Pull To Open: A Random Doctor Who Podcast

The Tenth Planet is a big deal in the Doctor Who universe — remembered for the first appearance of the Cybermen and William Hartnell's Doctor regenerating into Patrick Troughton. What it's not remembered for is its depiction of 1986, a world where space exploration is managed internationally, American generals are walking stereotypes, and the South Pole is considered a good place to store a world-...

Be sure to follow us on TikTok at @pulltoopen , and listen to this week's podcast to find out the prize for being our 1,000th follower! We all know there's a great future in plastics, but what about the past? The Randomizer brings us back to 1970s(-ish) Britain, where the Doctor is still in exile and those pesky store-window dummies are coming to life again. But retreading the same monster as last...

To many, Sarah Jane Smith is the best Doctor Who companion of all time — smart, feisty, kind, and loyal to the Doctor, almost to a fault. Kind of weird, then, that the guy kicked her out of the TARDIS and left her on Earth years ago, never visiting her again. At least that's what School Reunion says happened (presumably erasing The Five Doctors with some kind of memory wipe). We'll go with it beca...

The very first season of Doctor Who is a landmark for many reasons — the introduction of the mysterious Doctor and his granddaughter, the original story to feature the Daleks, and historical adventures involving the Aztecs and the French Revolution. The Sensorites , not so much. Still, there must be a reason the Randomizer sent Pete and Chris here — could this story about a race of telepathic weir...

A crashed ship. An innocent girl. And an insectoid alien with its own hidden agenda. Naps. Yep, The Rescue packs a lot into two short episodes, not the least of which is the first "new" companion of the classic series. When William Hartnell's Doctor invites Vicki to join the TARDIS as the ostensible replacement for Susan, it's hard not to draw a parallel with where the Randomizer last took the pod...

It has the Brigadier, a mysterious new companion, and a lot to say about regeneration — if Mawdryn Undead is anything, it's first-class fan service that's meant to appeal to longtime fans of Doctor Who. Strange, then, it's episode that long ago sparked one of our host's decades-long journey through time and space, ultimately leading to the podcast you're listening to now. Maybe that's why the rand...

Another pyramid? Another fascist Earth? How could the same podcast happen to the same guys twice? Turns out it's not Osiran mummies or jackbooted thugs from someplace "sideways in time" — it's the Monks, and their plot to rule Earth naturally involves applying some corpse makeup just after they've parked their pyramid-shaped spaceship in a Central Asian country so remote it defies geography....

Any science-fiction show that runs long enough will inevitably have its "parallel Earth" episode. Doctor Who hit that milestone in 1970 with Inferno , an action thriller that sees the Doctor "slip sideways in time" to an Earth with a taste for fascism and clean-shaven blokes. The series' last seven-part story is fondly remembered, but does it still hold up? And more important: Is it better than Py...

Doctor Who doesn't reference ancient Egypt often. But when it does, the result is Pyramids of Mars , cited as classic by many for its chilling villain and additions to the show's lore (like the Doctor's age and the coordinates of Gallifrey). With brutish robots disguised as mummies, a powerful evil mastermind, and Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen at the top of their game, there's much to like. But d...

You've been warned. We're still trying to make sense of the discussion that ensued when Chris and Pete revisited Sleep No More , the only episode in Doctor Who history that tosses out the opening credits and relies entirely on "found footage" to tell the story. We searched for rational explanations for how eye boogers could turn into carnivorous monsters or sleep dust could shoot in 4K, but instea...

We didn't want to go dark, but the TARDIS Randomizer forced our hand, bringing us to the two-part finale of Peter Capaldi's first season, Dark Water and Death in Heaven . With the return of the Cybermen and UNIT, the story already sets a high bar for itself, but the ambition keeps ticking up as the episode offers up the show's in-universe explanation for the afterlife(!) as well as the absolute be...

After "Planet of Fire," the show bounces back to Kamelion's first and only other appearance in Doctor Who, "The King's Demons." What is it about this shapchanging robot from Xeriphas that's inspired the TARDIS Randomizer to make us take stock of Kamelion's onscreen life, but in reverse order? Regardless, Chris and Pete pull out their history books (as well as their Ahistory books ) to decode drunk...

Like a glorious bird on fire (there should really be a word for that), Pull To Open rises from the ashes of 2020 and swoops into 2021 with a new episode and a new mission: to revisit any and all episodes of Doctor Who — in random order. In our first podcast on this journey, the TARDIS Randomizer takes us to " Planet of Fire ," the penultimate story of the Peter Davison era. With companions arrivin...

What does Doctor Who have to say about disease? In the classic series, it was with a outbreak from space that overwhelms a base on Titan, infecting even the Doctor himself. In an time where coronavirus has made facemasks and social distancing the new normal, "The Invisible Enemy" might have new relevance. Or maybe it's just a brilliantly fun sci-fi yarn about an intelligent fast-spreading space bu...

Everything about Doctor Who has been changed, but was the three-part Season 12 finale truly epic? We got to experience ghosts, Cybermen, almost-Cybermen, and massively ambitious retcons, and they all added up to... something, anyway. Chris and Pete navigate the misguided character arcs of "The Haunting of Villa Diodati" and the painfully predictable plot of "Ascension of the Cybermen" to arrive at...

Chris Chibnall's Doctor Who gets even more ambitious, and it... works? Fugitive of the Judoon marks a big turning point for the show and Jodie Whittaker's Doctor — plus we get to see (a noticeably older) Captain Jack again. Is this it? Has the 13th Doctor finally hit her stride? Or is it just more big promises with next to no hope of a satisfying payoff? Beware the lone Cyberman commentary th...

Doctor Who is back! And so is an old enemy, which happens to smash a certain big reset button. Chris and Pete take apart Spyfall , the two-parter that opens Series 12 of new Who, but is it truly as epic as showrunner Chris Chibnall clearly thinks it is? And what does "epic" even mean when universe-threatening stakes are the norm? Will the ambitious seeds Spyfall has planted grow into something gre...

In the debut episode of the Doctor Who podcast Pull to Open, hosts Pete Pachal and Chris Taylor come home for Christmas. That is, the Doctor Who Christmas specials — all 13 of them. Which were delightful holiday presents, and which were Christmas turkeys? And is it a good thing the show ditched Christmas for New Year's? Grab some eggnog and gingerbread (assuming fish fingers and custard aren't ava...