The Metebelis Two - a Doctor Who podcast

We discuss the abrupt end to Ncuti Gatwa era with a review of his concluding 2-part story Wish World and The Reality World and the speculate briefly about what may be ahead for Doctor Who. Opening and closing music is "Monsters" off of Blue Öyster Cult's 1980 studio album Cultösaurus Erectus. We recorded this episode on 24 July 2025.

We've reached the penultimate story in the season with The Interstellar Song Contest, where "Die Hard meets Eurovision" and hijinks ensue. Ben reminisces about past Eurovisions. David wonders if singing a Hellion folk song can really cause three trillion people to overlook they were about to be murdered? Throw in another bi-generation, Susan Foreman, a sidelined Belinda, a married couple with skil...

The Doctor goes home to Lagos, Nigeria, and finds themself trapped in a barbershop. In a powerful script by Inua Ellams, Ncuti Gatwa's portrayal of the Doctor is equalled by Ariyon Bakare as the Barber. There's much to like in this story, but Jo Martin was underused in her cameo — RTD, just give Martin her own series already. We thought shoehorning in Mrs Flood in this story was a tad lame. We'd h...

The series reaches the midway point, so why not drop in on last season's companion and spend some time with Ruby? Pete McTighe brings a story examining contemporary issues while he tries to channel his inner Haisman and Lincoln, massaging both the right and left wings of the political spectrum to leave us with a muddy middle. Toss in a new UNIT dating controversy and some continuity reinforcement,...

Well, well, well. This week returns us to Midnight, but this time with Lombardo space marines on a search and recovery mission to a diamond mine that has gone silent. Another interesting future-tech gadget from the mind of RTD, with the TARDIS cracking the spacesuit selection for Belinda and the Doctor. But overall, David thought the Doctor's thinking and planning was sloppy and Ben thought the st...

In a rare intersection of time and space, Ben and David sit down on the same couch in the same living room at the same time to not only watch "Lux", a new episode of Doctor Who , but also to record a podcast on the very same story together. Wow! We talk about animation, RTD's storytelling and handling of 1952 America, Belinda's yellow dress, and breaking the fourth wall and who Davies depicted to...

The new Doctor Who season has launched with Ncuti Gatwa's Doctor joined by new companion Belinda Chandra, played by Varada Sethu. Both of us agree that Sethu's debut as Belinda was great! We look forward to spending the next seven episodes with her and the Doctor. Ben reflects upon what movies "The Robot Revolution" reminded him of, and David wonders if there wasn't a little bit of a Douglas Adams...

Ben spills the beans on this year's Gallifrey convention. Has Ben turned 180° on his thoughts on Steven Moffat? Listen, and you be the judge. This episode was recorded right after the con closed, but due to real life getting in the way, the podcast took a bit of time to get produced. Better late than never, we hope? We recorded this podcast on 19 February 2025. Opening and closing music is from "S...

Ben welcomes back to the podcast Lena Barkin and Jess Jurkovic to discuss the upcoming Gallifrey One convention in Los Angeles. What are the Gally gang looking forward to at this year's guest-loaded con? And, what have Lena and Jess been up to in fandom in the past year? Opening music is "Space Adventure Part 2" composed by Martin Slavin and closing music is "Morton's Fork" composed by Dudley Simp...

We're kicking off our 2025 podcasting year with a look back to the 2024 Doctor Who Christmas special: Joy to the World. David worries that the time hotel may open the door to temporal instability, and Ben comes up with an interesting what-if that could have tied the time hotel to The War Games. Opening music Brian Hodgson's " Galaxy Atmosphere " and closing music is "Hotel California" performed by...

We discuss the phenomenal animation of "The Wheel in Space" by Iz Skinner and her partner Steve Skinner. It easily ranks in the top three of Doctor Who animations. We speculated about this animation having an official release before Josh Snares released his informative "Making of" documentary . Thus our podcast is a little behind the times due to the editing and production lag. To view the animati...

We conclude our look at Ian Marter's time on Doctor Who with a chat about the role of Harry Sullivan in Terror of the Zygons and The Android Invasion. Harry starts out strongly in Zygons, but is treated poorly in his final appearance. Harry was the third wheel to the Sarah and the Doctor relationship, and he was bullied by both of them in the Season 12 finale, which helps explain, storywise, his d...

We continue on with our leisurely-paced examination of Ian Marter's time on Doctor Who by looking at Harry Sullivan's role in Genesis of the Daleks and Revenge of the Cybermen. The character starts out strong with Terry Nation's sidekick / buddy writing for Sullivan in Genesis, but by the time Bob Holmes writes Revenge, Harry is on the chopping block, and we witness a prickly, almost hostile relat...

In this podcast we talk about Ian Marter's first two stories after his character, Harry Sullivan, joins the TARDIS crew: The Ark in Space and The Sontaran Experiment. We discuss the ease at which Marter portrays Sullivan as a decent, square-jawed Englishman. We also lament what could have been if the Doctor Who production team better utilised the character since he was an effective foil and compat...

We continue with our Ian Marter discussion with a brief conversation about the debut of Harry Sullivan in "Robot"! But, before we get underway, we pick up where we left off with new details about Marter's time at St. Edmund Hall at Oxford University with the discovery that there is a recording on vinyl of Marter singing in You Can't Do Much Without a Screwdriver , an original musical staged by the...

We kick off our Ian Marter retrospective with a look at his time at Oxford University. Thanks to back issues of St. Edmund Hall Magazine, we uncover new information that places Marter at Oxford three years earlier than is widely and incorrectly reported in other published sources. From our research, we found that Marter was at St. Edmund Hall , aka Teddy Hall, from 1963-1966 and was heavily involv...

We discuss the recent animation of the William Hartnell story, The Celestial Toymaker. Overall, we think it successfully presented a boring, at times, story that is hard to follow with moving images for episodes 1–3 missing. Ben would like to see the animators push it even further away from the original broadcast visuals. David would have preferred the guest cast's likeness to be better expressed...

We pay our respects to William Russell, the actor who played Ian Chesterton, Doctor Who's original leading man. With Russell, Ian proved to be a solid and dependable man of action and reason. Along with Jacqueline Hill, who played Barbara Wright, the two provided the moral centre for the early show, which relied on their decency, normality, and dependability to guide the viewers in the early mid-1...

An entertaining enough finale, but with big enough plot holes that you could drive a pyramid through. Something went wrong with this season in more ways than one and with Empire of Death, Davies seemed oblivious and tone death to some of the underlying messages his drama was sending. Basically, nothing in it really makes sense, and many of the story's emotional beats were insensitive or unearned....

Skidding into your UNIT-approved podcatcher is the pod on "The Legend of Ruby Sunday," and, oh boy, do we have questions. Has Unit become the earth-based research office for Doctor Who? Why would Unit drop everything to find the Doctor's new friend's mother? How would the Tennant Doctor react if he saw Susan Triad's big reveal on television? And what is Sutekh without the Egyptian / Osirian backst...

In this podcast we talk about Rogue, the Doctor's new sexy friend, who we met along with some dubious bipedal bird cosplayers or LARPers. Ben gives a brief background on Oliver Frey, aka Zack's Rogue in Him magazine and connects the dots between the comic and RTD. David muses on watching a show for young people and wonders if adventure plots are a thing of the past. The opening music is Vitamin St...

We meet the first real monster in this season of Doctor Who and no, we don't mean the slugs of doom, aka Mantraps. RTD catches us a little flat-footed with the surprising ending, but the subtle hints were there all along. With a wave of the hand, we excuse any plot holes and applaud what may be the best episode of Ncuti Gatwa's first series of Doctor Who. The opening music is the episode's soundtr...

Russell T Davies has written a new Doctor Who story that he describes as Welsh folk horror in which he packs in a lot to 45 minutes, including the obligatory Susan Twist, creepy pub denizens, and an homage to other ghostly stories. We were a little surprised to have a Doctor-lite episode in a season that is a mere eight episodes long. What caused the Doctor to vanish? Is the fairy circle in the sh...

With Moffat back writing for who and RTD as showrunner does it feel like 2005 all over again? Well, maybe? We discuss the latest Doctor Who episode, Boom, complete with the requisite fatherly love, casting surprises, LED scenery, returning vicars, twist speculation, and a dose of handwavium to resolve this tight, immersive bottle episode. Opening Music is "Skye Boat Song" performed by Martine Muss...

Doctor Who, aka Ncuti Gatwa, is off in space and time with Ruby, his new traveling companion. So what does Russell T Davies have in store for a new generation of Who fans, and what do two old Who fan podcasters make of all of it? Opening Music is "My Dog Fred" by Murray Gold. Closing music is "Scream & Shout" by will.i.am and featuring Britney Spears. We recorded this episode on 13 May 2024.