Who Back When | A Doctor Who Podcast

Doc's night out in Essex is cut short as we're treated to the origin story of one of the greatest nemeses of Doctor Who * * * In the midst of The War on Skaro that started with some kind of referendum and lasted a millennium, the world’s last innocent little boy, a cherub by the name of Davros, is tossed a flashing stick by a crouching madman with a box, who promises to help evade the clutches of...

The Doctor and Romana II help an excessively aggressive detective out of his jurisdiction solve an inter-temporal Thomas Crown Affair * * * The Fourth Doctor and Romana II rather serendipitously arrive in Paris, where they take in the sights and sounds and both instigate and expend the BBC’s full stock of Parisian B-Roll. When visiting the Louvre, however, they stumble upon an apparent plot to ste...

We RE-review Capaldi's very first Christmas Special. Expect special appearances by Dream Logic, Swamp Thing and Hulk Hogan. * * * Ho-Ho-Holy Moly, it’s Christmas Eve and as though in a dream Clara wanders onto her ample roof terrace to find Santa Claus and his two elven compadres, Ian and Wolf, attempting to rein in their flying deer. It’s a Christmas miracle! Or is it? The Doctor soon arrives and...

We celebrate our seventh year of travelling down this temporal road with you, with some customary Anniversary Bloopies! * * * Aloha, Podcastland! Has it been a whole year since we last snuck this particular variety of bloopies into your earballs? Why, yes, because this weekend saw the Seeeeeeventh (7th) Anniversary of the Who Back When podcast! Correctamundo, we have been chatting about Doctor Who...

After about seven lifetimes as an absentee granddad, The Doctor checks in on Susan in post-Dalek-invasion UK * * * After seven lifetimes of not giving a tinker’s cuss, The Doctor decides, hey, wonder what my granddaughter’s up to. Oh, wouldn’t you know, she’s sending out a distress signal and has been for the last 30 years since the Dalek Invasion of Earth, the charred aftermath of which he abando...

Wait. Romana regenerates willy-nilly, Davros is immortal and Daleks are just robots? * * * K9’s got laryngitis, Romana is regenerating and trying out bodies like dresses, and the TARDIS still doesn’t have any manual navigation. So where does that leave the Doc? Answer, landing on a strangely familiar planet, with a strangely familiar companion but no mechanical pooch for company. It soon becomes c...

Worst. Birthday. Ever. * * * In this season 8 finale, Clara goes all in with a ruse to convince a cathedral full of Cybers that Clara Oswald never existed and she’s actually the Doctor. Except she’s not the Doctor. Newly de-emoted Danny Pink is downloaded from the Nethersphere into a freshly pollinated Cyber-suit. Except he didn’t delete his emotions after all, and wasn’t he cremated? Meanwhile, P...

Doc and Romana blow up and/or rescue a Space Princess from a Darth-Vader-wannabe on their hunt for the final horcrux * * * The twin planets of Atrios and Zeos have eluded Doc’s travel plans up until now but that’s all about to change as Atrios is the location of the sixth, and final, piece of the Key to Time. The tricky situation surrounding this piece is that the planets are on the brink of annih...

The Doctor gets a smooch from his mistress and it turns out there’s an afterlife! * * * On the brink of confessing her laundry list of lies to Danny Pink but banking on her promise of loving exclusivity for him exonerating every treacherous peccadillo, Clara is suddenly left hanging as Danny boringly steps out into the London traffic. Love, as they say, truly is blind. Which is why Clara concocts...

Racist humans drill for methane and awaken Cthulhu-wannabe, Kroll, in the process * * * The Fourth Doctor and Romana track down the next segment of the Key to Time on the third moon of Delta Magna, where some industrially inclined white chaps have subjugated the aboriginal green people while setting up shop and stealing their resources. The green, so-called “Swampies” have put their faith in their...

With London in apparent lockdown and the emergency COBRA group failing to get the job done, Doc and Clara cross paths with a Tiger King * * * The world has been plunged into an existential crisis overnight; an invisible transmission has raced across the planet and it looks like life may never return to normal. The government’s emergency COBRA group meets and decides the best course of action is fo...

Caesar’s Salad and Marie Antoinette’s Cake? The Monkery continues on Mars’ second moon

Fembots, swashbuckling and a random Sasquatch. Plus everyone may be an android and we just never find out. What's not to like about this serial? * * * The Fourth Doctor and Romana (I) head to the planet Tara to collect the fourth segment of the Key To Time. No problemo, says Romana and casually picks it up while Doc lets a gadget do his fishing for him. Then a Sasquatch we’ll never see again sudde...

Fembots, swashbuckling and a random Sasquatch. Plus everyone may be an android and we just never find out. What's not to like about this serial?

With The TARDIS getting ever smaller on the outside, Clara must Doc up and investigate a case of killer graffiti * * * The Doctor is doing his best to get Clara back to the exact right time and place whence he last plucked her because her boyfriend is famously flexible and there are definitely no fishy fibs being floated. But they find themselves in Bristol instead, so, right time and right place-...

With The TARDIS getting ever smaller on the outside, Clara must Doc up and investigate a case of killer graffiti

Turns out that if you combine Druidic Hammer Horror, Inter-Dimensional SciFi and a Courtroom Drama, you get The Golden Girls * * * The Fourth Doctor, Romana (I) and K-9 head off to Earth, don’t you know, Cornwall specifically, to find the third segment of the Key To Time. Coincidentally it was around about the time of the production, but that doesn’t mean we can’t also have crazy nutbar druids try...

Turns out that if you combine Druidic Hammer Horror, Inter-Dimensional SciFi and a Courtroom Drama, you get The Golden Girls

The Doctor takes Clara on one last adventure aboard a space train haunted by a mummy who's more of a vampire * * * Clara’s relationship with Twelve has hit the buffers, so to make amends for his miscarriages of justice he arranges one last jaunt for their itinerary: a no-expenses-paid stowaway ride on the only space-going Orient Express, where sophisticated glitterati can indulge in the faux-histo...

The Doctor takes Clara on one last adventure aboard a space train haunted by a mummy who's more of a vampire

For our 300th episode, we spent an evening debating the ups and downs of the Thirteenth Doctor Era to date * * * What-ho, Podcastland! Would you believe it's been 300 episodes and in just under 7 years?! We can tell you, it feels pretty amazing. To commemorate this special occasion, we sat down for one last pre-quarantine, in-person recording, to discuss the State of the WHO-nion. Yep, this episod...

For our 300th episode, we spent an evening debating the ups and downs of the Thirteenth Doctor Era to date

A robot parrot, condensed planets and another piece of The Key To Time... ish. By the left frontal lobe of the sky demon, what a totally bananas serial this is! * * * In Douglas Adams' first Doctor Who serial, The Fourth Doctor and Romana I continue their quest to find all the pieces of the Key to Time and head to the planet Calufrax. When they materialise, however, it seems they are in the right...

A robot parrot, condensed planets and another piece of The Key To Time... ish. By the left frontal lobe of the sky demon, what a totally bananas serial this is!

Mankind looks to the stars because of Clara's disregard for democracy, but you can't make a human space exploration omelette without cracking a few moon eggs. * * * Coal Hill School’s premier disruptive influence Courtney Woods has made the Doctor her latest excuse for tearaway behaviour, so he makes a special case of her and takes her to the moon, but 35 years in the future for some reason. They...