Pull To Open: A Random Doctor Who Podcast

All the Doctor had to do was close the bloody TARDIS door. Instead, a sparkler from space hitches a ride to Renaissance Italy, recruits an astrologer, and sets out to stop humanity from ever getting too smart for its own good. The Masque of Mandragora looks like lavish BBC Shakespeare, sounds like a thesis on science vs. superstition, and somehow gives us skin-tight tights, cultists doing the Hoke...

Some Doctor Who stories become legends because everyone has seen them. The Tomb of the Cybermen became one partly because, for decades, hardly anyone could. So when the long-lost Troughton classic finally busted out of cold storage, could the real thing possibly live up to the myth? Well… mostly. Patrick Troughton is at the height of his powers, the Cybermen have rarely sounded weirder or looked m...

Nikola Tesla invented our world. So why does Doctor Who keep trying to give him credit for WiFi? Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror has everything a great historical needs on paper: one of history’s weirdest geniuses, Thomas Edison as his foil, a terrific Goran Višnjić performance, and alien scavengers who could have been the cosmic extension of the Edison-Tesla rivalry. Instead, the sparks never quit...

There are Doctor Who stories that look cheap, and then there’s Underworld : the story so broke it couldn’t afford a cave. Its vast underground world was instead conjured with experimental CSO, earning the serial a reputation that has survived for nearly half a century. But hold the fumigation! Beneath those wobbly electronic rocks lurk some genuinely huge ideas: the Time Lords’ disastrous first at...

Achoo! Humanity may have survived millions of years into the future, but apparently the common cold is still an extinction-level threat. The Ark sends the First Doctor, Steven and brand-new companion Dodo aboard an enormous generation ship packed with humans, Monoids, miniature criminals and one very real elephant—then delivers one of the greatest cliffhangers in Doctor Who history. Shame about wh...

Doctor Who’s ⁠Cold War⁠ has the perfect pitch: an Ice Warrior wakes up aboard a Soviet nuclear submarine in 1983, with Matt Smith, Jenna Coleman, Liam Cunningham, Tobias Menzies and David Warner trapped beneath the Arctic ice. So why does it feel less like The Hunt for Red October with a Martian and more like an ordinary Doctor Who episode that happens to be wet? Join us as we crack open Skaldak’s...

Doctor Who meets the Devil! No, wait—sorry, the Doctor insists it’s actually science. The Dæmons brings the UNIT era to full folk-horror boil, complete with white witches, heat barriers, Morris dancers, one extremely patient gargoyle, and Roger Delgado’s Master hiding in plain sight with the diabolical alias “Mr. Magister.” But is this beloved Pertwee classic a perfect fusion of rationalism and vi...

Mind the gap—and the homicidal fungus. The Web of Fear takes Doctor Who underground for a six-part siege featuring eerily convincing Tube tunnels, bulletproof Yeti and, halfway through, one highly suspicious Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart. But is this rediscovered classic genuinely terrifying, or an overextended web of tunnel shenanigans, magical foam and comedy accents? Join us as we investigate the...

Let’s Kill Hitler promises history’s biggest time-travel trolley problem, then stuffs Hitler in a cupboard and turns into River Song: The Origin Story at hyperspeed. Steven Moffat’s chaotic midseason premiere delivers bootstrap paradoxes, poison lipstick, Amy and Rory unknowingly parenting their own daughter, and a human-shaped spaceship staffed by tiny people with homicidal antibodies. But can Ma...

Christmas is canceled. Doctor Who isn’t. But as RTD exits under a cloud of Winternox, we’re all a bit Bafflers about what comes next. Pull To Open pours one out, and thrashes out where the show should go next. Hard or soft reboot? Continue with Billie Piper or start afresh? And who can handle the hardest showrunning job in all of time and space? Join us for the finest bespoke headcanon around, fro...

Open the box, Pull To Open listeners—but be sure your mind is ready. Kinda is the kinda… er kind of Doctor Who story where the themes are so rich you don’t care what it looks like. Which is just as well because the jungle looks like a garden center, the villain looks like an ’80s music-video nightmare, and the real monster may be your own mind. Peter Davison’s trip to Deva Loka banks hard into Bud...

Doctor Who fans have long feared Fear Her —and not necessarily for the reasons the episode intended. A lonely child, a suburban street, a cupboard-dad, a doodle monster, a rogue Isolus, and one baffling Olympic torch relay all add up to what may be the most filler-y filler episode Russell T Davies ever filled. But is it really as bad as its reputation suggests? Chris reaches for the Ogron almost i...

It’s the end of the universe as Moffat knows it, and somehow we feel fine. The Pandorica Opens and The Big Bang two-parter throws every monster in the closet at Stonehenge, locks the Doctor in the most mythic box since the TARDIS, shoots Amy, explodes reality, gives Rory 2,000 years of plastic husband duty, and then fixes everything with a wedding phrase. Does it all make sense? Frequently! Does i...

The Leisure Hive should be a relaxing holiday: a beachside opening, fabulous costumes, and Lalla Ward dressed like she just won regatta season. Instead, we find a story with enough ideas for three serials and enough pacing for half of one. Is it a commentary on nuclear war? A tourism satire? A hard-sci-fi flex? A lizard-mafia caper? Somehow it’s all of them, plus the moment Doctor Who quietly kill...

Come one, come all to the Psychic Circus — where the audience kills, the clowns are robots, and the Doctor may be only one striped scarf away from becoming one himself. This week, Pull To Open tackles The Greatest Show in the Galaxy , a late-McCoy oddity that somehow manages to be creepy, funny, ambitious, and weirdly relevant all at once. Is the Chief Clown an all-time villain? Are the Gods of Ra...

Five years, 160 stories, one increasingly suspicious Randomizer. Pull To Open has reached the exact midpoint of its mad dash through all of Doctor Who, so Pete and Chris are taking a break from the usual TL;DW chaos to ask the big questions: How did this thing start? When did the podcast actually get good? Which Doctors and eras has the Randomizer weirdly favored — or avoided — and why does Doctor...

September 7, 1987: a date that lives in Doctor Who infamy—at least for Chris, who rage-quit the show the moment Time and the Rani introduced the Seventh Doctor in the most cursed way imaginable. Bad wigs, mangled aphorisms, quarry overload, neon overkill, and a regeneration scene that practically dares you to change the channel: this one has it all. But is the story merely a disaster, or a pivotal...

The Sea Devils should be an all-timer: the Master returns, the Navy shows up, the Doctor tries to broker peace, and the monsters have one of the most iconic “emerging from the sea” entrances ever. And yet… why do we learn so little about Sea Devil society? Why is the prison run by a duffer with sword décor and futuristic venetian blinds TVs ? And why does this story quietly force the Doctor into t...

Pull To Open goes on location! Pete and Chris hit Gallifrey One in Los Angeles as total Gally virgins, gawping at “chemicals on fire” sunsets, accidentally learning how expensive fandom can be, and collecting hot takes like they’re limited-edition prints. Along the way: Peter Davison (and the Tom Baker advice he still can’t hear), Millie Gibson popping in like it’s no big deal, and a convention fl...

Some stories upgrade the villains. This one upgrades everything. We venture to Pete’s World to face the stompiest reintroduction of a classic foe in r Rise of the Cybermen and The Age of Steel . But are these metal men truly scary, or are they just Bluetooth bullies from Big Tech? Let’s debate the genius of rewriting Cyber-history, discuss what the story steals from Spare Parts, and say goodbye (m...

It’s the Second Doctor’s second story, and he’s already cross-dressing, bashing heads, and doing the worst German accent this side of Oktoberfest. The Highlanders is a story where the Doctor flails through post-regeneration weirdness while Ben, Polly, and proto-companion Jamie navigate the aftermath of Culloden and a plot to sell Scots into slavery. With violent slapstick, dodgy disguises, and an...

Season seven of Pull To Open begins where all great potholing expeditions do: deep underground, with claw marks from the Randomizer and a moral crisis waiting at the exit. This week it’s Doctor Who and the Silurians , the only story bold enough to put “Doctor Who” in the title, and then end by asking: “So… was that a genocide?” Pete and Chris debate Malcolm Hulke’s surprisingly textured reptiles,...

Long before Skynet, the British Post Office built its own murderbot. In The War Machines , a supercomputer called WOTAN tries to conquer the world by... hypnotizing secretaries and constructing clunky Dalek knockoffs in a warehouse. And honestly? It almost works. Join us as we revisit the First Doctor’s most tech-forward outing, featuring the debut of companions Ben and Polly, the Inferno Club (no...

What happens when the Daleks land in 1930s New York and start questioning who they are? You get one of Doctor Who’s strangest detours for a marquee monster, where the Cult of Skaro grapples with ambition, identity, and a makeover ambitious enough for a Broadway musical. We dig into how Daleks in Manhattan and Evolution of the Daleks blend showbiz sparkle with Hooverville grit, why Dalek Sec’s big...

Ahoy, space scallywags! This week the Randomizer maroons us in The Space Pirates , the six-part “epic” so padded it should come with its own flotation device. Join us as we navigate Argonite economics, Star Trek knockoff vibes, Clancy's comedy moustache, a CEO who is definitely up to something, and a TARDIS crew who spends most of the story confused, kidnapped, or both. Is this Bob Holmes’ sec...