Doctor Who Reviews: 'The History of the Doctor' | Dr Who Reviews | Doctor Who Stories in Order | Torchwood Reviews | Sarah Jane Adventures Reviews

The Minister of Chance Review

“History’s end has been a long time coming” may sound like glib irony, but when the history referred to is that of the Doctor, and my five-year mission to chronicle it, it’s actually quite an accurate statement. As the members of the site’s Facebook group have been aware of for some months now, I no longer have the time to continue to cover all the Doctor’s adventures across the media, and I’m not prepared to plod along with piecemeal updates whenever I get five minutes to spare - this website is either The History of the Doctor, or it isn’t. It can’t just be bits of it, or it would be just a reviews site, plain and simple.

It’s a little over five years now since I launched this website, and in that time I shudder to think how much time has been poured into it; not just by me, but also by Dan, Chris, Kory, and Joey. As such it’s not going to just fade away like an overwritten timestream – what we’ve done to date will be preserved here for the foreseeable future, albeit under a cheeky little 1963-2011 caveat. I do intend to try and update product information, DVD covers and the like in respect of the pages that exist now, but so far as further reviews and articles go - that’s it.

I’m immodest enough to realise that this will come as a huge disappointment to many of you, particularly our hardcore readership, but those that wish to can still keep up with our former key contributors’ musings elsewhere: the first three issues of Joe Ford’s Third Zone fanzine are still available online, Chris McKeon still has his Doctor Who Examiner page and Daniel Tessier has recently launched his own blog, Immaterial, which, just like his work for this site, won’t limit itself to ‘official’ Who and its BBC-sanctioned spin-offs. Over the last few months I’ve received a few e-mails asking if I’ll be starting my own blog or contributing anything to other people’s websites or fanzines, but at this point I don’t intend to. I think in a thousand or so articles and nigh on a million words, I’ve probably had my two penneth.

One thing that is in the pipeline though, and will probably appear in the site’s Fan Fiction section next year, is the next instalment in the series of original MP3 audio books that began earlier this month with Wolfshead. The next adventure for the nth Doctor and Spadge, which is to be written by Daniel Tessier and performed by James Bolton (and likely one of his Rother FM colleagues too, Companion Chronicle-style), has been provisionally entitled The Six Pillars, and will pick up the story right from where it left off. Plans are still provisional at this stage, but what we are decided upon is that the story will introduce a new character, Nor Misha binti Abdul Salam (the love of whom listeners may have heard Spadge lamenting just before stepping through the portal at the end of All of History’s Heroes), and feature a Pontianak - a vampiric monster from Malay folklore (Misha’s family being Malay Muslims, or at least, a slightly skewed, alternative version of Malay Muslims). Beyond that, Chris McKeon has expressed an interest in contributing a story to the series – most probably one that will introduce the android Master seen in Scream of the Shalka – before handing the reigns back to me to round off the run with answers to the Pillion questions left blazing at the end of All of History’s Heroes, and a sly segue into both Scream of the Shalka and The End of Time.

It just remains for me to thank all of the site’s contributors for their prolific efforts over the years; the frightening number of readers who’ve crossed the threshold (particularly those who’ve taken the time to rattle off a few kind words to us); and, of course, all of the people behind Doctor Who and its spin-offs in all their multifarious forms. Legends all.

Without further ado then, I present the last of my many Doctor Who reviews. I’ll end as I began, with a look back at the most recently televised episode, A Good Man Goes to War. And then tomorrow, for someone else somewhere, History will start anew.

Living as we do in the iPlayer age of TV on demand, Sky Plus and media centres, more and more series seem to be shifting their stall towards the long game. The success of series such as 24, Lost and, for a while, Heroes has proven...

With “History’s End” upon us, I though it might be apt to examine not The History of the Doctor, or even the wider Whon-iverse, but that of the world that we live in - its wars, its empires; its decline-and-falls. But I won’t be doing so through academic texts, ancient art or even representative literature – I’ll be doing so through the grunge-filtered eyes of Mr Robert Shearman, wh-ose latest collection, Everyone’s Just So So Special, seeks to expose every single one of history’s...

And so the drama continues. Thirty-four years after Chr-is Boucher’s anti-Asimov murder mystery The Robots of Death cemented itself as being one of Doctor Who’s all-time greats, Nicholas Briggs re-examines its eponymous automatons in the first instalment of Big Finish’s latest lone seventh Doctor...

"You show me where it's written that a legend can't have more than one face."

When the Doctor entered Nottingham Castle, he did so expecting to meet

a renegade from his own race, who had somehow managed to survive

despite overwhelming odds against. He didn't know how right he was.

Now, manacled and at the mercy of the Sheriff's enthusiastic torturers, the

Doctor must face his most formidable foe to date – one whom he can

never hope to defeat, and from whom there can never be any escape.

As the Doctor faces the most personal of terrors, Spadge must find it in

himself to appeal to the good in the man who murdered his best friend,

and rouse the nascent champion within him. For this is the hour when

legends must be made, lest we lose all of history's heroes…

Featuring the Doctor, Spadge and Robin Hood, this MP3 audio book takes place between the TV

stories The Waters of Mars and The End of Time, and continues the story begun in Wolfshead.

It is performed by James Bolton, a broadcaster at Rother FM, and features an original sound design.

All of History's Heroes is available to download now by clicking the link below

(dependent on your browser, you may need to right-click and select 'Save Target As...')

The people of Nottingham celebrated when their Sheriff fell from royal favour and was replaced.

But to their horror, they found that their sadistic new Sheriff, De Retsam, was even worse.

De Retsam’s actions don’t seem to be motivated by greed or gluttony, but malevolence. Terrified

serfs whisper of his two black hearts and his sorcerer’s “Cabinet of Infinite Majesty”. Villages

are burned on his whim, their people and plenteous produce along with them. But these fires do

more than just kill and amuse the Sheriff; they take good men and forge from them monsters.

Having detected a temporal fluctuation in 1283, the Doctor pays a visit to the early 21st Century where

he intends to enlist the help of his old history student friend, June. Unfortunately for the Doctor though,

June is elsewhen adventuring – with him – and so instead he is lumbered with her two hopeless

housemates, Michael and Spadge, who are about to wake up from one of their infamous drunken

revels in the most outrageous place (and time) yet – Barnsdale Forest in the late 13th century.

Can two hungover students survive for more than ten minutes in the Middle Ages? And will

the Doctor unravel the mystery of De Retsam before one of history’s greatest legends is

subverted? Or will the Doctor become the next legend with his head in the historical noose…?

Featuring the tenth Doctor and legendary outlaw Robin Hood, this MP3 audio book takes

place between the TV stories The Waters of Mars and The End of Time. It is performed

by James Bolton, a broadcaster at Rother FM, and features an original sound design.

Wolfshead is available to download now by clicking the link below (dependent on your browser, you

may need to right-click and select 'Save Target As...'), and the next episode will be available on the 16th.

Much like last month’s Crime of the Century, until rec-ently Ben Aaronovitch’s Earth Aid only existed as an alluring opening scene and a smattering of ingredients. Part 1 would open, and we would find Ace in command of an Enterprise-style starship. She would promptly leave the bridge and...

Fourteen people meet untimely deaths.

The police cannot explain them.

Fourteen people resume their daily lives.

The police are completely confounded.

Fourteen people disappear inside a battered, blue box

– and one indomitable police officer follows them.

Featuring the fifth Doctor and Nyssa, this one-part audio script takes place between the

TV stories Time-Flight and Arc of Infinity, and after the audio drama Plague of the Daleks.

It was written in January last year, when a scene lifted from it was pitched to Big Finish

Productions (during the new writers' submissions window) under the title The Hole in the Wall .

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