Who Back When | A Doctor Who Podcast

A less racist, more trippy take on The Toymaker and ultimately a literal write-off * * * The Second Doctor and his companions, Jamie and Zoe, escape the volcanic eruption on Dulcis (and heartless mass-murder of all remaining Dulcian protagonists) by taking the TARDIS to The Land of Fiction, a parallel dimension of fictitious characters. Controlling the parallel dimension is world-class plagiarist...

We rifle through our sacks and come up smiling * * * Aloha, Podcastland! Correctamundo ("a word I have never used, and hopefully never will again") — it's Bonus Episode time! Alas, we had to reschedule this week's Classic Who review, with a likely recording date of any-second-now. But we didn't want your earballs to be without Who Back When on this fine Sunday, so we scrambled to assemble this Bon...

Super Jesus vs. The Second-Last of the Time Lords * * * Shazam! It’s time for the final showdown: Super Jesus vs. The Second-Last of the Time Lords. That’s right — we’ve arrived at the conclusion of the three-parter comprising Utopia, The Sound of Drums and now Last of the Time Lords. The Master’s still in charge and more bonkers than ever. His wife’s totally lost the plot. Martha’s walking the Ea...

N040 The Sound of Drums It’s the Second-Last of the Time Lords * * * The Doctor, companion Martha Jones and all-star badass Captain Jack Harkness are back from the year bajillion to save the day in the here-and-now. The Master’s still in office and the moment of first contact with the Toclafane is fast approaching. Will The Master wield his infinite political influence to destroy the world? Well,...

The episode that introduces The Master we deserved, desired and in the end were denied (oops, spoilers) * * * The Tenth Doctor, companion Martha Jones and stowaway Captain Jack Harkness go to the planet Malcassairo and *ahem* "the end of the universe" in this, the first instalment of the three-parter comprising Utopia, The Sound of Drums and The Last of the Time Lords (or possibly this prequel to...

We bring out the big guns for our 100th canonical Doctor Who review to talk about an episode that needs no introduction. * * * A record-amount of us sat down to debate the merits of Blink, an episode that many hail as the greatest achievement of Doctor Who to date. When Sally Sparrow coerces her friend, Kathy Nightingale, to break into four unsuspecting quantum-locked flatmates' house, and Kathy i...

It's Dresses vs Shoulder Pads in this (possibly) entertaining clash of the dress codes. * * * Doc and Jay-Z (that's Jamie and Zoe) go to the planet Dulkis where the shoulder-pad-rocking, guess-if-they're-good-guys Dominators have just arrived to enslave the indigenous, sweet and good-natured, unisex-dress-sporting Dulcians, and blow up their planet in order to turn it into radioactive fuel. Furthe...

The Eighth Doctor and Lucie Miller are separated in this oddly time-and-space-UNspecific story set, specifically, in Nazi-occupied Paris. Doc spends most of the episode being pursued by alleged Nazi officers straight out of ‘Allo ‘Allo!, and Lucie awakes to find herself an actress on stage in an anonymous, nondescript, Parisian theatre – which is bizarre, because they'd originally aimed the TARDIS...

An inconsistent fob watch, nonsensical straw men, and some of the best acting on Doctor Who * * * The Tenth Doctor is still stuck in the human form of John Smith, and the kid from Love Actually’s still got his mystical fob watch. As the Family of Blood brings war to England a year in advance, John Smith is faced with the Sophie’s Choice of sacrificing himself for the greater good or living a life...

The most convoluted Cyberman plot to date VS. The least professional space station crew ever * * * The Doctor and Jamie, now sans Victoria, spend a whole episode battling a homicidal servo robot aboard a spaceship before going to the titular space station, The Wheel, and forgetting all about it (the robot, that is). Why did the robot try to kill them? What was it doing there in the first place? We...

Who Back When is Three Standard-Earth-Years Young! * * * What-ho, Podcastland! It’s the 4th July, which as you may already know is not only the Independence Day of the US (and of the Earth – Cheers, President Bill Pullman!), but the birthday of Who Back When | A Doctor Who Podcast. For three whole years we’ve been podcasting (or DocPast’ing) about Doctor Who, classic and new, and as is tradition w...

An army of scarecrows, realistic depictions of racism, and an amnesiac Doctor * * * We've been saying on the show that any moment now we're going to get back to some really good New Who episodes again, and guess what – that time has finally come. After slogging through two episodes of Daleks in Manhattan, the mire that is The Lazarus Experiment and the wannabe Satan Pit that is 42, we've arrived a...

Lethal bubble baths, homicidal seaweed and the first appearance of the Sonic Screwdriver * * * This entirely missing six-episode serial sees the Second Doctor and his (still) two companions Jamie and Victoria arrive in – guess where – England. In fact, they even remark on it in the opening scenes. So they’re back, and once again there’s a monstrous menace threatening the safety of mankind. This ti...

The epic return of two foes and introduction of a lifelong friend and ally * * * The Second Doctor, Jamie and Victoria finally stabilise the TARDIS, but find that they’re stuck in some sort of fungus and suspended in time and space. They escape but soon find that a vast intellect – or let’s call it, hm, 'Great Intelligence' – has pulled them to the London Underground in 1975 when and where it has...

A few Ood short of The Satan Pit * * * Chris Chibnall, soon to be taking over as showrunner for Doctor Who, penned this Satan Pit-esque story about the perhaps freelance crew that may be fuel pirates who have, possibly illegally, just harvested "sun" from a nearby sun and are now (a) uncontrollably plummeting towards it – perhaps due to sabotage, possibly just because of gravity – and (b) turning...

Another Doctor Doppelgänger and almost as many parallel plots as there are plot twists. Fantastic! * * * Any fan of Patrick Troughton is going to be thrilled by this serial. Not only does Troughton portray the Second Doctor, but he also portrays the antagonist, Ramón Salamander! The Second Doctor, Jamie and Victoria arrive in the distant future of ca 2017, in Australia, where they're immediately h...

Thank goodness for big, red, scorpion-monster-friendly buttons! * * * The Tenth Doctor has finally had enough of Martha Jones, so we kick off this episode with him returning her to her bedroom. (Let's all just glaze over the fact that he somehow found out about its whereabouts and dimensions on his own.) Just as he's prepping to leave her forever, however, he learns of the unveiling of a new human...

Ice Warriors, nipple computers and a fruit museum appear in this serial that moves at a glacial pace * * * We find ourselves on Earth, sometime in the future – During the 2nd ice age no less! – atop a mountain where scientists use their ioniser to prevent rapid glacial movements from destroying all of Europe. Just as Troughton's Second Doctor, Jamie and Victoria materialise (sideways) outside the...

The Human Dalek wants to put more Human in the Dalek Humans, and the Dalek Daleks disagree. * * * We're still in 1930s New York in this continuation and conclusion of the gut-wrenchingly bad story that began with 'Daleks in Manhattan', and it's just as pants, give or take. Dalek Sec, the first and only Human Dalek, is planning to create a whole new race of Dalek Humans, and a mutiny is brewing amo...

Turns out the Great Intelligence is the Yeti of this story. * * * After over a hundred episodes, we finally encounter "The Yeti of the Story"! Or do we? Troughton's Second Doctor, accompanied by Jamie and Victoria, arrives in 1930s Tibet, where apparently he's been before. Yep, allegedly he had quite the adventure there some 300 years earlier. We don't learn anything more about that, though. Yeti,...

A sequence of “final" experiments, pig chaps, and what is ostensibly a Monoid with a Dalek for a hat. * * * It's 1930 and The Cult of Skaro is back, and – for the love of Davros – their stocks are plummeting. In Daleks in Manhattan, part 1 of the double feature that is concluded in Evolution of the Daleks, the motorised dustbins have taken over construction of the Empire State Building, so I guess...

The Doctor teams up with an Irish cat and the Face of Boe when Martha Jones gets stuck in traffic. * * * In 'Gridlock', the Tenth Doctor decides to screw with Martha Jones' self-esteem again, by taking her on a second non-date, this time on New Earth, where you may recall he also brought his ex, Rose. Except, where he took Rose to see the gorgeous, streamlined panorama of New New York, he's bringi...

For a weekend, Oxford played host to cosplay, celebs and myriad nerdalicious events as Comic Con invaded the city of dreaming spires. * * * Shazam! OxCon 2016 – that's the Oxford Comic Con – happened, and partly because we're located just around the corner, but mainly because it was totally badass, Who Back When (in this case represented by Mirimu, DrewBackWhen, The Roarmeister and Ponken) made an...

Doc and Martha are nearly showered in excrement on their first non-date and Shakespeare couldn't be randier in this pseudo historical * * * The Tenth Doctor takes new companion Martha Jones on her first trip through time, all the way to Elizabethan London. Martha's already pretty thrilled to be in the year 1599, but The Doctor really pulls out all the stops on this non-date when he takes her to Th...

Racist Space-archeologists unearth a fortune in Cyber-stencils in this legendary serial. * * * The Doctor and his companions, Victoria and Jamie, go to the planet Telos for no conceivable reason, and there do their best to help a group of human archeologists gain entrance to the heavily fortified and titular Tomb of the Cybermen – all the while telling them they really ought not to. Obviously, the...