Who Back When | A Doctor Who Podcast

The tooth fairy returns with an oversimplified god complex and acolytes who don't seem to realise THEY'RE the creators * * * The Doctor is astounded to receive very nearly 10 distress calls from the planet whose name means Disintegrator of the Soul. Turns out a mere three and a half millennia earlier, everyone’s least favourite impacted molar, Tim Shaw, Terminatored in there and convinced...

New Exiled Time Lady in town, The Rani, teams up with The Master in a bid to siphon brain juice from human heads, plot global domination and/or turn people into trees * * * The Sixth Doctor and flawlessly American companion Peri Brown miss their holiday mark once again and, instead of Kew Gardens, make their way on over to the mining town of Killingworth, where George Stephenson is apparently asse...

A frog convinces the worst dad in Norway to reenact the plot of The Village in an emotionally complex story with a lot of retro-rewrite potential * * * Expectorated by the TARDIS into a frilly bit atop Norway, The Thirteenth Doctor and her fellow desolation ambulance chasers come upon a teenage girl holed up in a solitary cabin, hiding from strange monsters roaming outside every night. Her dad’s b...

Team TARDIS and James Bond Jr go full Running Man, battling militarised mobility scooters and diaper zombies * * * On the former prison planet of Varos, the Varosians have two major exports: Zeiton-7, a precious metal used to fuel space and time ships, and reality TV. Toiling under the sadistic military rule of the governor, the Varosians record every aspect of their horrifying prison world and br...

Steven of New To Who fame popped round Oxford for a couple of days and a lot of Whovian bants ensued * * * Steven of New To Who podcast fame stopped by Oxford for a couple of days to see the sights, have a cocktail or two, and shoot the breeze about a host of topics ranging from ontology and The Avengers (ITV, not Marvel) to The Odyssey and Doctor Who . A considerable chunk of the latter was captu...

Will The King’s pricker stand a chance against good old-fashioned Lancashire mud? * * * Doc and the stop trying to make fam happen are super-luted, the sixteenth-century version of super-jazzed, to be attending the coronation of Bloody Liz One, mate, except the TARDIS doesn’t know, ahem, witch way to turn and has ended up at Bilehurst Cragg, where the local landowner-ess is turning the village int...

Seven of eight hosts from across nine years of Who Back When assembled for our 400th Episode to discuss the State of the Whonion * * * Sweet Buttery Moses, our humble podcast has been around for 400 episodes! To celebrate this milestone event, we assembled (nearly) every single person who has hosted Who Back When over the past 9 years to discuss the State of the Whonion. It obviously descended int...

Join us for some celebratory bloopers, Podcastland! * * * Happy Birthday to us! Happy Birthday to us! Happy Birthday, dear Who Back Wheeeeeen... Happy Birthday to us! Holy Moly, has it been nine years already? Feels like we started this show only yesterday. As is tradition here at WBW Studios, we're dropping some Bloopies-and-Behind-the-Scenes apples into your ear baskets to enjoy put on your...

Discount Danny Ocean, Ice Capades and Decapitations Galore make up this glorious return to Telos * * * In an attempt to repair the legendarily ever-broken chameleon circuit, the Sixth Doctor and companion Peri are thrust back to where it all began, Foreman’s Yard on 76 Totters Lane. It’s 1985 this time, though, and the halls of Colehill School presumably still echo with gossip about perpetual skiv...

The Head of People tears the Heads of Robots in this unexpectedly divisive episode * * * Doc gives up trying to do the impossible - outrun capitalism - and surrenders to its all-consuming pursuit, receiving from a congenial rictus-grin dubbed the Kerblam! man the gift of a fez, some innocuous bubble wrap, and a packing slip cry for help. Whereas Ryan would rather bet on it being a prank and risk s...

A freshly regenerated Sixth Doctor arises discombobulated and edgy, but altogether more abusive and homicidal in this rarely lauded serial * * * The Doctor has just regenerated into his 6th form, and he’s an altogether edgier, less dainty and more homicidal chap. Barely out of his cricket kit and into a psychedelic clown coat, he’s already trying to kill his companion and decrees that he’s taking...

We learn about the Partition of India, while multi-ocular members of the band Lordi scare the heck out of anyone dying alone. * * * When Yaz asks to go back and see her grandmother in her youth, Doc casts aside any notion of non-interference and takes the whole Fam back to the eve of said Nani’s wedding. There’s a fair bit of tension in the air, however: they’ve materialised on what is about to be...

We pour one out for the Fifth Doctor and reminisce about some of the highs and lows of his marvellous era * * * It has come to yet another Doctor Retrospective. We may have been doing this show for nine years at the time of recording this bonus episode, but it feels like we've been blasting through these retros lately. It's Peter Davison's turn this time around. Having recently wrapped...

An overlooked Futurama reference and the literal handwaving of interplanetary navigation whilst wearing marigolds. Not bad! * * * It’s Team TARDIS’s second trip into space and also their second collision course with fatal death courtesy of a sonic mine, only on this occasion they’re just-in-time-scooped out of their storyline by the medical ship Tsuranga , plausibly alerted to the ordnance’s deton...

Mr Big Bad's new hotel is infested by mutant spiders, and only Sheffield’s sickest grime station can flush them out * * * Soon-to-be-named Team TARDIS arrives in Sheffield with remarkable precision. While Graham heads home to start being haunted by visions of Grace and check for cash in the attic, Doc and Ryan are introduced to Yaz’s hospitable family, possibly hinting at future character deve...

Leather-bound Phantom of the Mope-era wages an android war against bat-shit crazy Space Bezos * * * Doc and Peri have arrived on Androzani Minor but, as they’re about a billion years too late for the tide, they’ll have to put any seaside plans on hold for now. A bit of bants and investigation on the surface quickly lead the TARDIS duo into the titular caves of that there Androzani. No need to brin...

A beautiful episode, in which Racist Danny Zuko plots to disrupt the US civil rights movement in possibly the most convoluted way imaginable * * * The TARDIS steadfastly refuses to land in Sheffield before the Thirteenth Doctor’s investigated a mysterious artron energy trace popping up where it shouldn’t in 1955, Montgomery, Alabama, Deep South, USA. Oddly, quiet, dignified seamstress Rosa Parks i...

A companion switch, far too many people in shorts, and the Brotherhood of Sarn * * * The cast of Monty Python’s Life of Brian seem to be shacked up with Laurence of Arabia on a desert planet called Sarn. Being the backwater world that Classic Who likes to frequent, Sarn of course has an elder / soothsayer, a chosen one sporting a fancy 3D tattoo, and some heretics who refuse to worship the fire go...

Smokey and The Bandit introduce The Doctor and her companions to the Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World of rubbish snipers and sentient offcuts * * * Having teleported herself and her new chums into the depths of space, The Thirteenth Doctor must surely think the Gumball Rally’s over and lost. As luck would have it, though, they Cannonball Run right into Smokey and The Bandit, the last two participants of a...

Dalek helmets, Time Corridon'ts and about fifty different plots coalesce in this terrible/wonderful companion exit serial * * * The Fifth Doctor, Tegan, Turlough and still no Kamelion get themselves stuck in a Time Corridor and shunted to the 1980s London South Bank, where strange things are afoot, but where they’ll barely spend any time at all, because space is more exciting and this serial i...

The Sixth Doctor and Peri head to Baltimore to attend a funeral, indulge in breathing exercises and potentially save mankind in the process. * * * Randomly stumbling upon a news piece on the untimely demise of a long-lost loved-one, Perpugilliam “Peri” Brown, whose introduction to the Whoniverse was utterly spoiled in this audiobook, compels The Sixth Doctor to take her back to 1984’s Baltimore, w...

A brand new Doctor, show runner and aesthetic, no TARDIS, different music. Oh, and new troops. No, not troops. Team. Gang. Fam? Either way, it’s a solid start for the Thirteenth Doctor. * * * Dyspraxic wannabe mechanic Ryan Sinclair crosses paths with one of his old schoolmates, underused probationary copper Yasmin Khan, after he high-fives the wrong electronic consent form crackling threateningly...

Terrific story arcs and eyebrows to knock your spatiotemporal socks off. We discuss Peter Capaldi’s run as The Twelfth Doctor * * * That’s it. We’ve reviewed every single episode with the Twelfth Doctor, and holy moly if this doesn’t mark the end of an era in so many ways. The last of Capaldi’s Doc (at least so far), and the last of his gorgeous TARDIS, those companions, that opening theme, that s...

Doc discovers a grave situation below the surface, Tegan is a defective android and Turlough exhibits some OTT PTSD. It’s great! * * * The Fifth Doctor and companions Tegan, Turlough and Kamelion — JK, Kamelion’s just a figment of your imagination — are traveling in the TARDIS when some wibbly-wobblies take them to the far edge of spacetime, outside of Timelord jurisdiction even, and deposit them...

Glass Avatars from the future don’t care about Data Privacy Agreements while the first and then-latest Doctor do Timelord Kegels to keep their respective regeneration at bay * * * Still doing his Timelord Kegels, The Twelfth Doctor is adamant he’ll hold back his regeneration mid-stream for at least one more episode. In fact, he’s contemplating never regenerating again. Stumbling out onto the Antar...