Series 2

To paraphrase the Fifth Doctor: ‘That's the wonder of Doctor Who. You never quite know what you're going to get.’ In the show’s earliest days, the audience pretty much got to unwrap a surprise present every week. No story titles, no ‘episode one of four’, just a few clues in the Radio Times or occasional newspapers. And the ... More

Series 3

In the last season, the Doctor and Rose were almost sickeningly in love, an almost adolescent, all-consuming kind of love. But, in the end, they were torn apart. It’s hard to move on from that kind of heartbreak. For a while, nothing else matters. “But your heart grows cold, the north wind blows, and carries down the distant – ... More

Series 4

It’s not unknown for the Doctor and his friends to find themselves in a situation where they have to tell robots from human beings. If you should ever find yourself with a similar dilemma, here’s the perfect test. Sit the subject down with a boxset of Season Four. Start at The Unicorn and the Wasp, leave it running, and if they want to ... More

Specials

‘I’m not a god,’ the First Doctor says in The Myth Makers, shortly after giving the Greeks the idea of the Trojan horse and thereby facilitating the slaughter of hundreds of Trojans in order to save his own life. If that’s what he’s like as a ‘mortal’, thank goodness he doesn’t have the powers of a god... Fast forward 44 ... More

Series 5

Doctor Who is commonly divided up into eras (we’ve discussed this before), but each era is not necessarily distinct. In fact, prior to Matt Smith becoming the Doctor, the only time in the show’s entire history where there was no continuation of characters, producer, or even production codes from one ‘era’ to another was 2005’s Rose ... More

Series 6

Doctor Who’s 2011 season is quite confusing. There are some aspects of time travel fiction that are inherently confusing – a paradox wouldn’t be a paradox if it were straightforward – but for most of the previous 47 years Doctor Who hadn’t really gone down those paths very much. Suddenly the show was making up for that with a ... More

Series 7a

The Eleventh Doctor’s first two seasons were complicated. Really complicated. Even now, when the answers have been revealed, it’s still tricky to follow – and, actually, have all the answers been revealed? Not entirely sure. However, the start of the next season headed off in a different direction. The producers for the 2012 half-season ... More

Series 7b

And so as we reach the final leg of our countdown to fifty, we’re presented with a very mysterious young woman. Why not? After all, that’s how it all started... Once upon a time, there was an Impossible Girl. She attended a normal school on Earth – but she had travelled all over the universe... Once upon a time, there was an ... More