Cold War

Mark Gatiss has failed to make the Ice Warriors scary again. That’s because they weren’t scary in the first place, so it wouldn’t be possible to make them scary “again.” Well, okay, I wasn’t even alive in the 60s, let alone watching Doctor Who from…

The Rings of Akhaten

The Doctor and his brand new companion, a pretty white woman in her early twenties, take their first real trip in the TARDIS. They travel both in space and time, arriving in an unfamiliar society with strange rules. Right away the companion wanders off and…

The Bells of St. John

“The Bells of St. John,” indeed. That Steven Moffat is one clever bastard, isn’t he? Well. When I heard the elevator pitch for this one—”there’s something in the wifi”—I rolled my eyes, because come on. We’ve had sinister cell phone networks, Bluetooth headsets, GPS devices,…

Time-Flight & The Runaway Bride

I was thinking that I’d maybe been too generous to the TV Movie. That maybe I’d been right the first time I saw it in assessing it as the worst Doctor Who story of all time. Then I rewatched “Time-Flight” for the first time in…

Doctor Who: The TV Movie

You guys! I just watched the 1996 Doctor Who TV Movie for the first time since 1996. And it didn’t completely suck. No, really. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I hated this thing back then as much as anybody did. I had already been…

The Snowmen

There’s a very old man who cannot die, and his business has always been saving the world…until now. Now he has withdrawn from that world, having sacrificed one of his dearest protegées in saving it. Now he lives in a gleaming white palace on top…

New Who Season 2

It’s hard to believe I’ve watched these episodes for only the second time ever. In the old days I’d watch Doctor Who over and over on VHS, but these days one or two times through is usually enough for me for quite a while. Anyway,…

The Angels Take Manhattan

Spoiler warning: watch the episode first. One of the more interesting answers to the question “Doctor Who?” that I’ve read goes all the way back to the 1968 story “The Mind Robber.” The theory (which I first read on TARDIS Eruditorum, and you should read…

The Power of Three

If there are two things Gareth Roberts does better than anyone else in his scripts for the Eleventh Doctor, they’re domestic life on Earth and warm-hearted humor. They’re not traditionally the foremost qualities of Doctor Who, which makes them all the more welcome for bringing…

A Town Called Mercy

The last time the TARDIS visited the Old West was in 1966’s “The Gunfighters.” I’ve never gotten around to watching that story, partly because it’s historically been regarded as one of the worst of the series. I can confidently say it’s a better Doctor Who…