Classic Rewatch: The Time Monster

Oh, those beloved gems of the Classic Who era, those perfect vertices between the complexity of script and clunkiness of execution that make them so near and dear to our Gallifreyan hearts. Those episodes where a handful of minutes can separate one of the most touching emotional dialogues the Doctor has ever shared with a companion, from one of the goofiest looking monsters ever to flap wildly about the screen. Dear, sweet 1972, you will always be a golden year […]

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, […]

Classic Rewatch: Colony In Space

Do you love adventure? Do you look dashing in black and red shoulder pads? Do you take certain pleasure in running mamby-pamby colonists off their government-appointed lands in the interest of thinly-veiled corporate greed? Do you have a hairstyle that would make both Sonny Bono and Liberace stare slack-jawed? Then you may have a future…in the Interplanetary Mining Corporation! Benefits include your own poorly-sighted rifle; keys to a sweet Daimler Haflinger buggy-type-thing; the most killer looking helmet this side of […]

Classic Rewatch: The Mind of Evil

It doesn’t take much to rattle some people. For those poor souls, their fears and concerns weigh so heavily upon them, the slightest provocation send them reeling into fits of worry and despair. Others are made of sterner stuff — but as we’ve learned from so many stories, everyone has their limits. There have been a number of science fiction series who have toyed with the idea of criminal rehabilitation via some form of mental reconditioning (Star Trek, Fringe, The […]

Classic Rewatch: Terror of the Autons

The deus ex machina trope has been explored and adapted more times in science fiction media that we could count. When Doctor Who writer Robert Holmes developed the Nestene Consciousness for “Spearhead from Space”, he paired the concept of a non-corporeal sentient being with the god-in-the-machine premise in the form of the Autons, and the Whovian world would never be the same. Not left to rest on his laurels, however, Holmes was by no means finished, and in the next appearance […]

Classic Rewatch: The Ambassadors of Death

♬ Just sit right back, and you’ll hear a tale A tale of a trip to Mars You’d better clear some time, we warn It’s told in seven parts. Some astronauts went missing, and When UNIT gets involved They call upon the Doc and Liz And things quickly devolve. ♬ This week, we find the diamonds in the radioactive rough that is the Third Doctor story, “The Ambassadors of Death”. Liz Shaw shines, the Doctor demonstrates his ability to merge science […]