I am a huge fan of the Twelfth Doctor and the Eleventh Doctor. I wanted comic recommendations for them.

Myself and two others regularly meet up for Doctor Who night, where all three of us will each pick an episode to watch back-to-back-to-back.

Recently we picked Midnight, Listen and Can you Hear Me? around Halloween, which formed a nice coincidence as all three somewhat explore fear and the unknown and made an almost anthology of their own.

Since then we've tried to do pick interesting trilogies that give us new orders to watch things in, for example focusing on one enemy or one theme.

Does anyone have any suggestions that follow this pattern? Obviously some are more obvious than others (like following the cult of Skaro episodes in order). A fun one I thought of was Shakespeare Code > Day of the Doctor > Zygons Two-Parter, where Queen Elizabeth is the link between all three.

It was explained that River’s conception in the TARDIS whilst it was in the vortex is what gave her the regeneration ability, but since it was revealed that regeneration originated from the Timeless Child and was engineered into time lords, don’t these ideas conflict? Unless the TARDIS has regeneration energy and it somehow passed into River? Please can someone clear this up for me if there is an answer out there 🙏

This post is part of a series of reviews. To see them all, click here.

Historical information found on Shannon O'Sullivan's Doctor Who website (relevant page here and the TARDIS Wiki (relevant page here. Primary/secondary source material can be found in the source sections of O'Sullivan's website, and rarely as inline citations on the TARDIS Wiki.

Serial Information

• Episodes: Season 23, Episodes 9-12
• Airdates: 1st - 22nd November 1986
• Doctor: 6th
• Companion: Mel (Bonnie Langford)
• Other Notable Characters: The Valeyard, The Inquisitor
• Writers: Pip and Jane Baker
• Director: Chris Clough
• Producer: John Nathan-Turner
• Script Editor: Eric Saward

Review

I am being manipulated. But the only way to discover why – and by whom – is to press on. – The Doctor

I don't know why, but Doctor Who has always been bad at mysteries.

It really doesn't make sense. The Doctor should be the ideal candidate for a stand in for a mystery novel detective – hell in the 3rd Doctor era Sherlock Holmes was one of the primary inspirations for the Doctor's characterization. And the longer serial format of the Classic series should allow for well-developed mysteries.

And yet, it just never quite materializes. The Robots of Death is probably the show's best story that happens to be in the mystery genre, but the mystery elements are still somewhat underdeveloped, possibly due to the rushed development of the story. Arc of Infinity is probably a better mystery but the surrounding story isn't as interesting, and even then the mystery has a pretty obvious resolution.

But I don't think there's as complete an attempt to create a mystery story as exists in Terror of the Vervoids. It's just a shame that Terror of the Vervoids is also known as Trial of a Time Lord, episodes 9-12. And kind of sidelines its own mystery story for the sci-fi elements, which are pretty weak. And has kind of a weak resolution to said mystery. And is full of lies. And is also preoccupied with introducing a new companion who, admittedly, gets a half-decent introduction but one that is exceptionally weird and kind of overshadows a lot of the early portions of the story. And…

Look Terror of the Vervoids has some promise. It's could be worse, certainly. But beyond the idea of doing Agatha Christie in space, I wasn't really impressed by any of the ideas present here. And the execution is pretty bland. At least in Arc of Infinity, while the culprit was somewhat obvious if you gave it any thought, the culprit's motivation was interesting. Robots of Death has its setting which did enough work that the mystery angle being a bit underwhelming kind of vanishes. Even Deadly Assassin, as much as I feel like that story is kind of mediocre, at least did all of that stuff with Gallifrey and introduced the Matrix, so that even though the "mystery" of the Deadly Assassin is a bit perfunctory, you can at least be distracted by the worldbuilding.

But Terror has a boring murderer and sci-fi stuff that feels frankly a bit goofy. The murder mystery aspect has some legs. The investigations of the Doctor and new (sort of) companion Mel are quite engaging in the moment. I think the biggest issue I take with them, is that no time is spent to set up any suspects in these scenes, not to mention that the actual murderer is mostly absent from proceedings, mostly showing up in scenes without the two investigators. But the Doctor and Mel don't really spend much time considering suspects. They'll talk about who could have done these things, but its very telling that in the final episode of the story, when the Doctor and Mel are talking through their potential suspects in the final episode of the story, Mel mentions Janet, the stewardess. Janet isn't even enough of a character to be a meaningful red herring here. And yet Mel and the Doctor have so little of a rapport with the crew that Mel bringing up Janet feels like something reasonable for her to do, even though the Doctor more or less dismisses the possibility.

And then there's the sci-fi side of the story. And…I do not like this at all. At least the mystery story has some real solid material and good characters attached to it (which we'll talk about later). The sci-fi stuff has…the Vervoids. On the starship Hyperion III, where the main action all takes place, there are a group of scientists – agronomists to be specific – who've created a superfood plant. This being a science fiction story however, things can't be that simple. Instead the plants in question, if allowed enough high intensity light can grow into sentient humanoid plant beings who would very much like to kill all animal life.

So, first of all I don't like that these things are humanoid. The Vervoids are a bit similar in their conception to the Krynoids from The Seeds of Doom – sentient plants who want to kill animals, albeit for different reasons. And yet by making the Krynoids vine creatures, Seeds managed to create a villain that felt alien and unknowable. The Vervoids might as well just be people. Which depending on the direction you wanted to go could work, but in this context they just feel mundane. Obviously we need to acknowledge budgetary concerns: with its reduced budget from previous seasons, Doctor Who could probably no longer afford to create something on the scale of the Krynoids, and humanoid creatures are by far the cheapest way to create monsters because you can just put a person in a suit. But the mundanity of the Vervoids still feels like their biggest issue.

But the larger issue is what the Vervoids represent. To go back to Seeds of Doom, those were just carnivorous plants that could take over people (which the Vervoids can do as well, it's actually where they seem to get their humanoid forms from). They were intelligent sure, but didn't represent something larger. Here though, the Vervoids are made to be incompatible with animal life for a more basic reason: you see, animals eat plants (or eat things that eat plants), so therefore intelligent animal and plant life are completely incompatible and must necessarily enter into a genocidal war against each other. Which…does not scan logically, even a little. It's not even that this is what the Vervoids believe, which you could maybe make work, no this is the actual truth. It's how the story justifies the Doctor killing all of the Vervoids, which is an act of genocide, as these plants are sentient.

And it's important that at the end of this story the Doctor crosses some sort of moral line for the trial story, but the logic getting there is so tortured (animals also eat other animals, but animal life isn't incompatible with…animal life). And real quick, if this is a case of the Matrix being manipulated again, it's weird that the Doctor never mentions it, considering that he's been claiming that all story. Also it kind of doesn't matter. Well it matters if you want to talk about the 6th Doctor as a character on the whole, but for this story, these are the order of events we are presented with, and the only events I can really evaluate for review.

But what I will say for Vervoids is that it has a half decent secondary cast. Well, it's got two characters that I really liked, a few more that were…fine, and some who were important who I just thought were kind of dull. My favorite character this story was unquestionably Commodore Travers. I mostly like the space that Travers takes up in this story. He's a character that the Doctor has met before in a previous unseen adventure, and so has a very different perspective on the Doctor than most characters in his position. Vervoids is kind of a "base under siege" story, and the Commodore takes up the position of base commander. But instead of being the standard obstructionist base commander, because he's met the Doctor before, he's actually quite helpful, explicitly getting out of the way and letting the Doctor do his work.

But this doesn't mean he's on good terms with the Doctor. And even more interesting, the Doctor seems to think this is justified. This is a plot point that is helped a bit by us not knowing exactly what happened the last time they met, only getting small details from the script. The Doctor apparently saved the then-Captain Tonker Travers' ship the last time they met, although "whether it would have been at risk without [The Doctor's] intervention is another matter" according to Travers. When Mel tries to tell Travers off for being too harsh with the Doctor, the Doctor actually shuts her down. It's a really interesting dynamic, helped by Travers coming off as quite intelligent and reasonable throughout the story, and getting a really strong performance from Michael Craig.

The other character I really enjoyed was Professor Lasky. She's our arrogant scientist who's created something she cannot control (the Vervoids), but insists through much of the story that everything's fine, standard sci-fi character honestly. A few of things make her really work for me. The first is Honor Blackman's performance, which really embodies the arrogant yet intelligent character. Blackman keeps Lasky just barely on the right side of likable, while still preserving the intrigue that she might be behind the murders, presumably to preserve her experiments. And I'll confess, I enjoy that the character can so thoroughly shut down the Doctor. It's enjoyable in a "taste of his own medicine" kind of way, especially when it's the 6th Doctor. And she does get a noble ending, which does feel right for her character. She tries to negotiate with the Vervoids, owning up to her own responsibility, but is predictably killed by them.

Of the rest of the cast, I probably enjoyed Bruchner the most. He's the well-meaning scientist on Lasky's team, and he starts to have concerns about what they've made much earlier than anyone else. He eventually decides that the experiment must be destroyed no matter the cost, and so tries to pilot the Hyperion into a black hole, before getting killed by the Vervoids. Not a particularly great character, but still memorable. But it's actually his colleague, Doland who gets more focus. For Doland is the murderer. It's certainly surprising, mostly because we'd gotten so little out of the character previously. The most we saw was Doland trying to talk Bruchner down from shutting down the experiments. But other than that he's kind of a non-presence for most of the story, until we learn he's planning on turning the Vervoids into slaves and has been killing to cover this up, as well as to maintain the experiments.

Also on the ship are a duo of alien called Mogarians (initially presented as a trio, but as it so happens one of them was faking). They're humanoid, but oxygen is poisonous to them and can only speak through translator boxes. They're pacifists, but have an extreme level of disdain towards humans, owing to human companies having strip mined their planet. Until the end of episode 3 (or 11) there's not much else to say about these two. In that episode we see them briefly hijack the ship, in order to reclaim many of the minerals in the hold, that were mined on their planet.

They are given some aid however. Through much of the story Rudge is presented as the ship's incompetent security chief. And I honestly enjoyed him in that role. This is his last assignment (and yes, he is killed by the Vervoids at the end of the story, just to complete the cliché). Once his role as conspirator with the Mogarians is revealed…he honestly doesn't come off as any more competent. He wasn't playing the role of bumbling security chief to deflect suspicion, no he was bumbling and that just coincidentally happened to deflect suspicion. Which is a bit funny, but honestly made me less interested in the character overall.

I should take a second to talk about the trial portion of the story. One of the inspirations for the structure of this season was A Christmas Carol. See, Mysterious Planet was set in the past, Mindwarp, being the Doctor's last adventure before he was put on trial represented the Doctor's "present" (close enough anyway), and finally the events of Vervoids are set in the Doctor's future. This is the Doctor's defense strategy: that if he's allowed to get back to his adventures he will improve. Let's grant for a second that, in Gallifreyan law, this is a valid defense because…honestly fair enough. First of all we have to acknowledge the usual problems – trial scenes interrupting the main plot disrupts the flow of the story, the Valeyard and the Doctor's dialogue in these scenes is bad and the trial scenes are mostly inane. Though they do in this specific story tend to be a little more pointed thanks to a running theme of the matrix recreation having changed since the Doctor reviewed it preparing his defense.

However now I want to ask a question: why did the Doctor choose this adventure? Obviously it can't have been easy to find an adventure where the Doctor held off involving himself in events until directly asked, but couldn't he have found one where he didn't commit genocide at the end? Even granting the nonsensical "us or them" premise of the story, it can't have been that hard for the Doctor to have predicted that using this particular adventure as his defense would get him in trouble. And again, if the extremes of the ending of this story were actually due to the Matrix being altered, the Doctor never mentions that, even though he really should.

And to that point, it also raises the question as to why the Valeyard has altered the Matrix recreation of this story. The alterations make sense if the Valeyard is trying to convict the Doctor of the "meddler" and "conduct umbecoming of a Time Lord" crimes, but at the end of the story he changes his tack to genocide, and we have to assume this was his plan all along. This is part of a larger problem that the titular trial of Trial of a Time Lord doesn't really make sense, but I'll cover that more in the season review.

With that said there were elements of the trial that I did actually like: specifically the Doctor's reaction to realizing the Matrix recreation has been altered. After initial shock, the Doctor starts taking the attitude that if he's being set up, he might as well find out how bad it's going to get. At one point he openly admits that he hasn't got anything else, and credit to Colin Baker whose acting in these trial scenes has been far better than the scenes themselves deserve, for really putting his all into that moment specifically.

And then there's the Doctor in the actual story of Vervoids. Well, the Doctor and his new friend, Mel. Since Vervoids is set in the Doctor's future and the last story revealed that he'd left his last one behind, naturally he'd have a new one in this story. And Vervoids is actually set after the Doctor met new companion, Mel. Originally the plan was to open Season 24 with the story of how the Doctor and Mel met…and then Colin Baker was forced out of Doctor Who, meaning that the show just had to leave Mel's first story as a big question mark. Still, since she is a new character, Vervoids has to open up with an introduction to Mel.

Mel is introduced forcing the Doctor to exercise and drink carrot juice. Which is definitely an unconventional way to introduce a new companion. Actually, I quite like Mel in Vervoids. Her seeming to have the better of the Doctor in their relationship makes a nice change of pace from the Doctor's acrimonious relationship with Peri. And while the Doctor doesn't like to exercise or drink carrot juice, the whole thing comes off as good-natured and silly. And throughout Vervoids, Mel is pushing the Doctor to investigate more, to do more. She's a much more active presence in this story than Peri tended to be, which was greatly appreciated. There's nothing too deep here, mind, but my hot take has always been that Mel and Six was actually a really solid combination, and it's a shame that we don't get to see more of them.

As for Sixie, other than playing detective, there's not much to say about his stuff in the main plot of Vervoids. He does have that interesting dynamic with the Commodore, one which sees the Doctor more contrite than we're used to seeing this Doctor. However he just kind of has an unremarkable story otherwise. He's a pretty good detective, in spite of being bad at interrogating people, but there's very little else to say.

And unfortunately I didn't come away from Vervoids with much of a positive feeling. It's got a decent secondary cast for a murder mystery, but the actual solution to the murder mystery is very underwhelming. Meanwhile the actual plot is built on a premise that just doesn't pass the smell test. And the trial scenes are still sucking away whatever life this story might have otherwise had.

Score: 3/10

Stray Observations

• Weirdly enough when this story was commissioned it went by the name of The Ultimate Foe which ended up being the agreed upon name of the final two episodes of the season, and suits them a lot better.
• Part of the outline for Mel's character contained an amusing bit of trivia: she was the first British companion since Sarah Jane. Since then the Doctor had travelled with people not from Earth (Leela, K-9, Romana, Nyssa, Adric, Turlough) an Australian (Tegan) and an American (Peri).
• Originally, the "future" segment of Trial of a Time Lord would have been two linked two part stories set in the same location at different times, not unlike what was done with The Ark. The idea was in part to have more episode 1's, in order to counteract the shortening of the season. However, Jack Trevor Story, who was meant to write the second of those stories struggled with his work and Script Editor Eric Saward didn't like Jack Halliwell's work on the first story. This was also before the whole season would have been presented as a single 14 part serial.
• After that, former Script Editor Christopher H. Bidmead was approached to develop his own story, but while the script was developed quickly, Saward once again was unhappy with the result. Another script by Sapphire & Steel creator PJ Hammond was developed, but this time John Nathan-Turner was unhappy with the script. The production team considered Robert Holmes, but his poor health and the fact that he was already developing the final Trial segment meant this wouldn't work.
• The Bakers had been contacted before but were away on vacation in Spain. Once they arrived back, Saward gave them both a summary of what had to happen in the story and what had been happening on a production level.
• It was Pip Baker who came up with the idea for the Vervoids, after reading in a scientific journal that plants have feelings.
• It was during the writing of this story that Eric Saward quit Doctor Who, and his frustration over the quality of these scripts has been cited as a reason – though not the main one. Producer John Nathan-Turner took over his duties, and while he did act as Script Editor for this story, Saward received no on-screen credit.
• Saward's departure, and subsequent interview with the Starburst magazine where he spoke out against John Nathan-Turner's work as producer, contributed to an already pessimistic atmosphere on set. There was no confirmation at this time that Doctor Who would receive another season, and given how close it had come to cancellation after Season 22 and the low ratings that Trial of a Time Lord had received, people were justifiably concerned that this would be the final season.
• So here's a weird point. Back in Mysterious Planet it was established that the Matrix could project scenes where the Doctor wasn't present by picking up on events that were in the vicinity of the TARDIS – what the Doctor complained about as "bugging" his TARDIS. But the first handful of scenes of this story occur before the TARDIS lands. So how did we see those scenes? Well, this being a time travel show there is actually a pretty simple justification. The "collection range" of a TARDIS, as it's called to in that story, refers to events that are temporally close, as well as spatially close.
• In episode 9, Professor Lasky is shown reading a copy of Murder on the Orient Express, which was of course a major influence for this story.
• Small detail, but I do appreciate that in the trial scenes, the Doctor has trouble remembering Mel's name, since of course he hasn't met her yet.
• On the other hand, it's odd that part of his defense includes him insisting that he wouldn't just ignore important information but instead get more involved, when his meddling is ultimately part of what he's on trial for.
• In that scene that I'm referencing, the Doctor notes that the Matrix record of the events have been altered. At one point, the Doctor in the altered version of the scene calls Mel's attempts at an investigation an "arbitrary course", a phrase which in the trial scene the Valeyard uses.
• In episode 10, the Doctor claims to be blessed with "tact and finesse". Sure, whatever you say Doc.
• In episode 10, two of the Mogarians are shown to be playing Space Invaders. The arcade game. Which is just bizarre on several levels.
• In episode 11, Professor Lasky suggests that when man discovered fire there was resistance to that discovery. At least in Doctor Who chronology we know that to be the case, as in An Unearthly Child we saw that exact scenario play out.
• You know what? I actually like the visual effects on the "black hole". It's not what images of black holes look like, but it's a unique visual that feels suitably threatening.

Next Time: Well, the Doctor's defense went remarkably poorly. Maybe he needs to turn to some extra-judicial means of getting justice

So, I think most of us can agree that in-universe, the reveal that Ruby's mum is just a regular person makes absolutely no sense for a variety of reasons. However, the twist wasn't added just for shock value. RTD seemed to want to make a point about fandom and and theorising, which was that we all seem to be doing too much of it. We make things special and then get disappointed when they aren't.

But is that even true? Yes, theories among the fans can be a bit ridiculous (everyone's the Rani and Rory is the Master come to mind), but is it prevalent enough to warrant RTD giving us this message? Personally, I don't think most speculation among the fandom is unearned given that it's usually in cases where the show intentionally presents a mystery (like River Song or Clara).

But what do you think? I'm curious as to your thoughts. Honestly, upon writing this post I'm starting to wonder if I missed the point and it's more of a commentary on fans not being satisfied in general with the writer's conclusions to storylines, which is a message I could probably get behind more. Who knows, maybe I've played right into his hands. If so, well played RTD, well played.

Anyway what do you think? Is RTD onto something? Is he making a mountain out of a molehill? I'd love to see what everyone else thinks about this.

I was perusing the tardis wiki page for unproduced stories and stumbled across the page for the unproduced episode "blood of the robots" and I was a bit confused when I saw it refers to the story as being second in a "shalka trilogy". The wiki doesn't seem to consider the feast of the stone as part of this "trilogy" and I can't for the life of me find any information on there being another cancelled shalka story that people know any information about. Is this just a slip up or was there more planned episodes that are just super obscure?

Because Three spent most of his life on Earth, time must have progressed normally for him as well. I've been wondering if anyone has made a year-by-year timeline of Three's time with UNIT. How many years did he spend as their scientific advisor? How often do the TV stories occur between each other? The Brigadier, Jo, Benton and Yates don't age significantly enough to have his tenure be 10+ years.

I know there is the UNIT Dating controversy but I'm simply talking about the era in isolation and not when it takes place in the 20th century as a whole (though feel free to discuss it in the comments)

Talk about whatever you want in this regular thread! Just brought some cereal? Awesome. Just ran 5 miles? Epic! Just watched Fantastic Four and recommended it to all your friends? Atta boy. Wanna bitch about Supergirl's pilot being crap? Sweet. Just walked into your Dad and his dog having some "personal time" while your sister sends snapchats of her handstands to her boyfriend leaving you in a state of perpetual confusion? Please tell us more.

Please remember that future spoilers must be tagged.

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• Latest Rewatch
• Latest What's Who With You
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Seems like AV Club have put it up early by mistake. No spoilers but it doesn't sound like anything to get too excited about.

https://www.avclub.com/doctor-who-christmas-special-review-joy-to-the-world-disney-plus

In my ever-growing Doctor Who video and audio collection, I've gathered over fifteen hundred individual stories, and I'm attempting to (briefly) review them all in the order in which they might have happened according to the Doctor's own personal timeline. We'll see how far I get.

Today's Story: Carnival of Monsters, written by Robert Holmes and directed by Barry Letts

What is it?: This is the second serial in the tenth season of the television show.

Who's Who: The story stars Jon Pertwee and Katy Manning, with Michael Wisher, Terence Lodge, Peter Halliday, Leslie Dwyer, Cheryl Hall, Tenniel Evans, Jenny McCracken, Ian Marter and Andrew Staines.

Doctor(s) and Companion(s): The Third Doctor, Jo Grant

Recurring Characters: Drashigs (an Ogron and a Cyberman appear on the Miniscope screen)

Running Time: 01:42:39

One Minute Review: Intending to take Jo to see Metebelis III, the Doctor instead lands the TARDIS on a cargo ship allegedly en route to India. However, when the boat is menaced by a plesiosaurus, it becomes apparent that something other than merely errant navigation is responsible. After the pair are arrested as stowaways, they discover that they are on the S.S. Bernice, which mysteriously vanished in 1926. The Doctor theorizes that the ship, its passengers, and the sea monster have all been collected, and he is determined to find out why.

"Carnival of Monsters" isn't universally beloved, but I enjoyed it the first time I watched it, and my opinion of it has only improved since then. If you can look past its uneven production values (the period sets and costumes look terrific, while the realization of Inter Minor and its denizens is less successful), there's hardly anything else to criticize about this clever, low-stakes political satire. This is Robert Holmes' best script yet and Barry Letts' most ambitious directorial effort, only fitting for the program's first proper return to adventures in time and space.

The serial features a wonderful cast, including Ian Marter in his first appearance on the show before being cast as Fourth Doctor companion Harry Sullivan. Nevertheless, most of Holmes' best lines are delivered by Michael Wisher, Terrance Lodge, and Peter Halliday, who are unconvincingly made up as Inter Minor's xenophobic admissions tribunal. After spending his last story bickering with his younger self, Jon Pertwee's Doctor is back at his most charming, and Katy Manning gets to play Jo's greatest hits, portraying her as inquisitive, resourceful, and daffy in equal measure.

Score: 5/5

Next Time: Peepshow

Snakedance is one of my favourite 5th Doctor stories, but there is something about it that I don't get and I was hoping someone could help explain it.

What is the deal with manussa and the federation on three worlds. Are the manussans a different species from the federation people (despite looking the same)?, as it is said the federator of the past destroyed the Mara and freed the manussan people from it. But then there is stuff that implies Lon and the other federation people are manussan..whats going on with the 3 world's, are there multiple species or just one, I'm confused please help haha.

So I've recently been rewatching series 1 and in the episode Boom Town there are lots if connections to Torchwood,as it is in the same location. But something that isn't often picked up on is that when Blon Fel Fotch and the Doctor are eating Blon points out that she has her flat that she lives in over looking the café and the water. Now, forgive me if I am wrong but it looks like the same flat that Owen Harper stays in Torchwood. We get to see the view from Owen's flat in multiple episodes of the show and I'm pretty sure it's the same one. I don't know how this could have worked from a production aspect but from a narrative aspect it can be quite likely. We know that Jack was in Cardiff and Torchwood was running in Boom Town. And we know Jack watched his past self, Jack was also looking for new team members between when the first series of Torchwood began and 2000. Owen could either already be there and live somewhere else or he has yet to arrive. Jack would already know that there was a vacant flat in the area as Blon had gone so he could always see if there was any technology behind or get Owen to love there.

It looks like they will soon announce the release of season 7. Here:

https://twitter.com/WhoMerchandise/status/1869077917701214349

I've tried to do tons of research on the subject, but I can't make sense of any of it. I know there is an audio series basically about this, but I don't have money to shell out to buy them and I can't find them anywhere else. All the research I'm doing is just confusing me and not making sense.

The reason I'm asking is because I'm writing a story that takes place during the time war and I'm just kind of trying to gather as much information as possible. My findings would determine what role Romana, Leela, and Brax take in my story (if any). Barring that, if anyone has any cool or interesting ideas for what I could do with these characters in my story, please let me know.

Context: The story I'm writing revolves around the Doctor's niece (which makes her Brax's neice as well), who is growing up during the war. Long story short, as she grows up she basically comes to understand that Rassilon sucks and he's a tyrant so she wants to fight him.

In hindsight which was your favourite portrayal? The dark, grumpy doctor was in the first episode (Deep Breath) or the redemptive, kind Doctor on the last episode ( Twice Upon A time)?

So in Legend of Ruby Sunday, Kate says that the TARDIS has appeared on the VHS for a second time, which leads me to think that sometime after The Doctor was finished dealing with the Goblins and left, while he wasn't looking, Sutekh took the TARDIS back to Ruby Road to try and work out again who Ruby's mother was?

If it's not that then I'm completely bamboozled I have no idea why there was a second TARDIS on Ruby Road with the dust cloud around it

It's been a while since I watched so could someone answer me a question.

The Master is Rasputin, right. the Rasputin Master is the one who swapped bodies with the Doctor for some reason and it was the Rasputin Master who got injured and assumingly made a deal with the Toymaker.

What the hell happened to the Master that UNIT captured? Did he go back in time to become the Rasputin Master?

Was he working with his future self?

What happened?

Just watched Time of the Doctor again for Christmas and bawled my eyes out for the umpteenth time at a dumb little robot head voiced by a guy who plays a comical vampire, and it got me thinking…

Did Handles use his last words to remind the Doctor about the phone, because he wouldn’t hold out to his chosen amount of minutes, or did he hold on all that time because the random number he chose was so long and he knew he had to see that request out, deciding to rest once he fulfilled his request?

RIP Handles

So, here's the concept, the doctor get killed early in story and regenerate into a new doctor
, then the resultion of the story includes some time reverse that reverts the doctor back ,

This idea will be neat for making a guessed star to play the doctor for one episode

The actor i have in mind is nick Briggs , a longtime doctor who fan, also the current voice actor for cybermen and daleks and many more,

He wrote many official stories during the wilderness era, even fan made ones

Also wrote and acted in many big finish audio stories and if i am not wrong he is still the exactive producer of big finish

Also he really want to be the doctor, in the wilderness era comics he made a future incarnation of the doctor that resembles him

Played the doctor in fan project and in stage plays

Played alternative timeline versions of the doctor in big finish

And when Christopher eccleston wasn't available he made a semi decent impression of the 9th doctor for big finish audio stories

I had the passing thought that Ncuti has an existing professional relationship with Gillian Anderson. She would be super exciting as a villain or a Lindsay Duncan type one off companion.

Who do you hope or think we might see pop up this season?

Hi, so i was reading the Tardis wiki page for Mels and remembered that her timeline seemingly does not add up at.

Melody regenerates because of an illness she catches in a latest 1970, and Mels later states that this was the last time she regenerated (having turned into a toddler/baby i don’t recall which).

So we know for fact that this was her last regeneration- yet (again according to the wiki) Amy and Rory were born in 1989, and the starting age for primary school is 5 so they would’ve began in 1994. So somehow over the course of 24 years Mels only aged AT MOST 5 years (possibly less depending on how old the body she regenerates into was.

Now you could make the claim that Mels due to her regenerative abilities simply physically ages slower (as does the Doctor). But that can’t be true given that once she enrols she ages at the exact same rate as Amy and Rory who are normal humans.

I’ve seen some people claim she can to some degree control her age, because of her “i might take the age down a bit” comment, but that seems like a bit of a leap for me (especially given the age ‘regression’ of river looking slightly younger when she dies than earlier in her timline is FAR less drastic than staying a child for over two decades.

Not to mention how (as a toddler) she managed to travel from new york to england. You could agrue she was found and cared for and her caregivers moved to england, but she states that she specifically sought out amy and rory so the idea that it was a coincidence is definitely not true, and i dont think that parents/guardians would move across the Atlantic to a small country town just because their child for some reason wants to.

So yeah, my question is is there any explanation for these discrepancies? Or is it simoly just a case of ‘dont think about it too hard’

A few weeks ago, I posted about watching and loving Colin Baker’s first season and my confusion about why it received such a negative reception. It is, in my opinion, a really solid season of Doctor Who and I preferred it to any of Peter Davison’s seasons. Davison has some individual good stories, but also a lot of dull, nonsensical ones. Other than some story issues with Revelation of the Daleks, I thought all of Baker’s first season stories were winners. I loved his sparky relationship with Peri, and how his pompousness was often played for laughs.

Now, having finished Trial of a Time Lord, all I’m asking is, how could it go so wrong? First, the idea of a trial sounds clever in the abstract, but all it does is deflate any possible tension the stories might have, cutting back to the courtroom so that the Doctor and the Valeyard can engage in some dull, repetitive banter. The Doctor spends most of these scenes making fun of the Valeyard’s name rather than countering any arguments, and it’s all rather juvenile.

Gone is the spark in the Doctor’s relationship with Peri (and, later, Mel). Instead, the Doctor is cowed and servile (drinking carrot juice and using the stationary bicycle), often being bossed around by them.

The stories themselves - The Mysterious Planet is the first, and best one; Mindwarp is disturbing, and it bothers me that we only ever see the ‘edited’ events created by the Gallifrey Matrix and never actually know what really happened; Terror of the Vervoids is dull and suffers from poor direction and uneven development of the secondary characters; and The Ultimate Foe is utterly incoherent:

On the bright side, I really like Bonnie Langford as Mel - I’m not British, but I understand she’s a well-known stage performer. I enjoy her energy and sense of humor.

Overall, though, what a letdown from that incredible first season.