Doctor Who Reviews: 'The History of the Doctor'

The Minister of Chance Review

individually, Gallifrey IV has been released as a five-disc box set. Resplendent in burnt orange and luminous gold, the slipcase’s elegant artwork carries images of the Gallifrey conjured by the current television series, while inside it the four stories that make up the series are housed in jewel cases, the artwork of each conforming to the hitherto Gallifrey house-style. This suggests to the listener a bridge between two eras, belying the tumultuous, tangential tales that lie within...

When I read the first line of Stephen Cole’s notes in the CD booklet, I very nearly laughed out loud. “Do you remember your first kiss?”, he asks a collection of self-confessed geeks so very infatuated with Doctor Who that they subscribe to a spin-off audio production range. Presuming that his listeners had each enjoyed a first kiss was a bold supposition in such circumstan-ces, leaving me wondering just how badly...

Matthew Graham’s second script for Doctor Who is far different to his first, the unfairly maligned Fear Her. While the 2006 episode was a primary-coloured, child-friendly affair, The Rebel Flesh provides a solid, languidly-paced, rather old-fash-ioned approach to the series, while at the...

I’m usually familiar with Doctor Who writers and what they’ve done before. David Lock, however, is more of a mystery to me than the eponymous Time Lord. Is he the former Labour politician and esteemed Queen’s Counsel, who for decades has been harbouring covert literary ambitions? Or is he the commended cartoon humorist, who’s now channeled his...

Being a devotee of Matthew Graham’s matchless series Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes, I was very excited indeed to hear that a second Doctor Who story from him was in the offing, and one twice the length of his first at that. The reported doppel-ganger premise appealed to me too, as in Graham’s hands...

BBC Audio’s latest audio exclusive, The Gemini Contagion, comes from the quill of Jason Arnopp, who made his Doctor Who debut late last year with the title track on Big Finish’s Demons of Red Lodge anthology release. This time though, rather than wallow in genre cliché, Arnopp does precisely the opposite, telling a tremendously imaginative tale...

With the third series of Iris’s audio adventures recently announced by Big Finish, it’s high time that we got round to covering the first. Though commonly referred to as ‘Series 1’ now, there were only two Iris audios to begin with, released...

Some people have all the luck. OK, he might have had a pretty tough adolescence, what with his parents being killed, but now Simon, the hero of Enter Wildthyme, has landed himself not only ownership of an aged eclectic bookshop, but a trip...

The term Lost Stories is an exceedingly broad one. As we’ve seen from recent Big Finish releases under the banner, it is capable of encompassing anything from the pilot of an abor-ted American spin-off series to a script rapidly rattled off by a writer to demonstrate his skill to would-be employers. When I thi-nk of Lost Stories though, my mind is inevitably drawn towards the sort of scripts that sparked the Big Finish...

The Doctor’s Wife was once of this season’s most heav-ily-hyped episodes long before it was bestowed with its content-ious title - the prospect of a Doctor Who episode written by acclaimed fantasy author Nail Gaiman was enough in itself...

I’d been looking forward to The Doctor’s Wife more than any other episode this year. Neil Gaiman is one of my favourite ever writers; a master of fantasy whose works typically combine a sense of wonder with a chill of horror, creating a sort of grim beauty. I’ve wanted him to write a Doctor Who...

Spearhead from Space is one of the most significant Doctor Who serials of all time. Not only did it see the series make the radical leap from monochrome to colour, but it also drastically altered the format of the show, having the Doctor sentenced to a period of exile on 20th century...

With Doctor Who’s first colour season a resounding success, Terrance Dicks and Barry Letts sought to open their second season at the helm with another Nestene serial from the legendary Robert Holmes. “The Spray of Death” went through numerous revisions before finally becoming Terror of...

Often an episode title will be justified, but misleading; sometimes, it will ensnare the viewer with an outright falsehood, as Russell T Davies did with his heavily-hyped Next Doctor. But, from time to time, even the most inflammatory of billings will be fully borne out...

Sherlock scribe Stephen Thompson’s brief for this episode can be summed up in a word: pirates. Executive Prod-ucer Steven Moffat wanted this story to lift our heroes out of their heavy arcs and cast them adrift on the high seas, substituting the opening two-parter’s head-scratching and soul-wrenching for every fun-filled pirate staple imaginable. However, whilst The Curse of the Black...

There’s something to be said for a straightforward adventure, and it’s certainly what was needed after the complex-ities of this year’s opening two-parter. A good spooky yarn is just what the Doctor ordered; something to coast along with while we rest our brains. While it has its flaws, The Curse of the Black Spot succeeds in providing an enjoyably rum old tale...

Tuning into Day of the Moon, you’d be forgiven for thinking that you’d missed Episode 2 and gone straight into Episode 3. Three months have elapsed for our heroes - the Doctor is trapped within the perfect prison, and his companions are on the run from Canton and the American government. It’s an exhilarating opening sequence, showcasing some beautiful cinematography, but it’s aggravating...

| | | | |

Typset in Arial, Assiduous, Bank Gothic Medium, Baskerville, Cheltenham Bold, Dalek, Deviant Strain, Digifit, Franklin Gothic

Extra Condensed, Gazz Regular, FuturaDisD, Morpheus, Secret Service Typewriter, Tahoma, Verdana & X-Files.

This site is non-profit making and is not in any way affiliated with the BBC, BIG FINISH PRODUCTIONS, FOX, PANINI, TARGET, TELOS or VIRGIN.

<a href="http://www.timelash.com/banners/click.php?to=1&from=42"><img width=468 height=60 border=0 src="http://www.timelash.com/banners/images/bannerexchange.gif" alt="The Doctor Who Banner Exchange"><br><small>The Doctor Who Banner Exchange @ Timelash.com</small></a>

Unless otherwise stated, all images on this site are copyrighted

to the BBC and are used solely for promotional purposes.