Doctor Who: Radio Free Skaro

With the New! Doctor! Who! countdown clock having more than two months on it, a mandate was declared by the Three Who Rule that now is the time for Season 7A commentaries. NOW. Over the coming weeks their trademark brand of pedantism, whimsy and love for classic rock will undoubtedly distract from the adventures of the Doctor, Amy and Rory playing out before them onscreen, starting this week with...

The bulk of this week's episode is devoted to "Chicks Unravel Time," edited by Deb Stanish and L.M. Myles, a follow-up by Mad Norwegian Press to the widely praised "Chicks Dig Time Lords." In this book, each writer tackled a different season of Classic Who, with sometimes surprising results! The editors of this weighty tome told Warren and Steven about the creation of the book, the wide range of v...

This week sees the Three Who Rule in rest mode after five weeks of exhilarating new Doctor Who episodes, and before they begin inviting a few of their friends, old and new, to join them for the next few weeks of podcasting whimsy. As such, much waffling occurs as topics veer from Doctor Who (thankfully) to Red Dwarf to Robocop to 1988 (or is it 1987?) and the contemporary career trajectory of a yo...

The Angels Take Manhattan….and, to various degrees, the hearts of Warren, Steven, and Chip the Two Minute Time Lord, who sat in Chris's stead to review the mid-season finale and the departure of Matt Smith's near and dear companions, the Ponds. Weeping Statues of Liberty, questions of style vs. substance and what comes next for the series all reared their silent, menacing stone visages before comi...

The Three Who Rule took almost as long to talk about "The Power of Three" this week as the (admittedly truncated) episode itself took to play out on UK television screens. So what did Steven, Warren and Chris think of the slow invasion of the world by an Ikea fever dream? Did they enjoy the emergence of a new generation of UNIT leadership or the strengthening of emotional bonds between the Doctor,...

Steven returns this week to the Radio Free Skaro fold after spending the previous week in a Doctor Who-less desolation in the form of the lakes area of Northern Wisconsin. A completely different desolate location (namely, Almeria, Spain) served as the backdrop of Episode Three of Series 7a of Doctor Who, A Town Called Mercy, a sharp-looking homage to the many spaghetti Westerns that were filmed in...

With Steven quite literally in a Cabin In The Woods, cut off from much of humanity and completely ignorant of "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship," it was up to Warren, Chris and special guest star Chip, the Two-Minute Time Lord, to hash out their feelings about thunder lizards, Egyptian queens and guest stars from the Potterverse. But it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows and puppy dogs and fluffy clouds and...

New Doctor Who! Yes, Asylum of the Daleks marked the return of the good Doctor and his erstwhile companions for the first time since last Christmas, and in high style with quite literally EVERY DALEK EVER making an appearance. What did the Three Who Rule think of Asylum? You'll just have to tune in and find out, but suffice it to say their opinions were less than uniform. All this and Pond Life, a...

We're officially into the home stretch toward the return of Doctor Who. After leaving the launch date until late in the game, as the BBC likes to do, it was formalized this past week that Asylum of the Daleks will grace our screens on September 1 (unless you live in Australia). Jubilation and excitement abound, despite the short run of Series 7A, and The Three Who Rule look forward to sinking thei...

With less than two weeks to go until new Doctor Who (maybe, possibly, nothing confirmed...) this week's news unsurprisingly revolved around both actual Series 7 news, like the screening of Asylum of the Daleks at the British Film Institute, and the spoilery spoler-free reviews of said screening by some of the UK's leading printed fishwrap merchants. Ticket sales for the upcoming NY screening of As...

The summer time-wasting series winds down a bit with what's likely to be the final miniscope for a time. With New! Doctor! Who! on the horizon, The Three Who Rule look at the NuWho writing efforts of stalwart scribe Mark Gatiss, whose contributions to Doctor Who date back a couple decades. Gatiss has authored New Adventures, starred in fan videos, written for Big Finish, done Confidential voiceove...

A bumper length episode of Radio Free Skaro awaits you this week! The lengthy news list contains a discussion on the new trailer for Series 7 that came out this past week, as well as speculation on what big name actor will be announced as a guest star! (Of course, by the time you all hear this, this information will be already out there, and we'll look like right idiots. Again.) After we cover som...

Whenever anything from the Sylvester McCoy era is the focus of an episode of Radio Free Skaro, there is bound to be disagreement. Chris and Steven are usually staunch defenders of the Seventh Doctor; Warren, to be polite, not so much. But the stories that director Alan Wareing claimed stewardship of, "The Greatest Show in the Galaxy", "Ghost Light", and "Survival" cause all three of those who Rule...

The latter part of our commentary of the Tom Baker classic "The Seeds of Doom" dominates this week's episode of Radio Free Skaro as, once again, our friend Josh Zimon from The Memory Cheats joins us to talk over the dastardly exploits of the vile Harrison Chase. Before that, though, the Three Who Rule hash over last week's Comic-Con, serial dramas, bleeding sheep (possibly?), and the possible ennu...

San Diego Comic-Con has become a huge event for the team behind Doctor Who, and this year is no different, with the cast and crew descending upon San Diego to promote the upcoming Series 7, believed to be premiering on BBC America (and most likely BBC One and SPACE) on Saturday, August 25! Stephen Prescott from the Mad Man With A Box podcast drops by to give us his report from the trenches at SDCC...

With Chris away this week as he completes his move westward to Edmonton, the Three Who Rule welcomes occasional Fourth Ruler Neil Perryman of Adventures With The Wife in Space and Tachyon TV fame to talk about the works of Paddy Kingsland in the Miniscope. Kingsland provided many a memorable motif in a multitude of stories from Seasons 18-21, ranging stylistically from the morose melodies of "Logo...

A bumper crop of news highlights this week's episode of RFS as the ramp-up to the new series of Doctor Who continues. San Diego Comic-Con talk, BFI premieres, and several new toys that will be filling the toy boxes and bookcases  of child and middle-aged nerd alike. And to top it off, we present our commentary of The War Machines, the 1966 serial that introduced us to the character of "Doctor Who"...

Christopher Hamilton Bidmead is a polarizing figure in Doctor Who fandom, with some hating his tenure as script editor and writer whilst others loved the shift he oversaw from clownish antics to more science-based storytelling. Where do the Three Who Rule stand on this vitally important matter? Why does Steven love Castrovalva? What is the Watcher, really? Why does Bidmead hate the TARDIS so much...

The Radio Free Skaro time-wasting series continues with our commentary on a story that features baddies some might call borderline pornographic (goodness knows JNT did). Yes, it's the third part of The Trial of a Timelord, Terror of the Vervoids! Much time was spent discussing the directorial choices made in this less than stellar series of Doctor Who episodes, despite the Three Who Rule having pr...

Derek Martinus directed six Doctor Who stories over the course of his career, the last one being 1970's Spearhead From Space. Much of his output from the 1960s, sadly, no longer exists in the BBC archives, so when it came time to discuss Martinus in the Miniscope this week, the Three Who Rule were presented with a problem: how do you talk about the visual aspect of Doctor Who episodes that exist t...

This week's episode of Radio Free Skaro has unwittingly turned into a celebration of one-time Doctor Who producer Philip Hinchcliffe. Not only do the Three Who Rule provide commentary on the first Hinchcliffe story to air, 1975's iconic The Ark in Space, but it was also announced this past week that Hinchcliffe will be appearing at his first ever Gallifrey One convention in February of next year....

With the furore and fascination of Eurovision now over with (oh, the excitement! The whimsy!), the Three Who Rule turn their gaze towards one of the most prolific directors in the new series, Euros Lyn, in this week's Miniscope. Lyn was credited with directing an astonishing eleven episodes across nine stories, including some stunning work on Tooth and Claw, and some questionable decisions on the...

The RFS team is scattered hither and yon this week with Steven in Madison, Wisconsin, and Warren scooping up cross-border deals in Seattle, but they still manage to crank out another episode of Radio Free Skaro for your listening delight. This week, Steven and Chris postulate on the news that was, including a discussion on the wonderful Tales of Television Centre documentary that aired on BBC Four...

It's a time of endings on this week's episode of Radio Free Skaro. Not only did the past week see the end of Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill in their roles as the Ponds, at least as far as filming goes, it also saw the end of the Upper Boat studio being the home of Doctor Who. To cap it all off, the Three Who Rule talk all over the first four episodes of Inferno, the last story to (prominently) fe...

It might sound like an overstatement, but writer/script editor Dennis Spooner was one of the most important figures in the history of Doctor Who. He essentially created what is now referred to the "pseudo-historical", introduced comedy into Doctor Who as a more prominent feature, and basically created the many mannerisms of the Second Doctor, the characterization that would go on to influence all...