Doctor Who: The 57 Doctors!

Ten and a bit years ago, the 50th anniversary special for Doctor Who, The Day of the Doctor, had a brief cinema release, and I and bunch of there nerdy fans were there to see it. The cinema version of the special included a bit of bonus content, including a specially-filmed introduction featuring Matt Smith and David Tennant, more-or-less in character as their versions of the Doctor.

The thing started with Matt Smith saying he’s traveled through time to welcome everyone to the movies to watch the one hundredth anniversary of Doctor Who, which was going to be a really special deal featuring all fifty-seven Doctors.

Doctor Who: The Game [Big Finish]

Continuing through Big Finish’s Monthly Range of licensed audio Doctor Who adventures, we get to The Game, which was release number 66 in the series. It stars Peter Davison as the Fifth Doctor alongside Sarah Sutton as Nyssa. William Russell also features in the story, but not as First Doctor companion Ian Chesterton. Instead he plays a character who complicated out-of-sequence relationship with the Doctor predates similar ideas we’ve seen on TV since then. 

Warriors of the Deep [Classic Doctor Who]

Doctor Who has long been my favorite show, and lately I have been revisiting old episodes for the first time in a long time. I haven’t been doing this in any sort of systematic way–rather, I pop through the series randomly. In fact, sometimes, my daughter and I will use the internet to generate a random story number and then just watch that. Lately, precipitated by Doctor Who being pulled from the Australian Britbox, I started going through a lot of episodes quite quickly, as I’ve come to realise I cannot count on this show always being available to me so easily.

The King’s Demons [Classic Doctor Who]

Doctor Who has long been my favorite show, but there was a long period where I hadn’t revisited old episodes in any focused way. Lately, I’ve been going back through the show, often with one or both of my two nerdier daughters, but not necessarily systematically. Rather, I’ve enjoyed picking out stories from different eras of the program and watching them as the mood strikes.

Doctor Who: The Power of the Doctor

And now, after many moons, the Chibnall-Whittaker era of Doctor Who has come to an end. My thoughts are many.

I have not been the biggest fan of this era of the show. Jodie Whittaker is appealing enough, but I have found her performance too broad to be actually engaging. In spite of the occasional bright spot, Most of the stories have been either underwritten or badly written, and filled with bland characters and uninspiring plots. There have been a handful of “shocking plot twists” that were memorable for all the wrong reasons, which leaves one tempted to rant that the last three seasons haven’t only failed to move the show forward in a positive way, they have actually done the series a bit of harm.

But of course, that’s just a grumpy old fan ranting away. What about The Power of the Doctor itself?

Spoilers Lie This Way

The Five Doctors [Classic Doctor Who]

Doctor Who has long been my favorite show, but until recently rewatchings of old episodes have been few and far between.  This has changed in the last couple of years as I have been using birthday and Christmas money to buy some of the old episodes, usually enjoying them with one or two of my nerdier daughters. This year, though, my wife and I bought a year of Britbox for each other as a gift, which gives me access to nearly all of classic Who.

Snakedance [Classic Doctor Who]

Doctor Who has long been my favorite show, but until recently rewatchings of old episodes have been few and far between.  This has changed in the last couple of years as I have been using birthday and Christmas money to buy some of the old episodes, usually enjoying them with one or two of my nerdier daughters. This year, though, my wife and I bought a year of Britbox for each other as a gift, which gives me access to nearly all of classic Who.

Doctor Who: The Roof of the World [Big Finish]

With The Roof of the World the Big Finish Main Range of Doctor Who audios returns to the world of the Fifth Doctor (Peter Davison) along with companions Peri (Nicola Bryant) and Erimem (Caroline Morris). The story was written by Adrian Rigelsford, and was release number #59 in the Main Range, coming out in July 2004, less then a year before Doctor Who was revived on TV.

Spoilers (for real)

Doctor Who: The Axis of Insanity [Big Finish]

After a whole series of Big Finish stories about the Eighth Doctor, things get switched up at last and Doctor Who‘s main range of audios from 2004 brings us this story featuring Peter Davison as the Fifth Doctor, Nicola Bryant as Peri and Caroline Morris as audio-original companion Erimem.

Spoilers

Black Orchid [Classic Doctor Who]

Doctor Who has long been my favorite show, but until recently rewatchings of old episodes have been few and far between.  This has changed in the last couple of years as I have been using birthday and Christmas money to buy some of the old episodes, usually enjoying them with one or two of my nerdier daughters. This year, though, my wife and I bought a year of Britbox for each other as a gift, which gives me access to nearly all of classic Who.