How long has Paul McGann's heroic eighth Doctor been the Doctor for now? It feels like an eternity and it will be over soon with Christopher Eccelston stepping into the role and turning what has been a comfortable eight years with the eighth Doctor into something very different. Not only is Doctor Who being re-vitalised on our screens but the influence of the New Series is spreading to the novels too with the ninth Doctor and Rose taking up residence in the latest ongoing series of adventures.

Before we say goodbye to the eighth Doctor I would like to pay tribute to what I consider to be his finest twenty novels, twenty books which have given me great satisfaction and have continued the legacy of Doctor Who with real panache, pushing the boundaries of what the TV series could do and making the ongoing saga such a rewarding experience.

Vampire Science by Jonathan Blum and Kate Orman

What's it all about? The Doctor returns to San Francisco with freshman adventurer Sam to discover a gang of Vampires have been sighted. Some want to co-exist with humans but others want to see their days out in a blaze of glory, provoking a war as devastating as the one between the Vampires and the Time Lords. The Doctor has to use all his wits to negotiate with the creatures and makes a deadly bargain with one of their number, a bargain that could see his new body come to a blood-curdling climax...

Why is it so great? This is a book that lives and breathes America and for a show that primarily focuses on Britain for its alien invasions it is a welcome breath of fresh air. Characterisation is strong throughout with the guest characters coming into a league of their own. Carolyn was so popular at the time there were some fans that wished she could travel with the Doctor instead of Sam and in truth she works brilliantly against him. Through her eyes we get to witness the magic and the horror that the Doctor can bring to people's lives. Her husband James comes across as genuine, wanting to scarper as soon as things get edgy. Kramer is the new face of UNIT and she makes an excellent hardened career woman but is gentle enough to warn Sam away from the dangers that travelling with the Doctor will expose her too. Orman and Blum effortlessly write the book between them, their prose style is so seamless it could be just the one of them behind the typewriter. I really enjoyed experiencing Sam's terrifying experiences, she is such a cocky character it was wise to introduce her to the real life nightmares she would be facing. Her experiences in the nightclub are haunting. The book doesn't take the easy way out either, despite flirting with a naive Doctor who thinks he can solve everybody's problems. People die. The Doctor wins the final battle but there are casualties. It is an important lesson he would learn again and again throughout his run, this isn't Time's Champion anymore...

Triumphant lines:

"That didn't change the effect he had on the world around him. He was magic" "It's stupid, that's what it is. He takes so many foolish risks with people like you. Just ordinary people who don't have the training to walk around war zones... " "I just want you to know you have a choice. You don't have to go with him... " - Adrienne Kramer

"Different Vampires. Different rules. Adrienne you must listen to me. Start a war now and it could expand to engulf the Earth - and beyond." - The Doctor

"The Doctor did something Sam had never seen before. He screamed. She stumbled back from him in shock. He threw his arms in front of his eyes, desperate. The sun came up."

"I'm just a boarder. I could leave any time" - Sam

"I can tear down everything you care for, leave you alone and hunted, and all the while make sure they never kill you." - The Doctor

"They're all killers. I don't see why they should live." - Sam

"They're not dead. Not while there is still hope for them." - The Doctor

"This one would be a live kill. Give him the full sensory experience. She rasped her tongue on the man's neck, tasting dirt and skin. He whimpered, bewildered. I can't make you feel what you just made me feel, Doctor. But this will hurt you."

"Vampire Crack Squirrels, James thought, and wished he hadn't."

"Without someone to scare, someone to hurt, someone to kill, someone to feel superior to... what are you? Nothing? You're nothing, Slake!" - the Doctor.

Bloody Marvellous by Peter Anghelides ("The whole opening chapter is so well-constructed, I think it could stand as a short story in its own right.")

A review by Finn Clark ("If all the BBC Books had been this good, we'd now have a new novel coming out each week and American distributors beating down the BBC's door for the right to carry Doctor Who books.")

Seeing I by Jonathan Blum and Kate Orman

What is it all about? Sam is homeless on the colony world of Ha'olam and trying to come to terms with the recent drama between her and the Doctor. The Doctor is trying to find her and for his efforts is soon confined to a hellish prison where everybody is nice. INC has acquired mysterious eye implants from an unknown alien source, a presence that is waiting in the shadows watching their progress. Can the Doctor and Sam rebuild their life together? Will they live to find each other and defeat the I... ?

Why is it so great? A plethora of reasons. It is a compliment to the skill of Orman and Blum's writing that I have skipped from their last novel to this and here they overcame the hurdle of co-writing a novel together but cutting the plot in two and each having a bloody good stab. After a string of novels that feels as though the Doctor and Sam are trapped in a childish soap OrmanBlum decide to deal with their rocky relationship with maturity and intelligence. Within the confines of Seeing I Sam is the BEST companion for the Eighth Doctor, accept no imitations because their separation proves (once and for all) how much they yearn to be a part of each other's lives and how much they love each other. The essential wrongness of their separation screams from every page and the trials they go through (Sam having to build up a new life on an alien planet, the Doctor experiencing psychological hell in prison) to reunite are convincing enough to make their relationship at the end of the novel far more interesting and balanced than it was before. It should be mentioned that the book takes a detour into SF land in the last third which completely shifts the story away from the regulars' personal lives but for the most part this is an outstanding straight drama unlike anything we have ever seen before or since. The Doctor has never come up against a greater adversary than his own isolation. In some memorably disturbing scenes his three years in prison almost drive him mad.

Triumphant lines...

"She can't be the first one who's had to build a life after being with the Doctor - hell, she'd already met a bunch of his ex-friends who had gone on fighting for what they'd believed in. If she had to damn well change everything about herself, she'd do it, and by the end of it she'd have a nice real job and a real place to live and a real her."

"Of course you realise this means war" - the Doctor.

"She realised she didn't really like the way he snored, and he got irritated when he had to tell her for the third time what his favourite colour was, and they both found themselves noticing the pauses in their conversations more and more" - in an incredible chapter of Sam's life she falls in and out of love, written in such a beautiful fashion it could only come from a writer who has experienced such pain.

"After a while the hunger stopped bothering me. I just switched it off. But the boredom... you can't switch that off. All the memories and meditations and word games simply dry up after a while. And you're left aware of every moment that passes. Every second. One after the other." - the Doctor sums up his imprisonment.

"Finally" - the Doctor's quiet admission when he is finally attacked in prison, at last he has something to fight.

"Three years of nothing" - the Doctor admits his horror in prison to Sam.

"And she planted an almighty smooch on his lips. When she broke away, she noted with some satisfaction that she felt absolutely no compunction to do it again." - to the relief of everyone, Sam is finally over the Doctor.

People who say it far better than me...

A review by Andrew McCaffrey ("There was one moment while in Seeing I where I cheered out loud. It was the passage in which Sam Jones (having run out on the Doctor in an earlier book) gets fed up with her boring, routine, desk-bound, nine-to-five job and quits to try to make a life for herself that means something. And this portion demonstrates the strength of this book. No longer is Sam merely Generic Companion #1, but a thinking, living, human character who's forced to deal with life after her first series of travels in the TARDIS.")

"Doctor, I love you" by Joe Ford ("This book comes close to being the perfect Doctor Who story without ever being a Doctor Who story at all. It is so far removed from anything I would recognise as Doctor Who and yet embodies so much of what I love about the show, and the book series in particular.")

The Scarlet Empress by Paul Magrs

What's it all about? The Doctor and Sam team up with the unforgettable Iris Wildthyme on Hyspero, a planet of impossible magic. They embark on a quest across deserts, mountains, forests and oceans to reunite the Four and overthrow the tyrant Scarlet Empress...

Why is it so great? The ultimate Doctor Who fantasy written by an author who wants to take the novel line away from human angst and remind you of the glorious enchantment of Doctor Who. It is Paul Magrs' best book for the BBC because of the density of the prose. Pick any page at random and you will find a glorious description or a priceless line of dialogue. He takes the reader on journey through a very alien world and involves his three central characters in some hilarious and dangerous situations. It is impossible to skip over the influence of the mighty Iris Wildthyme; the anti-Doctor in many ways (female, reckless and selfish) but so like him in others (an adventuress, heroic and fun to be around). Her debut is stunning, allowing the normally bland eighth Doctor to lock horns with this emotional Time Lady. If the Doctor were to fall in love with anybody, it would have to be Iris. Enjoy the spirits, djinns, alligator men and golden bears... this is a wild magic trip.

Triumphant lines...

"It happened to me. Seven of me were taken to the Death Zone on Gallifrey. Someone had reactivated the Games, they used to play there. Each of my selves, present, past and future, was given a relevant companion and playmate, and we were forced to battle our separate, and then collective ways, past Ice Warriors, Ogrons, Sea Devils, Zarbi, Mechanoids and Quarks, to get to the Dark Tower. Good job we only got the rubbishy monsters to battle, eh? It was that rogue Morbius behind it all. The rogue was after Rassilon's gift of immortality!" - one of several of Iris' story stealing from the Doctor. Paul Magrs pokes fun at the TV series and an army of anal fans brew up a storm.

"You've never been put on trial, exiled, summoned to carry out ridiculous tasks, dragged back to your ancestral home to atone for sins that weren't even yours... I think I rather envy you Iris. You've had, in many ways, the life I wanted for myself." - the Doctor.

"The storm chose this moment to break, and unleash a great, dark torrent upon Fortalice. Rain crashed on to the shabby rooftops and cascaded in the streets, creating instant floods which, gathering speed, seemed to be sluicing the townspeople away. The lightning cracked open the dense sky and was followed by the inevitable, bronchial mutter of thunder." - Magrs' formidable skill of description at work.

"You sound a mite like that last incarnation of yours. A portentous little feller, swaggering around, thinking he's got all the world's darkest secrets under his hat. Defending the secrets of time, indeed. Guardian of Forever. Time's Champion, my arse. You were a pretentious old thing then, Doctor, and you got on my nerves, frankly." - Iris sums up the seventh Doctor, rather brilliantly.

"A spider, a little larger than the original spider, fashioned entirely from silver and glass. Its brittle legs hissed and snapped and sparkled as it tested them out, as if it was a newborn creature. The ten eyes of the Duchess surmounted the original faceted eyes of the spider like a cluster of bright jewels studding the pommel of a sword. Those vastly improved eyes drank in the light" - wow.

People who say it better than me...

A review by Finn Clark ("A TARDIS journey for the first time is truly magical. This book is wonderful, in the strictest sense of the word. It's full of wonders.")

A review by Terrence Keenan ("Magrs is out to mess with readers' minds, fanboys' minds and give everyone and everything a V-sign/middle finger and boot in the rear. He does all this to get reactions, which is what challenging writers do... So, in The Scarlet Empress, Magrs is on a mission to play games with continuity, storytelling and anything else he can get away with. And this time, he succeeds.")

Interference (Books one and two) by Lawrence Miles

What's it all about? The Doctor investigates the Cold, a new weapon which makes people disappear instantly. Sam is kidnapped and taken to Anathema, home of the Remote, an offshoot of Faction Paradox. Fitz is frozen and woken up in the 26th century where the Faction kidnaps him. The third Doctor visits Dust after a conference with his eighth self, warning him that there could be possible interference in their time stream. What is the truth behind the deadly Cold? Who is the mysterious IM Foreman and what relevance does he have on the Doctor's life? And what is the fate of Fitz, trapped in the future and in the Factions grasp? And is this the end of Sam?

Why is it so good? It has scope like no other Doctor Who story, before or since. It takes a handful of characters and takes them down unpredictable, fascinating paths. The joy of the eighth Doctor line is its continuing story, which allows for terrific evolution for the characters. Interference goes one further by daring to mess around with previously written continuity, paradoxically killing the third Doctor and thus spreading an infection through his timeline until it reaches the eighth and he becomes a fully fledged member of the Faction. And what shocks! Sam leaves, befriending Sarah Jane (who makes a welcome return, written to perfection). The real Fitz is twisted into Father Kreiner, a Faction agent who hates the Doctor for his fate and the Fitz we leave the book with is merely a remembered version of the real thing. After two years of yawn-inducing adventures somebody has decided to shake up the regulars in a spectacularly dramatic fashion and it works a treat. Lawrence Miles writes like no other, his book full of twisted observations, hilarious dialogue, intelligent discussions and imaginative ways of telling a scene (scripting scenes, telling a chapter from each of the character's POVs). This is an incredibly brave book for the eighth Doctor range to put out, with consequences that change the series for the better. Packed full of clever, imaginative ideas and stunning characterisation, you can almost forget this is two hundred pages too long but nothing can take away from the power of the finished result.

Triumphant lines...

"The roundels were all turning pink as if the blood had been building up behind the walls, trying to burst through the access panels." - the third Doctor and Sarah face the console room filling with blood, a sure sign that they are moving from the innocent adventuring of old to the grimmer nightmares of the eighth Doctor's life.

"I feel as if I've walked into the middle of someone else's adventure." The third Doctor confirms our suspicions.

"I love you," said Sam. The Doctor looked up at the ceiling again. "Do you know, I know exactly what you mean by that" - the Doctor and Sam say goodbye.

"You're going to say I can't kill him. If I kill him now then his future selves will never have existed. But I don't care. I was with the Faction. I'm not going to let a Paradox get in my way." - Fitz wants to kill the Doctor, whatever body he is wearing, for abandoning him to the Faction.

"This is wrong" - the third Doctor's last line before he dies on Dust.

People who say it better than me...

Deconstructing the Doctor by Marcus Salisbury ("Interference renewed my fascination with a series I've watched, on and off, since the mid-1970s. This is Doctor Who truly holding its own with the greats of science fiction, and there really is no higher praise.")

It's so bloody big by Mike Morris ("It's impossible for me to go into specifics without giving the game away. But this book is wonderful, completely fucks around with continuity and leaves you re-evaluating the series, and completely fucks up your head while you're at it. You can get annoyed about this if you like, but why bother? Why not just enjoy what you're reading, and dump as many preconceptions about Doctor Who as you can?")

The Shadows of Avalon by Paul Cornell

What's it all about? The Brigadier's wife, Doris, is dead and he joins the TARDIS crew in Avalon, an other-dimensional kingdom. The TARDIS has been destroyed and the Doctor is marooned and caught in the crossfire as the British Army arrives in force to explore the Land of Dreams. Gallifreyan agents wreck havoc during the negotiations and before anybody realises it war breaks out. Can the Doctor save the world, his best friend and himself?

Why is it so great? Paul Cornell said he hated this book in a recent DWM, which I find hard to swallow because it has always been one of my favourites. He is the angst king, he puts his characters through real emotional turmoil and he has a fine target here in the Brigadier. Grieving for his wife, it is possibly the best exploration of this character in print to date with some scenes (carrying the wounded soldier to safety) enough to bring tears to your eyes. The central plot is fascinating and explores humanity in a very negative light as we bring our guns and bombs to the Land of Dreams. The eighth Doctor gets one of his best interpretations to date, an engaging mix of boyish charm and hidden aggression as he is stripped of everything he holds dear. Some of the scenes between him and the Brigadier bristle with emotion. It is a real treat to return to Gallifrey and the regenerated Romana, the black haired bitch, is now the enemy. Shocking developments with Compassion as she unexpectedly becomes a TARDIS and bringing the series full circle as the Doctor is once again on the run from his own people. A beautiful story of loss and life, written in Cornell's trademark style.

Triumphant lines...

"The TARDIS exploded into a ball of flame and matter" - gasp!

"So you dare to do this in the Land of Dreams?" the Doctor whispered. "Such arrogance. Such interference. There's bound to be a war you know?" - the Doctor condemns the invasion of Avalon.

"You never used to be a hypocrite Alistair. Whatever's happened to you, this regeneration doesn't suit you."

"Finally he nodded to himself. He was finished here. 'Sorry to keep you waiting dear.' He started to squeeze the trigger." - the Brigadier on the brink of suicide.

The Brigadier squatted beside him. 'Don't be ridiculous, Private. If I got killed...' And the thought suddenly struck him that what he was about to say was true. That, incredibly it must have been true when he started this walk. He found himself smiling at how ridiculous it was that he had come all this way to discover that. 'If I got killed then I couldn't get you home'" - a life-affirming message as the Brigadier realises there are still reasons to live.

"'You can't fight history,' she said, quite calmly 'We'll catch up with you. We'll take back the type 102 and have our new race of time capsules. There's nowhere in the universe you can hide from us'" - Romana issues her threat as the Doctor escapes in his spanking new Compassion TARDIS.

People who say it better than me...

A review by Mike Morris ("On this point, something else became clear to me as I read the book. The Eighth Doctor is no longer McGann. When reading, say, a PDA, the ultimate test of whether the Doctor is well written or not is whether you can visualise the actor saying the words. Not here, not any more. The Eighth Doctor has fully evolved into a print-Doctor, free from the tyranny of our TV-sodden minds. And the writers recently seem to be revelling in this.")

When did the EDAs become good? by Robert Smith? ("For the first time in a very long time, the EDAs are interesting. I'm left desperately wondering where things are going from here and that's a very nice feeling indeed. A feeling I haven't felt since the NAs.")

The Banquo Legacy by Andy Lane and Justin Richards

What's it all about? Scientist Richard Harries is preparing to push the boundaries of science further, this time the science of the mind. He is attempting an experiment to share thoughts with his sister. The equipment overloads and Richard is tragically killed. But foul play is apparent when his corpse staggers to his feet and starts attacking the gathered guests at Banquo Manor... The Doctor is concerned, Compassion is under attack, a Time Lord agent has tracked them down and it is perfectly obvious that their time on the run is coming to an end...

Why is it do great? One of the most atmospheric Doctor Who books written, thanks to the perfectly captured period details and the spine-chilling horror of the situation. It is a welcome return of Andy Lane to the novel line, easily one of the most accomplished novelists and teaming up with one of the current greats. Together they create a fabulous murder mystery, told from the first person of two very different characters. Suspicion is rife in the house and with a killer on the loose and a Time Lord agent to uncover, the sense of paranoia is palpable. The last third takes a lurch into zombie territory but does so with such aplomb it is hard not to applaud the authors for their From Dusk Till Dawn -style genre twist. Some of the scenes with the blackened, bloody Richard Harries terrorising the Doctor and his friends are memorably scary and the uncovering of his sister as the culprit is a stroke of genius. The climax is also superbly judged with time running out for the Doctor, the Time Lords finally know where he is...

Triumphant lines...

"'The control is not subconscious. We know exactly what we are doing. We have always known.' Baker's mouth dropped open, and with the immaculate timing of melodrama and the precision of the commedia dell'arte, Richard Harries' bloodied form stepped into the doorway beside his sister..." - my favourite moment of the book. A real "oh shit" scene.

"The light gleamed greasily from the exposed of the skull, and the line of his teeth was a malicious smile matched in his one remaining eye." - ewww. "The broken, blackened face of Richard Harries stared down at us from the window, his own single remaining eye catching the moonlight and blazing as if it were again burning, melting, dripping like its twin from its socket." - double ewww.

"As we plunged back into the woodland I saw Harries' dead face watching us from the shattered window of the shed, framed by splintered glass." - I could keep quoting these nightmarish images all day!

People who say it better than me...

Superb stuff by Robert Smith? ("The murder mystery style of the book works far, far better than Yet Another Horror Novel, as I thought we'd be getting. The clues are very nicely presented and the plot twists and turns sublimely. The search through the house, with chapters lasting less than a page, is astonishingly gripping stuff.")

Totally brilliant by Richard Radcliffe ("From its macabre cover, to the personal reminisces of Stratford and Hopkinson - this is gothic Dr Who at its very best. Lane and Richards have taken all the aspects of gothic Who and grafted it into a story rich in interest and excitement.")

The Burning by Justin Richards

What's it all about? Progress has left then mining town of Middletown behind. Jobs are scarce and a strange fissure has appeared across the moors that the locals believe reaches down into Hell itself. People start dying in mysterious circumstances. Can it have anything to with Roger Nepath, the stranger in town who is exhibiting his collection of mystic Eastern artefacts? Who is the stranger in town who claims he has no memory and calls himself the Doctor? And can anyone stop the beginning of the end of the world... the terrifying, destructive force of the Burning... ?

Why is it so great? This is a glorious re-imagining of the eighth Doctor, which thanks to its very existence admits that the previous editor had not truly taken the character down a very interesting path. This is an excellent hopping on point for fans as it takes us right back to the beginning, the Doctor is a mysterious character travelling from place to place righting wrongs, we can follow with him as he discovers who he is and why he does what he does. And what a Doctor! He is almost sadistic in places, he violently admonishes his friends, shows little sign of remorse when they start to die and even contributes a murder to the book. He is instantly compelling and unpredictable, just what Justin Richards was trying to do. The story itself is low key but still very readable, a quiet horror novel which focuses strongly on characterisation and shocks. The nineteenth century is captured beautifully with strong intelligent dialogue throughout and the book features a genuinely horrific monster in the Burning creatures. Some scenes are disturbingly graphic and the book is all the better for it.

Triumphant lines...

"The fire was a living thing. Burning. Roaring its way through the roof timbers and running liquid down the front of the building. It licked its way out of the eye-windows of the house, crackling and cackling in the door way." - a great opening paragraph.

"'More important?' Stobbold could barely believe his ears. 'Doctor a man has died/' 'I know' the Doctor snapped back. His voice was loud, his tone angry. 'I know! But we must prevent the thousands, perhaps even million of deaths that may follow.'" - the remorseless Doctor upsets the locals.

"'She's dead,' the Doctor shouted at Nepath. "And she'll always be dead. I don't care what assurances you've been given. It doesn't matter what you do to me, she is dead.' His eyes locked with Nepath's. 'And you know that,' he said slowly, deliberately, clearly. 'And you know,' he said quietly 'that it is your fault.'" - the Doctor confronts madman Roger Nepath and hammers the truth home about his sister with vicious forcefulness.

"The foot drew back. Nepath rocked forward, head free of the water for a moment. A clear view for a second: Of the Doctor giving a sudden, single, violent kick at the stone of Patience Nepath's back. The he was falling, her weight on top of him. The view through the bubbling white water was a blur. The Doctor was watching him as he sank slowly." - the Doctor murders Nepath.

"'Doctor, there is one thing I should like to know very much' 'Yes?' 'Who are you?' 'Ah that is something I must find out for myself."

People who say it better than me...

A review by Dominick Cericola ("This a new beginning for the EDAs, as Richards not only helms the lead book, but also the seat as Editor (replacing Stephen Cole). With The Burning, he gives us characters who are strong and memorable, lingering in the embers of our Consciousness long after the book has closed. These are signs that we are perhaps finally past the bumpy ride of the initial EDAs, heading for smooth sailing ahead, with deeper stories and intricate plots.")

The Turing Test by Paul Leonard

What's it all about? The Second World War is drawing to a close and Alan Turing, top code breaker is called in to break a mysterious new cypher. It is coming from Germany so everybody assumes it's German... everybody that is except for the mysterious "Doctor" who walks into Turing's life and turns it upside down. Is it really a coincidence that people start to die when he shows up? On a journey to discover who the message is from, the Doctor and Turing team up with celebrated author Graeme Greene and pilot Joseph Heller right into the heart of wartorn Germany. Can the message really have been sent by aliens... ?

Why is it so great? This is a superb achievement no matter what way you look at and probably the closest any Doctor Who book has come to being a literature. I was aware of both Alan Turing and Graeme Greene before I read this book and thanks to its powerful passages from the POV of both men I went and learnt a lot more afterwards, Doctor Who once again giving me the incentive to learn about history. Turing's sections are still my favourite; his child-like view of the world is beautifully naive and his mad crush on the eighth Doctor takes the books into a bold and adult direction. Greene's sections are much more exciting though and where the meat of the story comes in. It is fascinating to read from these characters' POVs and then discover what they think of each other... just when you have made up your mind about Turing, Greene dismisses him as wet and emotional and you are forced to re-evaluate him again. Heller's sections are the funniest and the most dramatic with the final set piece of the four characters racing through the explosive streets of Germany one of the most convincing fictitious war time settings I have ever read. All this magnificence and there is still time for the best scene in the entire book and quite rightly you have to wait for the end for it as the Doctor realises just how far he has come, manipulating and hurting people just to contact the aliens sending the message so he can leave the Earth. What has happened to our hero?

Triumphant lines...

"The Doctor is not an angel, though he may not be a man exactly, either. I desired him as a man, loved him as one but my love did not blind me, or make me religious!" - Alan Turing

"The Doctor whirled around and grabbed my arms and for one terrible, wonderful moment I thought he was going to hug me again" - Turing, besotted with the Doctor, giddy with excitement in his presence.

"I know for certain now it was the best moment of my life. I have known nothing better, before or since, of standing on that swaying train with the Doctor, with the grey French fields passing outside, and the murder of war ahead" - Turing makes his decision to follow his heart and accompany the Doctor to Germany.

"A child, I thought. A child in mathematician's clothing" - Greene on Turing.

"'It won't work. They know you're not mad. You've got another week here at best.' '"Quack quack, quick-quack, quaaaaack!" Which meant oh shit you're not telling me they're going to make me fly again.' - Heller tries to convince the Doctor he is mad so he can survive the war in hospital.

"The raid was well underway, flame-light brighter than moonlight and infinitely more bloody." "The city was a bonfire, white-flamed buildings crumbling like Christmas cake." "I could hear the scream of overloaded engines - I could even smell aviation fuel" - wartime Germany captured with frightening realism.

"The Doctor walked up to me and put his hands on my shoulders lightly. There were tears on his cheeks. 'I've killed so many people,' he whispered." - the cold realism sets in as the Doctor realises what he has done to try and escape the Earth.

People who say it better than me...

A review by Finn Clark ("This is a short review, because I honestly don't have a single criticism. Our three narrators get more of the limelight than the Doctor himself, but he's so important to the workings of the plot that you hardly realise unless you stop and think about it. And besides, those three central portrayals are just so darn good. This book feels like it's had far more time than usual spent writing it - either that or Leonard's been a pastiche genius all along and never told us. Very impressive indeed.")

A review by Mike Morris ("We open with Alan Turing, and I could quite happily have read his account until next February, it's that good. He's simply fascinating, a man who is at once mercurial and deeply passionate, and yet a slave to logic and rationality. The Turing narrative is basically a tragic love-story, one that we know is doomed from the moment it's mentioned on the first page. Watching Turing fall for the Doctor is like watching a car-crash in slow-motion. This is the great advantage of first-person narrative, because we see Turing's inner turmoil behind the perfectly rational exterior. People call him a robot, and only Turing and the reader know it isn't true.")

Father Time by Lance Parkin

What's it all about? Earth, the 1980's. With UFOs filling the skies, a giant robot stalking the Derbyshire hills and alien bounty hunters searching for the mysterious Last One, the Doctor is the only man who can protect the innocents caught in the crossfire. The Doctor has lost his memory, his friends, his past and his TARDIS. All he has now is the love of his daughter. But will even that be taken from him... ?

Why is it so great? One of the most sensitive Doctor Who books ever written. It is a heartfelt character piece first and a non-stop thrill ride second and yet it succeeds in both areas making for a packed book. But Parkin spreads his novel over the 1980's so as to make the evolution of the characters realistic and the consequences of his early sections all the more important. The primary concern of the book is to give the Doctor a family, namely friendly teacher Debbie Castle and stranded alien Miranda. This is where the novel triumphs, it grounds the Doctor to the Earth like never before and delights in his happiness after so much brooding during his exile. The middle sections of this book come close to being "straight" drama as we experience all the difficulties of being a teenage girl, including the heartbreaking betrayal of a lover. We get to see Miranda grow into something of a female Doctor and she is fantastic to read about. The book is also highlighted by some phenomenal set pieces that could only have come from the mind of Lance Parkin, namely the super cool robo-Volkswagon and the tower block, which explodes into roses. The prose is rich and fulsome and the pace of the book is frantic despite its complex characterisation. Father Time explores the amnesiac Doctor eighth Doctor better than practically any other book and shows once and for all what a great character he could be.

Triumphant lines...

"The Doctor clutched Miranda's hand. It was warm and tiny compared to his own. 'I'll protect you,' he told her, tears in his eyes. 'I'll look after you.'"

"The windows became roses. Some petals drifted away but most were caught in waves that poured down the side of the building like waterfalls. The windows frames followed, the walls after that. The whole building became a cascade of roses, floor after floor bursting out and throwing out plumes of red petals." - beautiful

"I... I made a mistake. I really like you, and I was drunk, and just give me another chance, and I know I don't deserve it." Miranda smiled. Then she swung round, putting her whole weight behind a punch to his face. He heard something crack between his eyes and the rush of warm liquid." - everyone has experienced the pain of love and so does Bob when he cheats on Miranda.

"'Hand me the gun,' he told her 'and then go.'" - the Doctor cuts his daughter out of his life after she kills the Deputy.

"The Doctor glared down. 'What's the matter? No bons mots, no quips?' The Doctor knelt over him, pressed his knee into Ferran's chest and punched him hard in the face. He hesitated, but only for a moment, and then punched him again." - the Doctor's violent reaction to Debbie's murder.

"We could have been a family." - the Doctor to Miranda after Debbie's death.

"'Time to go home,' the pilot told him. The Doctor looked out over Earth, the Terminator crawling over the Atlantic. The he looked up at the stars. They were sharp points of light here, all distinct colours. The sky was pitch black, the light here was harsh, pure. There were millions of stars, and around them were millions of planets. 'I am home,' the Doctor said."

People who say it better than me...

The Quickening by Jason A Miller ("On the whole, reading Father Time can be an exhilarating experience. The characters and the action are crisper than that of previous Who novels, and there are moments of great humor and great pathos.")

A review by Terrance Keenan ("Lance Parkin has created something special in his contribution to the Caught on Earth Arc. Father Time is the rare book which takes all sorts of fanwanky ideas and manages to spin them into something fresh, yet familiar, comfortable yet exciting.")

The Year of Intelligent Tigers by Kate Orman

What's it all about? The island world of Hitchemus is home to a colony of musicians and seemingly harmless alien animals. When the storms and the tigers break loose, the Doctor tries to protect the humans, but the humans don't want him. When he ventures into the wilderness in search of the tigers' secrets, Fitz and Anji find themselves on their own, trying to prevent a war. With both sides eager for blood, and hurricanes on the horizon, the Doctor must decide whether this time he's on the side of the human race...

Why is it so great? Kate Orman is not the first author that would come to mind when asked who can create a convincing alien atmosphere but that is exactly what she does in Tigers. Hitchemus is a planet rife with emotions and the violent weather shifts with the mood of its people. The book is filled with sounds and scents that make this an intoxicating, occasionally overpowering planet to visit. It is an ideal backdrop for this riveting character study, taking the absurd idea of talking Tigers deadly seriously and exploring them in such depth that you cannot help but believe. Orman is the character writer and takes the opportunity to study the regulars in with real intensity; the Doctor's wilder instincts emerge, giving Anji's mistrust of him some weight. They emerge from the book with a much stronger relationship, having been through such a tragic conflict together. This isn't a book for thrill seekers or action plots but a insightful, carefully nurtured piece of writing which lives and breathes through its vivid prose. It is my personal favourite of Orman's solo works.

Triumphant lines...

"I'm the Doctor and I'm extraordinarily clever." - I dunno, I just love that line!

"I tried living in a straight line for a hundred years and that wasn't enough, either. Why am I looking to be something else? Something in one place, one time."

"Travelling through time and space and having adventures. It all sounds so pointless - and silly. Tell me it's not all pointless. Tell me it's not ridiculous." "I think it sounds wonderful," breathed Karl. "Wonderful."

"Don't give me that!" she yelled into his face. He was shocked backwards, letting go of her. "It's not good enough." Her throat was so tight her voice was coming out like a high-pitched buzz of an angry insect. "You can't put on the sad face - oh-I'm-so-sorry after the fact. You had a moment to be human and you stepped right past it." - tension between the Doctor and Anji after the death of Besma Grieve.

"It's up to you now. I've finished here." He laughed brightly. "Save your own world for a change." And Anji realised: he wasn't possessed, he wasn't transformed. He was, at last, absolutely himself." - the Doctor whips up a storm to get everybody's attention and tells them to sort out their own mess.

"It felt like leaving my family behind. Like a pair of brothers who drive you crazy but you love to see." - Anji comes to terms with her new family.

People who say it better than me...

A review by Mike Morris ("Here, Anji's character has been crystallised, and the dynamic between the three characters is excellent. Anji doesn't trust the Doctor. She trusts Fitz, all right, and is almost beginning to like him; but Fitz is so in thrall to the Doctor that she doesn't really trust him either. What we're left with is a character with an astonishing strength-of-mind and a fine capacity for losing her temper. In fact, she's rather like Tegan, but more analytical, more intelligent, and slightly less likeable (Anji's far more manipulative than Tegan was). Still, if a character reminds me of Tegan there's undoubtedly a lot going for her.")

Semiconductor by Rob Matthews ("So with all this at its core, Year of... is a very strong and powerful book. Actually, with all this clunking terminology I've probably obscured the beauty of Orman's graceful prose. I should point out that obviously if it wasn't superbly written, I wouldn't have analysed my reaction to it this much.")

The City of the Dead by Lloyd Rose

What's it all about? The Doctor, Fitz and Anji are attracted to New Orleans in the early 21st century. A dealer in morbid artefacts has been murdered and as he investigates the Doctor attracts the interest of a homicide detective. Fitz goes grave robbing, Anji gets a date and the Doctor is asked to pose naked with a crazy young artist. Just what is the mysterious void that is hunting the Doctor down? And what does it have to do with lost history... ?

Why is it so great? Have you read it? This is a macabre and thoroughly disturbing novel that grips from the first page and never lets go. Astonishingly, it's the debut novel of author Lloyd Rose and her writing is dazzling, the descriptive prose is unlike any we have seen before because it focuses obsessively on the location and makes it a character of its own. As such New Orleans becomes as frightening and alien as any planet the Doctor has visited and twice as vivid. It is also makes the Doctor the focal point of the novel and explores his tortured soul with depressing clarity; he shines from every page, desperate, lonely, and eager to recapture his past. There are some deliciously adult moments that are handled extremely well, especially a magic sex ritual that the Doctor breaks up and a spot of grave robbing. What's more every character is vital to the book and has something to hide, which leads to a twist-packed last third, which ties everything up rather neatly. It might be the most miserable chapter in the Doctor's life ever but it is also the most atmospheric. Stunningly original.

Triumphant lines...

"'Nothing can get into the TARDIS,' the Doctor whispered. The he realised that Nothing had."

"You know I don't think the Doctor quite gets evil, not really, no matter how much he's fought it. Basically it just doesn't make sense to him. He's and innocent. And that's scary, it gives him a blind spot."

"They walked on in silence, each of them aware of how romantic the setting would be with another partner. He's awfully sharp and funny, Anji thought, he sticks up for people, but... no. She'll never see me as anything but an irritating kid brother, Fitz thought. How did I get to be everybody's brother?" - the whole Anji/Fitz romance is skipped over wonderfully in one paragraph. Unlike some other book companions...

"'Go away' hissed the man with the fixed Scots burr, not sitting up, not moving at all, just fixing the Doctor with that terrible blue stare. 'Go away! And never come back!'" - in the Doctor's mind, at the gates of his memory sits the seventh Doctor threatening him away from the knowledge that could tear him apart.

"All those years, he thought unhappily, all those enemies defeated. All those dangers skirted, and now I'm going to be killed by a fool." - the Doctor ponders the threats to his life by the melodramatic Dupre.

"The Doctor slumped, head bowed. 'What was it?' he said. Rust could hardly hear him. 'What did I do?' 'Why do you think I'd tell you? I don't hate you that much.'" - the Doctor begs for his stolen knowledge.

People who say it better than me...

A review by Finn Clark ("To state the most obvious thing first, it's set in New Orleans. I mean it. It's really set in New Orleans, bedded down so firmly it's grown roots. You can taste the city, feel it crawling under your skin and wriggling down to take residence in your hippocampus. It's a potentially awesome setting (read some Anne Rice if you're in doubt) but you need talent to bring it to life as vividly as this. Garth Ennis doesn't even begin to pull it off in Preacher, f'rinstance. I can't imagine this novel set in any other city, or on any other planet. It's rich and textured, something to run through your fingers and inhale deeply. Did I mention that I liked the setting?")

The Living City by Robert Smith? ("This is a gorgeous book. The opening especially is fantastic. Ironically for the titular city, New Orleans lives and breathes through the pages of this book. It's almost a character in itself. However, it's the writing that really brings this to life. I must confess I don't usually notice the quality of writing unless it's very good or very bad. To say I noticed the writing here is a huge compliment. It's not just the descriptions, fantastic as they are; the dialogue is fantastic too, in a way that we so rarely get.")

The Adventuress of Henrietta Street by Lawrence Miles

What's it all about? Something raw and primal is eating its way through human society. Something only the eighteenth century could conjour up. The Doctor must take the part of Earth's champion in the fight against the beasts, the limits of human knowledge. To do this he plans to get married and thus bond himself to the Earth. He must also ally himself with the mysterious Sabbath whose allegiances are unknown. Why is the Doctor so ill? Close to death and betrayed by his fiance, will he be able to stop the beast tearing up the world... ?

Why is it so great? Because there is nothing else quite like in Doctor Who fiction. Written in the form of a historical document it allows Doctor Who to produce scenes of a disturbingly graphic nature, including hardcore sex and blood-drenched murder. The Doctor has come into his own now, a fantastic, elemental character, standing up for our little planet despite his weaknesses. He commands the reader's attention, pulling together political factions to fight the beasts and priming the women of Henrietta Street for the final, bloody battle. The book is packed with fascinating historical detail and side stories that grip as much as the main story. Lawrence Miles has written his best book here, clearly sweating blood to keep the reader engrossed and continuing themes he has used before but taking them to a new level of sophistication. The narrative style is risky but works a charm, hiding away twists sneakily and giving us glimpse of the fates of certain characters long before they occur. Ingeniously the Master shows up to remind us how much Doctor Who has changed since his day, he makes some very perceptive comments here. The most adult Doctor Who book is also one of the best; it is an attention grabbing high the series doesn't reach so often.

Triumphant lines...

"In the years to come there'd be blood and fire, war and renewal, the burning of coal and the burning of peace treaties, human workers redefined as machine parts while free thinkers made the most glorious of discoveries" - the future of the eighteenth century?

"He wanted to give himself roots in a universe where he no longer truly belonged" - the Doctor tries to find a home on Earth.

"They are our own ignorance given flesh. Should we reach the horizon we will find our own ignorance staring back at us in the shape of these bloody, murderous animals." - the disturbing explanation of what the apes truly represent.

"Humanities punishment on itself - whenever man or woman explored the darkness, the apes would be waiting there"

"A huge, all pervading shadow - who lurked in dark places, as if hiding in the belly of some monstrous leviathan which moved unseen below the surface of human affairs." - one of the first descriptions of Sabbath.

"He went on to speculate that he might just go back to sleep, and only wake up when the universe was once more in a fit state for somebody of his calibre." - the Master.

People who say it better than me...

A review by Mike Morris ("If you reach the same stage, then stick with it. It's a style that takes a long time to adapt to in a Doctor Who novel, but as I got used to it Adventuress became intriguing, then engaging, then enthralling. It's rooted in its era and incredibly well-researched, dropping names of all sorts of peripheral characters, going off on tangents and relating all kinds of anecdotes, fleshing out a (relatively slight) plot with concepts and speculations and discussions. This may not be to everyone's taste.")

A review by Richard Radcliffe ("It's a book that requires greater attention, the devil is in the detail as they say. It's a book that adopts a style of writing not to everyone's taste - but it's a book that demands to be read for the sheer quality of the writing. The effort that you put into the book is rewarded many times over. I hated Interference for its unnecessary messing with DW continuity. Here there's no such concerns, the DW slate has been reset anyway. It was the perfect time for Lawrence Miles to write a novel. That this novel turned out to be so brilliant surprised me, the old traditionalist. Embrace the new Who - it really is exceptional. 10/10")

Anachrophobia by Jonathon Morris

What's it all about? The Doctor, Fitz and Anji become embroiled in a war that has lasted centuries, a war where time is being used as a weapon. The war has reached a stalemate with neither the Plutocrats nor the Defaulters making any moves for a hundred years. Station Forty is on the verge of a great breakthrough, they can send soldiers back in time, hoping to affect the past and change the details of the war. But time travel is a dangerous, primitive, unpredictable business and can have some very nasty side effects...

Why is it so great? It has the honour of being a horror book that actually scared me, and that is rare for a Doctor Who book or a mainstream horror novel. The feeling of dread Jonathon Morris provokes is excellent and his imagery is truly frightening, taking an item as normal as a clock and using it in such a disturbing fashion. This is a dark, depressing novel (I promise you there were some lighter books but they just don't impress me as much), which highlights its excellent regulars because of it. Fitz and Anji have rarely been this heroic, going through physical and emotional hell and the Doctor is defiantly brave in the face of their claustrophobic nightmare. The unknown has never been such a frightening concept, especially when the action moves to Station One and everybody has become clock people. The climax is the last of several really clever ideas and the central dilemma, "Would you go back and change anything in your past if you could?" is handled skilfully well. Fantastic twist ending too.

Triumphant lines...

"The clang sounded again, this time coming from underneath. The capsule swung heavily to one side, sending Fitz and the Doctor sprawling to the walls. It was like being inside a tolling bell. "There's something out there!" said the Doctor "It's trying to get in!" The clang repeated, transforming into a murderous hammering, coming from every direction, above and below." - trapped in the void of endless time travel, the Doctor and Fitz are attacked by creatures of the vortex.

"She lay her wrist over the sink. Holding it there she rested the blade against the vein. And then she swiped, hard, digging into the flesh. Forcing the knife in, twisting it in deeper, dragging it across her arm. She looked down. The skin at her wrist had cleaved apart. The skin parted to reveal a mass of whirring wheels, pinions, governors, whirls and springs. An intricate system of cogs and gears in perpetual motion" - Lane attempts to commit suicide but has already began her transformation into a clock person.

"She burst into anger and yelled at him 'You don't know what it feels like to care, to really care... you heartless bastard.' The Doctor was shaken. 'I still have one heart left you know.'" - another spectacular showdown between the Doctor and Anji.

Ash gave a deep, choking cough and his clock face fractured outwards. He turned away from the window, and with a gulping retch, he vomited foam and thick, dark blood over the tiled floor. Anji couldn't take any more and turned away. 'They don't realise what's happening to them. It's horrible.'"

"The Doctor ruffled his hair. 'So let me get this straight. You've lost sight of... you've forgotten why you're making a profit, the empire has vanished and you're stuck on your own. But nevertheless, you've continued with the war, haven't you? Continued accumulating wealth. Continued sending men to their graves. It's all been for nothing, hasn't it? Totally and absolutely pointless!'" - the Doctor sums up the absurdity of the situation.

"My associates and I now control the continuum. All other dwellers have now been successfully expelled." - Sabbath boasts at the success of his plan, after the Doctor has destroyed the clock creatures for his business associates.

People who say it better than me...

A review by Terrance Keenan ("Just buy it, read it and enjoy. It's that brilliant.")

A review by Richard Radcliffe ("The writing is fluent. The imagery conjured up (clocks instead of faces, time standing still and speeding up) is frightening. The story is more straight-forward than the multi-layered Festival of Death - it's linear, in spite of the subject matter. There are some surprises though, the real enemy shifting, keeping the reader on their toes. The pacing is excellent, and it really builds up to a satisfying conclusion. Jonathan Morris has emerged as one of the brighter lights of new Who writing talent, and rightly so judging by this book.")

The Crooked World by Steve Lyons

What's it all about? The people of the Crooked World lead an idyllic existence. But somebody is about to shatter all their lives. Somebody is about to change everything. Streaky Bacon will no longer chase the thingamajig. Angel Falls will no longer by menaced by her guardian in a scary mask. And Jasper the cat will no longer be tortured by that damned mouse. The Doctor's TARDIS is about to arrive. And when it does... that's all folks!

Why is it so great? This is simply a fantastic idea, written to perfection. Doctor Who visiting cartoon land was enough to get fans in a tizzy but this book's triumphant reviews and poll-topping position in the charts confirm that a zany, wonderful idea like this can still work in the series. What starts off as a witty commentary on the absurdities of cartoons evolves into a beautiful coming-of-age story for the characters of the Crooked World with striking adult concepts invading their simple lives and changing them forever. Whilst the book is crammed full of moments to make you laugh it is the touching scenes that stand out the most, scenes such as Streaky trying to commit suicide, Jasper being dragged back to his old life and Boss Dogg's reaction to Scrapper's death. The cover is divine and sets the scene perfectly and as ever the Doctor, Fitz and Anji light up the book whenever they appear. Anji gets some great moments as she tags along with the Spook Wagon gang and tears down all the conventions between reality and cartoons. The conclusion is filled with optimism as the Doctor defends Jasper and watches with joy as the cat and mouse are reunited. It sounds awful doesn't it... but it really works. Doctor Who is rarely this creative or insightful. Buy it.

Triumphant lines...

"The wolf man stuck out a flat arm and, with a pop, it re-inflated, simple as that. It repeated the process with its other limbs, then its and finally its torso. Then its features lit up with delight, and, with a soft ping, a glowing, yellow light bulb materialised above its head." - after falling down a sheer cliff face, the wolf man pops back into shape, much to Anji's astonishment.

"It's a man with a luminous green sheet over his head," said Anji. But Mike, Thelma and Harmony had already turned and... well not fled exactly. Not yet. Their feet were peddling the air with insane speed, but they did not move forwards. "It's got eyeholes," she said "and look, you can see one of his shoes." - Anji exposes the Green Ghost.

"The resulting explosion blew the gun from Streaky's mouth and left him frazzled. The despair and guilt, however, remained, and pressed down upon him with redoubled weight. And he buried his head in his front trotters and cried." - Streaky tries to commit suicide, fearing he has killed the Doctor, a concept he cannot come to terms with.

"'These new ideas, these new ways of thinking that are changing this world - where do you imagine they came from?' The realisation came across Anji like prickling dread. 'They came from us, didn't they?!'"

"I've been asked all kinds of dang fool questions about why everyone can't just go ahead and do exactly what they like - but them's the laws and that's the way it has to be. So, my advice to you people is this: if you start to feel these unnatural urges then pull yourselves together. Go and have a nice lie down or something." - Boss Dog attempts to stop the spread of free will.

"She imagined Fitz's reaction when he undressed his latest object of his lust to find she was built like a Barbie." - for once Anji has the upper hand during one of Fitz's conquests.

"'Free will is dangerous.' 'Maybe, but don't you find it exciting?'"

People who say it better than me...

The Six Degrees of Streaky Bacon by Andrew McCaffrey ("Certainly I found much here that was unbelievably entertaining and unexpectedly touching. Rarely has death and pain been touched on so expertly in the Doctor Who books and the fact that the people dying and suffering are evolving cartoon characters just goes to demonstrate how powerful the writing is. Definitely an EDA not to be missed.")

A near perfect EDA. Who'd have thought? By Robert Smith? ("For a novel set in a cartoon universe of mindless violence, contrived plots and comic pratfalls, The Crooked World is surprisingly moving. There are some hilarious jokes scattered throughout and the worldbuilding is worth the price of admission alone. However, the seriousness works perfectly to offset the wacky setting, as characters undergo actual emotional growth, the regulars begin to understand and manipulate the world and the story rockets towards a conclusion that's both surprising and touching. I can't think of an EDA I've enjoyed more.")

Camera Obscura by Lloyd Rose

What's it all about? A new danger menaces reality and the Doctor and Sabbath are forced to team up again in Victorian London. A time machine is causing all sorts of terrible problems, splitting people into duplicates and threatening to unravel all of Time itself. The Doctor was told his second heart was taken from him for his own good, stolen by Sabbath, but just where did the alien organ end up? Are the rivals linked in more ways than they realised... ?

Why is it so great? Amazingly Lloyd Rose manages to top her debut novel with this gripping piece of escapism. It takes all of the current "arc" elements (unlicensed time travel, Sabbath, the Doctor's missing heart) and uses them all to their full dramatic potential. The Doctor and Sabbath's relationship reaches its absolute peak, they bicker, the argue, they investigate... they descend into Hell together... it is a learning curve for both characters and they both emerge from the book with a deeper understanding of each other. The eighth Doctor is given one of his best interpretations in print, Rose once again allowing him to own the novel and devising truly sadistic ways of torturing him. The book skips by in a flash, the atmospheric prose and stunning dialogue make this a pleasure to read but it is the unforgettable character work that shines the most. Chiltern, Scale, Octan, the Angel-Maker... these are fantastic creations. A faultless novel.

Triumphant lines...

"The Doctor wondered exactly how much it weighed. At least thirty pounds. He imagined that when it crashed down onto his chest, it would, in addition to crushing his remaining heart, drive the edges of his smashed ribs right out through his back and into the floor. In this, as with so many other predictions in his long life, he was absolutely correct."

"The Doctor's eyes snapped open. Fitz and Anji jumped. The Doctor said, "You son of a bitch!" - the Doctor realises Sabbath is using his second heart.

The Doctor's eyes flashed. "You fool. Do you think that time is nothing but a little flame to imprison in your lantern? Do you think I am?" - the Doctor confronts the man who has borrowed his heart.

"You can't kill me at all. As long as my heart is beating in your chest, I can't die. You've made me immortal. And without even writing a poem."

"Dear Fitz and Anji - I have been kidnapped by Scale. It would be a good idea to rescue me. Yours, the Doctor. P.S. Tell Sabbath to help you" - note left by the Doctor.

"And that name! "Sabbath" Like a comic book villain. He probably thought that sounded cool too. I'll bet his real name's Melvin or something." - Anji.

"Injustice is the rule but I want justice. Suffering is the rule, but I want to end it. Despair accords with reality, but I insist on hope. I don't accept it because it's unacceptable. I say no." - the Doctor argues his case for a free universe.

"'Really? You're going to force me to come?' The Doctor looked at him with an expression Fitz had never seen before. 'Do I have to remind you how easily I could break any bone in your body?'"

The Doctor looked down at a black, quivering piece of meat. 'Is that the one you loved her with?' 'That?' Sabbath lifted the Angel-Maker a final time, resting her head against his chest. 'That is not a human heart.'"

People who say it better than me...

A review by Rob Matthews ("Without belittling her own accomplishment, I'd say Rose's writing style here is comparable to Kate Orman, Paul Cornell and Lance Parkin at their best. She has Orman's gift for beautiful prose, and for gently slipping in bizarre or horrific bits without yelling 'boo!'; she's attuned to the Jungian-archetype nonsense so beloved of Paul Cornell (though it's several shades darker here), and she has the same no-nonsense approach to narrative as Parkin, as well as his ability to describe a time and place without going overboard.")

Exquisite. Absolutely exquisite. by Robert Smith? ("Camera Obscura is an utterly sublime book that puts the rest of the Doctor Who authors to shame. It's got it all: fabulous regulars, great characterisation, creepy settings and monsters, laugh out loud jokes and is fantastically written. A book that should not just be read, it should be savoured.")

Time Zero by Justin Richards

What's it all about? The Doctor, Fitz and Anji have finally gone their separate ways with Fitz heading to Siberia, Anji back at work in the city and the Doctor finally alone. But they aren't separated for long... creatures from another dimension are roaming the Siberian landscape, the military terrorise the Naryshkin Institute and deep within the snow is the TARDIS, trapped within the ice. Only the Doctor can see these events are all connected and he is soon involved in a plot that reaches back to the creation of the universe... and beyond. To Time Zero...

Why is it so great? This is simply a storming story, really well told. It is the climax of a fantastic year of Doctor Who books and is as dramatic and satisfying as anything 2002 produced. It is a real action-oriented plot, which translates to the page extremely well with multiple plot threads coiling around each other and accelerating the pace throughout. It is at this point that you realise how well this set of regulars have gelled and their separation is genuinely upsetting. Everyone gets loads to do, Anji evading the military, Fitz chased by dinosaurs and the Doctor investigating the mysterious journal. Their reconciliation is as touching as you would imagine. The last eighty pages are my favourite, the book cleverly incorporating some difficult SF elements to drive the narrative to its powerful conclusion. People have expressed annoyance at the confusing nature of its time travel mechanics but Richards explains everything with clarity, dropping ideas into the story well before they are needed in the last third. The twist ending is totally unexpected and drives the book series on for another mini arc. A book with real teeth.

Triumphant lines...

"She wanted to tell him that he was a good friend, and that it might sound trite but it was the best compliment she could think of and that she trusted him and would miss him and had enjoyed the time they had spent together despite all the death and the cold and the dark and the longing. And so much more." - Anji saying goodbye to Fitz.

"She cried because she had been crying so long that she no longer knew how to stop. And she cried for shame - for knowing that every time she had said Dave she meant Fitz." - Anji discovers Fitz has died in Siberia.

"The plane, Anji realised, as she stared out of the front windows, that was now flying at low altitude towards a range of mountains. Anji rarely swore without a good reason, and hardly ever in public. But as she slumped into the empty pilot's seat and stared at the bank of incomprehensible controls in front of her, she decided she had a very good reason. And the was nobody on the plane to hear her."

"That's the trouble with your meddling, Doctor. For all your good intentions you simply muddy the water. Even problem you solve, every person you save adds to the complexity and the confusion and chaos that is the multiverse. What it comes down to is this: You have no idea what you're doing." - Sabbath.

"I've faced people who became clocks. I've fought against beasts from other dimensions, and evil you can't imagine. I've bargained with fire demons and forgotten more than any of you will ever know. But I don't think I've ever had to face anything like this... "

"That you're dependable and brave and the best friend a man could have." - George Williamson to Fitz.

People who say it better than me...

A review by Mike Morris ("And this book is damn good. It's consistently enjoyable, and has some genuinely touching scenes - the final scene between George and Fitz is tears-in-the-eyes stuff. There's a really great link to The Burning also. Provided you don't expect ongoing plotlines to be wrapped up, and treat it as another instalment on the ongoing saga, Time Zero is a relentlessly brilliant slice of escapism and congratulations should go to all concerned.")

Time's Hero by Robert Smith? ("The novel itself is another extremely solid offering from Justin. It astonishes me that he's still at the top of his game after all these years and time spent editing, but there's some great stuff here. It's much cleverer than it first appears as well and some selective rereading showed me just how well-structured this is.")

Timeless by Stephen Cole

What's it all about? The Timeless organisation can fix your wildest dreams, get away with murder and bring a whole new meaning to the idea of a victimless crime. The Doctor, Fitz, Anji and Trix are rapidly embroiled in an investigation of the mysterious organisation. Fitz and Trix married? Anji has become a mum? The Doctor confronted by surviving Time Lords? Has the world gone mad...?

Why is it so great? Timeless just edged out The Deadstone Memorial for a place on this list. It is a great, sprawling narrative that flies off at totally different tangents. Stephen Cole is working with some big ideas but he incorporates them into his narrative strikingly, such as Sabbath sneaking a substance into the beginning of the universe and Chloe and Jamais bringing people from less fortunate dimensions to ours and allowing them to live the life they should have had. It is the characters who impress the most here, from the expertly handled regulars (the eighth Doctor brilliantly kicks somebody in, Anji gets a touching almost-romance) to the layered and fascinating guests characters (Stacey's twist identity is excellent, Basalt is a truly creepy villain) and even Sabbath shines here, getting the upper hand for a change and having it snatched away from him by his allies at the last minute. Anji gets the send off she deserves in a wonderfully written last chapter.

Triumphant lines...

"SABBATH: Ha ha! Working as I am for unspecified powers, the nature of my misguided plans remains frustratingly obscure! Ha ha!" - Fitz and Trix take the piss out of Sabbath.

"Then he pulled off his top hat and spread both arms wide to the clear blue sky. 'Hello reality!' he yelled. 'You are cleared to land!'" - the Doctor overjoyed as he sorts out the multiverse.

"Basalt smacked the woman's head into the window and cracked both open."

"She realised with some surprise that tonight she had been just sitting here with a bloke, relaxing and chatting and joking around... And it had felt good. Too good maybe. Too normal. She wasn't great at normal these days." - Anji adjusts to life back on Earth.

"'Her people are your people. Her ruined world is the place you come from, isn't it?' 'Be quiet,' the Doctor told her sharply. 'Why are you so scared to face up to it, Doctor?' said Anji.

"And with a whimper, the universe was born, and something else along with it."

"The future could take her as it found her. And despite all she had been through, and all the uncertainties that remained, Anji found herself smiling."

People who say it better than me...

Time and Spaced by Rob Matthews ("Timeless works extremely well as a novel, but it's easy to imagine how easily it could be played as a television episode too, such is the strength of the dialogue. I mean, I too read Who books as books and not as imagined TV episodes, but it's very easy to envision how this one would play on screen, probably with a far more intimate and edgy, handheld style of direction than the TV series ever attempted (though may well be more likely to attempt when it returns to the screen courtesy of the RTD massive).")

A review by Mike Morris ("Of course, that's probably not how it happened at all, because this book makes surprisingly good use of the altering universe idea. But the fact remains that this book is just great, absolutely great, for two hundred pages or so, and then goes downhill faster than a demented bobsleigh. Finally, the changing history setting makes sense, the notion of Timeless is fabulous, and Daniel Basalt is the sort of character that gives everyone the shivers and never seems anything but real. There's a hell of a trick to creating a real psychopath, and Cole succeeds brilliantly. Chloe, Jamais and Erasmus are terrific. Sabbath's appearances are genuinely surprising and unsettling. It's all good - well not all, but mostly.")

Sometime Never... by Justin Richards

What's it all about? In the swirling maelstrom of the Vortex, the Council of Eight map out every moment in history and take drastic measures to ensure it follows their predictions. But there is one elemental force that defies their predictions, that fails to adhere to the laws of time and space... A rogue element known as the Doctor...

Why is it so great? A controversial choice but I still love it, mad SF ideas and all. It is a culmination of three years worth of Doctor Who novels and it does not disappoint. This is practically an entirely plot driven book... but what a plot! It is wonderfully layered and constructed to give the reader a giddy sense of satisfaction at the climax as all the loose ends are tied up neatly. The Council of Eight are rather less frightening than we all imagined but rather more interesting too, with Octan's grand scheme one of the most devious and terrifying in Doctor Who history. I love how this encompasses so much, the companion deaths from the PDAs; the diamonds from Timeless, Sabbath, the creatures fleeing the Vortex... finally the arc is tied up and given satisfactory answers. Plus the wealth of clever ideas in play make this an essential read, Justin Richards is never happier than when taking a scientific concept and adapting it to entertain and he does that beautifully in Sometime Never..., over and over again. Some lovely surprises and top dialogue too, this is a treat for anyone who loves strong storytelling and revels in science and are happy to see the arc brought to a close.

Triumphant lines...

"Yet he infects everything and everyone he touches." - the Council on the Doctor.

"If only there was time to sit and talk and make friends and be happy." - The Doctor, constantly on the run.

"Just as the creature seemed not to notice the Doctor, so the people in the street did not, or could not, perceive the creature. People bumped into it, stepped around it - even mumbled apologies without apparently seeing it. A stone thrown into the time stream - so that the water flowed round and over it, disturbed, redirected but oblivious."

"But as the creature and its master knew, it was the almost-nothings that make history."

"Glass from the cover exploded ahead of it, a waterfall of shards crashing to the floor as the skeleton rose to its icy feet and lurched forwards, towards the crowd."

"Family reunion. Don't ask. I shudder to think what he got up to - and into - when I left him alone for a century."

"Only one event can give you life after death. Total destruction on a massive scale" the Doctor told them. "The death of history."

The Doctor was already with Miranda, cradling her emaciated body in her arms, watching the tears roll across her face. Her hair was pure white, and for a moment as the skin on her face tightened in death, she looked like a young girl asleep in the snow."

"So predict this!" Sabbath shouted as the barrel of the gun touched his own temple. A rush of wind, the first hints of an eternal scream of rage and anger and pain and triumph. And then Sabbath was gone."

"When he spoke, the Doctor's voice was controlled, quiet. But it had a hard, sharp edge. "You couldn't predict the toss of a double headed coin." "The possibility of multiple universe, an infinity of choices, leaped into existence."

"A police telephone box, in the corner of a junkyard at the end of a dark lane at the start of a long journey... "

People who say it better than me...

A review by Finn Clark ("However here Justin Richards ties together books going back almost to the start of his time as editor and builds them into an epic. Forgotten story elements come together and the result is something special. It even ties in the recent PDAs! That impressed me. Since 1996 the BBC Books have been compared unfavourably with Virgin, but the scale of this novel's original mythology goes beyond anything Virgin ever gave us. It takes a while to get going, but eventually it's great. Even Sabbath becomes compelling again, after becoming a parody of himself by being a predictable stock villain in inconsequential books. The key difference is that Sometime Never... actually feels as if it's going somewhere, both with the character and with the 8DA story.")

A review by Donald McCarthy ("There is no huge showdown, unfortunately, just a show down between the Doctor and Octan. During the scenes on the Time Station I was beginning to worry as it seemed that nothing would be resolved satisfactorily. Justin soon proved me wrong. Without giving anything away I will say that this book had an excellent ending that will leave you lost for words.")

The Tomorrow Windows by Jonathan Morris

What's it all about? Look through a Tomorrow Window and you'll see into the future. According the press pack the Tomorrow Windows will bring about an end to war and suffering. Which is why someone decides to blow them up. Investigating this act of wanton vandalism, the Doctor, Fitz and Trix visit an Astral flower, the show world of Utopia and Gadrahadradon - the most haunted planet in the Galaxy. They face the sinister Ceccecs, the gratuitously violent Vorshagg, the miniscule Micron and the enigmatic Poozle. And they encounter the doomsday monks of Shardybarn, the warmongerers of Valuensis, the politicians of Minuea and the killer cars of Estebol. They also spend about half an hour in Lewisham.

Why is it so great? Just read that blurb! This wildly creative novel is the biggest breath of fresh air in the EDA range for years. It doesn't take itself at all seriously, revelling in its silliness and yet still retaining a dark side that will sneak up on unsuspecting readers. The regulars are on fine form, especially the Doctor, who shoots from one planet to another trying to sort out all the meddling going on. The worlds themselves are imaginative and vivid and gloriously offbeat. The pace is furious and the dialogue is frequently laugh out loud hilarious, particularly concerning anyone at the alien auction. Top marks for the Ceccecs, a marvellously creepy idea. I adored this book the first time I read it. And the second. And the third. One of the best.

Triumphant lines...

"Then it solidified into one, final figure. A wiry man with a gaunt, hawk-like face, piercing, pale grey blue eyes and thin, prominent nose. His lips were set into an almost cruel, almost arrogant smile. He had an air of determination, as though withholding a righteous fury." - the ninth Doctor first appears in Doctor Who as the Doctor looks into a Tomorrow Window and sees his future.

"Ken's a bomb," the Doctor yelled at the top of his voice. "The Mayor of London is about to explode!" - pure genius.

"Charlton Mackerel was in his early teens when he realised there was something fundamentally wrong with the universe. It was, he felt, incompetent. Not that gravity, magnetism and so on did a bad job. Rather, the problem lay with people. People were, he realised, rubbish."

"He'd been living for the moment for so long he had forgotten to live beyond it." - Fitz ponders the future.

"And Rolf Harris!" exclaimed the Doctor. "No other planet in the known galaxy has produced a Rolf Harris!" - the Doctor tries to defend the achievements of Earth. Ahem.

"Pods burst open to reveal glorious, glistening flowers, their petals unfolding in delight. And tendrils - the whole thing is a writhing mass of tendrils. Slithering out of the belly of the flower and drifting into space like jellyfish tentacles, near transparent and phosphorescent. It's gorgeous. The Astral Flower opens to its fullest extent and becomes a chaos of beauty."

"Its amazing what you find at the bottom of your deep freeze" observed the Doctor. "Old lollies, fish fingers and thousand-year-old film stars."

"Well Mr Mind Reader listen to this you disgusting, effluent creep. I would rather die than kiss you. I can think of nothing more revolting than you, your face and your body. You sick - nasty pervert, I think I'll kick you again." - Trix sends some pleasant thoughts Martin's way.

"Mankind can't learn if it can flick to the back of the book and look up the answers."

People who say it better than me...

A review by Rob Matthews ("It may be the most page-turningly enjoyable, gleefully camp and chuckles-packed EDA since the aforementioned Mad Dogs & Englishmen, it may be more honest-to-goodness fun than anything we've seen in this line for what seems a very long time, but it nevertheless wants to say something in deadly earnest about what a bunch of idiots we humans really are - our lack of foresight, our chronic inability to actually face the Tomorrow that we're creating today.")

A review by Andrew McCaffrey ("What I really ended up liking about the book was how rich it was. There are lots of mad ideas all over the place that you can't quite imagine the author getting away with in an overly serious tome. But they're very welcome here.")

The Sleep of Reason by Martin Day

What's it all about? In the past an asylum is set on fire in the midst of terrifying circumstances. Now Laska dreams of the asylum and is shocked to find herself admitted to the Retreat, the hospital from her nightmares. She knows something is wrong with the institute, something that revels in madness and growing ever stronger. The mysterious Dr Smith is aware of the approaching danger to and starts to take an interest in Laska. And all the while the long dead hound draws near...

Why is it so great? Don't be fooled by its low-key nature, this is without a doubt one of the very best Doctor Who books out there. It lavishes much time upon its central character, Laska, and refuses to see the book through the Doctor, Fits or Trix's eyes even once and as such resembles a mainstream novel. Martin Day has a firm grasp of the English language and this is the book we all knew he could produce with some truly astonishing passages of emotional maturity and horror. The passages from the diary are excellent and allow the author to makes some striking parallels between the modern day and the 1900's, both culturally and in terms of the two stories taking place. The opening and closing chapters are fantastic and reveal some astounding character growth and the growing menace of the wolf and madness are realised with gripping realism. It is also another chance to see how far the Doctor has come since his one hundred year exile; having overcome the Council of Eight and their machinations he now has time to concentrate on people and making their lives more comfortable. It is an essential chapter in his life and one that once again uses the amnesia with great imagination.

Triumphant lines...

"Happy birthday" Caroline said, and slashed at her arm with the blade.

"Fitz and Trix... " began Liz. "Hideous names" commented Dr Oldfield. - glad somebody finally pointed it out.

"God is love but sometimes love is punishment - cling to that, cling to God, even if all hope is gone - in him alone is our hope."

"Of course I believe in truth!" Smith exclaimed hotly. "Good and evil, justice and prejudice, freedom and slavery - you cannot help but yearn for objectivity in such areas. But here, in this world we know, we have only subjectivity. We each of us muddle through as best we can."

"For too long now I've been concentrating on the "bigger picture", as you might say. Sometimes the details are just as important." - the Doctor acknowledges his mission to help people.

"He picked up a large piece of cracked flagstone from the floor, held it over her face. He pinned her body to the floor with a dirty boot stamped between her breasts. As he described events to me, his voice deepened, and his face almost seemed to become shallow before my eyes, like a skull. 'I am death!' he bellowed. And he dropped the stone." - one of the most frightening passages I have read.

"He had poured further oil over his head - he glistened in the torchlight like some newborn phantasm of evil - and was clearly about to turn his attention to the gaslights that flickered at the far end of the room."

"I could hold her head in the flames. That would be good."

"Perhaps this was Fitz's way of trying to cheer her up, or at least take her mind of things. Laska smiles. He was quite sweet really. For a twit."

"'Oh yes,' said Smith. 'Plenty of bad memories.' He stared at his hands as if they had blood on them."

"Almost a year ago Laska arrived at the Retreat. Now, at last, Caroline was leaving."

People who say it better than me...

A review by Finn Clark ("It starts slowly but powerfully. We get a worrying prologue in which a mysterious patient announces his retirement, then a chapter about a disturbed young girl that's downright hard to keep reading. This is a book set in a mental institution, both in the present day and 1903, and for many chapters its focus is firmly on the people who live there, both staff and patients. A significant effect of this is to nail our attention to the characters and their problems. Without aliens, spaceships or any other such nonsense, we can settle into an actual novel.")

A review by Richard Radcliffe ("Challenging and highly intriguing, in equal measures, The Sleep of Reason has to be classified as one of the boldest novels in the range. It also brings Martin Day to the forefront of Who authors - a brilliant novel that I will definitely read again sometime. 9/10.")

10 things that I've always meant to write a review specifically as an excuse to say... by Mike Heinrich

1. David A. McIntee loves language only as a vehicle to tell a story, not out of any intrinsic love of language itself, for its own right. This is why some people find his prose to be painfully leaden, while others don't see what the big whoop about it is. The degree to which you are bothered by Mr. McIntee's writing almost entirely depends on the degree to which you love language as a thing in and of itself; The nuance, the use of phrasing, the crafting of written communication into an artform beyond just the story that it's telling. These are things that a McIntee novel doesn't particularly care about. The words exist to communicate the story itself, which is what his works are actually concerned with - which is of course perfectly valid, I suppose. This all explains why some found Bullet Time to be terribly exciting, while others found that it was painfully dull. It just depends on which you primarily care about - the story, or the medium.
2. Mike Morris is inevitably right and should be obeyed in all things. Except possibly architecture; a field about which I know relatively little and so I really couldn't say whether I agree with him or not.
3. I don't, honestly, understand what people are complaining about in reviews of Grimm Reality. But then, I haven't read it yet, and so I probably wouldn't, would I?
4. I can't be the only one who occasionally pictures Steve Cole dressing up as 'Tara Samms' and heading out for a nice night on the town, can I?
5. There is, I'm reasonably sure, an article to be had in the concept that the various Doctors represent the different archetypes of boyfriends that those of us who date boys are likely to go through. First you date the one who's too old for you but is vaguely paternal, then the one who clowns around a lot, than the one that we think is all 'classy' and cares more about his clothes than you, then the one that everyone else tells you is clearly insane but you love him anyway until he gets too moody to deal with, then the 'nice' one that you can't bring yourself to admit is a tad dull, then the one who's just mean, then the vaguely sinister one with the engaging mind, then the hot one who doesn't stick around long enough, etc, etc. There's a solid article in that. I just can't be bothered to write it.
6. I absolutely refuse to admit that Trevor Baxendale's writing has improved a great deal since The Janus Connection, despite the fact that it clearly has.
7. It's mind numbingly insane that the new series isn't being shown in the US. Mass Geek Rioting, that's what they're heading for, mark my words.
8. Deep down, we all secretly (or openly) enjoy watching Lawrence Miles fly off the deep end about something. I suspect more than one submission on the slush pile was deliberately plotted just to set him off about one thing or another in the hopes that it will get commissioned and we'll all have the guilty pleasure of hearing him say 'Faction Paradox did WHAT to set UK policy on immigration!? I'm off to RADW to post a stern response, I am!'
9. Less deep down, I think we'd all much rather watch that than listen to Gary Russell explain why continuity is important.
10. With all due respect to the deceased - and yes it's a tragedy that he died far too young - I think we would all feel a great deal better about things if, at some point in the last year of his life, JNT had sent us each a nice little card that read 'I'm terribly terribly sorry about Season 20. And a great deal of 1984-89, for that matter. Sorry about that.'

The best episodes for the new series of Doctor Who by Jamie Beckwith 22/6/05

Overall I think the series has been brilliant with hits far outranking the duds. Five classics, a solid intro, an enjoyable romp at the end slightly let down by the second half, one competent episode, three poor but rewatchables and only one complete clanger. Here's to series two.

1. Father's Day
2. Dalek
3. The Doctor Dances
4. The Empty Child
5. The End of the World
6. Rose
7. Bad Wolf
8. The Parting of the Ways
9. The Unquiet Dead
10. Aliens of London
11. The Long Game
12. World War Three
13. Boom Town

The best special effects (from the original TV series!) by Joe Ford 24/6/05

For some, Doctor Who special effects are a contradiction in terms. There will be people drawing an obvious parallel between the new and old series' as those on display in 2005 are naturally a huge leap ahead of anything offered in the past fourty years. As we Doctor Who fans know this is being a mite unfair as the budget differences between the two are enormous and for the money they had and the time in which to achieve them the special effects of the show in its hey-day are much better than we ever could have hoped. Who can forget Doctor Who championing CSO, the steadycam and scene-sync when they were new inventions to be experimented with? The results are not always spectacular but you cannot say that they did not try. That was the joy with a series like Doctor Who, even if the effect was poor you can see exactly what they were trying to do, pushing the envelope, making the monsters bigger, the explosions more spectacular, the settings gloriously alien and awe-inspiring. Want dinosaurs popping up in modern day London? Or Edwardian sailing ships in space? The Earth plunging into the sun? Doctor Who has had a stab at all of these and more.

So rather than prove how desperately shallow I am and attempt to prove to newcomers to the show that occasionally, just occasionally Doctor Who managed to scrape together enough coppers to produce an effect worthy of Voyager (whose own special effects in the early years are starting to look a bit dated...) I am here to praise those moments of inspirational genius, like my good mate Mike Morris points out with the wheelie bin scene in Rose, it might not be totally convincing but it sure gives you the willies. So in no particular order I have selected a few gems from every era of Doctor Who, moments where the series was simply the most wonderful programme ever and capable of just about anything...

• Dalek City (The Daleks)

  One of the best attempts at portraying the horror of the unknown in Doctor Who comes in the second story as Ian and Barbara get their first glimpse of intelligent alien life. At the edge of a deserted and barren jungle they stumble across a cliff face which overlooks a giant technological city. The shots of the four travellers staring over the abyss at the city are magnificent, the scale is pitched perfectly and the close up shots are just as good, the design suggesting that a functional and powerful race built the thing. The oppressive, music and close glide over the mist swathed city tells you everything you need to know. You do NOT want to go in there...

• Giant sets (Planet of the Giants)

  I really don't see how Doctor Who could have pulled this off in any other era than the black white years. It is a hoary old cliche for sure but the sheer verve of trying to pull off a Honey I Shrunk the kids scenario on a Doctor Who budget is worthy of considerable praise and the fact that most of the effects actually convince is even more of feat. The story sticks to simple domestic areas that we all know and recognise and reminds you how dangerous it can be to be one inch tall in these usually "safe" environments. I love the scenes in the sink, just including a huge plug and chain the designer convinces that the Doctor and Susan are in desperate danger of being sloshed to death! The giant ant, matchbox and worm caught in mud are also very good and the giant blow-up phone are imaginative attempts at suggesting scale when the budget cannot stretch to making one.

• Cybermen come alive (Tomb of the Cybermen)

  I chose this over the Dalek battle in Evil of the Daleks because it inspires a greater sense of awe in me. You have to give the set designers their due in this story; with the Cybermen refrigeration units you have a set on a scale that really blows the mind. The moody lighting and delicate layer of frost add much to the scenes menace and the music is dramatic and exciting. You will rarely be as scared in Doctor Who as you are when the Cybermen, superbly designed with their horrific blank faces, slowly creak to life and delicately peel their way out of their cryogenic cases. Top marks to everybody who is concerned, I may not be this story's greatest fan but this is the moment the story leads to and they pull it off with real style.

• Trapped in the void (The Mind Robber)

  It should suck, really it should but this tacked-on first episode of The Mind Robber threatens to show up the rest of the story. With just a white backdrop, three bloody good actors and a real sense of horror, the director manages to convince you totally that they are trapped in a deadly, unknown space. The robots that glide in and out of the scenes are terrifyingly good; whose ridiculously dated design works because it is such alien space that ANYTHING could emerge from it and their creaking, mechanical movements are as scary as anything in the series.

• World's End (Inferno)

  This is much more of an idea effect than one that is pulled off on screen, but even so it could be my all-time favourite on this list. In what must be the greatest cliffhanger in the series the Doctor escapes a parallel world and leaves all his friends behind to die in a dramatic meltdown. Just as he vanishes from existence the Brigade-Leader, Liz, Greg and Petra turn and face a mountain of molten lava rolling down to consume them. The performances and script pull this off so well, it is such a terrific dramatic idea and almost unbearably tense to watch. The final shot of the lava rushing ever closer could be the most emotional, most horrifying moment in the series.

• Drashigs attack (Carnival of Monsters)

  Easily the best of all the BIG monsters Doctor Who tried to pull off (the Drashigs would kick ass against the Skarasen, the T-Rex and Kroll!), these mean buggers will stop at nothing until they have swallowed you up! With their ghastly roar, sharp teeth and dramatic entrances (they shoot out of the ground and punch through hull plating as though they are expecting a cliffhanger!) they are truly an awesome sight. It doesn't hurt that Vorg tells a sweet little tale about them eating a spaceship and their contribution to the climax of the story, enlarging from the Miniscope and gobbling up a power-mad politician, will enough to have you punching the air with delight. One of Robert Holmes' loveliest creations.

• Detonate the Human Race (City of Death)

  This is a lovely piece of modelwork from an era where production values are unfairly dismissed. The Jaggaroth spaceship is a gorgeous piece of design, like a giant spider, which rises and folds its legs away. It is photographed with a nice sense of scale and colour and the explosion itself is one of the best-realised AND most important events in Doctor Who history. Doctor Who kick-starts the human race in a tragic accident, which is shown at the start of the story to get things off to an explosive start and once again at the climax where it is revealed just how imperative that moment was. Funny how a story can twist your view of a special effect, I thought it was okay at the start but once its significance was stressed I thought it was fucking fantastic.

• Trapped in the void part two (Warriors' Gate)

  It is hard to choose a favourite special effects sequence in this story, because much of it looks fantastic and is bolstered by the unreal, fairytale atmosphere of the gateway. I love it when Biroc bursts into the TARDIS in slow motion, causing explosions galore and leaking time winds in his wake. I love the scenes with the colour Doctor exploring the black and white gardens. I love the climatic model work featuring the TARDIS, the Privateer and the Gateway. There is so much more. Here is an imaginative Doctor Who story that has an equally imaginative production. The direction and effects are stunning.

• Inside Tegan's mind (Kinda)

  Getting inside Tegan's head is as terrifying as you would assume. Set against a pitch-black void with the actors highlighted with strong lights, this is a perfect example of the effectiveness of the simplicity of Doctor Who's effects. Add some freaky characters to the mix, a sinister pair of cronies playing chess, a sadistic jester and a scene where Tegan is multiplied over and over again and you have some of the weirdest and spookiest scenes in the show's history. A shame the story did not stick to the simpler side of things, with embarrassing jungle sets and hideous giants snakes, these glimpses of mind rape in Tegan's head are clearly the best scenes of the story and some of the best of the era.

• Ships in space (Enlightenment)

  A gorgeous idea, beautifully executed. Can you imagine Doctor Who managing to pull off Edwardian sailing ships floating around in space? Not only do they rise to the occasion and provide some breathtaking imagery but the ethereal music and quality writing all help to make these shots some of the best ideas in Doctor Who in the last ten years. The ships even have oars rowing! When the Doctor, Tegan and Turlough visit the deck and glance out at the other ships you will be stunned at how fantastic these scenes really are.

• "...and cut it - now!" (Vengeance on Varos)

  A skilfully directed story with a killer cliffhanger, which is bolstered by a potential horrific death for the Doctor by dehydration. The "VR" desert effects are quite sublime as he crawls along the passageway and spies stunning vistas of sand surrounding him. Strong lighting, terrific photography and an uncomfortable performance from Colin Baker combine to make this a truly upsetting moment. And a quick word for the giant gee-gee fly which is enlarged, still one of the best shock moments in the series.

• "I am to become a Dalek" (Revelation of the Daleks)

  Another grotesque scene, but one that is filmed so well it will leave you squirming in your seat. The thought of being turned into a Dalek is already a nasty one but the sight of Stengos in a Dalek casing with pulsing organs grafted onto his face, is truly horrific and guaranteed to give you nightmares. Genuine performances sell the scene perfectly but it is the deliciously sick makeup that triumphs here.

• Special Weapons Dalek (Remembrance of the Daleks)

  They really pulled out all the stops for these Dalek stories, didn't they? This is one mean bastard who is able to take out several Daleks with just one shot and demolish a warehouse gate and get the emergency services a-running! The oiled-up Dalek casing with just a huge gun jutting out is possibly the neatest piece of design work Doctor Who ever dished up. In one of best scenes in McCoy's era, it swings around and takes out three Daleks at once in a dazzling display of pyrotechnics.

• The living planet (Survival)

  Special effects were maturing a lot come the last story broadcast and Survival boasts one of the best alien planets in the series' history. With its pinkish glow in the sky and rumbling threats of eruptions, it really feels as though the planet is alive. The script expertly ties this into the story, using its characters to highlight the planet's mood and the drama in episode three leads to some stunning moments of destruction. Fire roaring from the sea, the ground splitting and spitting out fire, explosions in the sky... finally Doctor Who special effects have come of age.

• The TARDIS (The TV Movie)

  Still the most ingenious redesign of the TARDIS, pipping even the RTD series because of its scale and atmosphere. The TV Movie was an explosion of gorgeous special effects but none of them meant as much to me as this sinister yet strangely comforting cathedral-like TARDIS. The console looks more dated than ever but deliberately so and the central column gives the whole room a creepy glow. Even the ceiling scanner, which reveals exploding planets, is gloriously appropriate. For once the TARDIS was spectacular.

Top Ten old friends/enemies I'd like to see in future episodes by Antony Tomlinson 30/6/05

Well, well, well. Rumour has it that the Cybermen will be returning in the new season of Doctor Who next year. To be honest, I'm not that excited about this resurrection (see Joe Ford's peerless article on the Cybermen for all the reasons why TV is better off without these silver clowns) even if I am thrilled to hear the phrase "new season". Nonetheless, this has got me thinking about all the monsters, friends and enemies we've seen over the last 42 years, who I would love to see come back in "Season 2 (or 3)". And here's my wish list...

1. Dinosaurs (The Silurians/Invasion of the Dinosaurs)

   A few years ago the BBC leaped into the world of CGI and brought us the excellent prehistoric wildlife documentary, Walking with Dinosaurs. Week after week we got to see Diplodocus grazing, Pterosaurs flying overhead and Allosaurs trying to eat their young. It was terrific, and kids loved it.

   Now, presumably the BBC still has all those dinosaur special effects lying about in a cupboard somewhere. And for Doctor Who - a budget-conscious, kids show about a Time Machine - resurrecting these prehistoric monsters seems a bit of a "no brainer". It'd be great fun to see these terrible lizards in action again too, and it might also mean that we get to go back in time more than a century or two.

2. Daleks (Dalek, et al.)

   The props have been made and they look great. The Daleks are also now genuinely scary, with the whole Time War thing placing them at the centre of the Doctor's mythology. They really seem like a plague of evil now, in a way they haven't been since Evil of the Daleks. And kids love them (I know, I've heard them screeching "exterminate" in shopping centres, the little blighters). So let's welcome these killers back for more mayhem and massacre (Daleks I mean, not children).

3. Trees (The End of the World)

   The trees were a lovely bunch, I thought. The idea of sentient trees is wonderfully futuristic, and they looked terrific (despite the wooden acting... heeheehee). They are also a rare example of an inhuman race that the Doctor has empathised with during the new series. And a story about trees and humans battling for Earth could give us interesting material, with a similar "political" punch to stories like The Silurians. Once again, also, the costumes have already been made (more savings).

4. Huguenots (The Massacre)

   Well, when I say "Huguenots", I really mean any people in history whose plight has important resonance today (Aztecs, Highlanders, Roman slaves etc.). I think the TARDIS really needs to travel a little further back in time to make the most of its potential (Russell T. Davies should not be too alarmed at the idea of historical stories following his costume drama Casanova - and, of course, the BBC is great at this kind of thing). Furthermore, it would be wonderful to travel back to a point in history that allows writers the chance to explore moral relativisms and great injustices of the past (as the new series has already done with injustices present and future).

   Nonetheless, the question as to whether the new series could pull off a purely historical tale is controversial. For the first season, the producers have, perhaps wisely, chosen to focus on sci-fi and horror - giving kids and action fans the requisite monsters, spaceships, zombies and robots they desire. In defence of historicals, however, I would remind producers that there are many other, more terrestrial threats that kids and action fans find equally exhilarating - ninjas, sharks, gladiators, sabre-toothed tigers, pirates, piranhas and deformed maniacs.

5. The Fifth Doctor (The Caves of Androzani [and a couple of others])

   I do not want the new series to make the mistake of the 1980s, by harking back to the past. However, if a cameo for an old Doctor is required (and such a cameo could be introduced without alienating new viewers - once they are familiar with the idea of regeneration, they just have to be told that "this is a past self") then Davison is the ideal Doctor to bring back.

   For one, he is the only Doctor to represent an era of the series which was popular enough not to get cancelled (unlike Doctors 6, 7 and 8), who at the same time looks much as he did when he played the role (unlike Tom Baker, who has turned into an old lady). And he's alive. Furthermore, he remains a successful, well-liked TV actor in his own right (currently appearing as ITV's "Dangerous" Davies - a slightly inept but sincere fighter against injustice... hmm, sounds familiar). He has also managed to perfect the Fifth Doctor's character on audio. And, most importantly of all, Davison has said that he'd love to do it (reportedly).

6. Vampires (State of Decay/The Curse of Fenric)

   Why not? After all, there seem to be a lot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer Fans out there (I don't know why to be honest. Buffy seems a load of old cack to me. When it comes to far-fetched American shows, I much prefer Desperate Housewives [does this admission mean that I'll get banned from the DWRG?]). And while the new Doctor Who series has had zombies galore, it seems about time that the other main staple of onscreen horror was reintroduced. That said, we clearly shouldn't get carried away with continuity if the bloodsuckers do return - one legendary Time Lord war is enough to be getting on with.

7. The Hoothi (Love and War)

   There were very few monsters in the books who ever got my imagination fired up. The one exception was the vilely necrotic Hoothi in Paul Cornell's Love and War. This creature is a horrible fungus which travels through space in a giant, fleshy puffball. It spreads spores which, on entering another creature's body, riddle it with fungus and turn it into part of the Hoothi army. It is a creepy, chilling enemy that gives a lot of scope for zombie hoards, and which could be beautifully realised using CGI. Furthermore, it is the creation of one of the new series' writers, so its appearance is not unthinkable.

8. Rutans (The Horror of Fang Rock)

   The Rutan is probably the monster which could benefit the most from a return to the screen. In The Horror of Fang Rock, this creature looked like a blob of hair gel. However, with the power of CGI, the biolumescent, tentacled amoeboid could really terrify (indeed, the Rutan in Shakedown already looked damn cool, without the benefit of the new serial's budget).

   As far as the nature of the monster goes, the Rutan could provide the series with a thrilling plot, blending Predator with Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It certainly sounds great on paper - a sophisticated, militaristic creature that kills horribly via electric discharge, which can move stealthily in any environment, which can shift its shape and which also has a penchant for gruesome autopsies. I'm scared just thinking about it.

9. The Celestial Toymaker (The Celestial Toymaker)

   Hear me out on this one. I know that wanting the Toymaker back is very fanwanky, and I also know that previous revivals (The Nightmare Fair, Divided Loyalties) have been less than impressive. But I have good reasons, I think, for wanting this mystic weirdo back.
   (1) The new series has really lacked any truly ethereal beings. Almost all the aliens we have met have been flesh and blood creatures. With the exception of the Gelth, there is little indication that there is more in reality than that contained in our universe.
   (2) The Doctor could do with a nemesis. Not a silly sod like the Master, but someone he really fears and who bears a grudge.
   (3) An enemy who kills for fun is the most chilling of all. That said, perhaps creating a new character along these lines would be preferable to resurrecting the actual Toymaker.

10. Captain Jack

    Handsome, roguish, always cheerful in a fight and good at blowing the hell out of things. What's not to like?

1. The Slitheen (obviously)
2. The Master (an inherently ridiculous character)
3. Adam (what was he all about?)
4. Davros (the Daleks are doing very well on their own, thank you very much)
5. The Time Lords (the new series has benefited enormously from their absence)
6. The Brigadier (let him enjoy his retirement)
7. The Ice Warriors (never very interesting. Green Klingons with knobblier heads)
8. Bessie (we want the Doctor to be a hero, not a daft old antiquarian)
9. Rose's flat (Rose wants to escape her old life. So do I)
10. The Heart of the TARDIS (aka "the cop-out switch")

Bottom ten fan complaints about the 2005 series by Rob Matthews 3/7/05

Having salivated for years over the seemingly impossible idea of Doctor Who returning to the TV screen and being an enormous popular success, fandom finally had its wildest dreams come true in 2005.

And still wasn't fucking satisfied.

There was a time not so long back when I'd happily browse review sites looking for book and audio recommendations and enjoying getting into debates about stuff. Now its more of a case of just hoping the criticisms won't miss the point too wildly, and won't confirm to the outside world every bad Comic-Book-Guy-from-The-Simpsons stereotype of what 'fans' are like. And though, to be fair, the majority (ie - a little more than half) of what I've seen is usually pretty sound, there's a sizeable minority of, um, let's say 'misguided' criticism which has been like rusty nails down the very fibres of my soul. It's literally the only thing about the new series by which I've been seriously disappointed, and indeed appalled. The sheer ingratitude of fans (a word often mistakenly interpreted as 'people who actually like the show'), the fact that as early as week five of the series they were already brewing up a moronic backlash against the man who's made their show the big success they claimed they wanted, has absolutely disgusted me, and its terribly embarrassing to think of all those brand new young fans who might peer at Outpost Gallifrey and discover just how big a proportion of fandom is composed of bitter old farts who can't let go of the past, and who actually care if a throwaway line in Boom Town contradicts another one in Masque of Mandragora, or some such.

It's the extreme(ly mad) opinions that get noticed, sadly, and so instead of that lovely sense of vindication the more hopeful of us were looking for (finally being recognised as having been right all along!), any lazy tabloid hack could now log onto Outpost Gallifrey, say, and paint a picture of us as a bunch of terminally petty demented tossers.

If this sounds angry, well then sorry, but that's because I am angry. Don't get me wrong, I'm not looking for some kind of happy-clappy cheerleading when I click my fansite bookmarks; objective criticism is great, and the series has certainly had its share of flaws. But there are so many wrongheaded, unreasoning comments about this series solidifying into received wisdom (and I use the word 'wisdom' in its most tenuous sense), I just feel they need to be refuted en masse.

1. 'X from the new series contradicts Y from the old series' Ah, 'continuity'. Doesn't the very word make your bowels judder. One of Lars Pearson's I, Who books quotes a nice axiom from Paul Cornell: 'You should rewrite continuity the second it gets in the way of a good story.' There are apparently several fans who'd re-word this along the lines of 'You should completely rewrite, hobble or junk a good story if it in any way contradicts something from another story twenty-odd years ago that only about five per cent of your audience will remember anyway'. What 'continuity' whiners seems to forget is that Doctor Who is a storytelling vehicle, not a pretend history. Doctor Who the TV series was never, ever that fussed about maintaing a consistent view of its universe. Only anal fans were. If your primary complaint about a story is that some detail in it contradicts some detail in another, then you likely don't have an argument at all. And should probably get out more.
2. 'The Unquiet Dead/The Empty Child is proper Doctor Who, as opposed to that RTD rubbish' I think this translates as 'something like it could probably have been made in the Hinchcliffe era, which I prefer.' An extremely smallminded view which would have made for a more formulaic and far less interesting TV series, and one which probably wouldn't even have had any life or momentum of its own. Plus the remark really highlights the crippling inability of certain fans to appreciate the new series on its own terms. Or indeed, to accept that it's not a show that's being made for fans, it's a show for everyone. One that, incidentally, has made fans out of such unlikely people as my dad and Michael Grade! This is why in the run-up to the show I was saying 'Wait and see'. It's a far more objective option than creating the series in your head and then complaining when the reality of it doesn't match up.
3. 'Cornell/Gatiss/Shearman have shown Russell T Davies how it should be done' This is just nonsense. Don't these people see the difference between coming in and writing a single episode, and being in charge of a whole series? That it's a lot easier to not put a foot wrong when you're writing one script than it is when you're writing eight of the buggers? In any case, the best of RTD's scripts this season have certainly equalled the best of anyone else's. I'm sure if, say, Steve Moffat had been in charge of the whole series and RTD had only contributed The End of the World, fans would all have been making exactly the same remark, but with the names rearranged. Buyer's remorse, I think it's called.
4. 'If a Dalek has survived, hopefully this means others might have done so too' And, er... this would be a good thing why exactly?
5. 'After the atrocious Aliens of London/End of the World...' Atrocious? Really? Hey, you may not have liked it, but 'atrocious'? Get a grip. I think wild distortions like this take place through a sort of fannish Chinese whispers (kind of like normal Chinese whispers, except more bilious) - in much the same way as the character of Mickey has come to be treated - entirely unfairly - as some kind of Jar Jar Binks-style abhorrence.
6. 'Rose is an annoying slapper.' Ron Mallett said this, and it's probably the most offensive thing I've seen on this site. Based on absolutely nothing in the episode at hand - except that she's attractive and seems to below a certain wage bracket -, the remark is not only snobbish but borderline misogynist, like an updated version of calling someone a tupenny whore.
7. 'True Doctor Who fans...' Hey listen mate, you're no more or less a true Doctor Who fan than any one of us. And you're starting to sound like the Emperor Dalek.
8. 'The Slitheen's ludicrous suggestion that she and the Doctor are on some kind of date...' So terrified was some fan at the prospect of the Doctor somehow ending up having a shag, he took this blatantly joking remark from Boom Town in deadly earnest.
9. Any complaints about the CGI being unconvincing Well yes, I know, it's not up to the standards of the bubble wrap, polystyrene and toilet roll tubes that made up the effects work in the original series. But I guess we're just going to have to accept that the production values are significantly lower than they were in the good old days, and that things like the spider-robots can just never match up to the magnificent spectacle of the Cybermats arcing balletically through the air in Revenge of the Cybermen, that the Jagrafess can simply never attain the terrifying visceral believability of the cave monster in Caves of Androzani. It's a shame, but what can you do. We'll just have to stop loving Who for its FX, and find something else to like.
10. 'Why the hell do the Daleks bring the Doctor to the Gamestation?!' Ahem. They don't. I suggest you watch the episode again.

10 possibly shameful confessions about the new series by Mike Heinrich 14/7/05

So, we all have little (or possibly enormous) responses to these new episodes as we watch them for the first time. And I think that in large part because we're so used to having the entire televised series a good 15+ years behind us we have a tendency to rely on crystalized fandom opinion about things.

That is to say, If I'm going to say something shocking about how I feel about... oh... Take The Green Death as an example, I'm pretty sure going into the thing how the majority of fandom seems to feel about The Green Death. So, as I make whatever shocking statement about it that I feel the need to make... oh... say for example that I feel the need to say that I think Jo's haircut is simply dreadful, and that the Welsh are shockingly stereotyped. Or whatever.

As I say that potentially shocking and scandelous thing (well, it might be for somebody out there, I suppose) I'm pretty sure that I already know before I even type it what the response is going to be from most of fandom

1: Nobody gives even half a crap about Jo's hair (with the possible exception of Katy Manning, I suppose)

And 2: Yup, they sure were, weren't they. If you were posting that absolute revelation in 1973, it might have been a fascinating new topic of converstion. If only for the sake of discussing how you'd managed to access the internet in 1973...

The point being that for the last 15 years we've become very used to making statements about the televised series already knowing full well who's likely to agree and disagree. Which can be comforting, in it's own way.

And even the discussion of the audios is hampered by this effect to an extent, since the only way we can really discuss them is in terms of the original series from which they sprung. Which is to say, if you're reviewing the new Peter Davison CD, you can be fairly comfortable in your knowledge that Joe Ford has found something wrong with it. Nine times out of ten.

We're still using the same vocabulary to discuss the audios as we are to discuss the old televised episodes, if you see what I mean.

Which is really what's so exciting to me about the new series. When we throw out a review on them, we really don't KNOW at this point what the received wisdom about these things is going to BE a few years down the line. We can't be certain about who will agree and who will disagree based on past opinions.

Suddenly discussing televised episodes is EXCITING again.

So, with that out of the way, here are ten confessions of things I think about the new series. I have no idea if they're shocking or not, truth be told. And I love that.

1. I really, REALLY enjoy Rose. The episode, not the character. Although I enjoy the character as well, but right now I'm talking about the episode. I love the pacing. I love that it hits all the fanboy buttons. I love that it's essentially more of a 45 minute commercial for the rest of the series than a proper story in its own right. 'This year on Doctor Who! You'll see- Old monsters! A new companion! A new type of Outfit for the Doctor! Mickey and Rose's Mum! Some pretty good CGI! All this and more, this season on Doctor Who!' That's really all this episode is, and I eat it up with a spoon. Even the burping garbage can.
2. I want to learn more about the Face of Boe. Apparently He (she?) lives a really really long time and has a lot of money. I want to know more. I'm probably the only one.
3. The Unquiet Dead's a little dull. I'm sorry, but it is. It's very pretty, I enjoy the story, but I find it to be a little dull. There, I've said it.
4. Some of the aliens in End of the World looked a little silly.
5. I understand what they were trying to do, I honestly do. But that said, I think the time spent introducing Adam in Dalek would have been better used expanding that story a bit. I enjoyed Dalek. I just think it could have been more. The Adam stuff felt like time wasted to me.
6. The WWII clothes made Captain Jack's chin look funny.
7. Yes, the 'Silent but Deadly' line should have been cut, but it wasn't ultimately a deal-breaker for me.
8. The same is true of 'Maybe you need a Doctor'
9. At the end of the day, I'm looking forward to the Cybermen more than I was to the Daleks. A matter of personal taste.
10. Frankly, I thought that the dinner conversations were about a million times more interesting than the 'Oh No! Cardiff's going to be destroyed by a nuclear reactor!' plot.

Top Ten Hatnells by Jonathan Middleton 28/7/05

I've always felt that the Hartnell era was one were you had a good leading man let down by bad scripts. But unlike Troughton where bad scripts were more common, Hartnell's era started off well with a good first season then had a crap second season and then a wonderful third season.

10. The Edge Of Destruction. An interesting story and considering it was written to fill a two week gap and could only use the regulars, it acheives greatness through brilliant acting and characterisation and disturbing scenes. Hell even Ford puts in a decent performance despite the first episode being directed by Ed Wood... sorry, Richard Martin. Hartnell, Hill and Russell shine in a sort of story that later seasons could have used.

9. Galaxy 4. Despite the crap title this is a well written intelligent story that turns a sci-fi cliche on its head. Stephanie Bidmead puts in a superb performance that could have been over the top. It is a pity that William Emms didn't write more for the series (although he did submit other ideas). The Rill are brilliantly designed for an era where crap monsters were commonplace. My only real problem is this was orignally written for Ian and Barbara and Steven is out of character and it would have worked better in season two.

8. The Rescue. A brilliant story from good old David Whitaker with an excellent introduction for Vicki and a chilling potrayel of Bennet by Ray Barret who is superb as Koquillion as well. My only real problem is the cliffhanger which is just plain stupid.

7. The Aztecs. This would have been higher if it weren't for some dull direction and some pathetic fights. John Ringham puts in a fine performance along with Keith Pyott and Jacqueline Hill shines as Barbara. Hartnell puts in a fine performance and his romance with Cameca is wonderful.

6. The Daleks' Master Plan. Despite the fact that only three episodes survive and there's a fairly pointless part seven to ten it's a great yarn. Kevin Stoney is fantastic as Mavic Chen along with Jean Marsh as Sara Kingdom who should have stayed on instead of Dodo. Douglas Camfield's direction is top notch too.

5. The Savages. A truly underrated story with a superb score and marvellous performances from Frederick Jeager as Jano, who is a good mimic of William Hartnell. The Savages are particularly good too, showing that they could just have been cliched noble savages and it provided Steven with a good exit. The only real problem is Dodo, who is bloody annoying as per usual. Oh and Hartnell is excellent as usual.

4. The Daleks. Some good material for Hartnell whose manipulative callous Doctor is wonderful. The Thals are intersting for the only time ever. The Daleks are utterly callous preparing to wipe out the Thals at a moment's notice. The cliffanger to part one is iconic.

3. The Time Meddler. The first appearance of another Time Lord in the series the cliffhanger to part three is a shocker. Peter Butterworth is marvelous as the monk his byplay with Hartnell is excellent. Steven's proper introduction is wonderful too.

2. The Crusades. Some superb Shakesperean dialogue coupled with 100% performance from Julian Glover, Walter Randall and Jean Marsh coupled with some marvellus other performance from the rest of the guest cast. The regualers are also firing an all cylinders.

1. The Massacre. I just love this. Hartnell is superb as both the Abbot and the Doctor and Peter Purves shows how marvellous his acting is. The script, largely written by Donald Tosh, is superb. The other actors are brilliant: Leornad Sachs, Joan Young, David Weston... all the actors in this are brilliant. Whoever wiped this should be sacked. The only flaw is that Dodo is introduced in this episode.

Oh and some pieces of absolute garbage.

10. Planet Of Giants. This is one of the worst episodes ever. The villians are stupid and badly acted. Forester and Smithers are awful. The ending is stupid. Barbara is an idiot who fails to tell them she's been infected even though she should.

9. The Space Museam. Despite a great first episode, this soon dissolves into a complete B-movie s*ite full of dull aliens running around corridors. It just goes too show how awful the sixties were.

8. The Keys Of Marinus. I used to like this at first and despite one of the best planets in Doctor Who, it's full of fantasy cliches. The supporting characters are dull: Altos and Sabetha are so wooden I wondered if they were carved out of logs. Oh and it's got that woman off Silver Nemesis.

7. The Sensorites. Nice ideas and could have been a classic. Unfortunetly it's got a dull alien race and a dull bunch of humans. Peter Glaze is so hammy as the City Adminstrater and frankly I couldn't care less about this crap.

6. The War Machines. The Bore Machines, more like. A completely cliched idea full of dull charecters and a completly boring villian with a plan so stupid only Gerry Davis could have thought it up. It amazes how Ian Stuart Black who wrote The Savages wrote this garbage. I suppose Dodo leaves and Ben and Polly join.

5. The Romans. This is just so overrated garbage. Joe Ford who hates season two loves this and I just can't see why. The fight scenes are laughable Derek Francis is so hammy. Hartnell can't be bothered and it was inspired by the Carry On films which are just awful and should be banned.

4. The Gunfighters. I wish this story had never been made. I just can't stand it, the American accents are stupid the acting dire, the direction awful... oh and that song why? why? why?. This piece of b*ll*cks is the equivalent of a cheese grater to the penis compared to season three.

3. The Dalek Invasion Of Earth. This story's awful. I hate it so much it's awful. The plot's ridiculous, the characters are all out of a cliched resitance film, the direction's awful and why did they hire Richard Martin? Hartnell can't be bothered to act, many of the other actors sound half asleep, although given the dialogue I can't blame them.

2. The Chase. A lot of people say this is so bad it's good. I say it's so bad it's bad. Full of crap set-pieces completly thick Daleks, this is nothing but a jumbled mess of incoherent ideas and bad acting. Oh and Richard Martin directing it and it has jokes, of which a total of zero are funny. This is just one huge blooper. It may very well be the worst Hartnell yet, but wait... what's coming next?

1. The Web Planet. This is the worst Hartnell EVER! it totally sucks. Why was it made? It's f***ing s*it. The Menoptera are boring, the Zarbi are just awful and the Optera... what can I say? Because it's awful and they got Richard Martin to direct. The acting is awful, everyone just bored to death. The regulars give phone-in performances. This story should have been burnt and what's worse is they're realeasing it on DVD in September! I would gladly swap this for the four episodes of Galaxy 4 and the remaining two of The Crusades.

Top Few Everythings by Jamie Beckwith 11/8/05

We Doctor Who fans are known for compiling immense catalouges in our heads and I'm no different.

And so a quick rough guide to my world of Doctor Who.

Top Three Doctors

1. Patrick Troughton
2. Tom Baker
3. Sylvester McCoy

1. Sarah-Jane Smith
2. Romana (Second Incarnation)
3. Rose

1. Scaroth, last of the Jagaroth
2. Sutekh The Destroyer
3. The Silurians

City of Death

Favourite Adventure For Each Doctor

The First Doctor: The Aztecs

The Second Doctor: The Mind Robber

The Third Doctor: The Claws of Axos

The Fourth Doctor: Nightmare on Eden

The Fifth Doctor: Kinda

The Sixth Doctor: ??? (Sorry Colin!)

The Seventh Doctor: Ghost Light

The Eight Doctor: /

The Ninth Doctor: The Empty Child

Worst Adventure:

Resurrection of the Daleks

First Adventure I Ever Saw

Remembrance of the Daleks

First Doctor Who video I Bought

Death to the Daleks

First Doctor Who DVD I Bought

Remembrance of the Daleks

Top Three Original Novels

1. Just War
2. The Romance of Crime
3. The Infinity Doctor

First Issue Of Doctor Who Magazine

# 170 (Jan 1991)

Number of Shelves My Doctor Who Collection Takes Up

Five and a half plus two cupboards

The best episodes of the new series by Charles Tuck 13/8/05

10) Boom Town

This is just awful; the whole story revolves around a fancy dinner scene that is not that fancy in itself. The plot is pathetic and the Deus Ex Machina ending is just lazy. The Slitheen are an awful creation and shouldn’t have been brought back!

9) Aliens of London/World War Three

The Slitheen’s first appearance is pretty sad. There are a few memorable scenes, like the Doctor being slapped (that still makes me laugh) and the first appearance of the Slitheen’s true form that lift it above Boom Town but the enormous amount of poor comedy and plot-holes destroy a good idea.

8) The Long Game

Simon Pegg’s Editor makes this plot-hole ridden story worth watching. The Jagrefess is pathetically designed and Adam's scenes are a waste of time but apart from that, it’s a fun little story.

7) Rose

A nice opening to the new series but there are a couple flaws. Jackie and Mickey are just annoying but Billie Piper as Rose is superb. The Autons are up to standard and have seen better days but there are a couple original ideas. A nice start but not brilliant.

6) The End of the World Apart from the resolution (just flicking a switch!?) this is actually not that bad. The End of the World shows that not every episode needs a scary monster that kills all in its way. The cunning Cassandra, brilliantly played by Zoe Wannamaker, is done well.

5) Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways

A good use of the Daleks and RTD’s best, the killer game shows are not too silly, even the What Not to Wear scene. The ending is a bit Deus Ex Machina but there have been worse. The Daleks are ruthless as ever in this story, which is how they should be.

4) The Unquiet Dead

I really liked this story, the opening is one of the best in Doctor Who and the rest is good too. Charles Dickens wasn’t really needed but I’m glad he was included. The Gelth are well done and all of the acting is good. Nearly a classic!

3) Father’s Day

I know this is a bit controversial but I think that this story is excellent. The Reapers are a deadly foe, killing a vicar… I remember the scenes that show the world through the Reaper's eyes, reminding me of the snake guard in Battlefield (if that's a good thing). Paul Cornell does the emotional scenes excellently, but the Doctor acts a little weird. A really emotional and superb story.

2) The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances

The Empty Child is creepy, it’s a memorable episode that is well written and well acted. The jokes are funny, the scary bits are scary and Captain Jack is introduced. What could be better?

1) Dalek

This could. A perfect story that explores the motives of the Daleks, with plenty of memorable scenes. The dialogue is perfect, especially the Doctor's taunts to the Dalek and the ‘You would make a good Dalek’ scene. Everything that the Daleks have been criticised for is removed, the stairs and the plunger, among other things. Stories like this will keep the series going!

Top Ten Eighth Doctor comic strips by Richard Radcliffe 16/8/05

When one strand of DW fiction finishes I like to do a Top Ten, so this would be an obvious time for that. The Top Ten 8th Doctor comic strip stories, then in reverse order:

10 Road to Hell - Japanese Samurai hijinx, as this Doctor shows his global interests.

9 Bad Blood - American Indian backdrop with alien trappings later on.

8 Uroboros - the Ophidius arc continues supremely well, not letting up in interest or imagination.

7 Beautiful Freak - delightful pause after the Izzy switch of personalities.

6 Ophidius - the first colour strip leaps vibrantly off the page - very alien.

5 Tooth and Claw - WW2 and vampirism combine impressively. Edgy DW and excellent DW.

4 Children of the Revolution - fabulous return of the Daleks, their best story in this format.

3 The Way of all Flesh - traditions from faraway brought to life magically.

2 Oblivion - magnificent conclusion to best arc in all comics.

1 The Fallen - brilliant one-off story, with the return of Grace.

Top 10 dullest episodes by Mike Heinrich 26/8/05

Or

10 ten episodes that I still like to say very nice things about but at the end of The day just aren't terribly engaging for me to watch, despite the fact That I'm sure everyone involved in the production is very nice, kind To children and animals and I'm sure tried their best.

Someone who submits reviews here quite regularly has a habit of saying 'Doctor Who can survive Being bad, but not being boring.' Or words to that effect. I think it might even be Robert Smith?

A few moments ago, while reading Steve Cassidy's review of Rememberence of the Daleks (Quite a good read and worth my everlasting respect if only for describing the 7th Doctor as an 'Intergalactic Henry Kissinger', which still makes me laugh even as I type this) I realized something important.

There are approximately four million things that I'd rather be doing than watching Remembrance of The Daleks.

I own the VHS release of it. I bought the DVD and only ever took the shrinkwrap off of it out Of a mild curiousity as to what little advertisement cards might have been stuck inside. I actually Put on the commentary track once and listened to exactly 14 seconds before having the most wonderful and restful nap I can recall taking in the last ten years.

Despite the fact that I don't really have anything negative to say about Remembrance, I'm forced to admit that it just bores the living crap out of me.

Which then led me to think about what other episodes that might apply to... To which that might apply... About which to apply thereto are.... Oh screw it, you know what I mean.

So...

In the order that I happen to think of them - the top 10 episodes of Doctor Who that I personally happen to find a bit dull.

10: Let's start it off with the obvious one, The Web Planet.

Now, oddly enough, I really like the first two episodes of this one. That's how long I can keep up with the whole thing. Blah blah brave experiment blahdy all alien chorus numbers blah blah blah. And then the napping begins. Much like Colin Powell, I respect what it's trying to do - I just have no interest in spending any time together.

9: Remembrance of the Daleks.

See above comments

8: This one pains me to admit. OK, I'm just going to say it. The Mind Robber.

I do like the premise. I could spout off all the usual lines about 'bold use of surrealism'. Perhaps I'd even throw in the phrase 'Oddball episode' But come on. This adventure is so dull even Frazer Hines couldn't be bothered to show up for all of it. I like the concept. I just wish the exection had been more engaging. But that's just me.

7: This one holds the curious position of combining overwhelmingly affectionate nostalgia with complete disinterest. The Mind of Evil.

One of the first episodes I ever saw, actually. Hence the affectionate nostalgia. But somewhere between the prison being taken over by the convicts, then UNIT, then the Master, then a charming Dutch couple who happen to be walking by at the time, I just stop caring. I think of this one much like Grandma. We love Grandma. We don't want to go see Grandma. Because there is absolutely nothing whatsoever to do at Grandma's.

6: The Planet of Evil.

No surprise on this one, I expect. If you watch The Tom Baker Years (And if you haven't, go do so now) you will observe that upon reaching a clip of this episode Tom Baker sits quitely for a moment, mentions that he recognizes Prentice Hancock, and then is forced to admit that he retains absolutely no memory of this story. That says something to me.

5: This one actually surprises me, but I have to admit it - The Creature from the Pit.

Sure, it's got the philospher with some fun lines. And the titular Creature has a penis. Beyond that I just can't get worked up about this one. I don't dislike it, I just wouldn't invite it to parties.

4: The 1996 Telefilm with the Silver Pertwee Era Logo.

I liked the regeneration sequence quite a bit. Moreso, actually, than a certain more recently viewed clip of a similar nature. After that I vaguely recall a motorcycle chase and hoping that Eric Roberts would die (so, just an average afternoon). I'd go check to see if there's anything more to remember about this story, but I'm actually getting sleepy just thinking about it.

3: Resurrection of the Daleks.

I promise I don't have anything against the Daleks. I'm actually terribly fond of several of their stories. The Chase, for example, is one of my favorites as it's pleasingly ridiculous from start to finish. Resurrection, however, just doesn't do it for me. It's not that it's bad, it's just that the acting is in many quarters terribly wooden, the plot doesn't make even the tiniest scrap of sense if you stop to think about it, and it's whole raison d'etre appears to be to bring back Davros and reflect lovingly on how much we all really enjoyed Destiny of the Daleks, which we of course didn't. OK, maybe it IS just bad.

2: OK, this one may be just me. Vengeance on Varos.

People seem to love it. I honestly don't understand why. I'm not offended by it. I don't think it's too violent. I just (Peri's all too brief Bird Transformation Scene notwithstanding) can't find it in myself to care about anything that happens to any of these people. Although I do confess to a twinge of sympathy for poor Areta filling in all that tedious paperwork only to have her entire system of government overthrown, thus rendering it unneccesary. Poor thing. Honestly, I'd rather watch Timelash as with that one there's at least plenty to make fun of. If one was into that sort of meanspirited behavior. Which I am of course not. No sir.

1: The number one most least interesting story in the history of televised Doctor Who to me personally is... The Monster of Peladon.

I'm actually so disinterested in this story that I can't even be bothered to say anything about it. Just take a moment to think about why you haven't watched it anytime recently and assume that I said something along those lines.

And if you could imagine that I had really great abs while I said it, I'd appreciate it very much.

I should note that for the sake of this list I haven't included the following:

• Episodes of the new series, as I'm still just too excited to be watching new Who to be bored with them yet.
• The books, as there were - frankly - far too many of them that were pretty boring, all things considered.
• The audios, as I'm poor and haven't been able to get many of them.
• Episodes which were partially or completely destroyed. This rule was mostly to excuse myself from having to mention The Space Pirates.

Ten observations about Doctor Who stories I can't be bothered reviewing by Mike Morris 24/10/05

I've sort of stolen this from Mike Heinrich's list of things he always wanted to write a review specifically as an excuse to say. What a wonderful idea, I thought. Because for ages I've wanted to say that Meglos is an interesting example of a story that exists between two distinct eras, and fails - but at the same time is very interesting - because the two come to a disjointed accord, and the results are uneasy but sometimes oddly beneficial. Lexa is a good example, a Williams-era standard ranting religious leader who would have been held up as either a villain or an object of ridicule a year beforehand, and who now seems terribly out of place - yet she achieves a curious nobility in spite of her limitations.

Thing is, if I wanted to say that I would have to actually review Meglos. And although I've tried several times, I simply don't seem capable of reviewing Meglos. I just have sod-all else to say about it, and have no strong feelings as to whether it's good or not, and can't get too worked up about it one way or the other. All I can do is shrug and say "uh, s'all right, not as bad as it's s'posed to be but it's not that good." So I never bothered.

Anyway, here's a few things to say about some stories. Either they're from an era I have no sympathy for, or stories I don't have any strong views on, or I've already reviewed them, or all sorts of things. All I have are little asides, and I jolly well feel like sharing them. So here goes.

1. Criticising The Web Planet for being slow, silly-looking tosh is utterly unfair. It was conceived as an effects-led extravaganza in a different period entirely, and noting that it's dated is similarly misguided - it wasn't designed to be seen again. The fact is that, at the time, The Web Planet did look extraordinary and achieved phenomenally high ratings. And now, while it's terribly dull and I haven't watched it for years, I can't help but be fond of it. It's a reminder of a different time when audiences trusted television more; a time before irony and po-mo and mockery, where programmes really could try to do new things, to suggest the alien through strange speech patterns and slow, careful build-up. The Web Planet comes from a time before shallow mockery. And so, when people mock it, they simply look cruel and shallow. In that way it's bigger and better than any of us will ever be.
2. The Three Doctors is just absolute rubbish. I mean, it quite simply fails on just about every conceivable level. The effects and costumes are dreadful, the script is utter garbage, the plot makes no sense whatsoever, it's cosy and smug, it's glitzy and gaudy, it's slow-moving and silly, and there is no excuse for giving this load of complete tosh any sort of indulgence - the production team have indulged themselves quite enough already, one suspects.
3. In The Talons of Weng-Chiang, we're supposed to be very scared that Mr Sin has the cerebral cortex of a pig and the pig part took over. But, um, since when were pigs famously psychotic? When did pigs start hating all humanity? I for one have never read any mountingly hysterical headlines about the increasing number of pig-related fatalities in contemporary society, or seen tragic news footage of holidaymakers being attacked by pigs. I mean, they wallow around in their own faeces, sure, but I can't say they've ever struck me as particularly murderous animals. Okay, so the pig-grunts are cool, but I don't really see where this comes from.
4. Genesis of the Daleks invented continuity. It's the first Doctor Who story that actively starts to link the series' disparate stories together, portraying the Daleks as creatures with a history rather than bad guys who are just there and pop up whenever convenient. By sending the Doctor to change history, the show automatically sets itself up as a history, a chronicle of something larger - and by extension, a continuity. This is borne out by the fact that Destiny of the Daleks, the next Dalek story, is the first story that actually refers to previous events but subverts them, changes them, links into the rest of the show (as opposed to The Monster of Peladon, which links to a previous story but is still isolated from the rest of the series). And, partly because of this legacy, Dalek stories tend to maintain a direct continuity with each other from thereon in.
5. Eye of Heaven is brilliant, but it has a scene where the Doctor teaches a bunch of sailors to sing "Ticket to Ride". This seems wrong on a couple of levels. Firstly, the Fourth Doctor doesn't strike me as the type who would love singing (Leela mentions it at some point). I can see him loving music, but not singing. And secondly, I can't see that this incarnation of the Doctor (indeed, any incarnation with the possible exception of Ecclesdoc) would like the Beatles. They're too damn anodyne, too popular, too vapid. Too rubbish, really. We're talking about someone who likes quoting Aldous Huxley and Gertrude Stein and what have you. Someone who likes words. He'd be into Bob Dylan - you could see the Fourth Doctor quoting him, "With your mercury mouth in the missionary time, your eyes like smoke and your prayers like rhymes - marvellous stuff, Sarah Jane," or something - but the Beatles? Would the Fourth Doctor really enjoy songs that go "Love love me do, you know I love you, I'll always be true, please love me do", or "I am the walrus, they are the egg men, coo-coo-ca-choo", or "I'd like to be under the sea in an octopus's garden in the shade"? Actually, I can see him quoting that last one. But that's not the point. The point is... oh... do I have to have a point?
6. When I wrote my review of The Indestructible Man, I presumed there were going to be loads of people writing about how it's a satire on the War on Terror, so I just referred to it and waited for someone else to go into it all in detail. This doesn't seem to have happened, and I'm buggered if I know why. I mean, fine, it refers to Gerry Anderson stories, but that's not the point is it? So I'll re-iterate it here: The Indestructible Man is a satire on the War on Terror. It takes in themes of paranoia, alienation, dehumanisation, fanaticism and segregation, and is therefore one of the most ambitious PDAs ever written. The realisation is uneven, but it's still a remarkably ambitious piece of work. Go and buy it (and if someone could actually write a review about that whole angle, I'd be grateful).
7. The Claws of Axos is a story that would have greatly benefited from more episodes, giving the lie to the old chestnut that quickness is automatically better. It was written as a 7-parter and it shows. Had it been longer it would have had time to develop a plausibility that the Season Seven stories has, but it never feels the complete experience somehow. Instead of getting all sorts of officials in all sorts of offices that would really establish a plausible bureaucracy, we've got this terminally useless bloke Chinn who keeps eating all the time. It's utterly routine apart from that, although the direction is so completely trippy that it^Òs got some sort of strange charm, a bit like The Web Planet - okay, so it looks stupid now, but at least they were trying to do something different and at the time it must have looked fantastic. It deserves criticism on all sorts of levels, but the visuals actually deserve praise, even if they do look bloody stupid now. If you're going for hallucinogenic, than at least do it with conviction.
8. The Android Invasion is pants, and the fact that the villains aren't Daleks shows how easily the Daleks could disguise bad plotting, motivations and so on. I mean, the first episode's very good, actually, but if one listed the ten daftest plot points in Doctor Who, this story would have a good five entries all by itself. The Kraals don't have any reason to invade Earth! The virus is released at the end and doesn't do anything! The Kraal fleet orbiting Earth gets forgotten about! There's no point to the whole "android double" thing - just bomb earth with the virus for God's sake! And CRAYFORD NEVER LOOKED UNDER HIS EYEPATCH! I mean, he must have taken it off sometimes! Unbelievable... and yet... I can't help but feel that if the story had Daleks in, most of those wouldn't seem to matter so much. Except for the thing with the eyepatch, that's just stupid.
9. Silver Nemesis compares the Cybermen to Nazis. CYBERMEN AREN'T NAZIS! Cybermen are communists! I mean, it's obvious for crying out loud! They all look the same, they're all mindless slaves just there to do a job, they want to spread out and make everyone else like them, they crush diversity and individuality - it's Invasion of the Body Snatchers all over again! Cybermen turn anyone into Cybermen, that's the point - no racial discrimination or superior beings tosh. And they don't have a leader - well, except for, duh, the Cyberleader, but he's a "leader" in the sense that a Sergeant Major is a leader, not in the sense that Hitler was a leader. Essentially, Cybermen are all the same, and that's why they're scary, so comparing them to Nazis is just so wrong it defies belief. That's the only vaguely original criticism I can make of Silver Nemesis, apart from that just read someone giving the story a right good pasting (Joe Ford is a good place to start) and imagine I said it.
10. Look, the paradox stuff in Father's Day might be opaque, but just because something isn't directly explained doesn't mean it's automatically bollocks. It's a question of the author building up trust, and while that's almost indefinable I reckon Cornell achieves it here. The early scene with the two versions of the Doctor and Rose is so effortlessly achieved (particularly where the first versions vanish as causality changes) that the story clearly has time travel theory - if you like - at its fingertips. So I'm prepared to take much on trust, and work it out for myself. It may contradict the original series, but the original series contradicted itself all the time anyway.

    So just try and work it out. Like this - if time is a sheet of fabric, the Doctor and Rose returning to the same point is effectively twisting that fabric in an unnatural way locally, and the change in causality effectively happens at a vulnerable point - causing the fabric to rip. You might imagine the result as being like - you know when you cut your hand, and sometimes there's a tiny bit of flesh just hanging off the wound by a flap of skin? Earth is essentially that bit of flesh and the flap of skin is Rose's dad (the point of contact between the injured piece of flesh and the rest of the body). As the TARDIS interior doesn't actually exist in our dimension, but elsewhere, the Doctor can no longer access it because Earth has been cut off from the rest of space-time.

    Anyway, because the wound was caused by Rose's dad not being hit by the car, that becomes the critical action that will close the wound up again (and the Doctor's comparison between the Reapers and bacteria seems equally apt). This is why the car keeps following Rose's dad - to carry on the metaphor of space-time being like a body, it is essentially trying to heal itself by re-establishing this action. After that, space-time sorts itself out, just as your hand eventually regrows its flesh. Things aren't exactly the same - after all, when you cut yourself and heal, all the blood cells aren't exactly in the same place - but it's largely the same, with people being moved about a bit and causality "growing" around actions as is best convenient, to create a new version of space and time that best fits the revised circumstances.

    Or maybe you think you can come up with a better explanation. Fine, have fun working out. Revel in it, don't get angry about it. Because that's half the fun of being a fan, right?

Top Ten Greatest Doctor Who Writers by Graham Pilato 12/1/06

These are, I believe, from what I've seen, read and heard, the ten greatest Doctor Who writers. If their names are on it and it's Who, I'm drawn in like it's Christmas and I ain't got a thing all year long and Santa's smiling and tasting the milk and cookies while I watch... you know, like that. It's like private fireworks. Like chocolate. Like a new Peter Weir movie. I'm there.

(In alphabetical order)

1. Douglas Adams. On the basis of: City of Death mostly, and, well, me being a big fan of his. On top of the Hitchhiker's series, there are his never-bested Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (even though it has major plottings ripped from Shada and City of Death) and The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul. This guy was an outright genius at effecting the skewed but relevant perspective necessary for high comedy. And Doctor Who and science fiction, more generally, were the veins that he worked best in. Perhaps this was because his imagination was too vast for anything else -- I don't know -- but he was ours.

   His masterpiece was surely City of Death. Even though he only coped well for a brief time as script editor, his guidance of the Who verbal texts and plots surely led to an era of the series that was as witty, whimsical and charming as just about anything else ever on television. Unfortunately, it was also a wildly unfocused season, leaving a great majority of the dramatic unities behind on occasion. His Daleks weren't scary and most of his bad guys had invisibly twirling moustaches... The role of editor was actually a pretty bizarre choice for the man, the undisciplined ideas guy that he was. However, without him in that job there never would have been a moment like "the most important punch in history" or "shall we take the lift, or fly?" ... well, there wouldn't.

   See the DVD for a lovely featurette or two. His Doctor Who input was fabulous in spurts, not consistently, as in the case of the other script editors listed in my top ten, but his fabulous spurts were just about the most fabulous spurts ever, ever, ever. And I've been to Old Faithful. Ahem.

   (He would have had a better one-liner there than that one, that's for sure.)

   Though David Fisher and Graham Williams were responsible for a great deal of the plot of City of Death, it was Mr. Adams who brought the incredibly good dialogue and all the discourses on the value of art to society. He was a grandmaster of urbane, subversive sci-fi satire and perfectly aligned with the late-era Tom Baker Doctor Who.

2. Christopher H. Bidmead. On the basis of: season 18 being my favorite Doctor Who TV season, the philosophy and pacing of Castrovalva and the intensely suspenseful descent into the puzzleworld of Frontios. See the Leisure Hive DVD. He's a rather harsh critic and another very devoted maker of Doctor Who -- he rips Tom Baker apart, and the kind of show that Doctor Who had become in the late 70s -- and then he rips his own work apart. His work was focused, serious, and wrenched from what had come before with Mr. Adams' season into a saner, darker, more coherent realm.

   His vision was part of the new regime of producer John Nathan-Turner, whose intent was to streamline the show and give it a new, updated look for the 80s. Also, he wanted to make the stories more centralized, the images more palpable, the high concepts more meaningful, and all this was aimed at a slightly older audience, too, than the young children of the '79 season. Mr. Bidmead was his dogged lead interpreter. He delivered on story after story, keeping the new season taut, well plotted and part of an even tone of combined weariness and rejuvenation. The season's theme was consistent: "entropy increases". You can't run from decay and deliverance from it is almost impossible to achieve... perfectly set for Tom Baker's last year.

   The ideas that year were mostly huge and heady, stood up on artful scientific reaches, contemporary theoretical struts and technobable honest enough to inspire physicists. A bit. The complexity of the art/science divide is a tough one. Have at that, Warriors' Gate detractors. Say what you want about season 18's science, I still have never wavered in my awe at the outside-the-whole-universe scene in Logopolis... Watch it die. Watch Adric actually be a reasonable companion in this season, annoying to many, but still reasonably so for what he provides as an absolute foil to Romana and Tom's Doctor.

   Watch Bidmead's devotion to the big ideas in his era's stories remain palpable all the way through to production, clearly grasped and created by the early Nathan-Turner Era team. No story touched by Mr. Bidmead was lesser than Meglos, and Meglos was still intriguing and startling, uneven but occasionally brilliant.

   I exalt the changes apparent in The Leisure Hive. The trilogy of mainly Bidmead-authored stories tying together Seasons 18 and 19, the Master's return and Tom's regeneration, is right at the heart of where I became a committed, diehard Doctor Who fan when I was a kid. I thank Mr. Bidmead for that.

3. Andrew Cartmel. On the basis of: the freshness of the McCoy Era and the brilliance of the "War" trilogy in the New Adventures. Okay, so this guy is not the greatest proponent of Doctor Who tradition. He undid almost everything that was held dear in terms of continuity of the Doctor and his backstory, but then his efforts to make McCoy's character more mysterious, more powerful and more complicated employed some really fantastic new minds to create this new Doctor. The lean towards magical realism and the postmodern extreme, telling socially relevant and suspiciously allegorical tales in seasons 24 and 25, pygmalion-esque companion definition in season 26, the keeping close with Mr. Platt and Mr. Aaronovitch, all of the effort to play the 7th Doctor as the most enormous small man in the world, "the butterfly wing that causes the hurricane", made Mr. Cartmel's Doctor Who a very, very exciting Doctor Who for any thoughtful or wary kid. It made this show about the push to take action in overcomplication, to effect survival against the odds. It was united thematically, like Bidmead's season 18 and it was incredibly original and utterly timely.

   His War trilogy, Warhead, Warlock and Warchild, suffered from an evolving interest on the part of the writer. He got tired of cyberpunk, as one must. But he did it the best in Warhead. And he made a new psychic and political playground the present for each book of his trilogy.

   Right off the bat, the War books are at odds with Doctor Who tradition, but that tension is clearly the point as well. Suffer the distance of spirit from effort in Warhead. Live like a human trapped in a cat without intention, without human powers, but with the mind of a cat and the spirit of a human, in Warlock. Know the power of ultimate leadership in an ancient power of psychosomatic priority, the notion of the alpha male dominant, simply by necessity of survival in our social packs in Warchild. Doctor Who? What Doctor? But the notion of the all-powerful 7th Doctor, who plans to exacting detail, playing chess with his companions and other precious human lives, was the Time's Champion, the Ka Faraq Gatri, the blah blah blah, was the scariest mofo around. Mr. Cartmel's psychological examination of humanity in some definite noir materials, war-called or not, rocked some serious novel-making. Take the power of his Doctor and then notice that he never actually got his plans just right in these stories. Wonder what the whirlwind is when it's at home.

4. Robert Holmes. On the basis of: well, you name it after 1975... basically being the number one go-to maintenance man for the show through its best and worst eras (up until his death in 1986.) I shan't go into too much detail here, as it's all been said before (and far better than I'm going to put it), but this gentleman was to Doctor Who what Bob Dylan was to Rock 'n' Roll. He made the show that was already great a smarter, wilder, scarier and even greater thriller-immersion experience. Endlessly inspired, a genius for both universe-building dialogue and character duos, duos necessary to make the worlds he so naturally envisioned from his own satirical, jaded, constantly witty, fertile imagination just blossom offscreen... and sometimes on (depending on the director), Robert Holmes wrote or had a hand in writing 8 of the top 12 Doctor Who TV stories in Outpost Gallifrey's 40th Anniversary poll, and 5 of my top 12...

   His best sustained work was while he was the fully employed script editor of Tom Baker's first three seasons, but his best episodes are scattered throughout the series: The Caves of Androzani, Episode 13 of The Trial of a Time Lord, The Talons of Weng-Chiang, Carnival of Monsters, The Ark in Space, The Ribos Operation.

   The entirety of The Ribos Operation took place on about four sets with only nine characters, but the world of that story is so vast, complicated, tragic -- basically incredibly well implied -- you could write a spinoff series there. And his wry Romana was marvelous. Robert Holmes, Satiric World-Maker Extraordinaire.

5. John Lucarotti (and Donald Tosh.) On the basis, mostly, of The Massacre, the best Doctor Who story of the 60s (at least up until Dodo shows up in it.) Because his episodes were historicals that made for terrific drama and fantastic education at once, Lucarotti's three stories -- Marco Polo, The Aztecs and The Massacre -- were the best all-historical stories in Doctor Who (at least until the late 90s.) They had humor, wonder and thoughtful exploration of eras often left out of school curricula. They were genuinely extremely compelling as far as teaching material goes. They are the high standard by which historical Who is compared now.

   Lucarotti's Marco Polo employed a travelogue approach, joining the explorer in the middle of his journey and following him through his adventures all the way to the Court of Kublai Khan, superbly building up suspense en route. The journey, long yet eventful, positively glittered with exciting incidents and intrigue. And his story amongst the pre-Cortez Aztecs pitted history against morality through the eyes of a most sympathetic companion. Both stories placed the strangeness of the other, the Mongols and the Aztecs, firmly in the realm of acceptability to their own time and place. We and our heroes were the interlopers -- changing history or established cultures was inappropriate. We musn't change history, but we can always learn from it -- and redefine it.

   The Massacre stepped even further into that theme, pitting religious intolerance itself against an incredibly sympathetic companion, giving us several doomed characters to worry about as time's arrow came to call, as well as a strong sense of the complicated world of the time, with every character having a different agenda, and nothing ever being too sure until the massacre itself. Lucarotti's vision may have actually been greatly improved by the intervention of script editor Donald Tosh, with his Abbot of Amboise left uncertainly Doctorly, being a double for the Doctor, but unclear if he was the Doctor..., but the premise and the choice of such an inevitably obscure and educative, illuminating and highly conflicted event as the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre for the story were Lucarotti's, so here's to him.

   (But here's to Donald Tosh: the briefly employed but groundbreaking script editor of the first half of Season 3 who, beyond making a masterpiece out of The Massacre, contributed much of the epic quality to The Daleks' Masterplan orchestrating the creation and destruction of both Katarina and Sara Kingdom, comissioned The Ark and The Celestial Toymaker, two of the wildest and most interesting story ideas of the 60s in Doctor Who and who very nearly had the first regeneration story - supposedly very excitingly written - in the second drafts of Toymaker, later rewritten to a duller effect when Gerry Davis came along.)

6. Lawrence Miles. On the basis of: Alien Bodies and Interference, mostly... but also on his impact on the entire run of Who and Who-related novels after 1997, pretty much. The chance to take his own mythology and turn it upside down and rewrite it made him fiendishly mad; it made him work. He was given the chance to do what he'd always wanted to do: to make Doctor Who his. Alien Bodies was the beginning of a new age, a vision of what old ideas could do when washed off and turned around and looked at in a mirror universe. The potential of his paradoxes, his use of alternatives to all assumed notions about the universe, the prospect of simply looking into his fiction and seeing what was there warped the entire run of the 8th Doctor adventures. And everything is meaningful in his stories, grounded in science or not. He generally breaks the laws of the universe to tell his science fiction, actually. His visions are not fantasies but rather fever dreams of twisting universe construction. He's not so much a Holmes-alike satirist world-maker, though, as a witch doctor out to cure our heroes of their lack of consequence.

   He makes other writers work to pursue his ideas as well, inspiring them and frustrating them in equal measure by making it very hard to live up to the sheer vastness of his perspective. He plays with series lightning, burns out fast and then fires up again. He may have had his work done a disservice by the editors of the EDA novels line, Mr. Cole and Mr. Richards, but Mr. Miles' ideas are generally bigger and more involving than any other writer's ideas I know and surely his mark was made.

   He's got Faction Paradox, now, too, to keep him going. But wouldn't it be interesting to see what he might do if Russell T. Davies got to actually befriend him and ask him into the new series' writing circle? What could it be like? I don't know if I want to know.

7. Steven Moffat. On the basis of: everything that he's done for Doctor Who has been the best of its entire subgenre and/or format, essentially. His episodes, The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances, are the best of the Ninth Doctor's era. His short story Continuity Errors, in Decalog III: Consequences, was just about the best Doctor Who short story ever, certainly in the tip top percentile. And his "The Least Important Man" is surely one of the best Benny short stories ever. Plus, he wrote the best ever Doctor Who parody, The Curse of the Fatal Death, which -- I'm serious -- is brilliant.

   After all of that best-ness, what do we actually see in what this guy does? What's it all worth? What has kept him so busy not writing for Doctor Who much, much more often? He's a professional. And a fan. He's had an actually legit television writing career with "Coupling" and "Chalk" and um, other... funny... stuff... but he's ours, he's one of us. Simply, he writes efficiently and for a clear dramatic effect. He appears to really know the power of his images and his ideas and how to run with them without dropping the good bits. He's a practiced master, not interested in telling giant epics so much as brief little gems, knowing the use of limits. His stories, quirky and charming as they are, are still exquisitely tightly paced and very affecting. And actually, really scary. His gas-mask people are actually a perfect example of his ability to clue right into what images have the most profound effects upon people. Mr. Moffat knows his audience, knows what pop culture references will work, knows how to get under our skin.

   He's still writing for the second season of the new series. He's very, very good and Mr. Davies knows it. (Thank god.)

8. Jim Mortimore. On the basis of: Campaign, Lucifer Rising, The Natural History of Fear, Eye of Heaven and Parasite, mostly. But then that's five things to have as mostly and I think everything with Jim Mortimore's name on it is definitely worth looking into. In the end, his best stories are bound to be the ones where he has the most control over his vision. In the case of Campaign, there was a wild and challenging vision, fraught with imcompatibility with the staid, 280 page limits of BBC Books. And so he published it on his own. And it's just about the trippiest, strangest and most involving Doctor Who book ever made. Of course, it's not supposed to even exist at this point, so just do what you have to do and find it.

   And vision with Mr. Mortimore does not mean some kind of nifty big idea that will simply supply a good story and a thankful fanbase; it means a fiercely individualized perspective on exactly what this ride will be, what this wonder will be. He takes his audience to other worlds, worlds that are stranger and more mind-blowing than just about any other writer's in Doctor Who, certainly more consistently. This wonder is, I believe, the point of Mr. Mortimore's work, to take us on an adventure that offers wonder to a painful extreme.

   The nightmares that he got from the apocalypse in Inferno as a boy, or perhaps the sight of the whole universe winking out in Logopolis, these things keep this giant talent with us Doctor Who fans, I expect. This context is important because he so easily transcends it once he gets going.

   Essentially he's not even a Doctor Who writer -- he surely doesn't play well with his writing mates, not when his stories are meant to tell a somewhat continuous one with what's come before and what's coming next. Other writers have to fight to stay on course after every time one of his bold works rocks the boat so hard. He's not a Doctor Who team-writer so much as a single dreamer at a keyboard, another madman visionary like Lawrence Miles who just shares this expanding mythology with us -- only Mr. Mortimore's worlds aren't always doused in continuity and the series mythology. When the mythology is present, it's as a cue to realize the nature of the mythology itself, as in Blood Heat's alternative Earth ruled by Silurians with an estranged, too violent UNIT, and then Campaign's whole existence at odds with continuity. He writes to create his version of the Doctor, his version of the companion, like some other authors, but his versions are often gratingly at odds with expectations. They're often even more interesting or at least more powerful than other versions.

   And with this difference, he pushes us. He means to take his favored audience into the uncomfortable territory of actually perceiving real, sheer wonder/terror. His games of stories are genuinely disturbing. The numbers of deaths and the methods of dying are beyond any other writer to convey.

   Take Parasite. It's the nastiest thing. It's brilliant. It has no business in a cozy Doctor Who series with the likes of Terrance Dicks writing stories nearby. You'll cut your mind reading it. It's a David Cronenberg movie with an unlimited budget set in a vaster than vast biological artefact drifting into local space, set in the context of human canibalism as a common urge, a metaphor that runs through the piece. It's a mess. It's hard to enjoy as an experience, filled as it is with torture. But it's so exquisitely visceral and sensual that you'll want to hammer a nail into your thumb just to snap out of the numb terror of psychophysical awe/revulsion it puts you in.

9. Marc Platt. On the basis of: Ghost Light, his Gallifreyan myth-making and Spare Parts. Or, rather, on the basis of his moment-to-moment magic, difficult as it may be to follow sometimes. Mr. Platt's provocative way with the language, with the forgotten turns of phrase you never thought you'd hear again after your dreams ended some time long ago that you can't recall, summoning hauntings and planetwide conquerings, merely on the basis of a single phrase you can't believe you're hearing now... Or not. It's a gamble, I think, whatever you might call psychic connections in writing to an audience. But I know that this man's writing gets deep under my skin and sometimes it's something so simple as a turn of phrase. The "basilisks and unicorns" bit and the "I loathe bus stations" lines in Ghost Light, not to mention "the cream of Scotland Yard"... and the moment of "Wilby" who "will be the Doctor" in Time's Crucible... the "Daddy, look at my uniform" stuff from a proto-Cybergirl in Spare Parts... He hits with subtlety by diction and by moment.

   But it's his wilder ideas too, though, such as in A Storm of Angels when the avarice of the explorers is an infection of gemstone skin and bones. But listen to the Doctor describe the gorgeous heavenly reaches of the sky from his alternative 1st persona here as well. What language is this that other writers are misusing? How come no one else gets to have images this good in Doctor Who?

   I've been told he was too complicated in Ghost Light and Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible, but I do happen to believe that he was only just getting as far along and as deep as can be. Testing the waters, testing us. Trying to make more meaning, to make everything mean something. But maybe he was just too intense. Bits in Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible about moving across the infinite inversion of the TARDIS and its many time zones, wildly imaginative as they were, were tedious for some. Naming the monster "the Process" squealed out pretension when readers were craving Cybermen and Daleks. But the monster was the process, of course, and the ideas were huge.

   Thank goodness we had this man to care for that holiest of holies, the Doctor's homecoming story, Lungbarrow. One may choose to ignore its implications or even its relevance to mythology, but we who have read it know what a world Mr. Platt created. What a house!

10. Rob Shearman. On the basis of: Punchline, The Holy Terror, The Chimes of Midnight, Jubilee, Deadline, Scherzo and Dalek. Another genius of unique visionary approaches, Mr. Shearman writes plays about fairly ordinary people who are faced with impossible conundrums, asking them and the audience to question how they would deal with the absurd situation. His stories are highly formulaic, but the formula is all his own: tragedies of an impossible fiction. The man writes his characters' paradoxical nightmares into a tragic loop, they see what is wrong with the nature of their world and their own actions in it and then they have to choose to accept their situation or not. Except in the case of Deadline, where the opposite is the point of the story, they choose not. And the man keeps varying the story on that formula to keep himself interested, I suppose.

    It fascinates the long-term fan and keeps the immediate audience aware of the fiction in the fiction. It makes his Daleks so much more frightening, being the obvious extension of the human urge to be single-minded and self-servingly nasty to anyone else. It makes his heroes that step into self-awareness just that much more sympathetic and it makes both his own role as a writer and the audience's role as observer that much more important and a part of the fiction itself. What are we to do, in the case of both Punchline and Deadline, when we are as much conversant with the creation and enjoyment of the fiction as is the lead character? The fantasies that they have are ours to continue with or not.

    The heroes in Shearman stories are reliant on us like Tinkerbell is on her audience. If we don't care and we don't clap along, the point of the story falls apart. It's more involving and more disturbing than just about anything else I know of in fiction.

    What more can we ask for in a thriller a writer who makes us both think and care about the action itself of living?

    As the only writer in my top ten who is a dramatist by majority of audios, I also believe Mr. Shearman stands out as a writer for the sheer attraction of his characters' interplay. I believe that there are very few audios that call out for replay as easily as TV Doctor Who episodes may call to be replayed and it's far more the writer's burden to make the dialogue work to that effect on audio. Only Mr. Platt, Mr. Shearman and Mr. Pascoe have had the knack of regularly drawing my attention back to their audios merely by their moments of wit and eloquence.

    Honorable Mentions:

    Ben Aaronovitch (not interested in shaking up the world quite as much as Lawrence Miles, but of the same gigantic ideas writing ilk, a writer who galvanized the late 80s TV series and its novelisations as well as the early New Adventure novels; see the novelisation of Remembrance of the Daleks, Transit, So Vile a Sin and The Also People)

    Paul Cornell (the foremost fan fabulist, creator of Professor Bernice Summerfield, justified often as just about the most popular Doctor Who writer of the 90s, Mr. Too Deep for the Small Screen; see Happy Endings, Love and War, Human Nature, Timewyrm: Revelation)

    Terrance Dicks (master of charming Doctor Who formula fun, the number two go-to maintenance man for the show in its best and worst eras; see Robot, The Five Doctors, State of Decay, The War Games, Timewyrm: Exodus, Horror of Fang Rock, Catastrophea and World Game)

    David Fisher (overshadowed by the greater genius of Douglas Adams in the period of his tenure as a regular series writer, a brilliant combiner of zany, elaborate plots and potentials with some very serious and profound perspectives on the human condition; see The Stones of Blood, The Androids of Tara, The Leisure Hive and many of the main plots of City of Death)

    Don Houghton (questioner of the nature of free will in Doctor Who and of the depths of human depravity once a pandora's box of sorts is opened, twice brilliant; see Inferno and The Mind of Evil)

    Rona Munro (the writer of my favorite Sylvester McCoy story of the 80s, someone who surely appreciated the enormous power of mixmatching the mundane and the fantastical; see Survival)

    Daniel O' Mahony (oh how wild and amazing this man's prose is; see his work in The Man in the Velvet Mask, The Cabinet of Light and Nothing at the End of the Lane from Short Trips and Side Steps)

    Kate Orman (the first repeat great female writer for Doctor Who, a student and a champion of the New Adventure novels of the 90s, she, latterly with her husband Jonathan Blum, was the continual bright light of hero characterization and catharsis in the novels; see Set Piece, So Vile a Sin, Seeing I, Vampire Science and The Year of Intelligent Tigers)

    Lloyd Rose (the writer of those deliciously detailed gothic 8th Doctor novels that make one's mind go "ffwhaaaa;" see City of the Dead and Camera Obscura)

    Stephen Wyatt (the first magical realist writer of the McCoy era, easily one of the most creative and ingenious writers of that time; see Paradise Towers and The Greatest Show in the Galaxy)

    And also not to be forgotten, brilliant as they often have been, we've got: David Whitaker, Andy Lane, Jacqueline Rayner, Terry Nation, Chris Boucher, Justin Richards, Russell T. Davies, Eric Saward, Christopher Bailey, Stephen Gallagher, Paul Magrs, Steve Lyons, Lance Parkin, Paul Leonard, Mark Gatiss and Dave Stone.

    Also, recent work by Caroline Symcox, Phillip Pascoe, Jonathan Morris and Martin Day should be noted ... and others... that are great now and will be greater -- and will be namechecked by me and more down the road... yo.

The Top Ten New Series Doctor Who Episodes by Benjamin Bland 17/2/06

Although I have not been overawed by the quality of the new series of Doctor Who I have, probably, been impressed overall. Here's the top ten of the 2005 episodes.

1. The Christmas Invasion
   The first half is lousy but in the second half David Tennant just carries the story away to make this the overall most impressive Who story of 2005.
2. Rose
   Not archetypal Who but still a very good first episode. The Autons make a memorable return and Christopher Eccleston gives what is probably his best performance in the series.
3. Dalek
   This may well have been better than the two above if it hadn't been for all the ridiculous stuff at the end about the Dalek turning good. Let alone saying Rose is the woman the Doctor loves, please!
4. The Empty Child
   A good story although not as good as is said by some others. Has some massive plot holes in it but entertaining enough, the only Who that's at all scary so far in the new series.
5. The Unquiet Dead
   Again not as good as some say but still a great Doctor Who story penned by Mark Gatiss.
6. The Doctor Dances
   Not great; why isn't the Doctor saving the world here?. Isn't that what he's here for? He doesn't really do anything worthwhile in this story apart from flirt endlessly with Rose.
7. Fathers Day
   Not great Who, but still an ok story. Rubbish title though. Why is Rose so stupid? Again this time the Doctor has nothing to do with saving the day. Why had Paul Cornell tagged on such an artificial and unnecessary 'end of the world' scenario>
8. The End Of The World
   Daft but funny.
9. The Long Game
   Not keen on this at first but it's grown on me.
10. Aliens Of London
    Ok but a bit too CBBCish for my liking. Reminisance a bit of McCoy's first season.

    So there's the top ten. Here's the rest though, in case you're interested.

11. World War Three
    An Okish ending to Aliens Of London.
12. Bad Wolf
    Why does Russell T Davies seem to think we Who fans want to see reality TV? Not very good, interesting idea though.
13. The Parting Of The Ways
    A pretty bad ending to the series I'm afraid. The return of the Daleks is pretty soft and the way they are dispelled is dreadful.
14. Boom Town
    The worst Doctor Who episode EVER! Nuff said.

My idea for a repeat season of Doctor Who episodes by Thomas Cookson 30/3/06

As I said in my City of Death review, I am disappointed that the popularity of the new series seems to have given the BBC and popular culture more distance with which to sweep the embarrassment that is the old series of Doctor Who under the carpet to be forgotten about. I must say that nothing cements my opinion more than the fact that the BBC has refused to show any repeats of old episodes for reasons that can't be fathomed otherwise. Doctor Who is popular now and people are eager for the showing of Season Two; why not satisfy their hunger and curiosity for a while with old repeats? (Well actually I was eager for Season Two until they showed The Christmas Invasion which as a mediocre standalone with no other episodes to support it has truly thinned out my interest in future Doctor Who to the point where a new season is something I feel I could take or leave, to be honest). I honestly feel there must be some newcomers to the series who might be just slightly curious about old Doctor Who and would give it a look in if they repeated it. But no, the BBC is basically winking at the new popular audience as if to say "trust me, you don't need or want to see the older ones."

And why not? And what's this fixation with talking down the old series? As if the new series was the first time that Doctor Who did emotional content, or grittiness, or convincing characterisation, or looked at the consequences of the Doctor's actions.

I think that the BBC (and Russell T. Davies currently seems happy to help them in this) always enjoys treating the fans mean to keep them keen.

I acknowledge of course that it is difficult to select which stories to show to a new audience since a lot of them can try the patience or credulity of the modern audience. Certainly the 2000 repeats were a disaster because I think interest became lost when The Silurians went on too long. So I've selected stories that I feel would hold interest, that are reasonably action driven and which aren't so dated, as well as focusing on the key choices that link well into the new series for various reasons. Also, I decided that to keep the momentum going, the episodes should be shown in twos rather than once a week; that would, after all, fill a similar Friday evening 45 minute slot segment to the new series episodes. But here goes anyhow.

1. An Unearthly Child
   Just to give William Hartnel his moment in the sun, and to let people know how Doctor Who first began. I would only show the first episode since it is the highlight of interest and intrigue, and I wouldn't show it independently, but as part of an overall Doctor Who night.
2. The War Games
   As black and white episodes go, I think this is probably the one with the most modern appeal: it's a lot more fast-paced than most of the stories of that era. It also has a simplicity that makes it easier to warm to than Tomb of the Cybermen, The Mind Robber or The Seeds of Death and it is probably the most definitive encapsulation of the Doctor's role as galactic crusader against the evil of the galaxy, as well as capturing the magic of the Doctor and Jamie's partnership. I feel it would go down well with modern viewers due to its envisioning of the Time Lords, and shares a similar sense of reality dissolving as Father's Day. On the whole I think it likely that viewers would stick around for five weeks of this, even though it's all black & white. Actually I think this would work best in a separate Saturday morning slot aimed at the young'uns.
3. Spearhead from Space
   Would be the perfect follow-on to The War Games and obviously shares significance to the new series in its portrayal of the Autons. Aside from that it's got a great visual dynamic and sense of pace.
4. Inferno
   I think this is a lot more exciting than The Silurians, with some outstanding cliffhangers. I think the inclusion of this story would be essential for covering the parallel universe concept, as well as the theme of life choices which are recurring throughout the new series, and it's also essential for letting it be known that Doctor Who did do emotional material back in the day.
5. Genesis of the Daleks
   Well the sew series has shown the Daleks, it's only fair that a repeat season should show their beginnings. I think this is a great piece for reflecting on the Dalek episode last year and the striking comparisons and contrasts throughout. Let's face it the two stories were made for each other!
6. Terror of the Zygons
   Well I'm sure plenty of fans who are waiting for this one to come out on DVD would be thrilled to see it again, especially for the sake of some good rapport between the Doctor and the Brigadier. As for a new audience, I think it shows some of Doctor Who's more believeable alien costumes. This one could also fit best in the Saturday morning kids slot.
7. The Deadly Assassin
   I can't be sure but I think there's a strong likelihood that the new series will revive the Master at some point, and I can think of no better story than this one to show the old villain at the height of his powers, and also for a more in-depth view of Gallifrey, and to show the modern audience that Doctor Who did The Matrix first and best.
8. Horror of Fang Rock
   I feel that a Victorian-era story would be most welcome in order to nod at the inspiration of The Unquiet Dead. However Talons of Weng-Chiang is a bit too long and talky for the modern audience and Ghost Light would go over everyone's head, so I guess Fang Rock is the ideal candidate. It's claustrophobic, it's relentless, it's scary.
9. City of Death
   For me it's the archetypal Doctor Who story that I can see non-fans warming to easily. In any case I think it's a nice demonstration in the context of the other choices that Doctor Who doesn't have to be dark and bleak in order to be brilliant.
10. Earthshock Oh what am I thinking about, I nearly forgot about the Cybermen. I think this is one of their more visually up to speed stories and still conveys the Cybermen's indestructibility well.
11. Revelation of the Daleks
    Well it's the only decent Colin Baker story that comes to mind. It also stands as one of Doctor Who's most unusual scripts, and it's very cool to see the Daleks again.
12. The Curse of Fenric
    This story is what I consider to be the most accessible of the Seventh Doctor stories. And it also is most reminiscent of the new series: with the World War II setting, the scene involving sanctuary in a church, etc. I can't see modern audiences picking a single bone with this one.

Top 10 episodes I loved as a kid but realize aren't so great now by Matt Anderson 13/4/06

I watched every episode as a kid and now again as an adult I watched every known televised episode recently on a public channel in Philadelphia. Which, for unfathomable reasons, was forced to stop showing old episodes once the new series began airing.

1. The Two Doctors
   Kid: Multiple Doctors! Jamie and Peri! Sontarans and neat space station and cannibals!
   Adult: The second Doctor and Jamie were utterly wasted and if Peri wasn't in a bikini to start the show, what would be the point?
2. The Mind Robber
   Kid: Robots and soldiers and no faces and giant books!
   Adult: The first episode was rather cool, then a bunch of 15 minute overacted messes.
3. Day of the Daleks
   Kid: The Daleks! Yes!
   Adult: What, exactly, do the Daleks do here besides act tough? The time travel logic doesn't work for a second.
4. Horns of Nimon
   Kid: Mazes and a guy with a bull head!
   Adult: Must I pile on? It's horrid.
5. Leisure Hive
   Kid: The Doctor gets really old!
   Adult: Yikes! A mannered mess that's more exercise video than entertainment.
6. Planet of Fire
   Kid: The Master and volcanoes!
   Adult: Peri in a bikini pretty much was the last second of entertainment. Time stood still.
7. Invasion of Time
   Kid: Nifty ghosts, Sontarans in the TARDIS!
   Adult: Episode 5 is pretty cool, the rest is all but unwatchable.
8. Colony in Space
   Kid: Creepy aliens in the cave, savages, robots with claws!
   Adult: Exactly how many gunfights can one story really have without it being totally ridiculous?
9. The Chase
   Kid: all those Daleks and settings!
   Adult: Couldn't they make the slightest effort to keep people older than 8 entertained?
10. Power of Kroll
    Kid: Giant octopus!
    Adult: The thrills are very few and far between with unending scenes of actors looking at monitors.

Top 10 Stories I hated as a Kid but realize they are truly Great by Matt Anderson 23/4/06

1. Talons of Weng-Chiang
   Kid: Where are the rats? What is going on?
   Adult: perhaps the most complex plot of any story, great acting, totally fascinating.
2. Ambassadors of Death
   Kid: Those spacesuits are the only monster?
   Adult: So the government is the monster!
3. Ribos Operation
   Kid: Are we ever going to see that crawling alligator again?
   Adult: Entertaining, if a bit over-dramatic, con game
4. City of Death
   Kid: Do they have to run around in the street again?
   Adult: Brilliant and funny sarcasm, wonderful and original plot.
5. Pirate Planet
   Kid: Who is that shouting at me?
   Adult: Yes, the pirate screams a lot, but gee whiz it's creative and another great plot.
6. The Aztecs
   Kid: Where exactly is the monster?
   Adult: Perhaps the only sign that the Doctor wished he had a girlfriend other than his efforts to keep Jo away from her future husband in The Green Death.
7. Delta and the Bannermen
   Kid: What is going on? First purple monsters and now some guy that looks like the Master eating raw meat?
   Adult: Yes, it's silly and tacky but it was not dull but kind of warm instead.
8. Mark of the Rani
   Kid: Who are all these people?
   Adult: When the Rani calls the Master an "asinine cretin" I laugh every time.
9. Caves of Androzani
   Kid: so who exactly is and is not an android and who wants the guns?
   Adult: Easily the best directed of the "classic" stories and the only good example of the Fifth Doctor actually acting like heroic, sarcastic, confrontational Doctor instead of the shrill grouch the Fifth Doctor too often was.
10. War Games
    Kid: Unending.
    Adult: It has its clunkers - no Brit should attempt a Southern drawl - but fabulous plot and the last two episodes are excellent.

Top 10 stories that seem as good now as when I was a kid by Matt Anderson 4/5/06

1. Genesis of the Daleks
   Still as gripping now as when I was 6. "From their evil comes a greater good" is a truly special moment.
2. Inferno
   OK, it might not make much sense now, but good scary monsters, a fun plot and the end of the world is very intense.
3. The Ark in Space
   Always a thrilling problem around the next corner, monsters that aren't truly evil, excellent speeches.
4. The Robots of Death
   Murderous robots are terrifying at any age and the second best example (after Caves of Androzani) of the Doctor goading the villain with continuous sarcasm.
5. The Silurians
   Very eerie music, wonderful plot and monsters, horrifying ending.
6. Pyramids of Mars
   A little yappy at times and a lot of the same lines over and over again "The humans will be destroyed!" but gosh it's fun to have those mummies wandering around killing people.
7. Earthshock
   Creepy caves then way off into deep space and back again. We go a long way, nice surprise at the end of part 1, always a sense of impending doom. A lot crammed into 4 parts.
8. Carnival of Monsters
   Lots of monsters, time loops, goofy costumes and overall a nice plot and even though the monsters are very lame, if you can just ignore that it is pretty scary.
9. Terror of the Vervoids
   It was the only part I could comprehend of the whole trial season and now I know why. A decent murder mystery and a Dalek-like massacre at the end. The only one of the four trial stories that isn't totally imbecilic.
10. Seeds of Doom
    Scary living plants, the Doctor in a chopper and the Antartica setting all so horrifying. Still works now as a great horror movie.

Top 10 stories that I hated as a kid and with good reason as I see them now by Matt Anderson 8/6/06

1. The Ultimate Foe
   What does this have to do with anything? Considering they are now on the 10th Doctor, hopefully this 2-episode mess will be ignored. Must I ruin the "plot" to explain why?
2. Underworld
   Dank and dull for 4 straight episodes.
3. The Armageddon Factor
   Exactly how many times can we hear "Fire!" and "The Key to Time is Mine!" without wanting to kick the television?
4. The Brain of Morbius
   Nothing happens, then there's a goofy monster yelling for a while, then nothing happens again.
5. Timelash
   Staggeringly annoying voices, characters and there is virtually no plot at all, yet it goes on and on and on. It's as if they expected to be cancelled before the final episode.
6. The Twin Dilemma
   Exactly what in the hell did they think they were doing having a psychotic Doctor attack the luscious Peri? An attempt to drive away viewers and it worked. The rest of the 4 episodes was a tacky exercise in who cares?
7. Time and the Rani
   At least having the Rani mock the screeching Mel made someone upstairs realize they had to ditch Mel ASAP.
8. The Two Doctors
   Where is everybody? It all seemed so cheap and thrown together and dull. That's exactly what it was.
9. Robot
   I remember being so excited to see a new Doctor and immediately wished the old one was still on as Tom Baker was so aloof and grating. I don't think the terrible plot helped.
10. An Unearthly Child
    1 episode of staggering excitement and 3 episodes of feeling like I had insomnia.