, the show is free to pursue its passion and be truthful to the edge he lends this incarnation. American star Jonathan Groff is suave and mischievous as Rogue and a convincing match for the Doctor. People blither on about all of Groff’s TV credits (which are notable), but to me he’s a Tony-award-laden Broadway star: Spring Awakening, Hamilton and Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along. All stunning. Rogue clearly bears many similarities to Captain Jack and River Song. Indeed, there’s a lot here that echoes the past. Not just Who doing Bridgerton, but Who doing Who. The Chuldur family are interchangeable with the Family of Blood from 2007. Watching this, I kept smiling and snorting with mirth, thinking, "This is so Russell." It is, but we must also pause and digest that the writing credits go to Kate Herron and Briony Redman. Just what Doctor Who needs: fresh blood and the "female gaze". It looks beautiful in all departments and plays with zip and energy. The anachronistic music choices are a hoot, from the spot-on pop tracks to the Doctor and Rogue dancing – and shocking society – to Piazzolla’s Libertango (from 1974). But the high point, after a couple of weeks’ starvation, is the chance to see just how well Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson play together as time-travelling best friends, having a high old time. Both are charming and often very funny. Read more: Episode 1 – Space Babies review Episode 2 – The Devil's Chord review Episode 3 – Boom review Episode 4 – 73 Yards review Episode 5 – Dot and Bubble review Check out more of our Sci-Fi coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to see what's on tonight. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Slug monsters are harvesting vacuous, tech-dependent humans, but in this intriguing satire do they deserve saving?
Story 309 Series 14/Series One – Episode 5 “I am not lowering my bubble” – Lindy Storyline The young inhabitants of Finetime are dependent on their dot and bubble technology to get through their home and working lives. Interaction is constant but they are unaware that they’re being harvested and eaten by slug-like creatures, until the Doctor and Ruby intercede and try to guide Lindy and her fellows to safety. First UK broadcast Saturday 1 June 2024 Cast The Doctor – Ncuti Gatwa Ruby Sunday – Millie Gibson Lindy Pepper-Bean – Callie Cooke Ricky September – Tom Rhys Harries Hoochy Pie – Niamh Lynch Harry Tendency – Aldous Ciokajlo Squire Cooper Mercy – Eilidh Loan Gothic Paul – Pete MacHale Blake Very Blue – Billy Brayshaw Valerie Nook – Millie Kent Dr Pee – Max Boast Rotterdam Twins – Elloise Bennett, Olivia Bennett Penny Pepper-Bean – Susan Twist Alan K Sullivan – Milo Callaghan Weatherman Will – Jack Forsyth-Noble Suzie Pentecost – Ellie-Grace Cashin Brewster Cavendish – Jamie Barnard Crew Writer – Russell T Davies Director – Dylan Holmes Williams Music – Murray Gold Producer – Vicki Delow Executive producers – Russell T Davies, Julie Gardner, Jane Tranter, Joel Collins, Phil Collinson RT review by Patrick Mulkern We all do it. Walk around in a bubble, glued to our devices. In this intriguing satire, Russell T Davies takes that to an extreme. On Finetime – a city under a bubble dome – people go about their business constantly encased in a literal bubble of interactivity, oblivious to the fact that they and their friends are being harvested by slug-like monsters. He toyed with this idea once before in Years and Years with the “filter mask” worn by young Bethany (Lydia West) who wanted to become a “trans-human”. Diehard fans will also spot the strong debt owed to the 1967 Patrick Troughton story, The Macra Terror, in which a human colony were enslaved by giant crabs they couldn’t see. The technology and set design are gorgeous. The monsters brilliantly, disgustingly realised. And the tone is largely spot on. The vacuity of the young people of Finetime (“No stinky old folk,” says Lindy. “Just people ages 17 to 27”) is perfectly captured in the writing and performances. They are so dependent on their bubbles, they can’t walk without its directions, like the cellphone users of today who cannot put one foot in front of the other without Google Maps. Here, Lindy walks twice into a lamppost. Unfortunately in this short run we have yet another episode in which Ncuti Gatwa’s relatively new Doctor isn’t fully involved. He and Ruby pop up regularly on windows in Lindy’s bubble, steering the action, but display all the presence and allure of daytime TV hosts offering advice to a live caller. We realise before the Doctor and Ruby that they have been facilitating the evacuation of a vacuous moron. Lindy is also revealed to be treacherous in her betrayal of Ricky September, the influencer who is supposedly gorgeous. If you say so… Many viewers should have clocked early on that not only are these youngsters rich, entitled and gormless, like contestants on a reality show, but they are also all white. In the last act, Lindy and her fellow survivors are shown to be racist, rejecting further association with or assistance from the Doctor. They don’t wish to be “contaminated” because “you, sir, are not one of us”. The Tardis is “voodoo”. It’s a strong line, but this final passage is protracted and overwrought, and doesn’t hit quite as hard as it ought to. We’re left with the uncomfortable feeling he should have left them to the slugs. Read more: Episode 1 – Space Babies review Episode 2 – The Devil's Chord review Episode 3 – Boom review Episode 4 – 73 Yards review Check out more of our Sci-Fi coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to see what's on tonight. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Millie Gibson impresses in a beautiful tale of enchantment
Story 308 Series 14/Series One – Episode 4 “The clifftops are a boundary between the land and the sea – a liminal space, neither here nor there, where rules are suspended” – Enid Meadows Storyline When the Tardis lands on a clifftop in Wales, the Doctor and Ruby stumble upon a magical "fairy circle". Once interfered with, it creates a timeline in which the Doctor has vanished and Ruby is haunted by the figure of a woman – always present but always at an intangible distance of 73 yards. Anyone who has contact with the woman flees and abandons Ruby, throughout her life, for decades, until in 2046 together they can save the world from a wicked prime minister, Roger ap Gwilliam. Only at Ruby’s death in old age does the woman come close; it is Ruby and now she has the power to reach back through time and stop the Doctor stepping into the circle. First UK broadcast Saturday 25 May 2024 Cast The Doctor – Ncuti Gatwa Ruby Sunday – Millie Gibson Enid Meadows – Siân Phillips Roger ap Gwilliam – Aneurin Barnard Old Ruby – Amanda Walker Kate Lethbridge-Stewart – Jemma Redgrave Carla Sunday – Michelle Greenidge Cherry Sunday – Angela Wynter Mrs Flood — Anita Dobson The Woman – Hilary Hobson Hiker – Susan Twist Lowri Palin – Maxine Evans Eddie Jones – Glyn Pritchard Thin Lucy – Elan Davies Ifor Jones – Gwïon Morris Jones Joshua Steele – Sion Pritchard Frank Hinchey Graham Butler Sanjay Miah – Ali Ariaie Rufus Bray – Albey Brookes Craig Deloach – Miles Yekinni Himself – Amol Rajan Marti Bridges – Sophie Ablett Akhim Patil – Shane David-Joseph Groundsman – Jason May Security officer – Dylan Baldwin Armed policeman – David Constant Newsreader – Deeivya Meir Eizabeth Campbell – Rhyanna Alexander-Davis Nurse – Vee Vimolmal Crew Writer – Russell T Davies Director – Dylan Holmes Williams Music – Murray Gold Producer – Vicki Delow Executive producers – Russell T Davies, Julie Gardner, Jane Tranter, Joel Collins, Phil Collinson RT review by Patrick Mulkern This is ludicrous nonsense and I love it to bits. A cotton-thin premise but written with such skill, played with such conviction and beautifully filmed that it is riveting to watch from start to finish. It’s like being inside someone else’s mind – Ruby’s – and sharing her delirious dream. In a short run of eight, you wouldn’t expect a "Doctor-lite" episode (Ncuti Gatwa had to dash off to Sex Education), but it throws light on Ruby, and the extremely impressive Millie Gibson – only 18 here in her first-filmed episode – carries the story alone. Every emotion, every doubt and every revelation. She’s excellent throughout, even if the ageing process doesn’t entirely convince. But you go with it, as if in a spell, until at last Amanda Walker (in her late 80s with a career stretching back to the 1950s) takes over and gives a similarly poignant and persuasive performance. Russell T Davies’s fast-forward narrative and the pernicious politician, Roger ap Gwilliam, recall the events of RTD’s Years and Years (2019) and PM Vivienne Rook, played by Emma Thompson. In scant screen time, Aneurin Barnard nails "the most dangerous PM in history", eg Mad Jack, and it’s very funny when he freaks out in the stadium, unmanned by the spectral woman. Any drama that powerfully evokes a mystical landscape has me on side. That’s one reason why I enjoyed the forgotten 2017 episode The Eaters of Light by Rona Munro, which imbued the Scottish Highlands with ancient forces. Here it’s Wales, where the clifftops feel like the edge of reality. I love how supernatural elements are creeping in, from the fairy circle that mustn’t be broken, to the mysterious woman, a familiar spirit always at an intangible, unidentifiable 73 yards’ distance. I guessed early on that she was a version of Ruby communicating across time, but the deathbed reveal is still chilling and satisfying. Like the end of 2001: a Space Odyssey. Simultaneously revelatory but opaque, beyond time and explanation. We don’t discover why the Doctor disappears. It's not clear why those who closely encounter the woman flee in fear. It’s as if they’ve seen a ghost, albeit one from the future; but they also succumb to the power of a spell that has Ruby at its heart. They deny her the truth, and of course in narrative terms they could never tell Ruby what or whom they’ve seen or the threads would collapse. The story is Ruby’s, a foundling since birth and now rejected by all."Don’t worry," she says. "Everyone has abandoned me my whole life. But I haven’t been alone for 65 years." In death, she reaches back to her younger self, only just audibly warning, "Don’t step…" to break the spell. I love that 73 Yards doesn’t entirely add up, it doesn’t fully explain itself or need to, and that is part of its magic. Its enchantment keeps working long after the finish. Read more: Episode 1 – Space Babies review Episode 2 – The Devil's Chord review Episode 3 – Boom review Check out more of our Sci-Fi coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to see what's on tonight. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Steven Moffat is back in a tense episode about faith, fatherhood and love.
Story 307 Series 14/Series One – Episode 3 “One wrong move and I go BOOM! All food mixer” – the Doctor Storyline In the year 5087, on the war-ravaged Kastarion 3, the Doctor steps on a landmine. Ruby is determined to help but one false move and they will die, as will the ordained Anglican marines deployed in the vicinity. Without moving, the Time Lord must outwit the deadly technology and the so-called Ambulances that are sweeping the battlefield. First UK broadcast Saturday 18 May 2024 Cast The Doctor – Ncuti Gatwa Ruby Sunday – Millie Gibson John Francis Vater – Joe Anderson Carson – Majid Mehdizadeh-Valoujerdy Splice Alison Vater – Caoilinn Springall Mundy Flynn – Varada Sethu Canterbury James Olliphant – Bhav Joshi Ambulance – Susan Twist Crew Writer – Steven Moffat Director – Julie Anne Robinson Music – Murray Gold Producer – Vicki Delow Executive producers – Russell T Davies, Julie Gardner, Jane Tranter, Joel Collins, Phil Collinson, Julie Anne Robinson, Steven Moffat RT review by Patrick Mulkern After two frantic episodes, Boom offers a welcome gear change. A sophisticated landmine stops Ncuti Gatwa in his tracks, rooting his quicksilver Doctor to the spot almost for the duration. A tense predicament unfolding in real time obliges him and Ruby to catch their breath, and be calm, brave and resourceful. Gatwa and Millie Gibson impress throughout. Fatherhood and blind faith are the themes of the week. The first character seen in close-up personifies both – a sightless Anglican marine and father whose very surname is Vater – "father" in German. To spare our sniggers, this is given an English pronunciation, not the German "farter". Vater will soon be a ghost, an AI hologram, thanks to a so-called "ambulance" that cruelly dispenses death on the battlefield. Its interface offers "Thoughts & Prayers" with all the glibness of politicians and social media types who claim to be "so sad" whenever anyone of note "passes". ("Ambulance" is also the latest guise for Susan Twist, bolstering her increasingly bizarre Who CV.) The Time Lord suggests that faith, especially blind unquestioning faith, has led to most, if not all, conflict in world history. In Boom, humankind has taken it to the stars. Faith in war, faith in technology, and these marines are the Clerics, a militarised religious organisation who first appeared in The Time of Angels (2010). It’s a strong message but interesting that these marines are “ordained Anglican”, a soft target. Imagine substituting any other faith or denomination there and watch that BOOM! It’s great to see Steven Moffat back in the driving seat after a seven-year absence. He still writes with ingenuity, playing with words and tech and, more than anything, tugging the heart. There are three types of love story here. Between father Vater and daughter Splice; between the shy marines Mundy and Canterbury. And yes, as Mundy follows Sunday, this is our first glimpse of Varada Sethu, who’ll join the series as the next companion. The third love is between best friends, the Doctor and Ruby. The little hug they share in the police box doorway right at the end is my favourite moment of the episode. There’s no hint of yearning, no Rose/Martha/Amy doe-eyed attraction. Just deep affection. And a smidgeon of Larkin, slightly misquoted by the Time Lord: "As a sad old man once told me, 'What survives of us is love.'" Read more: Episode 1 – Space Babies review Episode 2 – The Devil's Chord review Check out more of our Sci-Fi coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to see what's on tonight. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Two Maestros – Russell T Davies at an audacious peak and hilariously OTT Jinkx Monsoon – create musical delirium
Story 306 Series 14/Series One – Episode 2 “My notation is Maestro… I am music” – Maestro Storyline In the 1920s, a music teacher inadvertently opens the gateway for a terrifying creature to enter our universe. The demonic Maestro will rob the world of melody, even of the Beatles’ greatest hits – as the Doctor and Ruby discover when they arrive in London 1963. Who can find the right chord to send Maestro back to oblivion? First UK broadcast Saturday 11 May 2024 Cast The Doctor – Ncuti Gatwa Ruby Sunday – Millie Gibson Maestro – Jinkx Monsoon Timothy Drake – Jeremy Limb Henry Arbinger – Kit Rakusen George Martin – Ed White Paul McCartney – George Caple John Lennon – Chris Mason George Harrison – Philip Davies Ringo Starr – James Hoyles Cilla Black – Josie Sedgwick-Davies Tea trolley lady – Sherinne Kayra Anderson Studio producer – Chan Shoker Tea lady – Susan Twist Vinnie – Simon Jason-Smith Elderly woman – Laura June Hudson Shirley Ballas – Herself Johannes Radebe – Himself Murray Gold – Himself Crew Writer – Russell T Davies Director – Ben Chessell Music – Murray Gold Producer – Chris May Executive producers – Russell T Davies, Julie Gardner, Jane Tranter, Joel Collins, Phil Collinson RT review by Patrick Mulkern Released/broadcast/dropped a semi-quaver after the disappointing Space Babies, The Devil’s Chord elevates Doctor Who back into the realms of delirium and genius. No matter that not one note of the Beatles is heard. No matter that this Abbey Road is clearly nowhere near London NW8. No matter that the Fab Four look nothing like the originals but disturbingly like Ann Widdecombe’s discarded love-children. This is peak Russell T Davies. On astonishing top form. Doctor Who at its most audacious and highly entertaining. Maestro is an extraordinary creation – jaw-droppingly OTT, scenery-devouring, a note-perfect performance from Jinkx Monsoon. Hilarious, savage company. A fun night out. A presence that only a Drag Queen Supreme with decades of experience could command. And such are Maestro's metaphysical powers, even the opening theme music can be controlled. Maestro bursts from and recoils into pianos, hunts with a tuning fork, ensnares victims in reams of staves and clamps them in instruments. Maestro sucks music out of the world so that the Beatles and Cilla bleat out abysmal songs, and an orchestra staggers through Three Blind Mice. The simple repetition of the giggle from The Giggle is chilling. If the Toymaker was “a living game”, his child Maestro is “the essence of music itself”, as Russell T Davies establishes a new pantheon of camp superbaddies. It’s vast and intriguing. He's the true maestro at work here. Davies's free-rolling, witty script is well matched by a welter of brilliantly framed, comic-strip shots from director Ben Chessell. Any reservations about the leads lingering from Space Babies evaporate in this episode. Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson skate across the screen. An immensely winning couple with great chemistry. And what a challenge for Murray Gold. To render a world with a dearth of music, write a number of pieces reflecting that, and fighting against it – culminating in a joyful song-and-dance spectacular. There's Always a Twist at the End is like Glee does Sweet Charity – a triumph for all, from costume to choreography, but especially for the composer, who gets a blink-and-you'll-miss cameo at the piano. There are lots of nods to the past. The fact that the 15th Doctor realises his Hartnell incarnation is living across town in Shoreditch at this moment with his granddaughter. We see a sweet cameo for (Laura) June Hudson, now acting, but of course better known among fans as costume designer to Tom Baker. And don't overlook that the actor/musician playing 1920s piano teacher Timothy Drake is Jeremy Limb. He's the son of Roger Limb, who composed music for eight 1980s Who serials, including fan favourite The Caves of Androzani. We carry the past with us, but this re-energised version of Doctor Who is talking to the future. Check out more of our Sci-Fi coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to see what's on tonight. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Ncuti Gatwa sizzles and cute babies talk, but this frenetic season opener fails to excite
Story 305 Series 14/Series One – Episode 1 “If things connect, then you are connecting like crazy” – the Doctor Storyline Ruby Sunday joins the Doctor on his adventures – first stop, prehistory, where she nearly changes evolution. They move on to a space station in orbit above the planet Pacifico del Rio. A baby farm has been abandoned by society and the tiny survivors live in terror of a Bogeyman. First UK broadcast Saturday 11 May 2024 Cast The Doctor – Ncuti Gatwa Ruby Sunday – Millie Gibson Jocelyn Sancerre – Golda Rosheuvel Carla Sunday – Michelle Greenidge Cherry Sunday – Angela Wynter Eric – Mason McCumskey Voice of Eric – Sami Amber Poppy – Sienna-Robyn Mavanga-Phipps Voice of Poppy – Shola Olaitan-Ajiboye Voice of Sandra – Cadence Williams Voice of Marcel – Param Patel Voice of Adjani – Lonnee Archibong Bogeyman – Robert Strange Rico Trieste – Jesús Reyes Ortiz Lucia Colasanto – Yasmine Bouabid Crew Writer – Russell T Davies Director – Julie Anne Robinson Music – Murray Gold Producer – Vicki Delow Executive producers – Russell T Davies, Julie Gardner, Jane Tranter, Joel Collins, Phil Collinson, Julie Anne Robinson RT review by Patrick Mulkern Sometimes programmes with the naffest titles confound expectations. Space Babies is not among them, sadly. It's a new experience for me to dislike something written by Russell T Davies – whom I greatly admire – but my finger wavered over the one-star button, such is my antipathy to this instalment. Cute babies should tug at your heartstrings. Baby-farmed little 'uns abandoned by an uncaring society, even more so. These babies zip around in pushchairs, run an orbital station, and can even talk (clever effects). They're aging but seem to be in arrested development. Never had a hug. This should bring out one's protective parental instinct but weirdly it all lands flat. There's nothing to feel here. We observe a lot of dashing about, fleeing from a monster and hiding in shadows, but the excitement levels simply don't transmit. The bowels of the space station have generated a literal Bogeyman, a creature composed of bogeys and snot – nine years if not light years from the ludicrous dust monsters created from human eye mucus in Sleep No More (2015). Despite the frenetic chases, it poses little tangible threat and ultimately becomes another “space baby” that the Doctor must save, an only-one-of-its-kind with whom the Last of the Time Lords empathises. In an amusing, again quite literal crap ending, the Doctor “lets rip” six years' worth of nappy methane to propel the station into another orbit. Space Babies is positioned as a soft reset, the launch of supposedly another “season one” in some territories, but offers none of the panache of Rose from 2005. The 15th Doctor gives Ruby the same space-portal vista and phone home moment that the ninth Doctor gave Rose in The End of the World, only with far less impact. As a jumping-on point, perhaps wisely, it eschews timeworn mystification. Within the first few minutes, any newbies, along with Ruby, receive a crash course in the basics of Doctor Who, the workings of the Tardis and the latest holding pattern for Time Lords. (It's lovely to hear Murray Gold revisit a motif from his 2007 theme, This Is Gallifrey.) Ncuti Gatwa – buff, dynamic, crackling with energy – often dances across the screen. He is rarely still but benefits whenever such moments come and the camera lingers in close-up on his piercing gaze. Then, he is the Time Lord. Millie Gibson has a different energy, refreshingly playing her age, but is required to flit from thoughts and responses almost beat by beat in the off-kilter pacing. In this fast 45-minute slot, the duo are constantly reacting. It's snap, snap, snap, in search of a rhythm. RTD is expert at setting up clues and threads. The snow from another time is eerie, while a “mystery woman” never fails to be intriguing and has served Doctor Who well for aeons – from River Song to Madame Kovarian, via Missy and Impossible Girl Clara, right back to Susan Foreman in An Unearthly Child. They are in the DNA of Doctor Who. Ruby, the cowled “mother” figure and the woman that keeps popping up played by Susan Twist (here a comms officer on a monitor) are the latest batch and presumably interlinked. You cannot fault RTD's audacity. Both launch episodes are bold, but each to their own tastes. For me, Space Babies is Diaper Who, whereas The Devil's Chord screams to be loved. Check out more of our Sci-Fi coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to see what's on tonight. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Doctor Who: The Church on Ruby Road ★★★★
A spirited reset as Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson encounter mischievous Goblins and Davina McCall
Story 303 2023 Christmas Special “Health and safety – gin and tonic division” – the Doctor Storyline Davina McCall is hoping to help teenage orphan Ruby Sunday trace her parents via DNA records, but in the run-up to Christmas 2023 both women are beset by a spate of increasingly dangerous accidents – caused by mischievous Goblins. Ruby befriends the new Doctor at a London nightclub, while at home her adoptive mother Carla is preparing to foster a baby over Christmas. When this newborn is abducted by the Goblins and taken to their ship in the clouds to be eaten by a Goblin King, the Doctor and Ruby race to the rescue. First UK broadcast Monday 25 December 2023 Cast The Doctor – Ncuti Gatwa Ruby Sunday – Millie Gibson Davina McCall as herself Mrs Flood – Anita Dobson Carla Sunday – Michelle Greenidge Cherry Sunday – Angela Wynter Denzel – Bobby Bradley Trudy – Mary Malone Abdul – Hemi Yeroham Ruth Lyons – Gemma Arrowsmith Goblins – Rachelle Beinart, Jess Judge, Dilu Miah, Giuseppe Lentini, Andrew Francis, Lukas Disparrow Crew Writer – Russell T Davies Director – Mark Tonderai Series producer – Vicki Delow Producer – Chris May Executive producers – Russell T Davies, Phil Collinson, Joel Collins, Julie Gardner, Jane Tranter RT review by Patrick Mulkern I’ve never seen Doctor Who as an inherently Christmassy commodity, but others do and I’m delighted that, after a six-year lull, the show has regained its linchpin status in the BBC1 Christmas Day schedule and has the chance of a bigger audience. In The Church on Ruby Road the yuletide trappings are fairly minimal: a countdown to Christmas, a smattering of snow, a new companion born on Christmas Eve, and street decorations and a tree made deadly. Instead of elves toiling for Santa, a band of mischievous Goblins steal babies to feed their monstrous king. More importantly, this episode offers a soft reset, introducing the new pairing who’ll be fronting the series for the foreseeable future. We’ve already had a decent dose of Ncuti Gatwa (in The Giggle), and he is a bright new star – his own cosmos of charisma – while Millie Gibson displays confidence and innocence, a natural talent remarkable for an actor in her late teens. And she is tested in her first scene, a one-to-one with Davina McCall. Scripted interviews always have a whiff of artifice, no matter how off-the-cuff the participants aim to appear, and this is no exception. Filmed many months into the production schedule, The Church on Ruby Road finds Gatwa and Gibson having already established some chemistry, and future episodes should provide a few more sparks. Their initial encounter in a nightclub is certainly novel as Ruby spies the Doctor in a state of euphoria on the dancefloor, gyrating in a kilt to the sound of Touch by Hybrid Minds. You wouldn’t have caught William Hartnell doing that. Matt Smith, yes. It’s a distant echo of a clubbing scene early on in Russell T Davies’s brilliant Queer as Folk (1999). The series of accidents that befall Ruby and Davina provide amusement and a tinge of peril; they don’t add up to a whole lot of sense, and the Doctor’s explanation about a “tapestry” of coincidence somehow benefiting the Goblins is threadbare. The naughty Goblins are brilliantly realised, their baby-feasting antics lending a dark edge, and their much-vaunted song veering towards The Muppet Show. I have no idea what’s real, what’s puppetry and what’s CGI, which is as it should be, and the steer towards fantasy doesn’t bother me. The grounding of Doctor Who in humdrum reality is Russell T Davies’s forte and when Ruby’s foster-home set-up with mum Carla and gran Cherry starts to feel too perfect, too pleased-with-itself cosy, Davies opens a fridge door on their domestic bliss so that time is distorted, Ruby never came into their lives 18 years earlier, and Carla and Cherry’s outlook is much colder and harsher. Ruby joins a very long line of companions unencumbered by parents. Orphans in time and space, from Susan, Vicki, Dodo and Victoria in the 1960s, through to Amy and Clara of more recent times. So Ruby is no exception, although she is on a mission to find her mum and dad, who appear untraceable. It’s a mystery that will play out in weeks to come. Another, it seems, is the sudden uncanny wisdom of Ruby’s neighbour Mrs Flood, who interrupts the credits roll with “Never seen a TARDIS before?” Anita Dobson is a wonderful presence. I’ve adored her ever since her EastEnders heyday. I’ll never forget a moment at Elstree in 1986 when I held the canteen door open for Anita and, in full Walford drag (her not me), she flashed me a devastating smile and thanked me. I’d met Angie Watts! More Mrs Flood soon, please. Catch up on past episodes in the Radio Times Doctor Who Story Guide
With the Toymaker and a dazzling bi-regeneration, Russell T Davies has the last laugh
Story 303 60th Anniversary Special 3 “Well, that’s all right then!” – the Toymaker Storyline The whole of humanity is being driven nuts by a repetitive giggle in their heads. The Doctor and Donna are airlifted into a towering new UNIT HQ, where they join forces with Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, who has recently recruited the Doctor’s former companion Mel. They deduce that the giggle is an arpeggio emanating from every screen in existence, and originating from the first TV transmission by John Logie Baird using a puppet Stooky Bill. It’s key to a diabolical game being played by the Time Lord’s ancient enemy, the Toymaker. Visiting the Toymaker’s shop in 1925 Soho, the Doctor and Donna are trapped in his labyrinthine domain and menaced by puppet dolls. The Toymaker taunts the Doctor, who challenges him to another game. They race back to the present where the Toymaker seizes UNIT’s galvanic beam. He blasts the Time Lord who “bi-regenerates” into two bodies. They defeat the villain in a game of catch, and one Doctor retires to a family life on Earth with Donna, while the other sets off for fresh adventures. First UK broadcast Saturday 9 December 2023 Cast The Doctor – David Tennant Donna Noble – Catherine Tate The Doctor – Ncuti Gatwa The Toymaker – Neil Patrick Harris Melanie Bush – Bonnie Langford Kate Lethbridge-Stewart – Jemma Redgrave Shirley Bingham – Ruth Madeley Charles Banerjee – Charlie De Melo John Logie Baird – John Mackay Colonel Ibrahim – Alexander Devrient Shaun Temple – Karl Collins Sylvia Noble – Jacqueline King Rose Noble – Yasmin Finney Edward Lawn Bridges – Tim Hudson Middle-aged man – Ross Gurney-Randall Pilot – Glen Fox The Vlinx – Aidan Cook Voice of the Vlinx – Nicholas Briggs Trinity Wells – Lachele Carl Voice of Stooky Sue – Leigh Lothian Dance double – Luke Featherston Crew Writer – Russell T Davies Director – Chanya Button Music – Murray Gold Producer – Vicki Delow Executive producers – Russell T Davies, Julie Gardner, Jane Tranter, Phil Collinson, Joel Collins RT review by Patrick Mulkern “Well, that’s all right then!” The Toymaker’s piercingly sarcastic retort to the Doctor’s ludicrous bleats of exoneration – during a puppet show taunting him about the demises of his past companions – is just one of dozens of flourishes that sing in this third special. And they continue to haunt. I love the Doctor breezing into UNIT HQ and bumping into Mel after some 36 years. Bonnie Langford’s second bite of the Who cherry is richly deserved after her raw deal in the 1980s. (I interviewed Bonnie for Radio Times in 1986, and she wasn’t sure even then whether she’d be back the following year – and here we are in 2023!) Time has been kind to her and, of course, she is magnificent as a Mel reimagined by Russell T Davies. I also love the idea of UNIT boss Kate doling out jobs to the Time Lord’s former companions – and Donna bagging one and doubling her salary in the space of seconds. The Toymaker’s screamingly camp song-and-dance routine to the Spice Girls at UNIT HQ is one of my all-time favourite Doctor Who scenes, accomplished with precision and elan – flinging Kate into a wall, spinning Mel like a top, dealing death by bouncy balls, and showering rose petals in a steal from American Beauty. A jaw-dropping showstopper. I only wish they’d found something acceptable to inflict upon Shirley to include her in the assault (other than the Toymaker gurning at her). We live in strange times; we exist in a Whoniverse where it is now verboten to show Davros in his mobility chair, for fear it might offend people with disabilities, whereas it’s fine for another ancient villain to be as camp as a row of tents and voice racist tendencies in a wavering mittel-European accent. I’m glad I’m not making such nice judgment calls. I adore Neil Patrick Harris as the Toymaker, though, the closest Doctor Who has come to Jonathan Harris’s Dr Smith in the 1960s Lost in Space. The Giggle’s 1966 forebear, The Celestial Toymaker, embroiled William Hartnell’s Doctor and companions Steven and Dodo in far more elaborate challenges than these latest, banal games of cards and catch-a-ball, but the Toymaker’s masterplan of seeding a maddening arpeggio through time from the dawn of TV is very clever. RTD delivers a subtle, salty comment on our modern addiction to screens and our tendency to shout into the ether. The ventriloquist dummy Stooky Bill is hideous, as are his Woodentop family, Stooky Sue and the “babbies”, and it’s hugely satisfying when a merciless Donna smashes and boots them to bits. It almost goes without saying, but Catherine Tate and David Tennant are a superb pairing, a gift for this 60th anniversary. Some fans barked loudly for a multi-Doctor episode and RTD cunningly delivers one in a way that few could have predicted. The “bi-generation” is a joy as the old Doctor teams with the new for the majority of the denouement. We’ve had off-kilter regenerations before and this one opens all manner of possibilities for the future. It’s a perfect wrap for 60 years of Doctor Who that one version of the Time Lord is parked in his happy place to lick his wounds and dump his baggage, and I actually hope this umpteenth Tennant Doctor is left to enjoy his retirement undisturbed. Onwards and forwards with Ncuti Gatwa – in just his briefs or fully attired. He’s electrifying. At the end of these three specials, what fast becomes apparent is that it’s actually Russell T Davies who is the Toymaker, dusting off some long-neglected toys, holding them up to the light again and giving them another game for old time’s sake. He’s also minted shiny new toys that will see him and us through a few more years. With The Giggle, the showrunner has had the last laugh. Catch up on past episodes in the Radio Times Doctor Who Story Guide
A tense space adventure that really stretches its stars – disturbingly so
Story 302 60th Anniversary Special 2 “I’ve never been this far out. To stand here like this, physically unprotected, right on the edge… No-one ever has. Not ever. Till us. And this ship” – the Doctor Storyline With the Tardis damaged, the Doctor and Donna are flung to the furthest outreach of the universe. The police box vanishes, abandoning them in a vast spaceship but they are not alone. They encounter a slow-moving robot and alien entities that can convincingly duplicate the Doctor and Donna’s bodies and memories. They must race to escape before the ship explodes and prevent the aliens from reaching the known universe. But which Doctor and Donna are which? First UK broadcast Saturday 2 December 2023 Cast The Doctor – David Tennant Donna Noble – Catherine Tate Wilfred Mott – Bernard Cribbins Isaac Newton – Nathaniel Curtis Mrs Merridew – Susan Twist Doctor doubles – Daniel Tuite, Ophir Raray, Tommaso de Vincenzo Donna double – Helen Cripps Crew Writer – Russell T Davies Director – Tom Kingsley Music – Murray Gold Producer – Vicki Delow Executive producers – Russell T Davies, Phil Collinson, Joel Collins, Julie Gardner, Jane Tranter RT review by Patrick Mulkern Cloaked in mystery, swarming with ill-founded rumours, Wild Blue Yonder turned out to be an attempt by Russell T Davies to push Doctor Who to the limit. Not just to the edge of universe but to the extent of what the BBC in its partnership with Disney can now afford or, rather, achieve. The design and hardware of the vast spaceship look a million dollars, though (as Doctor Who: Unleashed revealed) much was created by CGI. Gorgeous and impressive CGI. When you’ve rehired David Tennant and Catherine Tate – two stars often on the brink of going supernova – what more do you need really? Well, another Tennant and Tate, identical, but then eerily not, suddenly swollen, malignant and fanged. A two-hander cleverly morphs into a four-hander – and with four of those distended hands being the stuff of nightmares. The distorted crab-like Doctor is at the bounds of body horror acceptable at teatime, surely a steal from the far more grisly The Thing. There must be all sorts of borrows from old movies that greater fans of sci-fi than I will spot, but I like the nods to past Doctor Who (The Wheel in Space and The Krotons from the 1960s). The daft opener with Isaac Newton recalls Steven Moffat’s cheekier moments, and Davies even has the courtesy to acknowledge Chris Chibnall’s lore-bending in Flux. With an unusual, throbbing score from Murray Gold, the tension builds, and while I miss some of key detail as it’s gabbled, I’m kept alert and guessing throughout, and am agog when the right Doctor first makes his escape with the wrong Donna. Without Tennant and Tate, this could slot into a season run as a standard, albeit impressively mounted episode. Is it worthy of “60th special” status? Well, if Tennant and Tate and Russell T Davies aren’t enough for you, how about Bernard Cribbins in his last screen role? The coda is a beautiful touch. Russell promised me at the launch for The Star Beast that there would be a “fitting tribute” to the great man, who died last year aged 93. It’s wonderful that he was able to make one final contribution to Doctor Who. Clearly, had he been well enough, he would have participated more in these specials as old soldier Wilf. Bernard was a master of comedy and pathos – and could convey both in one shot. From Carry On to The Railway Children, The Wombles to Old Jack’s Boat, he was part of our childhood across generations. Doctor Who was the icing on a long career. I met Bernard once and it was like meeting Father Christmas for real. A grandad for all time has passed into legend. Catch up on past episodes in the Radio Times Doctor Who Story Guide
David Tennant, Catherine Tate and Russell T Davies energise the 60th anniversary with a family-friendly blockbuster
Story 301 60th Anniversary Special 1 “Once upon a time, once upon a Time Lord, I had a best friend and her name was Donna Noble. A Time Lord and a human. And we travelled the stars together” – the Doctor Storyline Newly regenerated but with an earlier face, the Doctor returns to Earth where he is swiftly reunited with Donna Noble. Her life has moved on – with husband Shaun and teenage daughter Rose – and her past adventures in the Tardis lie forgotten. She will die if she remembers the Doctor. A furry alien called the Meep crash-lands on Earth and takes refuges with the Nobles as it is hunted down by fearsome Wrarth Warriors. But the Meep is far from meek and benign, and when it reveals its true nature, the planet is once again in danger… First UK broadcast Saturday 25 November 2023 Cast The Doctor – David Tennant Donna Noble – Catherine Tate Voice of the Meep – Miriam Margolyes Rose Noble – Yasmin Finney Shaun Temple – Karl Collins Colonel Chan – Jamie Cho Shirley Bingham – Ruth Madeley Sylvia Noble – Jacqueline King Fudge Merchandani – Dara Lall Major Singh – Ronak Patani Sergeant – Archie Backhouse BBC reporter – Matt Green Soldier – Isabella Carey Chief technician – Anna Martine Freeman Voice of Zogroth – Ned Porteous Voice of Zreeg – John Hopkinson Lads – Harley McEvilly, Max Fincham The Meep – Cecily Fay Wrarth Warriors — Robert Strange, Stephen Love, Jordan Benjamin, Vassili Psaltopoulos Crew Writer – Russell T Davies Director – Rachel Talalay Music – Murray Gold Producer – Vicki Delow Executive producers – Russell T Davies, Phil Collinson, Joel Collins, Julie Gardner, Jane Tranter RT review by Patrick Mulkern Who-oosh… and they’re back! I don’t just mean David Tennant and Catherine Tate, who are reunited as the Doctor and Donna after 15 years – time having barely changed them a whisker. Russell T Davies – showrunner and, for many, Saviour of Doctor Who – is at the controls again, along with many of his old guard: fellow executives Jane Tranter, Julie Gardner and Phil Collinson; and composer Murray Gold lifting us aloft with his exhilarating score. With this A Team reassembled, the familiar package of energy, humour and pizzazz fizz from the screen, albeit with even more heart than we’ve seen before (“I absolutely love her,” says the Doctor. “Oh, do I say things like that now?”), which is odd for an alien blessed with two hearts. The good Doctor has rediscovered his mojo. The newly regenerated 14th incarnation bears Tennant’s features once more (for reasons yet to be explained) but while it’s great to have him back, I’d have found it interesting had Tennant presented a completely different characterisation. But I’m sure I’m missing the point and will be a lone voice there. Doctor 14 crosses timelines with Donna Noble (Tate), whose death was foretold, should they ever meet again. Brash, gobby and funny as ever, she is going about her life, oblivious of alien incursions, while her expanding family is ever protective. Grandad Wilf (Bernard Cribbins in his last role, who was papped while filming) is mentioned but has yet to be seen. The Star Beast has the momentum of a bank-holiday movie for all the family, and if it feels cartoonish, that is just right, because the furball Meep, the Wrarth Warriors and aspects of the plot originated in a comic strip in Doctor Who Weekly (now Magazine) back in 1980. It bears striking similarities with ET – the Extra Terrestrial too, though it must be said that the Spielberg film came out two years after the DWW strip. The Meep is a cute design, even when it finally bares its fangs, and is a lovely voicing job by Miriam Margolyes. New characters include Donna’s daughter Rose, played by Heartstopper’s Yasmin Finney (a trans woman), and Ruth Madeley as Unit’s 56th scientific advisor Shirley Bingham, who comes with a very well-equipped wheelchair. Modern Doctor Who is rightly inclusive, and it’s typical and deft of Davies to make their inclusion key to the resolution. The Star Beast is diverting fun to kick-start the 60th anniversary, with two more specials to come, paving the way for a Christmas reset with Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor. Catch up on past episodes in the Radio Times Doctor Who Story Guide
Doctor Who: The Power of the Doctor ★★★★
Jodie Whittaker bows out in a frenetic BBC Centenary special, packed with faces, friends and foes from the past
Story 300 BBC Centenary Special Storyline When masterpiece paintings and the world’s top seismologists go missing, the Doctor’s former companions Tegan and Ace join forces with Unit, whose leader Kate Stewart sends an SOS to the Tardis from London, 2022. In Russia, 1916, the Master is posing as Rasputin, while hatching a new plan with the Daleks and Cybermen to destroy Earth and erase the Doctor from existence. The Cybermen invade Unit HQ and flatten it, while the Daleks plan to explore the world’s volcanoes and lure the Doctor into a trap. For a while, the Master becomes the Doctor in a forced regeneration, while she sees vestiges of her former selves in a limbo netherworld. The Doctor and her allies beat their enemies, but the Time Lord is mortally wounded and bids Yaz a sad farewell. As many of the Doctor’s former companions gather in a support group, the Time Lord regenerates on a clifftop into a new body with a familiar face from the past… First UK broadcast Sunday 23 October 2022 Cast The Doctor – Jodie Whittaker Yasmin Khan – Mandip Gill Dan Lewis – John Bishop The Master – Sacha Dhawan Tegan Jovanka – Janet Fielding Ace – Sophie Aldred Kate Stewart – Jemma Redgrave The Doctor – Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, Paul McGann, David Bradley, Jo Martin, David Tennant Melanie Bush – Bonnie Langford Jo Jones – Katy Manning Ian Chesterton – William Russell Vinder – Jacob Anderson Graham O'Brien – Bradley Walsh Ashad – Patrick O'Kane Deputy Marshal Arnhost – Joe Sims Train Marshal Halaz – Sanchia McCormack Curator – Danielle Bjelic Alexandra – Anna Andresen Nicholas – Richard Dempsey Jos Slovick – Messenger Dalek and Cybermen voices – Nicholas Briggs Dalek operators – Barnaby Edwards, Nicholas Pegg, Jon Davey Cybermen – Simon Carew, Jon Davey, Chester Durrant, Mickey Lewis, Felix Young, Richard Price, Andrew Cross, Matt Doman Crew Writer – Chris Chibnall Director – Jamie Magnus Stone Music – Segun Akinola Producer – Nikki Wilson Executive producers – Chris Chibnall, Matt Strevens, Nikki Wilson RT review by Patrick Mulkern The Power of the Doctor does not disappoint. It excites. It surprises. It confounds. It confuses. It brings an erratic four-year chapter of this constantly evolving saga to a satisfying close. Showrunner Chris Chibnall started with a clean slate in 2018, deliberately eschewing the trappings of the past, but bows out on a tsunami of the stuff. His frenetic, 90-minute finale is a prime example of what I call "kitchen-sink" Doctor Who. A lot of the favourite old crockery is sloshed around in a bowl and held up to the light to show a new sparkle. Here, we see not just ancient foes but antediluvian Doctors and companions – characters that one might expect in an anniversary (the 60th is only next year) but who have been revisited for a special to mark the BBC’s centenary. And let it be noted, The Power of the Doctor is the 300th story since Doctor Who began in 1963. Despite an abundance of distractions, Jodie Whittaker and Mandip Gill remain the throbbing heart of the story, as the Doctor and Yaz breeze through a rollicking adventure but must prepare for a sorrowful parting. Chibnall’s script pitches the emotion at just the right level for a show like Doctor Who. No love-in. No smooching. Just a convincing display of empathy between two women who accept they can no longer travel together, despite adoring each other as much as the actors playing them clearly do. The composition of the duo, perching on top of the police box gazing at planet Earth, is gorgeous. Dan (John Bishop) is jettisoned surprisingly early, after the well-staged space-train sequence at the beginning. Halfway into the tale, Graham (Bradley Walsh) pops up inexplicably in a volcano, and Vinder (Jacob Anderson) crashes through a wormhole conveniently close to the seat of the action but sadly has little to contribute. This leaves the special clear for a broadly female line-up of heroes – which works in its favour. As Kate Stewart, Jemma Redgrave has been a constant since Chibnall introduced her 10 years ago in the Matt Smith episode The Power of Three. She is always welcome. More significantly, Chibnall reintroduces 1980s companions Tegan and Ace after many decades’ absence. For some fans who’ve followed their adventures in the Big Finish audio dramas (I have not), perhaps they’ve never really gone away. It’s delightful to see actors Janet Fielding and Sophie Aldred stepping with apparent ease back into the mother show. Age has not withered their spirit. Now investigating mysteries of their own volition, Tegan and Ace are stronger, wiser and a shade more humorous. The moment when, after decades, they are reunited with the Doctor as a young woman is priceless. "I think I handled that quite well," shrugs the fractious Tegan. In nods to their heyday, Tegan rolls out her singular cuss "Rabbits!", and Ace is still calling the Time Lord "Professor". More than that, though, they relive their greatest hits. Tegan moves stealthily through an infrastructure evading Cybermen in an echo of the 1982 classic Earthshock, while Ace dons her old bomber jacket and takes a baseball bat to a Dalek, just as she did in 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks. There will always be an appetite for the Time Lord’s archenemies but, after decades of bluster and defeat, I do wish the baddies could gain one victory. The Daleks and Cybermen remain the lousiest shots in the cosmos and are easily dispatched like coconuts in a shy. I enjoyed how Steven Moffat developed the Master, and showed Missy (brilliant Michelle Gomez) seeking redemption, but under Chibnall, the Master has reverted to the ridiculous; his motivation unclear, his disguises daft. Why is he bothering to pose as Rasputin with blue eyes and a manky beard in Siberia and St Petersburg in 1916? I remain baffled by the "selective regeneration" that the Master forces upon the Doctor. Is Sacha Dhawan playing a new Doctor, or the Master inside the Doctor’s body and mind? Or both? Sure, he’s an obsessive weirdo and loves dressing up, but now in the middle of a blithering "Master’s Dalek Plan", he has time spare to robe himself in a mishmash of former Doctors’ garb, with accoutrements such as Doctor Two’s recorder and Doctor Five’s lapel celery. Mercifully, we’re spared jelly babies. The air of confusion isn’t helped by the Master’s TARDIS being a minimally re-dressed, relit version of the Doctor’s horrible domain. I do love the devilish trick he plays on Tegan, though, with the Cyberman figurine in fact being a Russian doll, a "tissue-compressed" but reversible Trojan horse. The attack on UNIT HQ is quite fun if you enjoy a lot of clashing and banging. The Taskforce’s new skyscraper home is an architectural miracle, which can topple into itself, leaving its fleeing personnel safe on the forecourt, merely puffed with dust. There are various daft ideas in this special, such as a Dalek being able to breach the TARDIS defences to lay an obvious trap. Why hasn’t this gambit occurred to them before? Because it should not happen. Another is the hologram of the Doctor. We’ve seen versions of this since Christopher Eccleston’s last episode, but here the holo-Doc is a tad too interactive. Why shouldn’t a holo-Doc always appear wherever and whenever to talk their companions through a crisis? It’s playful and forgivable, though – and allows Ace and Tegan to interact with their own Doctors. Yes, old Doctors are back in the Whoniverse. What a gift! Not just Jo Martin’s refreshingly strident turn from recent years and David Bradley’s endearing take on the "original" Doctor, but now Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy and Paul McGann. It’s poignant to see this quarter of venerable gentlemen, their aged countenances glossed over in a throwaway line. All still possess the Doctorly charm. But why these incarnations and not others? Obviously, some of the actors are no longer with us and their parts haven’t been recast, whereas others were unlikely to be asked or are being withheld for the coming 60th. A further fleeting but incandescent blast from the past comes near the end at the inaugural gathering of a kind of Companions Anonymous. Yaz, Graham and Dan join Kate, Tegan and Ace as well as three other souls whose lives were turned upside down by the Time Lord. Thus, Mel (Bonnie Langford), Jo (Katy Manning) and Ian (William Russell) return to the programme for the first time in (respectively) 35, 49 and a staggering 57 years – representing 1980s, '70s and even '60s Doctor Who. Another gift for this BBC centenary. All-too-quickly glimpsed. And all proving that, across a lifetime and long careers, there’s no resisting the allure and the power of the Doctor.
The classic monsters are faithfully resurrected but resurface in maritime mediocrity
Story 299 Easter special 2022 “Since when do Sea Devils have a ship?” – the Doctor Storyline Pirate queen Madam Ching raids a coastal village in 1807 China and unwittingly releases a Sea Devil warrior, which has been encased for centuries as a stone statue. Ching is on a mission to find the lost treasure of legendary sailor Ji-Hun, to pay the ransom for her kidnapped crew. The Sea Devils unleash a giant sea serpent to attack Ching’s ship. The Doctor, Yaz and Dan join forces with Ching to fend off the lizards and infiltrate their base to stop their latest plan to flood the Earth. First UK broadcast Sunday 17 April 2022 Cast The Doctor – Jodie Whittaker Yazmin Kahn – Mandip Gill Dan Lewis – John Bishop Ying Ki – Marlowe Chan-Reeves Madam Ching – Crystal Yu Chief Sea Devil – Craige Els Ji-Hun – Arthur Lee Ying Wai – David K S Tse Sea Devils – Jon Davey, Simon Carew, Chester Durrant, Richard Price, Mickey Lewis, Andrew Cross Crew Writers – Ella Road, Chris Chibnall Director – Haolu Wang Music – Segun Akinola Designer – Dafydd Shurmer Executive producers – Chrish Chibnall, Matt Strevens, Nikki Wilson RT review by Patrick Mulkern I feel a bit sorry for today’s young viewers. I grew up watching Doctor Who in the 1970s and, while it might not have been immense every single week, we could rely on a fairly steady stream of classics – and scares and chills agogo. Sitting through Legend of the Sea Devils is like watching seaweed dry. The 50-minute Easter special has a problem in common with so much modern Doctor Who in that, while it abounds in action, CGI spectacle and bombastic music, there’s a dearth of tension and suspense, there’s no time for a slow build, no eeriness, no real appetite for proper frights or even the mildest stab at the macabre. Doctor Who can be, and is well-known for being, behind-the-sofa or edge-of-the-seat viewing but making that is almost a forgotten art. The closest this era has come to it was Village of the Angels in last year’s Flux. Kudos to Chris Chibnall, though, for bothering to bring back the Sea Devils. They are legendary Doctor Who monsters – first emerging from the Solent half a century ago – and their resurrection is long overdue. Apart from fleeting glimpses since (and a mask used out of context in a 1981 Blake’s 7), there was one dismal rematch 38 years ago (alongside their lizard cousins, the Silurians) in Warriors of the Deep. Otherwise, flap all to write home about. Perhaps mindful of the design compromises of the Silurians’ return in The Hungry Earth (2010), Chibnall has steered costume designer Ray Holman and the monster-making team to honour faithfully the 1970s Sea Devil look – in particular, the turtle-like head with gills sculpted by John Friedlander in 1971. They’ve clothed the creatures in more appropriate garb than the originals’ ragged blue fish-nets, and there’s now moderate animation around their eyes and mouth – more than the rigid 70s masks could muster. That said, these Sea Devils still don’t enjoy a Big Moment, a major chill. This lot break out of stone, wield swords, fly, steer a huge ship and pull faces – but what they don’t do is get wet. Not a drop of water on them. The big thing a Sea Devil does, its raison d’être, is emerging spookily from the sea. But not here. This is like having a Dalek come on who doesn’t exterminate, a Cyberman who doesn’t want to convert you, a Weeping Angel that doesn’t send someone back in time. There’s not a solitary or mass emergence from the waves – such as their predecessors enjoyed 50 years ago, searing themselves into the memories and nightmares of the nation’s children. It wasn’t Jaws but the first airing of The Sea Devils and its two repeats that made nippers think twice about wading into the sea in the 1970s. The South China Sea is an unusual setting for the series and for the most part laudably realised, because of course the cast and crew couldn’t actually go anywhere near the Far East but were stuck filming in studios and at a farm and harbourside in Wales. Something is amiss in this production, though. Sloppy script-editing and choppy footage editing lead to incoherent storytelling. There’s no time to care for the slain in the village. There’s no build-up to Yaz and Dan suddenly springing a net around the Sea Devil. There’s painful exposition and name-calling and saying-what’s-happening-as-it’s-happening, while in the same space to-ing and fro-ing in time lead to ennui and confusion. The vast sea monster remains a puzzle. The costumes look beautiful but also as though they were sewn together yesterday, not clothes worn day in day out by poor folk living in 19th-century conditions. Madam Ching (Crystal Yu) is remarkably well-appointed and muck-free for a desperado who spends her life at sea. Conveniently (or perhaps Covid-driven), she is crewless yet manages to navigate and control an entire sailing ship as a one-woman captain plying the South China Sea. Ludicrous. Ying Kei (Marlowe Chan Reeves), the young villager whose father is slain, cleaves to the pirate queen like a lovestruck companion. More should have been made of Ching’s similarity in spirit to the female Doctor. They missed the boat on that, too. It’s lovely to see the Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) and Yaz (Mandip Gill) dressing for the occasion in fine, flattering silks from the moment they step outside the Tardis. John Bishop is visibly enjoying Dan’s absurd panto-pirate drag but is a spare part, except to provide lighter moments and prod at the embers of the Doctor/Yaz love match. Even in this day and age it seems bold to be venturing down this path with the Time Lord but it can only be a positive step and, as the Doctor alludes, she/he (or should it be “they”?) once had a wife (River Song), and that was a keenly felt and persuasive union. Let it not be forgotten that the first three Doctors showed flickers of interest in women they encountered, and Doctor Who has long discarded the vogue for ascetic, cosmic eunuchs portrayed by Tom Baker and Peter Davison. Surely, Chibnall’s co-writer Ella Road was brought in to finetune the touching heart-to-hearts between the two women. Nearing the end of this era, it’s a happy pay-off for viewers who have invested in this burgeoning romance and for Whittaker and Gill, who’ve formed a close bond in real life over the past four years. This progressive attitude is the most refreshing aspect of this maritime mediocrity. Hopefully, the Sea Devils will be put into storage and rise again soon with less wishy-washy material. Just the so-called Centenary Special to come now, concluding the Chibnall/Whittaker era later this year. Let’s hope it is what it promises: something special.
Multiple extermination and unrequited love in a time-looped storage facility
Story 298 New Year’s Day special 2022 Storyline On New Year’s Eve, customer Nick turns up for his annual visit to a storage facility, whose owner/manager Sarah he has a crush on. The Doctor resets the Tardis after it was damaged by the Flux, inadvertently putting the storage facility in a time loop, which reduces by one minute with each repetition. An extermination squad of Daleks is on her tail, tracking down and killing the Time Lord and the humans within each loop. With time running out, can they outwit the Daleks? First UK broadcast Sunday 1 January 2022 Cast The Doctor – Jodie Whittaker Yasmin Khan – Mandip Gill Dan Lewis – John Bishop Sarah – Aisling Bea Nick – Adjani Salmon Mary – Pauline McLynn Dalek voices – Nicholas Briggs Dalek operators – Barnaby Edwards, Nicholas Pegg, Jon Davey Karl – Jonny Dixon Crew Writer – Chris Chibnall Director – Annetta Laufer Producer – Sheena Bucktowonsing Executive producers – Chris Chibnall, Matt Strevens, Nikki Wilson RT review by Patrick Mulkern Fifty years to the day since Doctor Who legends Jon Pertwee, Katy Manning and Nicholas Courtney faced the Day of the Daleks – and I was sitting there on New Year’s Day 1972, glued to our temperamental telly – the winning team of Jodie Whittaker, Mandip Gill and John Bishop gamely take on the Eve of the Daleks. This special has been touted in some quarters as "a romcom with Daleks". If that’s showrunner Chris Chibnall’s aim, it falls down on the "com" front. Odd, given that most of the cast (Bishop, Aisling Bea, Adjani Salmon and Pauline McLynn) are more recognised for comedy. Yes, there’s the occasional amusing line or incident but no more than in a standard episode. The wittiest stroke is an in-joke when an indignant Dalek blurts, "I Am Not Nick!" – voiced, of course, by Nicholas 'Nick' Briggs. Eve of the Daleks fares better in the "rom" department. Sarah and Nick are a couple of weirdos. He’s weird for using the storage facility only to preserve the effects of his failed relationships, dated with Post-It notes. She’s weird for keeping Elf Storage open for her sole customer Nick and his annual visits on New Year’s Eve. Despite strong performances from Bea and Salmon, they remain to the end a mismatched, unconvincing pair. Far more romantic heft comes in the shape of Yaz. Just when she and Dan are looking superfluous to the material, making up numbers as Dalek fodder, Dan cuts to the heart of the matter and asks Yaz outright about her feelings for the Doctor: "Have you ever told her? How you feel about her?" For the first time she has to vocalise her adoration of the Time Lord. "I’ve never told anyone. Not even myself." This is by far the loveliest aspect of the special. We’ve been here before with Rose and Martha’s adoration of David Tennant’s Doctor and Amy’s flirtation with Matt Smith’s. All long ago. Yaz-and-the-Doctor has been simmering for years. Mandip Gill plays the emotion subtly and tenderly, as does Whittaker, who, like all incarnations before her, must rise above earthly desire and romantic entrapment. The Daleks are on sturdy form in their third successive New Year’s Day special after Resolution (2019) and Revolution of the Daleks (2021). Interesting that no matter what reboots they undergo, they always revert to the gorgeous bronze models brought in back in 2005, even if the latest trio are tooled up with an eight-barrel gun at the tip of the exterminating shaft. As they emerge from shadows and time and again get the better of the Doctor – "Daleks learn!" – their menace is enhanced, even if the repetitive rounds of extermination soon lose impact and engender the ennui of a video game. The time loop structure, losing a minute each time, is worthy of former showrunner Steven Moffat, while the use of a countdown in real time (albeit looped) also recalls Chibnall’s underrated Doctor Who debut episode 42 way back in 2007. If there’s one glitch, it’s how Sarah’s mammy (McLynn) keeps phoning, when she is outside the time loop. Eve of the Daleks succeeds as a contained piece, a 'locked-room' thriller, sagging only a little in the middle but gaining momentum in the final minute’s loop. Anyone who’s ever spent time wandering through the warren of a dimly lit storage facility will know how damned creepy they can be – even without a Dalek materialising at every turn. The final explosion and demolition of the multi-storey building is another of this era’s impressive CGI effects. If you think the chap at the end, gawping at the fireworks, is vaguely familiar, he is Karl (Jonny Dixon), the crane operator that Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor saved in her debut episode in 2018. That seems so long ago, and now we’re approaching the end of days for this Doctor, just as Whittaker has become so persuasive in the role. Only two more specials to go… The teaser for the next episode ends with a further echo of 1972 – a glimpse of a Sea Devil. Classic monster lives again! Chibnall brought back their land cousins, the Silurians, with some success in The Hungry Earth in 2010, so I’m cautiously hopeful for Legend of the Sea Devils.
The return of the six-part serial format brings chilling highs and confusing lows as the Time Lord takes on the Flux and the Ravagers, and learns more about her own mysterious past
Story 297 Storyline As a destructive storm cloud called Flux rips across the universe, Ravagers Swarm and Azure, ancient enemies of the Time Lords, break free of their bonds and pursue the Doctor. Sontarans take advantage of the crisis to invade Earth across its history. The Doctor and Yaz befriend Dan, a Liverpudlian who has been rescued by a canine Lupari, Karvanista. Their adventures take them to the Crimean War, the Temple of Atropos on the planet Time, and to a village in Devon, 1967, beset by Weeping Angels. Yaz, Dan and scientist Professor Jericho become trapped in the early 1900s, while the Doctor is “recalled” to the mysterious Division, where she meets Tecteun, the woman she once called “Mother”. Tecteun holds the secrets of the Doctor’s lost past in a fob watch and reveals that Division unleashed Flux to extinguish our universe as they move on to another. As Swarm and Azure gain control of Division, the Doctor is trisected across time and space where she and her various allies strive to avert the ravages of Flux, while enemies such as Sontarans, Daleks and Cybermen die in the conflagration… First UK broadcasts Chapter One: The Halloween Apocalypse – 31 October 2021 Chapter Two: War of the Sontarans – Sunday 7 November 2021 Chapter Three: Once, Upon Time – Sunday 14 November 2021 Chapter Four: Village of the Angels – Sunday 21 November 2021 Chapter Five: Survivors of the Flux – Sunday 28 November 2021 Chapter Six: The Vanquishers – Sunday 5 December 2021 Cast The Doctor – Jodie Whittaker Yasmin Khan – Mandip Gill Dan Lewis – John Bishop Professor Eustacius Jericho – Kevin McNally Karvanista – Craige Els Swarm – Sam Spruell Azure/Anna – Rochenda Sandall Diane – Nadia Albina Vinder – Jacob Anderson Bel – Thaddea Graham Grand Serpent/Prentis – Craig Parkinson Claire Brown – Annabel Scholey Joseph Williamson – Steve Oram Kate Stewart – Jemma Redgrave Fugitive Doctor – Jo Martin Awsok/Tecteun – Barbara Flynn Mary Seacole – Sara Powell Ritskaw/Skaak/Stenck – Jonathan Watson Kragar/Svild/Sentag/Shallo – Dan Starkey Old Swarm – Matthew Needham En Sentac – Sarah Amankwah K-Toscs – Charlie Oscar Wilder – Richard Tate James Stonehouse – Paul Leonard Wilma – Heather Bleasdale Kev – John May Jon – Gunnar Cauthery Eileen – Sue Jenkins Neville – Paul Broughton General Logan – Gerald Kyd Passenger – Jonny Mathers Priest Triangle – Nigel Richard Lambert Sonya Khan – Bhavnisha Parmer Police officer – Chantelle Pierre Reverend Shaw – Alex Frost Gerald – Vincent Brimble Jean – Gemma Churchill Mrs Hayward – Penelope McGhie Namaca – Blake Harrison Peggy – Poppy Polivnick Farquhar – Robert Bathurst Millington – Nicholas Blane Waiter – Guy List Kumar – Kammy Darweish Alfie – George Caple Scouser – Sonny Walker Cybermen and Dalek voices – Nicholas Briggs Mouri voice – Amanda Drew Weeping Angels – Barbara Fadden, Isla Moody, Lowri Brown Ood – Simon Carew Ood voice – Silas Carson Crew Writers – Chris Chibnall, Maxine Alderton (4 only) Directors – Jamie Magnus Stone (1,2,4), Azhur Saleem (3,5,6) Producer – Pete Levy Executive producers – Chris Chibnall, Matt Strevens, Nikki Wilson RT reviews by Patrick Mulkern The Halloween Apocalypse Have you been drooling? With Russell T Davies poised on the horizon – in magnificent saviour mode – preparing his banquet for Doctor Who’s Diamond Jubilee in 2023, unlucky series 13 had all the allure of a tray of stale sandwiches few fancied at the wake of the unlamented deceased. But, as the BBC publicity machine went into hyperdrive – hawking its wares, rather than hiding them, as was the way in recent years – there was a sense of mounting anticipation. Could the maligned showrunner Chris Chibnall drizzle his sweet pumpkin juice over these Halloween offerings and conjure some spooky magic? Well, yes, it seems so. Would watching The Halloween Apocalypse feel like Sunday-night homework? Not a bit of it. Flux – Chapter One: The Halloween Apocalypse gets off to a rollicking start. Mid escapade. High peril. No hanging about. Well, unless you’re Yaz and the Doctor, who, as we join them, are dangling from a “gravity bar” over an ocean of roiling acid. The pace is set for a fast, fun-packed opener, impressively achieved by Chibnall and his team in the face of COVID. Shorn of former sidekicks Ryan and Graham, the Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) and Yaz (Mandip Gill) make good sparring partners, fielding a balance of amity and antagonism, and falling into the trad pattern in which the Time Lord withholds vital information, imperilling the companion’s life, who in turn proves to be plucky and resourceful. It’s great to have this show fronted by two heroic women. In times long gone, Doctor Who producers sometimes described their female co-lead as “something for the dads”. Oddly, in 2021, the dad-pleasing equivalent may be that endangered TV beast: Middle-Aged White Man – in the shape of John Bishop. No worries that he’s a comedian. He’s following a fine Doctor Who tradition of casting performers more established in light entertainment: Roy Castle, Bernard Cribbins, Jon Pertwee, Catherine Tate, Matt Lucas… Bishop is an instant hit as handy Dan. “Official Scouse”, he’s down on his luck on the work front and in the romance department. We first meet him exuding pride in his city, posing as a guide at the Museum of Liverpool. Dan Lewis is the kind of guy who helps out at a food bank, even though his own fridge and cupboard are bare. A good soul. And a creditable addition to the series. As it transpires, the comedy foil is Karvanista, a dog-alien played with funny bones and a Northern twang by Craige Els (another Liverpudlian). Not so much a villain but a saviour of mankind – “Man’s best friend” – he’s one of seven billion canine Lupari, each with their own “designated human” to rescue from the incoming Flux. His Wookie bearing and shih tzu fizzog are an adorable, semi-comic creation, while particularly impressive are new aliens the Ravagers. Known prosaically as Swarm and Azure, they are mighty creepy and will chill younger viewers. Their method of dispensing death is nasty – simply meeting one of them seems to be a shattering experience… Swarm, an aeons-old menace with regenerative powers and a crystalline blue appearance, reminds me of Eldrad, last of the Kastrians, from Sarah Jane Smith’s 1976 swansong, The Hand of Fear. Toss in some Sontarans (still not very menacing and mostly comedic; their commander likes to wear a helmet in his own spaceship) and a lone Weeping Angel (a tensely staged sequence), and Chibnall has a few juicy elements frothing in his hubble-bubble cauldron. What is the relevance of Vinder, the officer at deep-space Observation Post Rose? Where does real-life 19th-century philanthropist Joseph Williamson fit in? (To this day his tunnels under Liverpool’s Edge Hill remain a curiosity.) Why has Azure lured Dan’s date Diane into a gloom-hole? Who is the Angel-beset Claire and how does she already know the Doctor? We’re pointedly reminded of all these disparate strands in a weak montage in the crescendo of an otherwise strong cliffhanger as the maelstrom of the Flux ravages through the Tardis and towards Earth. In all, The Halloween Apocalypse is an engaging appetiser and revives my dimensionally transcendental taste-buds. Apologies for all the culinary terms. Maybe I am hungry. Maybe I’m just quite taken with the publicity shot of John Bishop brandishing a wok. Dan and his pan… Wallop! This is Chris Chibnall’s Halloween-night stir-fry. He’s turned up the heat. Let’s hope he can keep his pan sizzling across all six weeks. * War of the Sontarans Their battle cry may be “Sontar-ha!” but this is more “Sontar-huh!” – so what!? The second episode, or rather Chapter Two of Flux, has potential. Sontarans en masse. Sontarans with a robust, tweaked design. Sontarans looming over Liverpool Docks and fighting in the Crimean War. Sontarans claiming Earth as an outpost (as Linx once did in The Time Warrior) and invading time (as they did in, er, The Invasion of Time). Sontarans played by quirky actors: Dan Starkey (in such roles since 2008) and Jonathan Watson, who I loved in BBC comedies Bob Servant Independent and Two Doors Down. Despite all that, a lot of this hour-long conflict is pat and flat. Too much battle waffle and not enough action. The “War” promised by the title is a flash in the pan, although the brief CGI aerial shots are done well. I’m not expecting graphic massacre and screaming agony at teatime, but this war is anaemic. It has largely happened already or happens off-screen. The Sontarans, among Doctor Who’s most sadistic foes, have become comedic grunts, lousy shots and are easily thwarted. The potato-heads are still SpudULike not SpudULoathe. Chapter Two runs 10 minutes longer than the first and the one that follows and, at its best, is intriguing without for a moment rising to levels of excitement. Intriguing, that is, if you’ve the patience to follow where this protracted yarn is slowly leading. It gets off to a good start, though. The Doctor comes to in a black-and-white wasteland, seeing a nightmarish crooked house in the sky. She’s reunited with Yaz and Dan on the corpse-strewn battlefield of Sebastopol, where they soon meet a miraculously un-grubby Mary Seacole (Sara Powell). A Sontaran commander clomps through mist on a horse. Yaz and Dan fizzle out of time in a blue haze, and the Doctor is unable to find any door into her police box. Soon, she has one of her time-worn clashes with a military nitwit, who to her disgust (like her long-ago chum the Brigadier) eventually blows up the invaders. She also turns yet another historical figure into an ersatz companion. Good that it’s Mary Seacole when it could so easily have been Florence Nightingale. And handy that Mrs Seacole has so few wounded to tend, she can stand around nattering and act as an overnight observation scout for the “Doctoress”. Fittingly, the heroes do the decent thing and exploit the Sontarans’ weaknesses in both time zones. We’re told there’s been a “temporal implosion”, but does that mean that in the 1850s the Empire of Sontar no longer overwrites Russia and China, and that in the present their forces are no longer all over the planet? Unclear. Elsewhere, or to be precise in the Temple of Atropos on a planet called Time, Yaz and Vinder encounter prissy floating lights (akin to the Megara in The Stones of Blood). They’re led into the domain of the Mouri, “creatures who hold time in this universe together”. If you say so. Nice of them to do so. Funny we’ve never heard of them before. Vinder (Jacob Anderson) has yet to make much impression. As the Sontar-scenarios sag, it’s a relief when Chris Chibnall puts his newly minted aliens back on the chessboard. I’d almost forgotten them. Doggy Karvanista – or Bungle-from-Bolton as I now think of him – is still sniffing after Dan, and their developing bond, despite initial antipathy, is amusing. I’m also rather taken with sinister siblings Swarm and Azure – excellent masks/make-up and delicious performances from Sam Spruell and Rochenda Sandall as swishy fiends just on the edge of camp. On balance, I’m enjoying Doctor Who’s return to the serial format with tense cliffhangers. Each episode of Flux offers two. There’s a quasi-hanger before the title sequence, which would work better with that “Eeaaoowwhh!” musical sting, instead of a muted segue into the sludgy current version of the theme tune. The closing cliffhanger is also robbed of effect when, moments later, the Next Time trailer reveals the heroes alive and well in a completely different setting. * Once, Upon Time Chris Chibnall’s Flux has crossed the threshold into Chris Chibnall’s Delirium. If Chapter One showed the first signs of fever and Chapter Two a momentary lull, Chapter Three is like waking up in the night with the full-blown screaming ab-dabs. Once, Upon Time is one of the most dizzying and blatantly confusing episodes of Doctor Who – and I’ve sat through a fair few – which makes it tricky to engage with. Calling the overall six-part story Flux, establishing that space and time are disrupted and having characters stricken by "temporal haze" (flitting in and out of phase from one person and body to another, and between locations and times) may excuse a lot of seemingly random events, but there has to be the hope of coherence, a glimmer of internal logic. Of course, there can be pleasure in obfuscation and rewards from delayed explanations, and this instalment does start to make sense towards the end, maybe because the standard human brain has jettisoned much of the nonsensical detail that has gone before. At a time when Doctor Who needs to broaden its appeal, alienating its potential audience rather than drawing it in is a risky business. Viewers poised between Countryfile and the Strictly Results show couldn’t be blamed for fretting that their BBC One signal is on scramble or for turning elsewhere. Devoted fans will probably derive satisfaction from sifting through and unpicking this kaleidoscope of images and information, especially the notes on the Doctor’s past lives, forgotten deeds and involvement with "the Division". Followers who abhorred The Timeless Children (the series 12 finale in 2020), especially the dismally "Mastersplained" new backstory for the Doctor, will likely throw up their arms in horror as those missing chunks of the Doctor’s past are given further currency and legitimised by the events of Once, Upon Time. But this is where some of the gems lie. One glistening jewel is the unexpected return of "Doctor Ruth" (the “Fugitive Doctor” as she is billed), the past incarnation played majestically by Jo Martin. Any excuse for another glimpse of her, please. The same can be said for Barbara Flynn, who elevates everything she touches. She only has one scene, as the enigmatic Awsok, some superior being (wielding a screwdriver, note), who teases the Doctor with snippets about the origins of the Flux. Jodie Whittaker sails through all these encounters and is on top of the confusion, but I’d love to have been a fly on the wall when the cast first received this script. "Um, who am I now, where am I now and what is this all about…?" perhaps. It’s hard to pin down Yaz and Dan in this piece. Some of the time they aren’t quite in character or are possibly avatars for other people. There’s sharper focus on Vinder, the lost commander. I like his look, his changing hairdos, his jackets… he can even rock fingerless mitts. Jacob Anderson maintains sensitivity and charisma, even while Vinder’s backstory becomes staggeringly dull. He’s engaged in a crisis of conscience alongside a subdued Craig Parkinson (from Line of Duty) as the Grand Serpent (more of a Limp Grass Snake) and two bored-looking non-speaking-artist aliens. It’s charming when Vinder sends his love message across time to Bel. Appealing played (and narrated) by Thaddea Graham (from Netflix’s The Irregulars), she reminds me of the lone fugitive types that used to populate Blake’s 7. There’ll surely be more of their fractured romance as Flux proceeds. The delirium calls forth hovering gold Daleks, easily picked-off Cybermen (one of whom is unexpectedly talkative; nice work for Nicholas Briggs) and a flutter of Weeping Angels. Chibnall has certainly delivered some banging cliffhangers. And Chapter Three’s hits home as the Angels penetrate the Doctor’s inner sanctum. “The Angel has the Tardis!” she cries, and it is deeply chilling. Roll on, Chapter Four, which with any luck will be a blinking nightmare. In a good way. * Village of the Angels After last week’s needlessly complicated, off-putting concoction, it is a relief to turn to Chapter Four and heap praise: thrilling storytelling, faultless production, terrific performances and a jaw-dropping conclusion… in sum, or by multiplication, this is several orders of magnitude greater than anything that has Fluxed before. Expertly directed by the fittingly named Jamie Magnus Stone, Village of the Angels is an hour of drama that is coherent despite its complexity, exciting and satisfying as a slice of TV sci-fi. Showrunner Chris Chibnall and his co-writer for one week, Maxine Alderton, make a strong partnership. (She wrote the 2020 episode The Haunting of Villa Diodati, one of Jodie Whittaker’s finest outings.) It must have been both daunting and a buzz to be the first Doctor Who writers other than Steven Moffat to be allowed to play with his nightmarish creations, the Weeping Angels. Not only to honour what’s been established in the past but to flutter their wings further. These "quantum-locked" statues gain more mobility and agency. An Angel has hijacked the Tardis! They’re in alliance with the Division (shady Gallifreyan operatives from the Doctor’s forgotten past). We’ve long known "an image of an Angel becomes an Angel" – now one can emerge from a 1960s telly, even from a torn-up pencil sketch. A cluster of Angels have the power to take the whole village of Medderton "out of space, out of time", while mounting an attack on Professor Jericho’s house, bashing down his doors. "Are they really ringing my doorbell?" he gasps. We also learn what happens if you’ve already been Angel-zapped into the past but, like elderly couple Gerald and Jean, are foolish enough to stray near an Angel again. Instant petrification and disintegration. There are reminders of The Time of Angels in Matt Smith’s first season 11 years ago, when Amy Pond had an Angel in her mind’s eye and saw her arm turning to stone, and when the Angels first found a means to speak (through dead cleric Bob). These aspects are developed through Claire Brown, a "percipient" with second sight – as the Doctor says, "You had a premonition of an Angel in your mind and now it’s living there." Claire’s arms turn to stone and she sprouts Angel wings. The blue-stonewashed encounter between Angel-Claire and the Doctor is riveting (superb performances from Annabel Scholey and Jodie Whittaker). Here the imagery starts to become biblical. This rogue Angel is like Satan, the fallen angel, tempting the Christ-like Doctor, if not in the desert, on a beach where the sea is parting. She dangles the one prize the Doctor desires: her erased memories. Temptation also comes elsewhere in the form of Azure, high on a mountain, enticing the dispossessed masses, while Bel leads Namaca (Blake Harrison) not into temptation and is his saviour. Here endeth the lesson. Kevin McNally is strong as Professor Eustacius Jericho and is no stranger to Doctor Who. He was one of the few plus points in Colin Baker’s debut stinker, The Twin Dilemma, 37 years ago. Jericho is steadfast in the face of unimaginable horror, having been "one of the first British soldiers into Belsen", albeit insulted by an Angel via his TV set as "loveless, childless, hiding in academia for fear of the real world… a life of failure". He and Claire are like a 20th-century Doctor/companion pairing, also extremely close to Dougray Scott and Jessica Raine's characters in the 2013 episode Hide. They're people we'll want to spend more time with as Flux enters its latter stages. Village of the Angels presents the quaint English setting of Medderton cut off from the outside world and is very John Wyndham (The Midwich Cuckoos). It is of course redolent of 1971-vintage Doctor Who. The Jon Pertwee classic The Daemons saw the village of Devil’s End isolated and beset by a living statue that vaporised the locals. (Bok the gargoyle, who terrified me as a nipper, was a clear antecedent for the Weeping Angels.) I’ve no qualms about referencing Who’s ancient past when Chibnall does it freely himself. He peppers Whittaker’s dialogue with the fan-pleasing catchphrases of her predecessors: Pertwee’s "I reversed the polarity of the neutron flow" and Patrick Troughton’s "When I say ‘run’, run!". Chapter Four brims with tense sequences (the Angels’ pursuit of the Doctor’s party in Jericho’s "assignation tunnel") and impressive visuals. The illusion of Medderton teetering on the edge of space, and the split-screen between day and night and 1901/1967 are excellently achieved by CGI. There are smaller, precise FX such as Claire’s pupils suddenly dilating "on camera". The most striking image is saved to last with the hideous petrification of Whittaker’s Doctor into a Weeping Angel. It elevates this segment into "stone-cold classic". As a final Flux flourish, the credits roll is interrupted (a rare event; Nick Frost’s Santa did it at the close of Death in Heaven in 2014). It bleeds into an extended scene with Vinder. Finally, the trailer for Chapter Five flings out a mini-reveal of Jemma Redgrave as Kate Stewart, the Unit leader introduced by Chibnall in 2012 and last seen six years ago. More on her next time… Survivors of the Flux Chapter Five screams "penultimate". It’s nowhere as exciting as Chapter Four but it does advance the Flux storyline and Chris Chibnall’s wider myth-making scheme, while showing Grandmaster Chibs placing characters in key positions on his multi-dimensional chessboard, poised to make his last moves. Among several holding patterns, the most impressive is 'Around the World with Professor Jericho', who is in full Phileas Fogg mode with his companions Yaz and Dan. To be fair, it’s more sharp-as-a-tack Yaz and her blundering associates Jericho and Dan. Stranded in the early 1900s, the trio are doggedly pursuing a vague directive from the Doctor, which leads them from Mexico to Constantinople to Nepal to the Great Wall of China, and thence back to Liverpool (looking spectacularly un-sooty for 1904). The joke’s on them; they could have stayed in Blighty. Lots of fun is had along the way, with counterweight-pulley pratfalls in an Aztec tomb (surely a little nod to the pulley system made by William Hartnell’s Doctor in The Aztecs, 1964); a mickey-taking hermit halfway up the Himalayas; the graffiti-message-across-time daubed at the Great Wall; and Dan getting ribbed for being repetitively Scouse. The time-hopping tunnel-builder Joseph Williamson falls into place, too. On an ocean liner, there’s also a tender moment when Yaz watches her Doctor-hologram for clearly the umpteenth time and we observe how much she adores and misses her friend. The Time Lord, meanwhile, overcomes last week’s cliffhanger – petrification into Weeping Angel – with remarkable ease, while the Angels themselves are fast dispensed with like last week’s cat litter. Beyond our universe, the Doctor is in the company of an Ood and that mysterious taunting figure from Chapter Three. "I’m the one who found you," she now chooses to reveal. "I brought you to Gallifrey and raised you. I am Tecteun. The woman you used to call 'Mother'." These exposition-laden moments, teasing about the Doctor’s origins, are altogether less tedious than equivalent scenes in The Timeless Children – and gain import and grandeur in the hands of Barbara Flynn and Jodie Whittaker (both magnificent). Flynn is so fabulous as Tecteun that I flinched when that camp swine Swarm swanned in and, with a stroke of his glove, made her "sashay away". Not content with expanding the Time Lord’s backstory, Chibnall wades into Unit’s already messy timeline… and muddies it further. In his new potted history, the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce (latterly Unified Intelligence Taskforce) has been malignly influenced by the Grand Serpent aka Prentis (Craig Parkinson). Far more menacing than in Chapter Three, he’s been bumping off big wigs for decades, although it isn’t clear how his sickening serpent gets inside his victims to begin with. Also, how did Jon Pertwee’s exiled Doctor never bump into Prentis during his many years at Unit or spot the fully functioning Tardis they’ve mothballed? In a sweet, fleeting aside, circa 1967, the man who would become the Brigadier is heard off-stage (a snippet of Nicholas Courtney from Terror of the Autons). But surely he could never have served as a corporal, as described; Lethbridge-Stewart was always officer material. Prentis’s encounter with the Brig’s daughter, Kate Stewart, shows what a shrewd operator she is – and Jemma Redgrave is on redoubtable form, returning for the first time since The Zygon Invasion/Inversion six years ago. I was dismayed when Chibnall summarily terminated Unit in 2019’s Resolution. Especially because he had told me in 2012: "As a writer, you’re eternally grateful to everyone back in 1968 who came up with that idea because it’s a brilliant storytelling mechanism. Unit is embedded into the family history of the show." Now the time is ripe for Kate and Unit to regain their former status – and save planet Earth. In further Chibs chess moves, Vinder is paired up with Dan’s date Diane inside a Passenger, while Bel is "hyperjacked" by Dan’s dog-man Karvanista. Earth has become – as ever – the focus in the universe for ultimate destruction by the Flux, the Division and marauding Sontarans. And, of course, in another dimension the Ravagers are dangling the Doctor’s lost memories in a fob watch. Are we all keeping up…? Is everyone poised? Only one more Chapter to go… The Vanquishers In the face of adversity may we find what makes us strong. This has certainly proven so for Chris Chibnall, the man with a show to run in the face of a pandemic. Forced to scale back, to operate in a climate of fluctuating COVID restrictions, he redrew his parameters in pursuit of the best Doctor Who he and his team could deliver. In that respect, they have achieved an impressive feat in the six-part Flux. Returning the programme to its original serial format has been the key win. It has allowed an engaging, occasionally gripping, series of storylines to evolve and interweave, build to effective cliffhangers, and then to resolve satisfyingly in this sixth and final episode. At times, it’s been apparent that everything but the kitchen sink, the dog basket and the loo brush was being chucked into the mix. Multiple locales, time zones, Doctors… A barrage of old foes dusted down and given a chance to play outside again… Sontarans chiefly, but Daleks and Cybermen too – all looking foolhardy in this final conflagration… Even a friendly Ood joined the fray, while the Weeping Angels polished their badges as Who’s chill-supremoes. Note that none of the creations from Chibnall’s past two series were called upon: no Stenza, no whispering-rag Remnants, no froggy Solitract, no shimmering Kasaavin, no Pting, no Dregs… Consigned to oblivion, perhaps. What’s positive is that he has now fashioned memorable opponents in the Ravagers, Swarm and Azure. Outstanding performances from Sam Spruell and Rochenda Sandall allied to fabulous costume, masks and make-up – “Condragulations!” to the design team. RuPaul’s Drag Race champions, eat your hearts out! "We have everything we need – Division, the power to destroy your universe… and you!" gloats Swarm. They not only relish destruction ("The end of all spatial objects," purrs Azure helpfully), they long to replay the final throes of our cosmos, in a constant loop. Their finest moments involve tormenting the Doctor: Azure proffering the MacGuffin fob watch, "It will break your mind"; Swarm literally tearing the house down, as he rips apart and reassembles the crooked building that represents the Time Lord’s missing past. Then Azure finally steps from her sibling’s shadow to discuss with the Doctor their diametrically opposed faiths: life versus obliteration. There’s an anti-climax when the ghastly pair meet their comeuppance and are frittered away by the embodiment of Time. They seem ecstatic about their exit. "Ascension…" coos Azure as she disintegrates. Maybe she is going to a better place. When Time takes on the form of the Doctor, with Jodie Whittaker’s benign face, I half-expected a reference to Kronos the "chronovore" from The Time Monster. It portends doom for this Doctor and heavy-hints a rematch with the Master. Way before this, we’ve seen a fresh spin on The Three Doctors. "Wow, you’re cute!" she says to herself. "I’m being trisected across disparate dimensions. I’m split across three realities now. It’s quite draining and confusing and breaks every known law." It would be easy to take the mickey here, but Chibnall and Whittaker handle all this guff confidently, and provide a clever, new and very Who-ey way of telling a story and spinning plates. Chibnall’s Flux has trodden an eventful if uneven path, with one swill-bucket of bad dreams (Once, Upon Time) and one bona fide classic (Village of the Angels) along the way. The greatest triumph of this six-parter is that, while frenetic, it has given its characters space to breathe and come alive, which can’t be said of the usual, limited 45-minute format. We might not know much more about them at the end than at the start but they’ve become familiar and likeable and we root for them. Warrior-lovers-reunited Bel and Vinder go off to make babies, in the company of Bungle-from-Bolton Karvanista, now the last of his kind. 'Claire-voyant' survives the Sontaran mind probe and arrives back in her own time with her 2021 hairdo miraculously restored. Resourceful Diane "may just have saved what’s left of the universe", but she still turns down Dan. The Grand Serpent gets hissy with the Doctor but she tames him ("I’ve put you on the very naughty step") and he’s abandoned on a minuscule asteroid. With so much going on, Kate Stewart draws the short straw. So strong is Jemma Redgrave’s presence, there are scenes where I’m willing her to intercede with more than the few lines she’s allotted. She signs off with: "I like this regeneration. Hope I meet it again." Let’s hope that transpires in the coming specials. Kevin McNally is the other winner, in a way. His have-a-go-scientist, old-soldier Jericho is a splendid old chap but was always destined to be the one hero sacrificed in this piece. "What an awfully big adventure..." We salute you, Jericho. A bedazzling CGI Flux-obliteration of planets, spaceships and archenemies is all conveniently hoovered up by one of those Passengers, whose silhouette still hits me as 'Ena Sharples in gimp mask'. Straggly ends are tied in a leisurely but satisfying wind-down. Dan (John Bishop) has earned his place among the Tardis crew, and the Doctor makes peace with Yaz (Mandip Gill). As it should, the focus narrows in on this pair, their heartfelt 'womance' and a well-placed tear. Both characters/actors have benefitted from this revised format. In the final moments, though, Chibnall offers another reset, possibly just a pause. The Doctor drops her fob-watch memories into the heart of the Tardis – determined to remain “Doctor Who?”. Perfect.
Doctor Who: Revolution of the Daleks ★★★★
Chris Chibnall doles out eerie set-pieces, the return of Captain Jack, protracted farewells and a glimpse of a brighter future
“How many people in the universe get to meet the Doctor, let alone travel with her? We’re the lucky ones, Yaz. Enjoy the journey while you’re on it. Cos the joy... is worth the pain” – Captain Jack Story 296 New Year’s Day special 2021 Storyline The Doctor has been languishing in a Judoon space jail for decades – until sprung loose by old friend Captain Jack Harkness. They return to her chums in Sheffield, only to learn of their concerns about the re-emergence of the Daleks. Entrepreneur Jack Robertson (a former opponent) is conniving with the Government’s Technology Secretary Jo Patterson to build an army of “defence drones” – in fact, a production line of Daleks. Soon after Patterson becomes Prime Minister, she is exterminated in Downing Street and the Daleks go on the rampage. The Doctor resorts to calling in Death Squad Daleks who are determined to eradicate the impure new versions. All surviving Daleks are then lured into a secondary Tardis and trapped in the void. Ryan and Graham decide it’s time to remain on Earth, but Yaz is determined to stay with the Doctor. First UK broadcast Friday 1 January 2021 Cast The Doctor – Jodie Whittaker Graham O’Brien – Bradley Walsh Yasmin Khan – Mandip Gill Ryan Sinclair – Tosin Cole Captain Jack Harkness –John Barrowman Jack Robertson – Chris Noth Jo Patterson – Harriet Walter Leo Rugazzi – Nathan Stewart-Jarrett Armen – Nathan Armarkwei-Laryea Rachel – Helen Anderson – Rachel Dalek voices – Nicholas Briggs Dalek operators – Barnaby Edwards, Nicholas Pegg Grace – Sharon D Clarke Emily Maitlis as herself Crew Writer – Chris Chibnall Director – Lee Haven Jones Series producer – Nikki Wilson Producer – Alex Mercer Music – Segun Akinola Designer – Dafydd Shurmer Executive producers – Chris Chibnall, Matt Strevens RT review by Patrick Mulkern Blackened, buffed up and both having had a little work done, the Daleks and Captain Jack Harkness are back to elevate Doctor Who from the doldrums in a New Year special, which restores some of the zest lacking in recent times, as showrunner Chris Chibnall doles out eerie set-pieces, protracted farewells and a glimpse of a brighter future. But first, Revolution of the Daleks finds the Doctor banged up in a space jail. Incarceration is usually a dramatic dead-end in Who. It was verboten under Russell T Davies, although Steven Moffat made a virtue of it in the Peter Capaldi classic, Heaven Sent. In 2021, Chibnall also finds value as he shows Graham, Yaz and Ryan pining for their absent friend, yearning for shared adventures. For ten months. That’s a sensation we can all empathise with – albeit captured here inadvertently because this episode was written and in the can before Covid blighted our lives. Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor is diminished by her personal lockdown. Surely any other Doctor would have quickly found a way to outfox the rhino-cop Judoon. She is displayed simply counting the days, the years, no doubt processing the dismal revelations about her past in series 12, and gurning at fellow inmates: Ood, Weeping Angels and the silly Pting… She has to wait to be sprung free by Captain Jack Harkness. Jack is an odd fit with this era of the series. Until a brief comeback earlier in 2020, he hadn’t featured for a decade; his function superseded by another flirtatious adventurer armed with saucy one-liners and a time-hopping vortex manipulator, River Song. John Barrowman undoubtedly brings a star twinkle and camp-tinged bravado all his own, and has earned the right to spout continuity references to 16 years past. Jack credits Rose Tyler for his immortality, but this would have been better demonstrated with a few ineffective exterminations. He also over-eggs his former spell in the Tardis: “I saw more than I could have ever dreamed.” Really? When he has a space/time-hopping device all his own? Oddest of all, Jack literally phones in his farewell, blithering on about Gwen, his associate from Torchwood – a turgid offshoot we might otherwise have overlooked. There are two Jacks in Chibnall’s pack; the other being Jack Robertson, the despicable entrepreneur who blithely walked off set to freedom in 2018’s Arachnids in the UK and to this inevitable return. Chris Noth brings towering charm to the role and, after an hour of treachery against mankind, Robertson deservedly takes one step closer to the White House. And a likely rematch in series 13… This special wafts lots of daft events under our noses. Captain Jack’s rescue of the Doctor is as ridiculous as it is amusing. And just how many devices can he shove… ahem, secrete about his person? How unlucky is that lorry driver who stops at the one roadside cafe where an agent is lying in wait with poison? Why does no member of the public, no one in the Government or Armed Forces recognise a Dalek? In the Doctor Who universe, they’ve posed a highly visible threat to planet Earth for years. While Daleks quacking and zapping at each in the streets have become a thunderbore, Clifton Suspension Bridge makes for an audacious if fleeting battleground. Chibnall, the director Lee Haven Jones, voice artist Nick Briggs and the FX team all do sterling work to restore menace and a degree of horror to the old foe. The augmented models (sleeker, remote-controlled, black-with-snazzy-lights) look perfectly at home patrolling No 10 Downing Street and cause a frisson of delight by exterminating the venal PM, Jo Patterson (Harriet Walter) – although even they are outshone by the golden Daleks launched in the 2005 revival. The gratingly dubbed “fam” have fronted Doctor Who since 2018 and if you’ve grown to love this quartet (I haven’t), you’ll lament their break-up and may indulge the coda of farewells that sprawls over nearly eight minutes. Bradley Walsh is a significant loss. Across 22 episodes, Graham has shown the most heart, been the most alive, spouting wisecracks across the cosmos. But here, with the two Jacks hoovering up any scrap of humour, Graham is muted, resigned to his departure, even before he knows it. Ryan has been a plank for much of his run, but now that he’s going is at last allowed a proper one-to-one with the Doctor. The scene where he forces her to open up (“What I always thought to be the story of my life isn’t true,” she says) shows us a window into Ryan’s empathic nature and is tenderly played by Tosin Cole. “Things change all the time,” says Ryan. “Sometimes we get a bit scared cos new can be a bit scary, right?” This is a barely cloaked admonishment to fans who choked on the expansion of the Time Lord’s origins in series 12. Graham and Ryan return to the moorland bike-riding lessons from their debut episode, and – no surprises – are granted a final ray of sunshine with the other “woman who fell to Earth”, Grace (Sharon D Clarke would have made a dazzling Doctor). Mandip Gill persuasively conveys Yaz’s frustration with and passion for the Time Lord and her renewed determination to cling on to her woman. Yaz believes she has the Doctor all to herself now. But for how long? The BBC broadcast ends with the left-field announcement “Introducing John Bishop”… The head honchos of Who must be banking on another leavening of the line-up à la Bradley Walsh, or even praying for the Catherine Tate effect (one of the smartest castings ever in Doctor Who). This isn’t the first time a Liverpudlian builder with a funny bone was drafted into Doctor Who (think Tom Baker) – so don’t bash the Bishop just yet!
Doctor Who: Ascension of the Cybermen/The Timeless Children ★★★
A brutal, tense set-up dissolves into a woeful morass of 'Master-splaining' as the Doctor's personal history gains wads of earlier chapters
“Be afraid, Doctor. Because everything is about to change – for ever!” – the Master Story 295 Series 12 – Episodes 9 & 10 Storyline In the far future, the Doctor and her gang arrive on a planet ravaged by Cyber Wars and team up with a disparate band of refugees. Their defences destroyed by Cyberdrones, the survivors flee through space, pursued by Cybermen led by Ashad. They head for salvation at a mythical place called Ko Sharmus. Meanwhile, in rural Ireland, a young man called Brendan is seen growing up, joining the Gardaí and proving to have remarkable powers of survival. Ko Sharmus turns out to be the elderly guardian of the Boundary to another dimension – through which the Master triumphantly appears. Again in league with the Cybermen, he has prepared a trap for the Doctor. The Boundary is a portal to Gallifrey, where the Master has wiped out the Time Lords and laid waste to their Capitol. He is furious that they’ve been lied to for centuries but delights in revealing that the Doctor is in fact “the Timeless Child”, who long ago gave rise to the Time Lords’ regenerative powers. Irish Brendan and the mysterious Doctor who was Ruth are just two of many previous incarnations the Doctor has been unaware of. The Master also turns his allies and the slain Time Lords into CyberMasters, but Ko Sharmus destroys them by activating a “death particle” developed by Ashad. The Doctor’s friends arrive safely back on Earth but she is imprisoned in space by the Judoon... First UK broadcasts Ascension of the Cybermen – Sunday 23 February 2020 The Timeless Children – Sunday 1 March 2020 Cast The Doctor – Jodie Whittaker Graham O’Brien – Bradley Walsh Yasmin Khan – Mandip Gill Ryan Sinclair – Tosin Cole The Master – Sacha Dhawan The Doctor – Jo Martin Ashad – Patrick O’Kane Ravio – Julie Graham Ko Sharmus – Ian McElhinney Yedlarmi – Alex Austin Feekat – Steve Toussaint Bescot – Rhiannon Clements Ethan – Matt Carver Fuskle – Jack Osborn Brendan – Evan McCabe Patrick – Branwell Donaghey Meg – Orla O’Rourke Michael – Andrew Macklin Sergeant – Caolán Byrne Tecteun – Seylan Baxter Solpado –Kirsty Besterman Judoon Captain – Paul Kasey Voices of the Cybermen and Judoon Captain – Nicholas Briggs Cybermen – Matthew Rohman, Simon Carew, Jon Davey, Richard Highgate, Richard Price, Mickey Lewis, Matthew Doman, Paul Bailey Crew Writer – Chris Chibnall Director – Jamie Magnus Stone Series producer – Nikki Wilson Music – Segun Akinola Designer – Dafydd Shurmer Executive producers – Chris Chibnall, Matt Strevens RT review by Patrick Mulkern The Ascension of the Cybermen Chris Chibnall has come out with all Cyber-guns blazing. There’s a clear sense of the showrunner relishing his Doctor Who finale. The first of a two-parter, this is already far more exciting and laden with import than His Chibs’s previous end-of-series effort, The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos in 2018, which wasn’t really a finale at all in impact or intent. Steeped in Who since boyhood, he adores a cliffhanger and it’s highly effective here, in its crescendo and delivery. I’m left itching for the follow-up. Although it has to be said, this one is markedly close to his previous cliffhanger in Spyfall: the companions in mortal peril a long way from the Doctor… who is herself on the threshold of another dimension… just as the Master springs up from nowhere… This time there’s a biblical vibe. Elderly sage Ko Sharmus (Ian McElhinney) stands like Moses with his rod by the Red Sea, showing the Time Lord how the waves divide to provide a route to salvation, except for her it is less the Book of Exodus and more the Book of Revelation. She sees the apocalypse again, Gallifrey destroyed, and the Master pops up like Satan to taunt her: “Be afraid, Doctor. Because everything is about to change. For ever.” But let’s rewind. To the beginning. The grim spectacle of that sea of Cyber-debris in space. A portentous voice intones: “The Cybermen were defeated. The victors of a billion battles broken. But that which is dead can live again – in the hands of a believer.” There’s a majestic flourish as the image zooms into the eye socket of a dead Cyberman and the bowel-movement opening titles swell forth. Our reacquaintance with the Cyber-foes must wait, however, as Chibnall next plunges the viewer into a subplot about a baby abandoned in a cot. More Mosaic allusion. We’re shown a bucolic, sepia-tinged locale, unspecified but apparently early 20th-century Ireland. It provides contrast to the war-strewn bulk of the piece, and builds in mystery as the orphan Brendan grows up rapidly, miraculously survives a bullet and cliff fall, and eventually, as a retiring cop, is subjected to bizarre torture by his boss and his adoptive father. How will this hook into the threads of the Cyber-war and Timeless Child? It’s pointless to speculate, but it is intriguing. On the edge of the universe the Doctor tracks down Ashad the emotive Cybermoan from the previous episode, and rues involving her team (“I’ve been so reckless with you”). The foursome’s ineptitude in this warzone only adds to the sense of peril. Their gadgets are swiftly destroyed by Cyber-drones (alarming flying heads) and, inexplicably, they cannot retreat to the Tardis. Separated and on the run, Yaz, Ryan and Graham remain so plucky and brave that we can’t help but root for them or worry – or even hope (you know who you are) – that somebody won’t come out of this alive. The remnants of humanity with whom they engage are a sorry bunch. So fast is the action that they barely register as characters and their names are lost, though all are suitably desperate and grubby. Steve Toussaint (as former teacher Feekat) looked like he’d stay around longer. Julie Graham fares best (with smutty cheeks but thick, immaculate eye-liner) as Ravio, a nurse in a former life who takes a shine to Graham. “Strange is a compliment,” she tells him. “I like strange.” Flirting in the face of adversity is never a good sign. Patrick O’Kane gives another deliciously sinister performance as the Cybermoan, who was “chosen to revive the glory of the Cyber race… The death of everything is within me.” Cheerful! As Ravio observes, Ashad is “a Cyberman that makes other Cybermen scream”. He’s proper nasty. And he turns the Cybermen, who let’s face it can be unutterably dull, into a palpable threat. Creating his own aftermath of a Cyber-war and the AI “Cyberium”, Chibnall has effectively overwritten Neil Gaiman’s abysmal Nightmare in Silver (2013) and its “Cyberiad”. Ascension of the Cybermen is brutal, tense and rollicks along, with returning Spyfall director Jamie Magnus Stone expertly handling the high-energy set-pieces and grand spectacle. The space-hardware FX, the interior of the Cyber war-carrier and the Cyber-costumes in various states of polish and distress are all first-rate. Segun Akinola cranks up the unease with an edgy score. So far, Chris Chibnall’s Ascension is nudging up among the best Cyber-tales, such as Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis’s The Tomb of the Cybermen (1967), Eric Saward’s Earthshock (1982) and Steven Moffat’s World Enough and Time (2017). I may not be smitten with the “Everything changes!” shtick. That was John Barrowman’s mantra in Torchwood and it led nowhere memorable or interesting. But bring on part two, The Timeless Children – and further revelations… The Timeless Children What an awful, boring mess. That’s what I jotted in my notebook halfway through this Doctor Who finale and it didn’t much improve, so that’s what I pass on to you first, unadorned. Despite Cybermen stomping around, the Master grandstanding on Gallifrey and the Doctor learning loads about her earlier lives, The Timeless Children manages to be spectacularly turgid, an overblown gush of nonsense that gobbles up almost 65 minutes of primetime television. Frankly, I’d rather have sat through a double edition of Countryfile. Where to begin? “Everything is about to change.” Such is the Master’s teasing warning in the cliffhanger recap. I’m not remotely bothered if current showrunner Chris Chibnall scatters and scrunches the sacred texts. Really, there aren’t any. There is no Doctor Who Bible. Rather he has concocted an earlier, unknown Testament, but in so doing has stretched the mythology to breaking point. You can’t fault his audacity, but The Timeless Children can’t hope to be interesting, as any sense of drama or dramatic tension makes way for an exposition megadump. This lore fest might startle the drooling devotee but must signally fail to engage the programme’s dwindling audience. I prefer the idea of William Hartnell being the first, the original Doctor, but numerous incarnations prior to his…? I can accept them. I’ve been intrigued by this concept since 1976 when eight unfamiliar faces popped up in the mind-bending contest in The Brain of Morbius. (“How far, Doctor? How long have you lived?”) We also already knew that the Doctor (in The Time of the Doctor) and the Master (in The Five Doctors) were offered a full new set of regenerations. So none of this is new. The Doctor’s long, lost history exposed now offers one minor reward in that the “Irish” Brendan simulation establishes that he/she was at least once ginger, and a fine red head. Expect the actor Evan McCabe shortly to be whirled around the Who convention circuit and Big Finish audio merry-go-round. The finale disappoints by showing little of the magnificent Doctor Ruth (Jo Martin). This guff about the Gormless Kid, sorry, the “Timeless Child”, abandoned, dithering around on the Boundary to another realm, discovered by the Shobogan space explorer Tecteun, regenerating through a flurry of races and genders… This might read well in prose (one of the fan fantasies indulged by BBC Books perhaps), but narrated by Sacha Dhawan’s Master, at length, and enacted by a mute cast on BBC One, it does not make for involving television. For me, the crucial line in this is Doctor Ruth’s: “Have you ever been limited by who you were before?” Let’s hope we can file all these earlier identities under Unclaimed Baggage, forget and move on. Despite Dhawan’s considerable charm and maximum efforts, I miss the Master. I mean the proper Master. The original, you might say. I’m so lucky I grew up watching Roger Delgado’s interpretation in the 1970s. He was dastardly, suave, charismatic, utterly persuasive. I also miss Missy. A waspish, hilarious, black-hearted Mary Poppins who sought and earned redemption, expertly pitched by Michelle Gomez. Dhawan’s Master seems to be channelling the bonkers John Simm version. He’s trying too hard to be insane, pouring glee and little restraint into each scene, though his florid performance helps lift many a stagnant stand-and-mansplain moment. It’s the third finale in recent years to rely on the Master/Missy in alliance with the Cybermen. Remarkably quickly, these new arrivals on Gallifrey are blended with Time Lord body parts; they also have time to augment their armour with the outré regalia, those silly ceremonial collars that even in their debut The Deadly Assassin were described as “seldom worn robes with their colourful collar insignia”. They look ridiculous. When will the Who makers stop relying on the Cybermen? They are dullness personified. Ashad the Cybermoan shows some personality and promise but is “tissue compressed” in the most anti-climactic manner. His army yet again are lousy shots. It would have been gratifying had they at least grazed Graham, singed Yaz or flattened Ryan. Accentuate the positives. There are some. The heart-warming interlude where Graham praises Yaz for being “such an impressive young woman… you’re never afraid and you’re never beaten”, then worrying he’s offended her sensibilities, is beautifully written and played. The Doctor using all her memories to blow the Matrix and free herself is a flurry of joy, and a rare example of the signature tune being used mid-programme. In a vacuum of tension, one scene gets close to suspenseful when Yaz, Graham and co hide inside Cybersuits and are stalked by Ashad. Oh, I also liked the minuscule beat of relief when Ravio (Julie Graham) steps out of a Tardis/20th-century house and realises, “This is Earth. We’re on Earth.” Apart from the deliberate obfuscation in Chris Chibnall’s script, which simultaneously reveals but withholds so much, a few minor quibbles remain. How did the Master escape from his trap at the end of Spyfall? How did he destroy Gallifrey? How did he wipe out the Time Lords, stop them regenerating or deep-freeze a selection for Cyberconversion? He just does. How did the Boundary establish a handy link between Ko Sharmus’s beach and Gallifrey? It just does. How do the Doctor and the humans get off the exploding Cybership and suddenly access a working Tardis? They just do. How on Earth can the Judoon materialise inside the Doctor’s supposedly impregnable Tardis? They just do. Thus The Timeless Children clamps shut with a tedious cliffhanger. The Doctor being incarcerated is death to drama. Former showrunner Russell T Davies appreciated that and would never allow it during his tenure. Series 12 has improved on series 11 but, tragically, Doctor Who has been haemorrhaging viewers. At least in the UK. It’s still being made by well-intentioned, dedicated cast and crew, but it has become old hat on a good day and old toot on a bad one. They can’t physically produce the rate of episodes the BBC secretly would like each year, nor to a high enough standard. Will another overhaul help? A casting coup to entice young or disenchanted viewers? I would look to the emerging talent in Netflix’s Sex Education. This finale demonstrates that “everything is about to change” does not equate to “everything is about to improve”. With luck, there are a lot of lives left in the good Time Lord but, with a heavy heart, I’m saying she/he deserves – and indeed needs – a lengthy rest. Catch up on all the Jodie Whittaker episodes in the Radio Times Doctor Who Story Guide
Doctor Who: The Haunting of Villa Diodati ★★★★★
The Doctor must save Lord Byron and the Shelleys and yield to the Lone Cyberman in a ghost story that deftly subsumes the birth of horror into the show’s own mythology
“Save the poet? Save the universe? Sometimes even I can’t win” – the Doctor Story 294 Series 12 – Episode 8 Storyline 1816: one stormy night at a villa overlooking Lake Geneva, the rakish poet Lord Byron and his young friends, including Frankenstein creator Mary Shelley, chill each other with tales of the dead. When the Doctor, Graham, Yaz and Ryan arrive, the Time Lord senses unrelenting evil in the air. They are beset by ghostly apparitions as the house seems to turn in on itself. In the cellar, Percy Shelley has been infected by the Cyberium, an AI from the future. It is manipulating everyone’s perceptions of reality to protect itself from the “Lone Cyberman”, who arrives to reclaim it. The Doctor ignores the warning Captain Jack gave her friends, yields the Cyberium to protect Shelley and his timeline, and vows to take the fight to the future… First UK broadcast Sunday 16 February 2020 Cast The Doctor – Jodie Whittaker Graham O’Brien – Bradley Walsh Ryan Sinclair – Tosin Cole Yasmin Khan – Mandip Gill Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin – Lili Miller Claire Clairmont – Nadia Parkes Lord Byron – Jacob Collins-Levy Dr John Polidori – Maxim Baldry Ashad – Patrick O’Kane Percy Bysshe Shelley – Lewis Rainer Elise – Sarah Perles Fletcher – Stefan Bednarczyk Crew Writer – Maxine Alderton Director – Emma Sullivan Series producer – Nikki Wilson Music – Segun Akinola Designer – Dafydd Shurmer Executive producers – Chris Chibnall, Matt Strevens RT review by Patrick Mulkern It was a dark and stormy night… We’re at the birth of what would become a cliché but this latest Doctor Who embraces all the familiar ghost-story trappings and deftly subsumes the birth of horror into its own mythology. The Time Lord’s rules of engagement are set. Ryan: “Nobody mention Frankenstein and don’t interfere.” Yaz: “And nobody snog Byron.” I was mildly concerned about witnessing the gormless WhittakWho Quartet blundering into this key moment in literary history, not just literary history but a seminal point in the horror genre, the birthplace of frights in the night in novel form. Admirably, Maxine Alderton (who’s written for The Worst Witch and many editions of Emmerdale) handles her subject and setting with charm and sensitivity. The Time Lord cannot wait to engage with “some of the most enlightened minds of a generation at the pinnacle, the absolute zenith of their creativity”. Cue, the historical figures horsing about on a rug, then gossiping with the foursome during a quadrille (an elegantly concealed info-dump). What the drama makes clear is just how young these Bright Young Things of the Romantic era were, and it brings them to life with a strong cast of relative newcomers. Lili Miller glints with naughtiness and empathy for the dark side as Frankenstein creator Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, just 18, and already known as “Mrs Shelley” before marriage. Nadia Parkes plays her lovelorn stepsister Claire Clairmont, who at the end delightfully rebukes the rakish Lord Byron (Jacob Collins-Levy). Lewis Rainer looks splendidly wan and “matinee idol” as Percy Bysshe Shelley, despite an iffy wig. Most recognisable of the set, Maxim Baldry (Years and Years) glowers as the volatile, insomniac Dr Polidori. (It isn’t mentioned here but John Polidori wrote his short story The Vampyre at the villa, which later influenced Bram Stoker.) All five are well drawn by Alderton across the 50-minute time limit. Faring best is Mary, who relishes the tales of the dead: “Something to awaken thrilling horror,” she purrs, “to make us dread to look around, to curdle the blood and quicken the beatings of the heart.” Mary delights in Byron’s reading of Hildegard the Death Bride, endures more horror than anticipated as the night unfolds – and eventually, inevitably, describes the “Lone Cyberman” as the Modern Prometheus. It is clever to suggest a Cyberman as inspiration for Mary Shelley’s Creature in her Frankenstein novel (formulated on that dark night in 1816 and published two years later). This cadaverous, botched operation of a man, reinvigorated by the equivalent of a bolt of lightning, lumbering about the villa, killing indiscriminately, responding tenderly to a baby… it’s so close to the monster that we have come to know in the movies. This bashed-up, war-torn loner is a welcome addition to the mythology, in much the same category as the solitary, recycled garbage-can Dalek in Resolution. His half-mask allows a performance to come through, vocally and via the one exposed eye of actor Patrick O’Kane. This wretched creature, named Ashad, does not have an emotion inhibitor, so we witness his rage, his sarcasm, his sensitivity. In a neat touch of arcane continuity, his roar of anguish echoes the Cyberman who was given emotions then went rogue in the London sewers in The Invasion in 1968. The Haunting of Villa Diodati is in good company with other haunted-house Whos: Peter Capaldi’s Knock Knock (2017), and especially Jon Pertwee’s Day of the Daleks (1972) and Matt Smith’s Hide (2013), both of which were beset with “ghosts” from the future. Are there “real” ghosts in this story, though? The Doctor leaves Graham guessing and gawping. Some details she cannot explain. The skeletal hand, the apparitions of a housemaid and a young girl provide fleeting chills and almost read like vestiges from an earlier draft. But Bradley Walsh delivers comedy gold again as Graham, spooked by this pair (“You two just need a spray tan and a kip”) and by the sinister valet Fletcher, who keeps appearing from nowhere. Perhaps more pressing is Graham’s need for a pee: “Big house like this, there’s got to be a lav somewhere” and later “Not a khazi for love nor money.” I don’t need to see Graham about his ablutions but am concerned that his quest for relief is never satisfied. The last we hear of this dribbling plot strand is when the valet points to a capacious po. While the links to recent and future episodes might be mystifying, the perception-manipulating power of the so-called Cyberium (“an AI from the future containing the knowledge and future history of all Cybermen”) is somewhat opaque and bewildering too. Why has someone sent this “quicksilver” to Geneva 1816? For the most part, the storytelling isn’t impeded – if you keep alert. For once, the detail and developments aren’t related with a bludgeon. “Words matter!” stresses the Doctor. “One death, one ripple, and history will change in a blink.” Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor is impressive, outfoxing Byron, encouraging Mary and Percy, nearly thwarting the Cyberman but, ultimately, not heeding the warnings of Captain Jack relayed via her team. She sees the bigger picture: “Sometimes this team structure isn’t flat, it’s mountainous, with me at the summit, in the stratosphere alone, left to choose. Save the poet? Save the universe?” No bragging; she’s stating her responsibility as a Lord of Time and admits, “Sometimes even I can’t win.” Lustrous, spooky, hitting every note, this episode is finely directed by Emma Sullivan, and has enough confidence and generosity to unwind with an almost minute-long poetry reading as the young Romantics loll in an idyllic setting. Maxine Alderton selects a passage from Darkness (a poem Byron wrote that summer) that reflects the mood of the piece and ends on an allusion to our favourite space/time traveller. Really rather beautiful. “The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave, The moon, their mistress, had expir’d before; The winds were wither’d in the stagnant air, And the clouds perish’d; Darkness had no need Of aid from them – She was the Universe.” Rare for this period of Who, The Haunting of Villa Diodati is one volume I would put on my shelf and contemplate dusting off again one day. And if it encourages viewers to reach out and discover the Romantic poets – and the progenitors of horror – this is a fine work indeed. Catch up on all the Jodie Whittaker episodes in the Radio Times Doctor Who Story Guide
From Aleppo to Sheffield, the Time Lord tackles Immortals’ games and the stuff of nightmares in a superb-looking, at times misguided, mystery
“I thought I should talk about it, cos those nightmares, they made me realise the fear is still there” – Graham Story 293 Series 12 – Episode 7 Storyline At a hospital in Aleppo, 1380, an orphan Tahira is terrorised by bestial creatures called Chagaskas. In 2020, Yaz, Graham and Ryan return to Sheffield to catch up with friends, but they’re soon beset by nightmares, controlled by a malign spectre, who abducts people in the night. The Doctor rescues Tahira, then with her friends is lured to a deep-space platform overlooking two planets frozen at the point of collision. The villain identifies himself as Gellin, a god-like immortal, who can now free his associate Rakaya from a prison orb between the planets. They intend to exploit the fears and nightmares of people on Earth and gorge on the dark forces unleashed. First UK broadcast Sunday 9 February 2020 Cast The Doctor – Jodie Whittaker Graham O’Brien – Bradley Walsh Ryan Sinclair – Tosin Cole Yasmin Khan – Mandip Gill Zellin – Ian Gelder Tibo – Buom Tihngang Rakaya – Clare-Hope Ashitey Grace O’Brien – Sharon D Clarke Sonya Khan – Bhavnisha Parmar Tahira – Aruhan Galieva Maryam – Sirine Saba Anita Patel – Nasreen Hussain Gabriel – Everal A Walsh Fred – Michael Keane Mum – Amanda Liberman Old Tibo – Willie Jonah Andrew – Anthony Taylor Crew Writers – Charlene James, Chris Chibnall Director – Emma Sullivan Series producer – Nikki Wilson Music – Segun Akinola Designer – Dafydd Shurmer Executive producers – Chris Chibnall, Matt Strevens RT review by Patrick Mulkern The stuff of nightmares. That’s always been Doctor Who at its best. There are certainly enough images and ideas in Can You Hear Me? to instil a few nightmares in younger viewers. A ferocious bestial monster lurking on a ceiling; a creepy old bald man who can materialise in your bedroom with a puff of black smoke; his detachable fingers lodging in your ears… But is this Doctor Who at its best? Not really. It does try hard, though. For a start Can You Hear Me? looks superb. The pre-titles sequence in Aleppo 1380 is gorgeously lit in sunset gold and after-dusk blues. The transitions in and out of dreams and nightmares make for beautiful swirling montages. And the peculiarly simplistic animation that depicts the Immortals’ origins seems original while also being reminiscent of an entry in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Like a lot of recent Doctor Who, there’s an intriguing build-up, a lot of dotting about across the planet and time zones, in such a way that you’re not sure even the writers have joined up all the dots, let alone the viewer. Why Aleppo 1380? Why Sheffield 2020? And then the express train of mystery and anticipation skids to a halt so that two or three people can stand still in a room and try to explain what’s going on. You can’t fault Chris Chibnall for harnessing fresh talent, and this week it’s Charlene James, a playwright who won acclaim for Cuttin’ It, a 2014 National Theatre drama tackling female genital mutilation. In 2018, she wrote two episodes of A Discovery of Witches for Sky, but Who is obviously a step up. It’s a decent debut, although of course it’s impossible to know where her input ends and the guiding hand of His Chibs takes over. Surely James’s homework didn’t include her going back to look at the early days of Doctor Who. For fans only, Zellin, the ghastly villain, acknowledges his antecedents. He references the Eternals from fifth Doctor Peter Davison’s story Enlightenment (1983), the god-like Guardians, who reach back to Tom Baker’s Key to Time season (1978/79), and even the Celestial Toymaker, thwarted by the first Doctor in 1966. Zellin neatly overlooks his own similarity to Ilin (Art Malik), a gamemaster as recent as 2018’s The Ghost Monument, whose kinship with the Toymaker I noted at the time. Zellin begins sinister enough, and seems to be several steps ahead of the Time Lord, but once he and his freed associate – predictably – set their sights on Earth and are standing in a British street ready to gorge on human fears, they become markedly less than god-like and just another dreary couple with peculiar needs. One major concern of series 12 has been the blandness of the Doctor’s three sidekicks, their lack of personality and emotional depth. Graham is reliably amusing but Yaz and Ryan too easily drift into vapidity. Will they be remembered in years to come like Rose Tyler, Amy and Rory? Decades later like Jo Grant and Sarah Jane Smith? Unlikely. But Can You Hear Me? goes a good way towards fleshing them out. It digs into their backgrounds, so that we see again Ryan’s best mate Tibo (Buom Tihngang), glimpsed in Spyfall, and Yaz’s stroppy sister, Sonya (Bhavnisha Parmar). All to the good. More importantly, it exposes their doubts, fears and, yes, nightmares. We learn that Yaz was bullied at school and three years earlier was a runaway, and thus has an unexpected bond with her sister and the policewoman who found her on the Moors. Ryan’s fear is the Earth burning within his and his aged best mate’s lifetime, and it leads him to question his long-term absence from his friends’ lives. Jovial Graham, understandably, is plagued with anxiety that his cancer will return more aggressively. (Lovely that he dreams of his dead wife Grace but gets no succour from the “still socially awkward” Time Lord.) Some of this detail is peppered throughout the episode but it also comes in a slab at the end. The final act may seem heavy and slow but at this stage such deepening characterisation is vital. Doctor Who rarely tackles mental health. This is a growing topic for TV drama and is handled well here, with Tibo, who seemed buoyant in the basketball game in Spyfall but has now troughed and is experiencing a bout of depression. No one should complain that this frivolous sci-fi series is attempting to address it, even if it sits a little uneasily in a storyline about god-like beings projecting nightmares, exploiting fears and feeding on the pain of others. This may not be quite dream TV or even your worst nightmare, but as a cry for help Can You Hear Me? is worth attending.
Deadly birds, a missing astronaut, the spread of an alien pathogen… this world-spanning mystery shifts from intriguing to enervating
“Two identical deaths on two different continents. It’s even more dangerous than I thought” – the Doctor Story 292 Series 12 – Episode 6 Storyline Ryan is in Peru investigating birds that are falling out of the sky. In Hong Kong, Yaz and Graham discover missing astronaut Adam Lang trapped in an alien lab, while the Doctor is on a beach in Madagascar, where the lone survivor of a submarine wreck is washed ashore and dies. These locales and events are linked to the spread of a deadly pathogen, Praxeus. It has been unleashed by aliens who view Earth as the perfect living laboratory to find a cure. Praxeus breeds in plastic, found in abundance on our planet, and ingested by birds and humans. The Time Lord and her allies produce an antidote and use the alien ship to disperse it across the world. First UK broadcast Sunday 2 February 2020 Cast The Doctor – Jodie Whittaker Graham O’Brien – Bradley Walsh Ryan Sinclair – Tosin Cole Yasmin Khan – Mandip Gill Jake Willis – Warren Brown Adam Lang – Matthew McNulty Gabriela Camera – Joana Borja Suki Cheng – Molly Harris Jamila Velez – Gabriela Toloi Joyce – Soo Drouet Zach Olson – Tristan de Beer Aramu – Thapelo Maropefela Crew Writers – Pete McTighe, Chris Chibnall Director – Jamie Magnus Stone Series producer – Nikki Wilson Music – Segun Akinola Designer – Dafydd Shurmer Executive producers – Chris Chibnall, Matt Strevens RT review by Patrick Mulkern The Doctor Who team have engineered a bit of a problem for themselves. Last week, they treated us to a taste of a startling new Doctor with a stronger personality, a nattier costume and a glorious Tardis harking back to the unbeatable original… We want to see more. But then this week… oh! We’re back to that again. But Praxeus is, in itself, disappointing. It’s co-credited to showrunner Chris Chibnall and more importantly Pete McTighe, whose satire on Amazon, Kerblam!, was one of the stronger episodes in series 11. I’d hoped for something similarly scintillating. Though Praxeus generates an intriguing mystery at the start with the dead birds, the avian attacks, the deadly infection, it soon starts to dither and plod. So much so that gifted composer Segun Akinola has to resort to burble-muzak, shimmering under every scene, to disguise the air of enervation. Like the previous episode, there’s a discernible Russell T Davies vibe. Which is no bad thing, normally. Multiple locations. Large diverse cast. A core relationship under threat. But whereas Russell T managed, ingeniously, to sketch a character as a fully believable person within moments and with a few lines of dialogue, that doesn’t happen here. I come away from Praxeus knowing little about any of these people nor caring about them, whether they live, or calcify and shatter. Who were the vloggers Gabriela and Jamila? Were they mates or an item? The scientist-turned-alien-villain Suki is instantly forgettable. Who was her associate Aramu who died on the beach, unremarked and unmourned? The closest to interesting characters are suspended cop Jake and British astronaut Adam – rewardingly, if unsurprisingly, a married couple. Their dysfunctional relationship and its imbalance of power bring a bit of humanity into the proceedings, but the actors Warren Brown and Matthew McNulty look like they’ve just met on set that day. Kudos, though, to McTighe and Chibnall for foregrounding a gay male couple (Doctor Who has majored on lady-love since the reboot) and allowing them a proper snog. No big deal. No issue. As it should be. Praxeus hops around the world: Peru, Madagascar, Hong Kong… Ambitious, but I didn’t get a true sense of any of these locales. We’re six episodes into series 12 and it’s noticeable now that, like RTD’s early seasons, the Tardis is rarely leaving Earth. Skyfall flirted briefly with a dark dimension (and Gallifrey); Orphan 55 turned out to be a devastated future Earth. What seems like another world in Praxeus is a crash-site under the Indian Ocean. Novel setting, drearily rendered. Can we have some alien planets soon? What does Praxeus have going for it? Well, like the Nikola Tesla episode, there’s an extensive five-minute set-up before the Doctor and her gang show up. The multiple settings mean that the quartet are split up, act independently and get a fair share of the action. Yaz starts to feel like a proper companion when she insists on remaining in Hong Kong to investigate solo and brave danger. But there can be little tension if the Time Lord is able to contact all her acolytes via a tiny comms device and then jump to their location and rescue them so swiftly that they don’t even bother to show the police box materialising. I hanker for bygone days when the Doctor could not steer the Tardis and would lose track of his companions. Why fret if she doesn’t even break sweat while rescuing Jake from death? “I can save him, just, if I materialise around him in the millisecond before the ship breaks up.” (That didn’t help the fifth Doc’s companion Adric in Earthshock!) The plot taps into our concerns about pandemic (timely), pollution and microplastic particles getting into the food chain, but I don’t buy into the alien pathogen, its need for plastic, the alien threat, the control of the birds, or the deaths (horribly realised though they are). I just don’t feel Praxeus. A mystery with no tension, little to coo at or chuckle at, not much to chew on. The complete Doctor Who Story Guide
Doctor Who: Fugitive of the Judoon ★★★★★
Enthralling times as Captain Jack returns and the Doctor discovers a mysterious other self (the excellent Jo Martin)
“Let me take it from the top. Hello, I’m the Doctor” – the Doctor Story 291 Series 12 – Episode 5 Storyline “Space rhino” law enforcers, the Judoon, storm modern-day Gloucester looking for a mysterious fugitive. They home in on Ruth and Lee Clayton, a seemingly innocent couple who are harbouring a secret and have been in hiding for decades. After Lee is executed, it becomes clear that Ruth is the Judoon target. The Doctor helps her flee to a lighthouse, where she discovers another police box buried in the grounds. Ruth is a previously unknown version of the Doctor, whose identity was cloaked by a chameleon arch. Together they face off the Judoon, but what does this all mean for the two Doctors’ timeline? Meanwhile, Graham, Yaz and Ryan are abducted by Captain Jack, who has a warning for his old friend: “Beware the lone Cyberman.” First UK broadcast Sunday 26 January 2020 Cast The Doctor – Jodie Whittaker Ruth Clayton/The Doctor – Jo Martin Graham O’Brien – Bradley Walsh Ryan Sinclair – Tosin Cole Yasmin Khan – Mandip Gill Lee Clayton – Neil Stuke Gat – Ritu Arya Judoon Captain (Pol-Kon-Don) – Paul Kasey All Ears Allan – Michael Begley Marcia – Judith Street Tourist – Katie Luckins Judoon Captain voice – Nick Briggs Judoon – Simon Carew, Richard Highgate, Richard Price, Matthew Rohman Crew Writers – Vinay Patel, Chris Chibnall Director – Nida Manzoor Series producer – Nikki Wilson Music – Segun Akinola Designer – Dafydd Shurmer Executive producers – Chris Chibnall, Matt Strevens RT review by Patrick Mulkern “AND YOU WON’T BELIEVE WHAT HAPPENS THIS WEEK” … Well, yes, I would actually. That Doctor Who tagline was flashed up on telly and all over social media in the days before transmission. Gawd, was that the best you could do, BBC!? When your ratings are dipping, don’t dangle invisible carrots. Put your wares in the bloomin’ window. Or at least some of them. Keep your exciting new/old Doctor under wraps by all means (more of her later) but flash Jack. That would have had the blue-rinse brigade tuning in, at least. Anyway, Captain Jack Harkness is back. Whoop-dee-doo! I can’t say I find his return particularly unbelievable. Surprising, perhaps, that the writers (Vinay Patel and, more so, Whorunner Chris Chibnall) deemed this undying yet moribund character worth reviving. Jack was a saucy beggar when he arrived in 2005, pansexing up the tail end of Christopher Eccleston’s tenure. He last appeared in Doctor Who ten years ago, but had already become tiresome from over-exposure in the turgid Torchwood. Mercifully, the spin-off expired in 2011, and Jack simply was not needed in Doctor Who. He’d been outclassed by another, superior pansexual vagabond with a vortex-jumping wristband – River Song. The role Jack plays in Fugitive of the Judoon could well have been taken by River and is bizarrely tangential. He has no interaction with the Doctor, though he plants a delicious smacker on Graham’s lips in a moment of mistaken identity. Jack’s dramatic purpose is to abduct Graham, Ryan and Yaz and stop them clogging the Doctor’s journey of self-discovery; and to drop another opaque warning (“Beware the lone Cyberman”) into the season arc. I don’t mean to sound down on Jack. I like John Barrowman. In person, he’s a charmer. We met long ago over a supper of cold meats in the Albany. That is not a euphemism (the Albany is an upper-crust residence off London’s Piccadilly). He’s a hugely talented actor and entertainer, terrific in West End shows I’ve enjoyed and on Broadway in the Sondheim revue Putting It Together 20 years ago. Remarkably well preserved, Barrowman has gamely kept puffing at the cinders of Torchwood for a decade. He deserves this reward, bringing much fun and vitality to the episode, and surely Jack will be back before long. The Judoon. No Bo Ko! Another return from the Russell T Davies era that few demanded. Yo Wo Doh! The rhino-headed law enforcers are thunderbores – Toh Bo Zzzo! – and have popped up several times, fleetingly, since their debut in the David Tennant episode Smith and Jones. Way back in 2007. Fo Ko Ho! That is a long time ago… I’d only recently re-joined Radio Times and I remember an excited Edward Russell, the Who brand manager, rocking up to BBC Woodlands (RT has changed address twice since then) with the first DVDs of series three. A group of us piled into TV editor Alison Graham’s office to watch Martha Jones’s debut. On the Moon. With the Judoon. So far, so “fan-pleasing” – if Jack and the Judoon float your boat. What with the Master, Gallifrey and random Time Lords aboard, series 12 is a vortex-jump away from Jodie Whittaker’s first. In 2018, Chris Chibnall’s clear-the-decks approach seemed salutary but it didn’t set the cosmos alight with its novelties. Given the right approach, I see little wrong in being “fan-pleasing”. But then I am a fan and I like to be pleased. Such is Chibnall’s heart that he goes one further from “fan-pleasing” to “fan-honouring”. In the credits, he’s named the Judoon captain “Pol-Kon-Don” after a Doctor Who fan who died last year. Paul Condon. I don’t recall meeting him, although I know he was a close pal of several friends of mine, so this is a very lovely act. Not a first. Steven Moffat named a teacher Tom in The Day of the Doctor after Tom Spilsbury, the lovely long-time editor of Doctor Who Magazine. And shortly before that Mark Gatiss gave a nod to one of his mates in The Crimson Horror. And maybe tonight’s Ruth Clayton is named after Spilsbury’s predecessor at DWM, Clayton Hickman. I’d like to think so. Apart from the fact that it’s told at quite a lick and is gorgeously directed by Nida Manzoor (especially at Gloucester Cathedral and that lighthouse), I love the playfulness of Fugitive of the Judoon. The boldness with which Chibnall throws another giant spanner into Doctor Who mythology. The reveal of the buried police box… the realisation that an ordinary Gloucester couple, Ruth and Lee, are in fact another Doctor and her companion… all majestically handled. A retro “white” Tardis is always a joy to see. I love when clues are hidden in plain sight. The episode starts with tell-tale close-ups: a timepiece, a wristwatch hitting eight, Ruth’s mystified eyes, her hexagonal mirror, her police box-like windows… I’m amused that our current Doctor is as flummoxed as the viewers. “Is there even a word for how dumb you are?” says the new/old Doctor. Great to see Neil Stuke (one of my late father’s favourite actors) as the secretive Lee but, well, a huge welcome to Doctor Who, Jo Martin. Two excellent, very different, strong performances in the space of 50 minutes. I am kind of chuckling at the image of any racists out there spitting feathers that at last we have a black Doctor. And any misogynists choking over the sight of two female Doctors on screen. Oh yes, and this new one is not only a second female Doctor but, mind-bendingly, also now the first female Doctor, somehow predating Jodie Whittaker’s. Haha! Many fans will be declenching their sphincters trying to bash this mystery woman somewhere, somehow, into the programme’s timeline and sprawling continuity. For me, it’s up there with the divine intervention of John Hurt as the War Doctor in the 50th anniversary; and all the previously unknown Doctors we glimpsed in The Brain of Morbius in 1976. That’s a thrill I remember to this day. For now, let’s enjoy what this portends… The BBC was wrong. I DO BELIEVE. And this could be the revival the programme desperately needed. (If we were awarding out of ten, this would be a nine; but I’m not feeling stingy so this is getting an RT top mark of ★★★★★.)
Doctor Who: Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror ★★★★
A delightful tale as the Time Lord unites with Tesla and Edison to thwart the giant scorpion Queen of the Skithra
“Nikola Tesla, you’re going to change the world, but first you’re going to save it” – the Doctor Story 290 Series 12 – Episode 4 Storyline At Niagara Falls in the early 1900s, the undervalued inventor Nikola Tesla becomes the quarry of the Skithra, giant alien scorpions whose Queen needs an engineer to repair her damaged spaceship. The Doctor and her friends arrive and a chase ensues to New York, where Tesla’s rival and former employer, Thomas Edison, joins the fray. They combine resources at Tesla’s Wardenclyffe Tower project on Long Island, where the Queen threatens to destroy Earth, but the scientists beam electric rays into the sky to repel the Skithra. First UK broadcast Sunday 19 January 2020 Cast The Doctor – Jodie Whittaker Graham O’Brien – Bradley Walsh Ryan Sinclair – Tosin Cole Yasmin Khan – Mandip Gill Nikola Tesla – Goran Visnjic Thomas Edison – Robert Glenister Queen Skithra – Anjli Mohindra Dorothy Skerritt – Haley McGee Harold Green – Paul Kasey Bill Tallow – Robin Guiver Mr Sorensson – Erick Hayden Mr Brady – Russell Bentley Mr Martin – Brian Caspe Foreman – Shaun Mason Crew Writer – Nina Metivier Director – Nida Manzoor Series producer – Nikki Wilson Music – Segun Akinola Designer – Dafydd Shurmer Executive producers – Chris Chibnall, Matt Strevens RT review by Patrick Mulkern Science, at last! Doctor Who normally steers clear of real physicists and inventors from history. Not surprising, really. Science and invention need a lot of research and much authentic hardware on show. Scriptwriters are evidently more comfortable depicting cultural icons (Shakespeare, Dickens, Van Gogh, Agatha Christie) and rulers (Elizabeth I, Victoria, Nixon, Nero, Churchill and Hitler). Of course, the Doctor is always the scientist in the room. All others pale in her or his presence. And there’s the small matter of her/him not being seen to influence scientific progress. Long ago in the 1970s, Tom Baker’s Doctor joked about having climbed a tree and dropping an apple on Isaac Newton’s head. Lo, gravity! In the 80s, Colin Baker’s incarnation kept “Father of Railways” George Stephenson on track against the Luddites. Such examples are few in Who. Pleasingly, series 12 is going where no Who has gone before. Spyfall involved the pioneers of computing, and only two episodes later we’re presented with the rivalry between inventors Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison. Nina Metivier (a relatively new writer who script-edited for series 11 and won a Bafta for her CBBC series Dixi) delivers a carefully honed script – instantly getting the meter of modern Doctor Who. She deals with her characters fairly: the visionary genius and thwarted ambition of Tesla; and the bald avarice and business acumen of Edison, who isn’t quite as despicable as he first seems. He’s shown to care when his workforce is massacred. In the quieter moments, the meeting of minds, the enmity and empathy between these two and the Doctor are a delight. (How I long for an adventure with Alan Turing!) The casting is spot-on. Goran Visnjic, a Hollywood actor of Croatian birth (best known as Dr Luka Kovac in ER), stalks the screen as the saturnine, idealistic immigrant Tesla. The Canadian Haley McGee is sparky as his secretary/devotee – go on then, companion – Dorothy Skerritt (another real person). Equally commanding and charismatic, despite Edison’s ruthlessness, is Robert Glenister. Probably best known for the BBC1 series Hustle and Spooks, aeons ago Glenister played Major Salateen in Doctor Who classic The Caves of Androzani – Peter Davison’s swansong as the fifth Doctor. (On 12 January 1984, an appalling 36 years ago, I was on the studio floor at BBC TV Centre watching Glenister act out Salateen’s dramatic death by gunfire. Take after take. A fabulous memory.) It’s a relief that this trio are not, at the end, recipients of the Time Lord’s cavalier “memory wipe”, which Ada Lovelace and Noor Inayat Khan suffered in Spyfall. Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror has so much going for it. That tart and tarty title. Strong performances from a fine guest cast. Immaculate set dressing. A balance of action and contemplative lulls. A lengthy scene-setting sequence at Niagara Falls; four-and-a-half minutes elapse before Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor blunders in comically in the manner of Matt Smith’s version. The evocation of New York (actually a set in Bulgaria) is reasonably persuasive; not as teeming or filthy as one imagines. Tesla’s Wardenclyffe Tower project on Long Island is excellently re-created. And there’s an easy-to-follow plot in which the men and women of science unite to fend off an alien threat… It’s not all rosy. That alien threat is a tad underwhelming. Yes, there has to be hokum, and the giant scorpions are well realised via CGI, but they are also patently absurd, hilariously inept when chasing Edison and Yaz through the streets. The Queen of the Skithra is a gorgeous/hideous make-up job on the mush of Anjli Mohindra (an alumna of The Sarah Jane Adventures and memorable as train bomber Nadia in Bodyguard). This sovereign scorpion is too reminiscent of the Empress of the Racnoss from The Runaway Bride. It’s amusing when she turns up unexpectedly on terra firma at Wardenclyffe, but is mostly a bit of a bore in the lower drawer of Who baddies, her galactic scavenging and threats of obliteration lacking originality. It’s lovely to see Tesla and Edison stepping into the Tardis and marvelling at its transcendental dimensions. I can’t help thinking they’d have been more staggered by the previous and infinitely superior Tardis control room designed by Michael Pickwoad. Such is the speed of the emergency that none of the historical figures has chance to question the Doctor and her party in detail about their origins. To realise that they are from the future and learn what history will say about them. Perhaps kindly, Metivier resists the temptation to do a Vincent and the Doctor on Tesla and bring him to now for a glimpse of his legacy. Her achievement above all is to honour and venerate Tesla, without entirely besmirching Edison, and to bring into public view a great thinker who would die penniless but, with his “world wireless system”, foresaw wi-fi. “I work for the future and the future is mine.” He exits on a high and we experience pathos not bathos. Let this be a trend, then. More scientists from the past, please, with tarty episode titles. I’m thinking: Rosalind Franklin’s Helix of Fear, Alan Turing’s Enigma of Doom, Marie Curie’s Curious Incident of the Doc in the Night-time…