Classic Rewatch: Invasion of the Dinosaurs

If you were handed the keys to a spacious house, complete with every amenity, and seated on a sprawling property, but every room had a distinct and inescapable unpleasant odor, could you still enjoy the place enough to call it home? If you won a high-performance luxury car, but the trunk (boot) kept popping opening randomly and the radio wouldn’t stop playing “Memories” from Cats at full volume, could you make it your daily commuting vehicle? It’s difficult to gain the fullest […]

Then Is the New Now

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became an adult…I looked back on childish things and waxed nostalgic on just how awesome it all was. Seriously. Those were the days, you know? Rubber monsters! Machines that went “bing”! The round things! We spend some time this episode looking at all the elements of “classic” Doctor Who that have been incorporated in some way into the […]

Classic Rewatch: Planet of the Daleks

It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. It was a season of “classic” Doctor Who that had fans then and now reveling in the performances, loving the on-screen chemistry, and even enjoying the plotlines and creativity that writers and producers were bringing to the table. And then…Terry Nation came back. Without much to offer in the ‘originality’ department. But hey — purple fur cloaks for everybody! Joined this week by television producer and devout classic […]

Classic Rewatch: Frontier In Space

Doctor Who has always been rife with complex backstories and themes of conflict drawn from the news and events of the time. Call it “present day problems, presented in another day”, if you will. From workers striking against the regime, to species in tense stalemates on the brink of war, to contending with the horrific aftermath of genocide and mutually assured destruction, the program has used our own chaotic world and its occupants as the inspiration for otherworldly tales. When […]

Classic Rewatch: The Mutants

Kafka has nothing on the minds of Dave Martin and Bob Baker. Well, then again, maybe he does, but we’ll be darned if The Metamorphosis is half as entertaining as watching a civilization of warriors (looking like a group of roadies from a Journey tour who found a side gig as extras in Game of Thrones) try to stave off a transformation into a chittering bug-people, all while trying to exert their independence from a tyrannical alien race — who […]

Classic Rewatch: The Sea Devils

Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Absence from the Master makes both hearts grow fonder. Take a short hiatus from full-tilt, beards-to-the-wall Roger Delgado stories, and his dastardly return is like that delicious thin mint after a massive four-course meal. Pair that little morsel of menace with a digestif of a Silurian spin-off species, and you’ve got a Whovian meal to remember. This week, we slowly rise from the depths of main show hiatus to absorb the six-part aquatic adventure, […]

Classic Rewatch: The Curse of Peladon

Look at yourself in the mirror. Take a long, pensive look, and contemplate what you would do if the people you cared for, the cause you believed in, and the principles upon which you base your sense of self were challenged by one antiquated law. We are advanced, enlightened people, and recognize that “old law” must be regularly reviewed and scrutinized to ensure that it still applies to modern society. Such an observation doesn’t even skip a beat in our […]

Classic Rewatch: Day of the Daleks

Five years without a go-round with your favourite sinister salt shakers is one heck of a dry spell. Shoehorning them into the middle of a temporal causality loop story rife with guerilla future freedom fighters, gorilla thuggees, and a Time Lord who’s been tipping into the wine cellar before attempting a mad dash on a fat-wheeled trike just pushes the whole thing into lunacy. (Sweet, delicious lunacy.) How could you possibly improve upon this sack full of angry cats? Why, […]