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29 November 2025 at 17:10 #78403
@ps1l0v3y0u I don’t know about this chord being contained in ‘The Inner Light”, “Blue Jay Way” (covered by this band on their reunion tour) or “Within and Without You”, I’m sorry that no one on here can tell me the song or songs I’m thinking of which contained “The Devil’s Chord”, so now I’ll have to reveal them.
The main song I’m thinking of is “Helter Skelter” covered by Siouxsie and The Banshees, from their album “The Scream” https://open.spotify.com/track/1fxqGusoFnaRoFRmf9bSsS?si=96b39597d6b2454d Several of the chords are used in the intro. I think it’s also contained in their songs “The Staircase (Mystery)” and “Playground Twist”. They were played by guitarist John McKay, but he left, then their later guitarists had to copy him as well as add their own ideas.
I haven’t heard this type of chord used by anyone else, but I’ve just found https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritone
The RTD Bad Wolf Productions series I was thinking about was “I Hate Suzie”.
28 November 2025 at 10:50 #78396@ps1l0v3y0u I don’t know anything about “the Devil in Music” or George Harrison using this chord. However, it was used in a cover version of a Beatles song and possibly in one or two other songs. This guitarist likes using more obscure chords.
I’m not wishing my life away waiting for the Doctor Who Christmas Special 2026! I think the BBC has closed down now. I never watch anything on BBC TV channels because I’m boycotting them. I think the BBC must be severely punished for their treatment of Doctor Who. Eastenders and Strictly must be cancelled, as well as the Licence Fee abolished just for starters! My fantasies about this are Doctor Who crossovers with both series that put the 30th Anniversary “Dimensions in Time” to shame. They should cost a fortune, bankrupting the BBC, so that the BBC has to go off air. Everything the BBC produces apart from Doctor Who is a total waste of the Licence Fee.
Luckily for Doctor Who fans there are some fan produced videos. One collection is called DW2012 because of when it started. I’ve only seen a few of these, because I didn’t hear about them until recently and Season 2 was taken offline to be remastered, but now I’ve heard it’s back online. Apart from this, there are lots of the Big Finish audio dramas available in Spotify and/or Apple Music which can save fans a fortune compared with buying them individually. Fans can also buy a subscription to KDAN PDF Reader or some similar software, then get it to read various Doctor Who novels to them aloud if they find them difficult to read.
I’ll be watching “The War Between The Land and The Sea”, but I’m not expecting much from it. I doubt if I’ll be watching it twice.
27 November 2025 at 14:53 #78393I think I must admit now that I never really liked the Disney+ era of Doctor Who. I was just trying to like it, watching it to support the series and telling other people to watch it to enable Doctor Who to continue.
I’m disgusted with Ncuti Gatwa for leaving just because it was taking too long for his liking for Disney+ to decide whether or not to finance another series or season. His latest job is performing live in a play! RTD and/or Disney+ have messed everything up by introducing fantasy elements into the series. Luckily, the original ending of “The Reality War” was deleted. This ending claimed that the character Poppy was actually Susan’s Mum. I think this is really stupid or even sacrilegious, because Time Lords have previously been shown to be in synch with each other when travelling. The Doctor would never meet The Master as a baby, for example. So, this means that it’s impossible for a baby or a toddler to be Susan’s Mum. I think her Mum might have been “The Woman” standing near Rassillon from “The End of Time – Part 2”, or an ordinary Gallifreyan Shobogan who failed the test to become a Time Lord. Either way, she can’t appear as a baby, although she might look younger than Susan.
Unfortunately, the actual chord played in “The Devil’s Chord” which caused Maestro to appear was a chord well known to me. It was made up of notes which are three tones apart. This is equivalent to six guitar frets. I don’t think it has a name because the guitarist of a certain quite influential band made it up. Can anyone here name the band or mention any tunes it appears in? I’m worried that RTD chose this as The Devil’s Chord, as well as the title of another series he’s produced because he hates this band!
I think the best thing about this era was Ruby, who was totally sexy. I think just the skirt she wore in her first episode could have attracted lots of viewers if they’d known about it in advance. I was really disappointed when she left at the end of her first season or series, then didn’t make many appearances in the second series or season. I’ve just noticed that she’s since appeared in a remake of the old “The Forsyte Saga”, and the pics of what she’s wearing in that mean that I definitely won’t be watching it. I hope she appears in a sci fi series in the near future. I don’t think she’ll return to Doctor Who in the planned Christmas Special for 2026, though.
23 November 2025 at 20:24 #78369Of course 14 should have worn 13’s clothes, because clothes can’t regenerate and no explanation has ever been offered. Apart from this, why did 13 have dark roots right from the time she regenerated until the end? Even Barbie dolls were made of her with dark roots! Which psycho had the idea of the dark roots? There’s no excuse.
Jodie: “I’m sorry but my hairdresser’s just dropped dead, so I couldn’t get my roots done in time for this shoot!”
Producer: “Never mind, just put this short blonde wig on for the moment”.
NO EXCUSE!
23 November 2025 at 16:04 #78367The series has a long tradition of the Doctor wearing their usual outfit when visiting any time period, but people not commenting on it. I think some of the most extreme examples were BG “An Unearthly Child”, in episodes 2-4 when the Doctor and companions travel back to the Stone Age, but not many comments are made about their clothes being made of materials and techniques unknown in that time when everyone else is wearing animal skins and even shoes haven’t been invented. One of the locals comments “they wear skins on their feet”. In “The Visitation” a Terrileptil says that the companions are wearing clothes made of materials unknown in that time period (i.e. 1666). In “The Mark of The Rani” set in the 19th Century, the Sixth Doctor is wearing his multicoloured, multi fabric coat as usual which sticks out like a sore thumb anywhere, but Peri is wearing clothes from that time period. So after all this, it’s no real surprise that people living in the 17th Century, the 1950s, etc didn’t comment on what the Thirteenth Doctor was wearing.
22 November 2025 at 19:02 #78354@nerys Yes, there were a few references to The Doctor being female. In her first full episode “The Woman Who Fell to Earth” Yaz called her “Madam” on the train. She asked why, then Yaz replied “Because you’re a woman”. In another episode during her first season she said something about having been a sister before.
In the episode “Rosa”, the character Rosa Parks called her “Ma’am” on the bus, telling her they weren’t allowed to sit next to each other.
In the episode “The Witchfinders”, set in the 17th Century, she was downgraded from Witchfinder to Witchfinder’s Assistant when she was with Graham, because she was female.
In the episode “Spyfall, Part 1” the spymaster played by Stephen Fry thought that Graham was The Doctor because he knew The Doctor was a man, but then it was pointed out to him that The Doctor had turned into a woman.
In another episode, which I think may have been “Can You Hear Me”, Captain Jack Harkness appears briefly and Graham, Ryan, or Yaz tell him The Doctor is now female. He replies “This I gotta see!”
Finally in “The Power of The Doctor”, the classic series companions Tegan and Ace are reunited with The Doctor by Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, then one of them says something like “We were told it was a woman, but YOUNG!”
There may be a few other mentions of the Doctor being female, but I can’t remember them at the moment. As for wearing a corset, this Thirteenth Doctor travelled to various time periods on Earth, but never had to wear one, although I think the women of some of those time periods in those episodes did.
16 November 2025 at 23:48 #78312@whohar it sounds like just a hatchet job of “The Sea Devils”, which was only six episodes long AND in colour! As for the spinoff, it looks and sounds like it doesn’t even feature the same species as the Sea Devils. They look quite different and are called “homo aqua”, so there’s no point showing this story before it!
16 November 2025 at 23:43 #78311@dentarthurdent What’s your definition of a “small episode”? Of course, “Midnight” was total crap, mainly people repeating what someone else was saying. “Vincent and The Doctor” was great, while “Fugitive of The Judoon” was part of the amazing Timeless Child storyline which revitalised Doctor Who. “The Wire” was also fantastic, while “Dinosaurs on a Spaceship” was crap. Of course “Space Babies” was terrible and I’m relieved that the original ending to “The Reality War” when Susan said to Poppy “Come on Mum”, was cut. Susan’s Mum must be someone with some history and who is older than Susan. It could be “The Woman” from “The End of Time” or a previously unseen woman who could be just a Shebogan from Gallifrey who never became a Time Lord. As we’ve seen in classic series episodes, when different Time Lords meet up after travelling, their time streams are in sync, so none of them could meet a parent as a baby.
30 October 2025 at 04:11 #78269I hate this latest plan of a FOURTEEN MONTH GAP until the next Doctor Who episode! I wonder if the World might end or I might die before then. I hope other people on here understand how I feel.
Also, I don’t think Russell T Davies should be allowed to write the Christmas Special for 2026, because he’s made enough mess already! His writing was great in the early days of NuWho, but nothing like as good in the Disney+ era. Specific things that shouldn’t have been featured were goblins, babies, fairies, and Imperial or US measurements such as the title “73 Yards”, as well as other occurrences of these measurements I’ve tried to forget.
My plans for the near future include getting KDAN PDF Reader to read various Doctor Who novels aloud to me, as well as to listen to as many Big Finish recordings, and watch as many fan films as possible!
28 October 2025 at 18:00 #78258BBC Executive1: “How can we make the fans accept yet another gap in Doctor Who?”
BBC Executive2: “Let’s spread a rumour that it’s dead and buried. We’ll let them believe this for about five months, then they’ll be grateful for ANYTHING!”
BBC Executive1: “BRILLIANT!”
28 October 2025 at 15:29 #78256BAD NEWS! Another gap for Doctor Who. I know some people will think it’s good, though. https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/sci-fi/doctor-who-future-confirmed-bbc-disney-newsupdate/
26 September 2025 at 15:28 #78140I think we can safely assume now that this “decision” on some unknown date in 2026 will include details that there will be no new series of Doctor Who in 2026, because there won’t be “enough time” to produce a series with all the special effects they claim are required!
All Doctor Who fans living in the UK should contact the BBC immediately telling them they’re boycotting the BBC completely because of their treatment of Doctor Who, including the big insult of a planned animated CBeebies Doctor Who series, and will claim a TV licence exemption.
Fans living outside the UK should complain especially if they subscribe to any BBC channels as part of a package, then cancel their subscriptions to those channels, or even the whole package, as well as demanding that the BBC and any production company they may hire stops spending so much time creating special effects for Doctor Who. Look how many commercial channels the BBC runs around the World! Who can guess how much money they make from this?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_BBC_television_channels
Wherever fans live, they could stage protests against any or all Disney shops, studios, etc, calling them “Doctor Who killers” or even “Doctor Who murderers”, although of course it’s the BBC who are mainly responsible.
Meanwhile fans can listen to lots of Big Finish audio dramas on Spotify and/or Apple Music, as well as watching the fan made series DW2012. Unfortunately, at the moment DW2012 is marred by series 2 of 5 being removed from YouTube to be remastered! Luckily, I’ve just found copies of some of the series two episodes on archive.org
26 August 2025 at 15:50 #78089The Mandela Effect in Doctor Who! This is where some people remember history totally differently, such as that Nelson Mandela died in prison instead of years after being released and serving as President of South Africa. This is supposed to mean that they’re originally from a parallel universe. My memory is amazing. I’ve just been watching some classic Doctor Who again. I mean the Fifth Doctor story “Enlightenment”. I remember clearly a villain called Captain Wrack saying to the companion Tegan “Have you heard of a stitch in time?” However, in the version I’ve just seen on BBC iPlayer at 18:51 into the video Captain Wrack says “Have you heard of time standing still?” I think this is an example of the Mandela Effect. Does anyone else here remember Captain Wrack saying “Have you heard of a stitch in time?” Did the BBC somehow edit this part of Enlightenment episode 3? If so, why? I’ve checked that my memory of David Cameron, Barack Obama, and Helle Thorning-Schmidt taking selfies, laughing and joking at a memorial for Nelson Mandela actually happened although I thought it was his funeral, and the Lib Dems still didn’t insist on Proportional Representation after the UK General Election of 2010 either. Events before 1983 might have changed, although I haven’t found any yet. I hope someone can explain this discrepancy.
22 August 2025 at 08:56 #78085I’m disgusted with the BBC! This latest comment makes no real difference. As for “The War Between The Land and The Sea”, even that has been delayed now. When I first heard of it, I thought that five episode series was why Doctor Who had been cut from 13 down to 8 episodes per series. I’m so sick and tired of hearing about it now that I think the whole thing should be dumped in a skip and burnt! Last night/this morning I was very drunk and writing a new series of Doctor Who, featuring Billie Piper’s Doctor up against a new, very powerful, time travelling enemy, who may have been created by the Time Lords. This isn’t much good for me, because then I’d know everything that was going to happen!
15 July 2025 at 17:37 #78042The BBC have finally made a statement about Doctor Who! Unfortunately, I don’t know what it means. Can anyone translate?
https://www.tvzoneuk.com/post/doctorwho-bbcstudiosceo-commentsrep1
15 July 2025 at 16:28 #78040I think the BBC should be forced to give a licence to anyone wanting to produce a new series of Doctor Who, as it looks like they want to kill it off. The licence should be free so that the group producing the new series can have more money to produce it.
I also think the TV licensing law should be updated to apply only to people watching BBC TV, listening to BBC Radio, watching BBC iPlayer, or Channel 4. At the moment, the law says that people need a TV licence if they watch ANY live TV at all! This includes live TV from outside the UK.
15 July 2025 at 14:08 #78038The Doctor is wearing a kilt, as he has done many times before. It has tartan, but a kilt doesn’t even have to have tartan on it to be a kilt. It’s a kilt because it wraps around itself and is fastened with a few straps, as well as having small pleats near the straps. As for the Doctor or anyone else wearing skirts, why not?
I don’t know why the Doctor said he has the only TARDIS in existence. How would he know?
Now for some explanations from classic Who which you said fans don’t need to watch.
1. A Time Ring was seen only once before in the Fourth Doctor story “Genesis of The Daleks”, the Daleks’ origin story made 12 years after the Daleks first appeared. Fans say it’s a different timeline from previous Dalek stories, but there are continuity errors in those stories anyway. The Daleks were originally all killed at the end of their first story. It’s essential viewing because it’s influenced all Dalek stories since then. The Time Lords intercepted a transmat beam carrying the Doctor and his two companions Sarah-Jane and Harry. You probably don’t know Harry. A Time Lord wearing a unique costume told the Doctor they wanted him to visit the Daleks’ home planet of Skaro and either prevent their creation or affect their development to make them less malevolent. The Time Lord then told the Doctor he was already on Skaro. His TARDIS was on a space station in Earth’s solar system, though. He gave the Doctor a Time Ring, telling him not to lose it because “That Time Ring is your lifeline!” Obviously, this was just a plot device to create suspense, then he lost it twice. The Time Lords could easily have transported the Doctor and his two companions safely off Skaro after the mission was complete.
2. The Zero Room was introduced, as well as deleted, in the Fifth Doctor’s first story “Castrovalva”. It’s described as a place totally isolated from the rest of the known universe. According to the companion Tegan, this allegedly makes it similar to Brisbane, or according to me parts of Devon, SW England. Have you ever been to Brisbane? The Zero Room is Time Lord technology and even the gravity is only local, so it’s easy to levitate. I don’t think Susan Triad could have built one. The Doctor could easily have reconfigured the TARDIS to create a new Zero Room, but never has.
As for the symphony orchestra, it’s just another example of what’s lacking in NuWho, meaning the amazing BBC Radiophonics Department incidental electronic music, which added so much atmosphere to lots of stories in the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Doctors’ eras. This was originally done in the Third Doctor story “The Sea Devils”, though.
14 July 2025 at 01:52 #78033It’s looking more and more likely now that the BBC think they can cancel Doctor Who forever, or at least indefinitely! They also think that Doctor Who fans will sit back and take any old SH**!
I say enough is enough and it’s time for some Doctor Who riots soon! Close down CBeebies as well, to prevent the travesty of a Doctor Who animated series for pre school kids. If other groups can hold riots and get away with it, then why shouldn’t we?
I’m also going to contact as many people as possible to try and get the rights to Doctor Who REMOVED from the BBC!! I hope this will lead to a group which actually CARES about Doctor Who making a Christmas Special, followed by a new series. It could be produced in a few months, like in the classic era.
12 July 2025 at 14:55 #78028I’ve seen Danger Man, but I don’t remember the dialogue in various languages.
I don’t think I’ll bother to watch any more Bond films.
My native language is English.
I’ve seen various episodes of Star Trek: DS9 and Star Trek: VOY in German first of all on the channel SAT.1, because at the time that was the easiest way for me to see them. You can now watch them via satellite or Internet on the German channel Tele5 https://tele5.de/serien
I started reading the New Doctor Who adventures years ago. At first it took me about 4.5 days to read each book in between doing everthing else I needed to do, but the amount of time gradually kept increasing with later books, until it took me about 18 months to read “White Darkness”, after having to stop then go back to the beginning again. After that, I stopped. I took some of these books to a creative writing night class I was going to. I asked the people there why it was taking me so long to read the later books. One student said she thought it was because the later books were written in more complicated language. Years later, I started reading that series of books again, this time using e-readers, starting with the following book “Shadowmind”. I managed to carry on until reading “Tragedy Day”, but then I stopped. I wrote summaries of each book to help me remember the stories, but now I’ve lost them.
A few days ago, I started using KDAN PDF reader which can read PDFs aloud. I find this is much easier than reading the printed Doctor Who books, or even e-book versions. Unfortunately, I have to pay a subscription of £8.99 to use this software after the trial period of 3 or 7 days is up. I didn’t cancel it after being able to read the BBC past Doctors book “Business Unusual”, telling the story of how Mel first met the Doctor, which Michael Grade prevented from being made with his 18 month gap and sacking Colin Baker. I think it took me about 4 days to read it, thanks to it being read aloud to me. I think the story in this book, as well as in the New Adventures books, is much more complicated than a classic Who story. I don’t know how long it would last if it was made for TV without deleting various details. I’ve now written a summary of the story and I plan to continue with The New Adventures “Legacy” soon.
11 July 2025 at 11:16 #78023I meant that James Bond’s friends and allies spoke English as their native language, but could have been from anywhere, such as the USA, Canada, or Australia. There were only 14 Bond books written by Ian Fleming, but I’m not sure how many stories there were. Two of the books were published after his death in 1964. Only two or 3 film versions were produced before he died. Some other authors have written Bond stories after he died.
I didn’t know until recently that lots of James Bond’s enemies were German or of German descent, but this was quite ridiculous because the stories were written years after WWII ended and the USSR was the new enemy. Of course, some of them might have been East German, but I don’t know, because I’ve been avoiding watching these films. BTW, Ursula Andress from “Dr. No” and a friend of Bond’s is Swiss German and her Dad was German, but her Mum was Swiss German. The language spoken in most of Switzerland is called Swiss German, but the spoken version is often unintelligible to stndard German speakers, due to the pronounciation, but also some different words and word order. It’s written the same as standard German, though. It may as well not be called German at all!
I like Doctor Who because I started watching it as a young child, but it’s stood the test of time and is the only thing that remains constant in my life, apart from the gap years. I’ve just started reading some more Doctor Who books by getting some software to read them aloud, otherwise they’re too difficult to get through. Unfortunately, the Doctor’s companions tend to be almost all from English speaking countries and space colonies. Not many Doctor Who stories have been set in other European countries either. Some exceptions to are “Arc of Infinity” (partly in the Netherlands) and “Planet of Fire” (partly Spain).
11 July 2025 at 00:33 #78020There’s a good reason I’m called TranslatorCircuit! I’m multilingual. I’m typing this on a German layout keyboard. Not only that, but apart from sci fi, most of my TV viewing is in German and French. James Bond is totally unrealistic British nationalist isolationist crap! In spite of all the defence cuts, James Bond is equipped to do absolutely anything. The stories totally fit in with all the Anglophonia CANZUK propaganda. Most of, or even nearly all of James Bonds’ friends are native English speakers, while most of his enemies aren’t. Lots of them are German, or of German descent. https://jamesbond.fandom.com/wiki/Germany
However, Doctor Who made an anti Brexit joke about UNIT operations being suspended in the story “Resolution”. Peter Capaldi attened an anti Brexit protest for scientists.
10 July 2025 at 09:10 #78014I’m afraid people aren’t saying you shouldn’t watch Star Trek TOS, or early James Bond films, so that’s not fair! I think the only difference is that the first two Doctors’ eras were made in B&W. In that case, what’s needed is more colourisations, but without editing out parts of the story, which was done with “The Daleks” or discarding most of the story, as with “The War Games”. I think there should be a colourised version of the unedited “The War Games”, which was originally shown as one 25 minute episode per week over ten weeks.
I was fascinated to see some of the First Doctor’s stories and I plan to watch the few I haven’t yet seen ASAP.
BTW, here’s a list of the longest films ever made. A lot of of them are longer than “The War Games”! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest_films
9 July 2025 at 12:09 #78008Doctor Who wouldn’t even exist without the First Doctor and wouldn’t have continued for so long without the Second Doctor and regeneration. I suppose the BBC could have replaced William Hartnell with a lookalike, followed by another lookalike, ad infinitum, but they would have had to be good actors as well. I think Richard Hurndall (from “The Five Doctors” and Blake’s Seven “Assassin”) was already old enough in 1966. Personally, I’ve met two William Hartnell lookalikes, but I don’t think either of them did any acting.
James Bond films don’t give any explanation of how Bond’s face can change. I haven’t even seen most of the Bond films because I think they promote British nationalist isolationism, but I have seen the latest one, because of the story about the engineered nanites, so I wanted to know more. I heard that the number 007 AND the name James Bond can be re assigned.
I’ve watched and enjoyed lots of other sci fi series, including all of the “Star Trek” series (but not much of “Lower Decks” and only the first episode of “Prodigy”, “Red Dwarf”, “Blake’s Seven”, “Babylon 5”, all the Stargate series, “Timeless”, “Firefly”, “Starhunter” and “The Ark”. I think that anyone who watches any Star Trek series must watch the original series which they’re all based on to understand it properly. Don’t forget “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” returns in 8-9 days from now, after a cliff hanger ending involving The Gorn, a species which first appeared in Star Trek TOS.
8 July 2025 at 13:53 #78003Your lack of knowledge of classic Who is disgusting! You need a viewing plan of various really important episodes to watch for your homework. I think you should start with “An Unearthly Child”, “The Daleks”, “The Dalek Invasion of Earth”, and “The Web Planet”. After that, watch “The Chase” and “The Time Meddler”. These are all First Doctor stories. Watching that era filled in a lot of gaps for me. “The Web Planet” is a more realistic story set on a planet completely different to Earth, without an Earth type atmosphere or humanoid natives. Out of these stories, only “An Unearthly Child” isn’t available on BBC iPlayer, so you’ve got no excuse! BBC iPlayer allows anyone to view it so long as their IP address is a residential UK IP address, not for business, but this can’t carry on indefinitely. There are plenty of alternatives which will allow you to watch classic Doctor Who and even The Flash (1990) without getting the episodes confused with NuWho or The Flash (2014).
8 July 2025 at 13:14 #78002Apart from being a sequel to the crappy “Midnight”, I think “The Well” where only one member of a crew survives is copying a Star Trek: TNG episode, as well as a Star Trek: ENT episode. Details on https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Night_Terrors_(episode) AND https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Impulse_(episode)
It looks like RTD has run out of ideas. I wonder which Star Trek episode he wants to copy next? I don’t really believe the claim “There are only seven drama plots” which JNT once said. BTW, which Shakespearian play is “Rose” based on?
7 July 2025 at 14:23 #77990“Planet of The Spiders” was a brilliant story! Criticising the spiders themselves is just a criticism of special effects. I’m also happy that the Master has continued since that era. Being able to knock something together in a rush is also what’s needed NOW, instead of pretending it’s too late, so no Christmas Special and no new series next year.
I don’t know if RTD will continue in Doctor Who, or why Chris Bailey might get a credit, but he wrote the Fifth Doctor stories “Kinda” and “Snakedance” which were both brilliant, featuring the Mara. The special effects were definitely good enough. I think the Mara should return, especially because that would be more believable than Omega returning after being totally annihilated TWICE, involving anti matter.
I think people should watch the fan made series DW2012 to see what can be done.
7 July 2025 at 02:05 #77986I thought I’d commented on this episode before, but I see I haven’t, so I will do now!
I think that Midnight is one of the worst Doctor Who stories ever, and this was almost as bad! It’s all based around the idea of looking behind someone at something almost invisible, but not quite. This was done before in “Planet of The Spiders” as well as “Turn Left”. The difference between these and “The Well” is that there’s actually a story apart from looking behind someone at something almost invisible, but with “The Well” that’s more or less the whole story. The writing technique was similar to “Boom”, where one part of an old story is reused and becomes the whole story. Total crap! After this, it’s no wonder the whole future of the series is under threat.
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This reply was modified 10 months, 1 week ago by
TranslatorCircuit. Reason: Added a sentence about "Boom"
2 July 2025 at 13:02 #77958I think that people need to have a good knowledge of classic Who to understand everything about NuWho but don’t have to watch all the stories. There are a few stories even I haven’t seen, such as “The Smugglers”, “The Savages” and “The Myth Makers”. I plan to watch these soon to find out what I’ve missed, though. I think that some of the best First Doctor stories are “An Unearthly Child”, “The Daleks”, and “The Web Planet”. I think that some of the best Second Doctor stories are “Evil of The Daleks”, “Tomb of The Cybermen”, and “The War Games”.
NuWho has been written so that viewers can start at the beginning of a Doctor’s era and understand most of what’s going on but not everything. The Fifteenth Doctor soon summed up The Timeless Child storyline to Ruby in a few words, but that’s no reason not to bother watching the amazing two part season 12 finale.
It’s obvious to me that the BBC doesn’t care about Doctor Who, except making money out of episodes already produced and merchandise. I think the rights to the series should be given to someone who DOES care!
As for the situation with TV or the death of live TV, being replaced by streaming, I think I should point out that Star Trek has survived in the form of a few streaming series. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is returning any day now and there are even plans to make some new Star Trek streaming series. I won’t count the animated Lower Decks or Prodigy, but since the beginning of 2020, a total of 30 episodes of Star Trek: Picard have been streamed, a total of 36 more episodes of Star Trek: Discovery, and a total of 20 episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, making a total of 86 episodes, soon to be 96 after the next season of Strange New Worlds. All of these series were on paid streaming platforms. Compare that with only 49 new episodes of Doctor Who shown as from 2020. I think that during that time there should have been 83 new Doctor Who episodes including Christmas Specials.
29 June 2025 at 17:40 #77931@dentarthundert
I can’t emphasise enough that people must remember Doctor Who didn’t start in 2005, so it’s essential for fans to watch the classic series which it’s based on! This isn’t like just another version of “Sherlock Holmes”, which was originally in short story or book form. It’s not a reimagining like “Battlestar Galactica” (2003) either! It’s a continuation of the original series.
Some classic Who hallmarks which have been lost are the amazing atmospheric electronic BBC Radiophonics music, which was incidental music during episodes, as well as the theme music, plus companions not going home until they left the Doctor, if ever. However, classic Who didn’t feature mainly electronic incidental music until well into the Fourth Doctor’s era, although the first electronic score for a story was “The Sea Devils” during the Third Doctor’s era. The BBC Radiophonics Dept was closed down in 1995 and the BBC hasn’t bothered to set up a replacement, just making do with the BBC Wales Orchestra to play all the Doctor Who music. The first non electronic Doctor Who theme was used for the TV Movie in 1996, but I thought it was sacrilege.
After years of me watching classic Doctor Who, having only the background information that The Doctor was a Time Lord who travelled through time and space in his ship called the TARDIS, I felt much better when I saw various First and Second Doctor episodes, which explained things in more detail. The Doctor had a granddaughter who he left behind on Earth because he thought it was for her own good to give her roots instead of wandering through space and time. This would have been really traumatic if it was in real life and may even count as child abuse! In theory the Doctor could be considered as having kidnapped Susan because she was too young to decide to go with him and may have been required to return her to Gallifrey. It seems the Doctor never went back to check on her, but then she re appeared with him in “The Five Doctors”. The Daleks were descended from the Dals, one of two groups which survived a nuclear war, while the Thals were their old enemies. The Cybermen were a prediction of what humans might become if they transplanted replacement cybernetic organs into their bodies, and they seemed to be upgraded in each adventure. The Ice Warriors showed what green Martians might be really like. Transmat or teleport should be a reality in the future, although scientists say it’s impossible to deconstruct and reassemble a person’s atoms, especially because too much data is involved. Other theories about this are Quantum Entanglement, as well as the claim in an old sci fi novel “Mission to the Stars” by AE van Vogt that what comes out at the other end is actually just a copy and the original has been destroyed. The Doctor’s people the Time Lords had a strict policy of non interference, but the Doctor had broken this law, so when he gave away his location by asking for help they soon caught up with him and forced him to stand trial. His punishment was to be exiled to 20th Century Earth with his TARDIS disabled and his knowledge of how to operate it blocked from his memory.
Of course, it’s essential for Doctor Who fans to know who Sarah-Jane Smith was, instead of just “a former companion”. They can soon find out by watching all stories featuring her either on BBC iPlayer (with a VPN if outside the UK) or by other means. Unfortunately, “Terror of The Zygons” and possibly some others have now been deleted from iPlayer, so they need to look elsewhere for them. She was a journalist who first appeared in “The Time Warrior” (Season 11) which also introduced the Sontarans, then appeared in every story up to and including “The Hand of Fear” (Season 14). This is a total of 18 stories or 80 episodes of about 25 minutes each. Her era spanned the Third and Fourth Doctors. She also appeared in “K9 and Company” a pilot episode for a spin off series that was never produced, although she’d never been involved with K9 before. She re appeared in “The Five Doctors” 20th Anniversary Special. She appeared in the NuWho episode “School Reunion”, then finally got her own spin off series “The Sarah-Jane Adventures”.
Mel is another classic companion who’s recently been featured in Doctor Who. Fans should watch all episodes featuring her from “Trial of a Time Lord” (Season 23) until “Dragonfire” (Season 24). This is a total of just 5 stories, totalling 28 episodes. She didn’t appear until the final 4 episodes of “Trial of a Time Lord”, but fans can’t watch just the last four episodes. Unfortunately, her origin story was never made after her being taken out of her time stream.
An amazing opportunity for a spin off series was missed when the Time Lord/Lady companion Romana left in “Warriors’ Gate” (Season 18) to stay with a time sensitive race called The Tharils who travelled through space and time using a gateway. She said she planned to do “What we’ve always done” using the Gateway.
There were lots of continuity errors, starting quite early on. The Doctor was the only person who was supposed to be able to open the TARDIS door lock, otherwise it would melt or fuse. However, even by the second story “The Daleks”, not only Susan, but in theory, even Ian could do it. Later still the Doctor started handing out copies of the TARDIS key. Another error was that The Doctor had to leave Sarah-Jane behind on Earth when he had to go to the Time Lords’ Planet Gallifrey because no aliens were allowed there. However, his next companion Leela not only went there twice, but stayed permanently. The Time Lords’ costumes and their culture changed as from “The Deadly Assassin” (Season 14). Later still, Nyssa was welcomed there by The High Council in “Arc of Infinity” (Season 20). Of course, no one can be sure at what point in the 20th Century the Third Doctor’s UNIT adventures took place. They were originally shown in the early 1970s. Actor Nicholas Courtney said he was first told that they were set twenty years in the future from that point, so starting in about 1990. However, various other people think they took place either in the 1970s or the 1980s. A lot of advanced technology was shown in these episodes, so it wasn’t the 1970s, no matter what recent comments about this have claimed. There was a continuity error about this in the Fifth Doctor story “Mawdryn Undead”, which showed that The Brigadier had retired before 1977.
Eventually, the BBC management turned against Doctor Who and actively tried to sabotage it! Michael Grade forced it to take a break and had the cheek to compare it to the totally crap and cliched Star Wars films, which are largely hated by Star Trek fans. Star Wars lacks much of a story, relying on special effects, props, and music. Grade claimed that special effects were what really mattered and even cited an example from the amazing “Warriors of The Deep” (Season 21) where Dr. Solow (Ingrid Pitt) tried using martial arts against the Merkur. Star Wars had only a few stories, but Doctor Who had hundreds! He also denied fans the chance to see how the Sixth Doctor first met Mel after she’d been taken out of her time stream. Doctor Who in the UK was also moved into the same time slot as the soap “Coronation Street”. It was moved from Saturdays to weekdays. There were sometimes two episodes per week instead of only one, which meant that it was only running for about 25% of each year. Finally, there was a reduction in episodes and lot of censorship during the Seventh Doctor’s era, which led to a decline in viewing figures, giving another BBC executive called Peter Cregeen the perfect excuse to “rest” it. After that, it was off air until 2005, apart from a pathetic 30th Anniversary special and an Americanised TV Movie.
After all this, as well as being conned out of 5 series plus 10 episodes of Doctor Who during the last 20 years, some fans think they should be grateful for whatever crumbs the BBC throws them, but I don’t! I think a wave of big protests is called for. The World might even end or I might die before the next series of Doctor Who if that’s not planned to be shown before 2027! Of course, in that case, any hackers leaking unfinished episodes before then would be welcome. I first saw “Rose” about two weeks before it was originally broadcast thanks to a courageous hacker who leaked it. It seemed identical to the version finally shown.
26 June 2025 at 10:22 #77919I was referring to your lack of knowledge about the first two Doctors’ eras. It’s essential to watch the classic series. The modern series wouldn’t even exist without it.
As for being forced back into the distant past, destroying my lifestyle, I’ve already had my lifestyle destroyed a few times, but not as badly as that. Just being forced to live in the middle of nowhere caused a massive depression for me, nearly leading to a nervous breakdown. I was threatened with worse than that, then I made plans about how to commit suicide if that threat was put into action.
How to try and re invent modern technology? I could get in touch with people who knew how to make certain things, give them the ideas, then wait and see what they could do about it. I doubt they could re invent the Internet soon enough for me, though.
26 June 2025 at 10:14 #77918I really couldn’t care less “how the television industry works” if it means constantly having gap years in Doctor Who! However it works must be destroyed, then the way it used to work or a way similar to that established. The main priority must be to get another Doctor Who special shown later this year, followed by another series next year. That’s it. Of course, I also want the BBC to make up for the gap years of 2009, 2016, 2022, and 2023, as well as being conned out of 10 episodes in 2024 and 2025!!
24 June 2025 at 19:04 #77910You should at least consult an episode guide before posting a long reply like that!
I think that Blink was an excellent story which introduced the Weeping Angels, but it was also a a Doctor Lite story. It involved a nightmare scenario of people having their lives destroyed by being forcibly sent back in time where there was far less technology and far fewer rights. After this, they became brainwashed into accepting their fates. I think it would be far more realistic if the Weeping Angels victims killed themselves instead. If it had happened to me then I’d at least have attempted to recreate various technology from the future and organised civil rights protests before killing myself!
Of course, the Hartnell and Troughton stories are widely available, including on BBC iPlayer, so there’s no real excuse for not having seen them. People outside the UK can just use a VPN. They were originally shown as 25 minute episodes once per week. Some of them were 4 episodes long, while a lot of others were 6 episodes long, or occasionally longer. There continued to be a lot of stories that were 6 episodes long until into the Fourth Doctor’s era, when this was phased out, although some later stories were longer than 4 episodes. As from the Fifth Doctor’s era, nearly all stories were 4 episodes of 25 minutes each, apart from experiments with episodes of about 45-50 minutes long, as well as “Trial of a Time Lord”. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with stories that are about 2.5 hours long in total, but there is something wrong with yearly series or seasons which are only 8 episodes of 45-50 minutes long!
24 June 2025 at 13:25 #77908Having a smaller budget than with Disney+ has nothing to do with the Tenth Doctor story Midnight. It’s obvious to me that the BBC had overspent with stories produced earlier that year, so then they decided to produce the story Midnight. To sum up, I think this story is totally crap, taking place mainly inside some kind of bus touring the planet Midnight. Passengers can’t leave the bus because of the atmosphere and the radation outside. The main thing that happens in Midnight is a few people repeating what The Doctor has just said, before finally managing to repeat what he’s saying at exactly the same time he’s saying it, which would be impossible IRL apart from using telepathy. Of course all the actors had to do to achieve this was just learn the script! One of the worst Doctor Who stories ever made as part of the classic or modern series. Of course, the worst Doctor Who story ever made was the 30th Anniversary special “Dimensions in Time”, which was a crossover with Eastenders. They originally planned a very ambititious special called “The Dark Dimension”, but it was cancelled due to the BBC wanting to hang on to nearly all the money they’d made out of Doctor Who merchandising without producing any more episodes for about 3 years. I heard that Tom Baker didn’t like the script, but it could have been slightly rewritten or they could just have offered him more money. You can see an animation of it on https://youtu.be/neQbzMCHJ8o?si=rNRdRvu3ujAsip6M
I think some good examples of excellent low budget stories are most of the stories from the First and Second Doctors’ eras. In those days they made 39-45 episodes of about 25 minutes each per year! The number of episodes was cut down to 25-26 per year as from the Third Doctor’s era. I don’t know exactly why this was, because even today or in recent years, the BBC has continued to produce series such as Eastenders, and Casualty, which have about the same number of or even more episodes per year than Doctor Who used to have in the 1960s. Some people might claim that this is completely due to special effects, but how many special effects are used in those other series, and how complicated do the special effects in Doctor Who need to be?
To sum up, less special effects and more episodes NOW!!
23 June 2025 at 22:33 #77904Here’s a link to a video covering various rumours and things that actually happened recently in Doctor Who. It all seems to make sense. I don’t think it’s good news, though. It seems the problem is Disney+, as well as the BBC trying to do things the Disney+ way. Let me know what you think.
23 June 2025 at 14:38 #77902The BBC is a waste of money! Doctor Who fans should complain about as many programmes they produce as possible! Doctor Who pays for itself with all its merchandise. The BBC continued to receive this money during the 1990-2004 gap years. There’s no problem financing Doctor Who at all! A lot of the money from Disney+ was spent on producing episodes in 4K. I haven’t even got a 4K TV and don’t see why I should buy one. I think 3D, including 2D to 3D conversion is more advanced than 2D in any resolution. The CGI version of Omega was crap as well.
I really hope Strictly gets cancelled soon, especially because I read that almost everyone watching Strictly some time ago turned off their TVs when Doctor Who came on!
I don’t care about Severance, which I’ve never seen, but I’ve just read about it and it doesn’t sound anything like Doctor Who. The series Timeless was a bit like Doctor Who, but very American and was cancelled years ago.
I quite liked the classic BBC series “Blake’s Seven”, which I think demonstrated just what can be achieved on a very low budget. For those who don’t know, it was a bit like Star Trek, but where The Federation was evil, like Star Trek’s Mirror Universe stories.
I’m sorry, but the link I posted to the very interesting “IT Planeet” has expired. You can see some trailers on https://www.youtube.com/user/ITplaneet I think it was commissioned or produced by TV3 Estonia, which is part of a group of channels called TV3 in various European countries. It was about a crew of three aliens who had prepared themselves for visiting Earth by intercepting some old TV broadcasts from some distance out in space, which meant they were decades old. Due to this, when they landed in Estonia, they thought it was still part of the USSR. They greeted a mad inventor by speaking Russian and playing the USSR anthem, but he responded by shooting at them, so they want back inside their ship and updated their information, then came out again and started speaking Estonian to him. After that, they had hilarious adventures involving trying to buy computers with forged banknotes that had the same serial numbers, as well as visiting an African country to meet a local conman who promised them a share of a fortune stuck in a bank account in return for paying a fee to release it. They spoke in English during this visit. The series is mainly in the non Indo European language of Estonian, though. There are also some scenes with the aliens speaking their own language. I managed to work out what was going on by observing things very carefully. It’s nothing like Doctor Who, but if a small channel in Estonia can produce something like this, then just imagine what the BBC could do!
Unfortunately, European countries apart from the UK haven’t been producing many sci fi series. Canal+ France has produced “UFOs” (original title OVNIs), while other French companies have produced “Missions”, which has been shown on BBC and iPlayer.
Germany (as West Germany) got off to an early start by producing a space opera type series called “Raumpatrouille Orion” (Space Patrol Orion, ZDF TV) in 1966, but only seven episodes were made. West Germany co produced “Star Maidens” and Germany co produced “Lexx”, but I haven’t heard of any other purely German (i.e. NOT produced by US streaming companies) sci fi series apart from the short lived “Operation Phoenix” (Pro7 TV) which was like Germany’s answer to “The X-Files”. “Sløborn” by ZDF TV (“The Island” on Amazon FreeVee or Prime) is a post apocalyptic series where most of the World’s population is killed by the deadly “Dove Flu”, leading to chaos and the survivors struggling to survive, then rebuild.
“Missie Aarde” by NPO TV (Mission Earth) is a Dutch sci fi comedy series about a spaceship sent from Earth to find a new home for the human race after every country except the Netherlands has been totally submerged by flood waters.
Spain’s TVE has produced “El ministerio del tiempo” (The Ministry of Time) which involves time travel and paradoxes.
Italian broadcaster RAI co produced “Space: 1999”, but has made very little sci fi apart from that.
Production companies from France, Canada, AND the UK were involved in producing the series “Starhunter”, which didn’t seem to ever be shown on any UK based TV channels until Amazon Prime or Amazon FreeVee started showing it a few years ago.
In theory, Germany would be the most likely to produce a series in a similar vein to Doctor Who, but someone told me that the people in charge of German TV channels don’t want to produce sci fi, so German sci fi creators have turned to US streaming services to fund their series such as “Dark” and “Spides”, after I complained to him that they’re not really German at all. He said only the funding came from US companies. Doctor Who has been showing a lot recently on the free German public TV channel “One”, owned by ARD. This included some classic Doctor Who episodes.
I think that after “UFOs”, “Missions”, and co producing “Starhunter”, France might just go further and produce a series in a similar vein to Doctor Who. I can only guess which broadcaster might produce it, but it could be Canal+, OCS, or possibly even the French owned RTL9 from Luxembourg.
22 June 2025 at 00:46 #77899@whohar @blenkinsoppthebrave
Doctor Who has the most flexible series format possible. The Doctor travels through space and time in their TARDIS, so that the location and scenery changes completely at least once in each story. Companions come and go and the Doctor’s face and body change as well. The regular cast at the beginning of any series or season can be completely replaced by the end.
Doctor Who having any more gaps in production at all is totally unacceptable and I think it’s time for direct action against the BBC as well as anyone else who might be involved, such as RTD and Bad Wolf Productions. It’s time to hit the BBC hard!
Whoever would’ve imagined in their worst nightmares that after Doctor Who came back after a 15 year gap, with only a pathetic 30th Anniversary special crossover with Eastenders and a very poor Americanised TV Movie during those 15 years, that only a few years later in 2009 there would be no series, just three specials followed by another special at the beginning of 2010, ending the Tenth Doctor’s era? Not only that, but there was no new series at all in 2016, 2019, 2022, or 2023! There were only specials in those years.
The BBC has continued to make millions or even billions of Pounds out of Doctor Who while it was off air in 1990-2004, as well as in more recent gap years.
Comments such as the above accepting another gap indicate that the people posting them have been brainwashed into accepting this.
I said in the past that David Tennant was allowed to swan off and play Shakespeare, but in the recent Doctor Who Unleashed 20th anniversary special there was an indication that something else happened instead. They said something like the Production Team AND David Tennant had “decided to move on”. This doesn’t excuse the fact that the BBC didn’t immediately get a new Production Team and a new Doctor, though!
There have only been 15 series or seasons of Doctor Who made in the last 20 years so this means the fans have been conned out of five whole series or seasons! Apart from this, Disney+ and Russell T Davies reduced the length of the last two series from 13 episodes to only eight episodes meaning that we’ve been conned out of another 10 episodes! How dare they?!
There has been something seriously lacking in the Fifteenth Doctor’s era, although the Thirteenth Doctor’s era was fantastic and The Timeless Child storyline was sheer genius which made me tingle as I watched it. It was really bad that the era ended with a 6 part series followed by a few specials, though. In the latest series, I think the episodes “Lucky Day”, “The Story and The Engine”, “Wish World”, and “The Reality War” were the best, while “The Well” was pathetic, and “Lux” wasn’t much better. There were also rumours about Ncuti Gatwa having “prior commitments” which led to the return of David Tennant for the three 60th Anniversary specials, as well as Ncuti Gatwa hardly appearing in “73 Yards”, or in “Dot and Bubble”. I think this is sacrilegious! The Doctor can’t be allowed to have “prior commitments”! As soon as they mention this, they should be regenerated Colin Baker style, meaning by another actor wearing a wig. I was also upset by the use of old measurements such as Yards a few times in a sci fi series, although even Star Trek TOS used metric measurements.
Of course, the idea of producing an animated Doctor Who series for CBeebies is just an insult! The Sarah-Jane Adventures was OK, although not all that fantastic, but this is going too far!
I don’t want to support the BBC producing crap like Eastenders (started with stolen Doctor Who money while the series had a gap), “Strictly Come Dancing”, or “Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg”, a so called reporter who made very biased comments in favour of Boris Johnson. She was Johnson’s main bootlicker.
As far as I’m concerned no Doctor Who means no BBC. I plan to email and phone the BBC telling them I don’t watch any other BBC programmes and I won’t continue to pay for a TV licence. I also plan to campaign to abolish the TV licence.
I feel so angry that I have fantasies of sabotaging Eastenders, as well as “Strictly Come Dancing”, but I don’t think I should mention any details.
If there are any Doctor Who fans reading this who live in countries that have various TV channels that actually produce their own TV series, please try and persuade them to produce a TV series in a similar vein to Doctor Who. I once saw a series called “IT Planeet” from Estonia which I thought was quite good, but it only ran for one season.
4 June 2025 at 10:37 #77830The season finale! The final part of a two part story which takes up 25% of the whole series because it was reduced to only 8 episodes thanks to Disney Plus.
It featured a star studded lineup, including Ruby, Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, both current versions of The Rani, and The Thirteenth Doctor.
I think this episode was better than all the previous episodes of this year.
The Rani somehow brings back Omega. I think this counts as a continuity error because Omega has been totally annihilated TWICE before in “The Three Doctors” and “Arc of Infinity”, both times involving anti matter, so that sounded quite final. The writers made up an alternative or additional story about Omega being banished instead of falling into a black hole, which they think somehow explains this, but it actually doesn’t. It sounds more like this version of Omega was created by a wish. I also thought the latest version of Omega as some kind of skeleton looked really awful!
The Doctor and The Rani reveal that The Time Lords and The Doctor lost their ability to have children when Gallifrey was attacked in The Time War. The Doctor said in last year’s series that although he had a Granddaughter, this didn’t mean he had kids, or at least “not yet”. I think this sounds like Susan travelled back in time to first meet The Doctor. However, I read years ago that Time Lords’ time streams are all somehow synchronised together, so in that case it wouldn’t be possible. The meeting between The Doctor and The Master seem to be always in sync, while The Doctor and River Song were travelling in opposite directions through time.
It was very interesting that Susan Triad somehow built a Zero Room, because that’s Time Lord technology, so I’d like to know how that was possible. Kate Lethbridge-Stewart said just before The Doctor left the UNIT Building that they had various equipment which sounded similar to Time Lord technology, but this wasn’t explained either.
This episode is longer than any of the rest, creating some suspense for me wondering what was going to happen. There was some time left, instead of just a few minutes, after The Rani and Conrad had been defeated. I’d heard a few rumours about Ncuti Gatwa leaving soon and even regenerating in this episode, but I didn’t know what to believe, so this was good. I was very sad to see Ruby leave.
The Doctor had already been drained of a lot of regeneration energy in “Lux”, so I was worried he might die altogether. Where did get all this spare energy that he fired into the TARDIS console?
Of course, The Doctor finally regenerated after expending all that regeneration energy. The question is how did he manage to save enough energy to achieve this, though?
Finally, I saw a female face appear, still surrounded by regeneration energy. She said “Oh, Hello!” In what sounded to me like an Australian accent, although I’m from London. After that, I saw in the credits that it was Billie Piper.
Of course, it leaves me very puzzled about what will happen to Doctor Who after this. I’m disgusted that the series has been cut down to only 8 episodes per year (not counting Christmas Specials) since Disney Plus got involved. Various sources are now saying that unless a new series is “commissioned” more or less immediately, then there won’t be “enough time” to produce a series to show next year. It’s obvious to me that this is mainly to do with special effects, but I think that the commissioning should be more or less automatic, like with the classic series, as well as NuWho in 2005-2008. They didn’t seem to have these problems in those days. In 2009, we had David Tennant abandoning the series to go off and play Shakespeare, ending his era with four specials, then some more gap years with other Doctors after that, cheating us out of FIVE years’ worth of series in twenty years! Of course, AFAIK Eastenders, Strictly, and Casualty have never been affected like this. I think that Doctor Who should cut down on the amount of special effects to the levels of 2005-2008 and concentrate on making some more episodes, which also means more than 8 per series, immediately! I read recently that at some time during the classic series the way they produced episodes was spending about 75 minutes filming each 25 minute episode, and only completing some stories a few weeks before they were due to be shown. I also heard recently that the two latest series of Doctor Who were filmed back to back, so this seems to mean that 16 episodes were available last year, but Disney Plus delayed the release of the final 8 for a whole year to fit in with their marketing plans!
Some people think that Doctor Who needs to spend AGES on special effects to compete with other series, but these special effects now seem to be preventing any more episodes being made!
To sum up, I hate what the BBC and Disney Plus have been doing. I think all other series on BBC TV are crap, and the BBC need to sort themselves out NOW!
3 June 2025 at 18:18 #77825At first, I wondered what was going on here, but it soon became obvious that everyone was brainwashed and living in a fantasy world after The Rani had kidnapped ababy who was the seventh son of a seventh son of aseventh son from 19th Century Bavaria. The Baby had magical powers.
Conrad the podcaster from “Lucky Day” kept appearing on TV telling a fairy story about “Doctor Who” and The Rani.
The Doctor and Belinda were married and had a daughter called Poppy who was actually one of The Space Babies from last year’s series. No one in the fantasy seemed to remember their true identities at first, but doubts soon started to appear, helped by Ruby who somehow remembered what no one else seemed to.
Overall a big improvement compared with the early episodes in this series. The story is very involved and made me wonder exactly what was going on.
1 June 2025 at 12:57 #77786This story is obviously based on The Eurovision Song Contest. It even refers to The Eurovision Song Contest as the form it originally took, although at some time it became The Interstellar Song Contest.
The word Mavity is mentioned yet again, showing that we’re still in an alternative timeline created by The Fourteenth Doctor and Donna.
We hear about an oppressed and exploited people called the Hellion whose planet has been destroyed to harvest Poppies as a flavouring and stop them from growing there again. The company sponsoring the song contest is the same company who did this. It sounds a bit like native Americans. A group of them want to kill all the viewers using a special frequency piggy backed onto the video broadcast signal!
Susan, the Doctor’s Granddaughter from the First Doctor’s Era, appears in visions that The Doctor has, but I can’t help wondering why this happened. It couldn’t be just from memory, as she looks much older than in the First Doctor’s Era, or even in “The Five Doctors” when we last saw her. There seems to be no in universe explanation. Ncuti Gatwa and the Carole Anne Ford just both wanted it to happen.
A hologram of Graham Norton reveals to The Doctor and Belinda that Earth was destroyed on 24-05-2025 and the Earth influences they see in The Interstellar Song Contest have ben salvaged from its debris. This sounds more or less impossible.
Mrs Flood was in the audience, then at the end when she’s rescued from space we finally learn that her identity is what lots of people have already suggested, although only as one of several alternatives. Mrs Flood is The Rani! She bigenerates, although when The Doctor did it, he mentioned that it was only a myth, so it doesn’t seem very likely this would happen.
However, I think this story is a massive improvement over the previous stories!
27 May 2025 at 13:16 #77666After the sub standard first three episodes, this series is continuing to improve with “The Story and The Engine”!
It’s all based around a barber’s shop, but then we discover that it’s actually a complicated spaceship which has an entrance that’s in two different places at once!
The thing about collecting stories to power the ship was really interesting. The visualisation of the stories on a monitor was also a nice touch. I want something like this to replace some destroyed photos of mine. I’d have liked to know more about the ship, such as why it was shaped like a spider and exactly what kind of engine it had, though. The name The Nexus seems to have been copied from the film Star Trek: Generations, where it was a dream world in which everyone’s fantasies could come true.
I’m still not sure why the mysterious barber, who claimed to have provided background stories for various gods, cut off his dreadlocks near the end, though!
It seems like a happy ending for everyone concerned.
4 May 2025 at 10:24 #77394It was disappointing that The Doctor and Belinda hardly appeared in this episode. I don’t think there can be any excuse for that. It should be in all Doctors’ contracts that Doctor Who takes priority over any other plans they may have, so they mustn’t make any such plans! It was great to see the lovely Ruby again, as well as her being featured so heavily in this episode. I had no idea how devious Conrad was or what he was really like until his conspirators unmasked after conning UNIT into arriving on the scene of a fake Shreek invasion, so that was very good writing. I thought it was hard to believe that Conrad complained about getting close to Ruby, including being smothered with lip gloss. It sounds amazing! I think being with Ruby would have made him change his mind about UNIT. I think his character should have been declared as gay after the fake Shreek invasion to make it more believable. As for what Conrad’s future holds, we’ll have to wait and see. Mrs Flood’s appearance at the end seems to indicate that she’ll release him from prison. I still don’t know who Mrs Flood is, though. She could be a Time Lord/Lady, or The Black Guardian in disguise.
20 April 2025 at 11:00 #77302I liked it! I think it was great how characters on film could be brought to life and I started to have fantasies about using this technique. I think the fans watching on TV was a nice touch, as well. It was a shame it was set on Earth, though. I want to see some stories which are completely set on other planets. We haven’t had this so far in this series. Lux was shown draining lots of regeneration energy from The Doctor, so I wonder how he’s supposed to recover from this drain. I was surprised to see Gaumont British News being shown in a cinema in the USA. Was it really shown?
I think there was a continuity error compared with the Thirteenth Doctor episode “Rosa”. “Lux” is set in Dade, Miami, Florida in 1952, but “Rosa” is set in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955. I’m not sure if that makes any differerence in this case, though. They mentioned racial segregation. This was described as banning “black” people from the Diner, as well as from the Cinema. However, both Yaz and Belinda are obviously of ancestry from the Indian subcontinent. In “Rosa”, Yaz was allowed to board the bus at the front, instead of in the middle, so this meant she was classified as white. She was called “Mexican” in a restaurant and refused service, though. However, in “Lux”, The Doctor said that Belinda was “black” and therefore banned from the Diner and the Cinema. Is this accurate, or not? I think there were very few people of Indian or Pakestani ancestry in Florida or Alabama in the 1950s, so they weren’t classified as “black”. I think that people with darker skin from other countries, such as Australian Aborgines, would have been classified as “black”, but not from India or Pakistan.
26 December 2024 at 06:56 #77058The main thing is that it’s not possible to tell a story with about two thirds of the original deleted! It was originally shown as ten episodes of 25 minutes each. The main selling point of this version is that it’s IN COLOUR! I once saw and recorded a version of “Genesis of The Daleks” which was cut down from six episodes to four episodes and that was very well done.
The War Chief isn’t The Master. This has been mentioned lots of times by writers and producers.
The 1970/1980 readout is because of a continuity error caused by the story “Mawdryn Undead”. In that story The Brigadier had retured before 1977. However, at a convention, actor Nicholas Courtney who played him said that they’d been told this era of Doctor Who was set about 20 years in the future, meaning it started in about 1990. This means the readout should have said 1970/1990. Of course, Doctor Who is set in a fictitious universe, so when the Brigadier had a phone call from the Prime Minister who he called “Madam”, this doesn’t refer to any actual Prime Minister in the real World, so that doesn’t place it in the period 1979-1990.
24 December 2024 at 15:39 #77048Well, I’ve seen it now. It’s a pity that this production hasn’t even got its own thread on here.
It was fairly obvious that various important information was deleted. I think even viewers who had never seen the original would have noticed this. It included the introduction of the other resistance fighters, especially Arturo Villar who led the largest resistance group. We never saw The Doctor blowing up the safe to get the map of all time zones. They were never shown taking over the Chateau and I don’t think it was mentioned that it was outside all the time zones. They were never captured by the Germans and taken to a German base where The Doctor demonstrated the sonic screwdriver. No fault with the SIDRAT machines was explained, which was why The War Chief wanted an alliance with The Doctor. The scene where the War Lord’s soldiers tried to rescue him was also cut out. Even The Doctor’s Trial was edited because they didn’t retire to consider their verdict.
I thought it was good that a full regeneration sequence was shown. I think this should have been included in “Spearhead from Space”. It didn’t all have to be filmed or videoed in the same session. They could have cut it together. I think that “The Two Doctors” with The Second Doctor and Jamie is a continuity error.
Compared with “The Daleks in Colour” it was a hatchet job! I don’t think there should be any more colourised productions which are heavily edited like this one was!
23 December 2024 at 15:34 #77045I’ll be watching the new colourised and edited version of The War Games, which I watched the original version of only 2-3 weeks ago, but I can’t remember how many times I’ve seen it before. It will be good to see it in colour, but I dread to think how many details have been edited out. I’ve been trying to write my own summary to make a quick check after viewing the new version. The Daleks in Colour was fine, but the original length was 175 minutes (including theme music) which was cut down to 75 minutes. I was struggling to remember which details were cut, so that was OK. In the case of The War Games, they’ve cut 250 minutes (including theme music) down to 90 minutes, so that’s a larger part of the story. Perhaps the Doctor and his companions won’t be captured and escape as many times, but it will take a lot more than that to reduce the length. I feel sorry for people who have never seen this epic Doctor Who story. I must advise them to watch the original version ASAP!
24 June 2024 at 11:50 #76583I really liked this episode! A few things weren’t explained though. Why did The Doctor have to disappear? What year was it at the beginning of the episode? It seems like it was after 2046, because of the fairy circle notes mentioning “Mad Jack”. Also £5 for a Coke in a pub is more expensive than in 2024. If it was after 2046, then how could Ruby travel back home by train and find her Mum there to welcome her back? It looked like 2024. Another point about money is how much were Ruby’s savings of £1,000 worth in 2046 when she donated them to the Albion Party?
Of course, we never found out what the future version of Ruby was saying to everone which made them run away screaming. I think it coud have been something like “I’ve got a disease that made me very elderly and forced me to haunt my younger self over there. Run away now, before you catch it!”
10 June 2024 at 12:47 #76163I was quite worried about this episode as soon as I heard the title was “73 Yards”. I wondered if it meant 73 back yards. I didn’t think it was referring to the antique measurement of length.
Unforunately, my fears were confirmed while watching the episode. Ruby said that the woman kept her distance at 73 yards away from her!
Even though Star Trek TOS was made in the USA by US companies, written by Americans, and shown on NBC, they used Metric measurements, although they sometimes used measurements of a system based on but not officially British measurements or Imperial measurements. I have heard these called “US Customary Measurements” and “The English System”. The units of distance have names including Feet, Yards, and Miles. These had been phased out by the time of Star Trek: TNG, though.
I don’t understand why Doctor Who has decided to re introduce these measurements!
This episode reminded me of the RTD series “Years and Years”.
Apart from the serious crime of using antique measurements, I didn’t like this episode that much, for the following reasons.
1. The Doctor hardly appeared at all, apart from at the beginning and at the end. I don’t think anything like this has happened since the episode “Love & Monsters”, or a few indivual episodes of multi part stories in the classic series. There were some episodes where The Doctor didn’t appear, because the actor was on holiday. The only classic series story where The Doctor didn’t appear was “Mission to The Unknown”, though.
2. In 2046 Ruby says she wants to donate £1,000 to the Albion Party. I wonder how little £1,000 would be worth in 2046? Perhaps inflation has been reversed or the Pound has been revalued, but this isn’t explained. As a fairy circle about “Mad Jack”, which it seems means the Prime Minister Roger Ap Williams, is already there at the beginning of the episode, it sounds like it’s set in or after 2046. A Coke in the pub costs £5. However, when Ruby goes home from the pub it looks like she’s in 2024, or possibly 2025, because I’m not sure how long she’s been away from home.
3. For part of the episode, including on the Football pitch near the end, I think Ruby is wearing 1970’s style clothes. Why is this?
4 February 2024 at 12:02 #75364I don’t know what to make of the viewing figures in the UK for the four recent specials, or the news that Millie Gibson has already left and been replaced! What do people on here think of all this news? Of course, there are also some YouTube channels saying that Doctor Who is dead.
8 December 2023 at 08:13 #74848This sounds like great news! I don’t know what to make of the UK viewing figures, though. It sounds to me like lots of traitors who abandoned Doctor Who because there was a female Doctor haven’t returned to watch these specials. I watched “The Star Beast” and “Wild Blue Yonder” both live. It sounds like a big shakeup is coming. “Timeless Child V2” is a great idea. I hope this will increase Doctor Who’s popularity. Of course, TV series such as “I’m a Celebrity” and “Strictly Come Dancing” are total crap made for morons! One of my fantasies is for some Daleks and Cybermen to invade the set of Strictly, killing all the contestants and judges.
30 November 2023 at 09:45 #74712@janetteb what the cut to nine episodes per year means that there will be fewer stories per year! Russell T Davies said this was because it was so expensive, after being given loads of money by Disney! Of course, this is no excuse.
Star Wars films are very expensive, but the main things about Star Wars is that it’s a series of films which come out occasionally, so there are only a few stories and they spent a fortune on special effects. Of course, years later one or two Star Wars TV series were made. IMHO Star Wars is crap! Star Wars was even used as an excuse by Michael Grade for having an 18 month break in Doctor Who before the Seventh Doctor’s Era started. He had the cheek to compare the amazing story “Warriors of The Deep” to Star Wars, complaining about the lack of special effects, then showing a clip of Doctor Solow trying to fight off The Merkur sea beast. Obviously, Star Wars can’t compare with Doctor Who stories.
Russell T Davies also said in this interview that the reduced number of Doctor Who episodes could be made up by spin offs, but I’m not sure exactly what spin offs will be made. One chance of a spin off from the classic series was missed years ago with “Warriors’ Gate”. Romana said she’d stay in E-Space with The Tharils and do what she and The Doctor had always done. The Doctor asked how how this would be possible without a TARDIS. Romana replied that she’d learn to use the gateway, like the Tharils. I started to write some stories based on this, then tried to get the BBC interested in the concept before I was allowed to send them any of my stories. They just wrote back saying they didn’t plan to make a series of “K9 and Company”, then that was the end of that!
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