Pete Messum Reviews...

And with that, the Thirteenth Doctor's era has come to a close. It's easy for regeneration stories to be overshadowed by the programme's future - understandable given the show's constant change and renewal - but suffice it to say that The Power of the Doctor makes for a fitting conclusion to this era of the programme. Kicking things off with a heist on a space train, we're reintroduced to the Cybermasters, returning from The Timeless Children back in Series 12. It's good to see them return, even if their ultimate roles in the narrative serve mainly as cannon fodder more than anything else. Their Cyber-converted planet, which I'd speculated to Gallifrey, was a nice idea even if it served as a backdrop to the events unfolding rather than playing a significant role. Quite why Ashad and his Cyber Warriors were brought back, other than fan popularity, I'm not sure. An off-hand comment about the Master cloning Ashad doesn't quite resolve the character'...

It was very difficult not to be excited for Legend of the Sea Devils . Not only did it mark the first time since 1984 that the aquatic foes had appeared in the series, but only their third story since their debut fifty years ago, despite being one of the most iconic Doctor Who monsters ever. The return of the Sea Devils has been on fans' wishlists for years, even after the horrific redesign of the Silurians for The Hungry Earth , so hopes were high for this 2022 Easter special. My expectations had been tempered somewhat prior to broadcast, not helped by a general lack of promotion for the special, yet even so I find myself thoroughly disappointed. I'd recently discovered rumours that Legend of the Sea Devils had been a turbulent production for the Doctor Who team, scheduled just after a last-minute New Year's Special that had been written in around a week by showrunner Chris Chibnall (after writing/co-writing six scripts consecutively, all drastic reworkings of an exist...

The shot of the Sea Devils rising from the sea became an instantly iconic image in the minds of a whole generation of children in 1972. As someone born nearly three decades later, my first impression of the Doctor Who's aquatic foes was a photograph on the front cover of the Destiny of the Doctors computer game: a strange tortoise-like creature wielding what appeared to be a mechanical eye. I'd no doubt seen odd shots as part of monster montages on Doctor Who Confidential , but about a decade ago, I finally watched all six episodes of The Sea Devils for the first time ever. Malcolm Hulke 's scripts for The Sea Devils are sequels to not one but two stories: firstly as a successor to his own Doctor Who and the Silurians , a tale of prehistoric lizard creatures being reawakened millions of years into their future to find that mankind has taken over their planet; secondly as a follow-on from The Daemons , the finale to the preceding "Master season" that introduced ...

As Doctor Who’s twenty-second season drew to a close, the future of the series was uncertain. The show had been unceremoniously cancelled during the broadcast of The Two Doctors, before the BBC backtracked and decided that the show was “on hiatus”. The plans for Season 23 were swiftly abandoned as the show attempted to reinvent itself. Revelation of the Daleks marks the end of Doctor Who’s run of success, making it rather apt that it should be set in Tranquil Repose: a place where the rich and wealthy of the universe go to rest in suspended animation, until such a time as they can be cured from whatever disease or illness is about to kill them. Naturally, Tranquil Repose is all part of a cunning ploy by the Cybermen- I mean, the Daleks. Davros has taken over the planet as its “Great Healer” and uses the bodies of the nearly deceased to create a new army of Daleks. The Doctor and Peri arrive to discover that a trap has already been laid, and that Davros has become the target of not only...

For Who the bell tolls... As 2022 begins, this year marks the beginning of the end for the current era of Doctor Who , with a trilogy of specials concluding Jodie Whittaker 's run as the Thirteenth Doctor, alongside faithful companion Yaz ( Mandip Gill ) and showrunner Chris Chibnall . The first of these, Eve of the Daleks , makes for the third in a trilogy of Dalek-centric New Year's Day specials from the current production team ( Spyfall : Part One wasn't technically an NYD special after all...), and in a strange quirk of timey-wimey-ness airs fifty years after the iconic Day of the Daleks - the metal meanies first appearance in colour! After the convoluted shenanigans of Flux , and following on from two fairly solid Dalek specials, is Eve of the Daleks worth a watch - or does it deserve to be exterminated...? In short: it's fine. A perfectly solid, watchable hour of television that's standalone enough to satisfy a more casual audience not caught up with Flux , ...

After five weeks of excitement and build-up, Doctor Who: Flux wraps up one of the show's biggest stories in a convoluted mess of a finale that, if nothing else, reminded me of how much I enjoyed the middle three instalments. Chapters One and Five seemed primarily interested in moving the pieces around to set up key plot points for later on, while Chapter Six: The Vanquishers is forced to wrap everything up in a satisfying manner within an hour. With so many characters and storylines, it's hard to keep track of exactly what's going on, who's where and what the endgame is. In fact, the plot is so all over the place that the Doctor is split into three selves in order to save the day. The Vanquishers is not without its highlights: most of the scenes and plot points work well on their own, although are all in need of more screen time to really expand on them. The Lupari are murdered off-screen (and apparently not killed in battle, but chucked out of an airlock by Sontaran...

One notable criticism levied at Doctor Who: Flux so far has that it's been too complex, and may well have alienated the show's more casual viewers. This is a bit of a double-edged sword. If Doctor Who plays it too safe, audiences will lose interest. If the show aims for something more complex, far out and cerebral, people turn it off because they can't understand it. Personally, I think that the show can strike a firm balance between the two, and Flux just hasn't quite managed this.  For one thing, a large part of the story revolves around the Timeless Child revelations from the end of Series 12...which aired in March 2020. There's no recap in the "previously" segments, and expecting everyone to remember those revelations after a year and a half of...well, you know what seems a bit ridiculous. Also, The Timeless Children is only vaguely comprehensible if you've seen The Deadly Assassin - a four-part Tom Baker story from 1976. Chris Chibnall may h...

If you're looking for nightmare-inducing, race-behind-the-sofa Doctor Who , Village of the Angels is certain to become a stone-cold (aha) classic. I'd been hoping that Flux : Chapter Four would be a horror piece, given that its the only instalment of this series to be co-written by Maxine Alderton - who wrote the the excellent The Haunting of Villa Diodati last year, an episode that's only grown on me with time. It'd be easy to say that Alderton was responsible for the best aspects of the episode, but I think that's a disservice to Chris Chibnall , who has given us two great episodes this season and one watchable bit of set-up. Which writer made it work? Perhaps it was the combination of the two. During Steven Moffat 's era I really started to feel as though the Weeping Angels were being overused. Their return in The Time of Angels / Flesh and Stone was welcome, bar the moment when the lonely assassins moved on screen (for the first and only time). The Angel...

I've been eagerly awaiting a proper tippy, mind-bending, timey-wimey episode of Doctor Who for a while now. Oftentimes such ideas are relegated to sequences, with a fear of (presumably) not being "mainstream" enough. We received hints of this in Series 12's Can You Hear Me? , but Once, Upon Time is almost entirely dedicated to this concept. Firstly, the big one: we finally get to see more of "The Division days", and it's simultaneously incredibly exciting and a tiny bit underwhelming. Jo Martin returns as the Fugitive Doctor! Although she clearly wasn't present during the initial shoot and has been added in pick-ups, resulting in a "glitch" effect switching between her and Jodie Whittaker . It's a good compromise, as though the production team couldn't make the schedules work, and so did what they could, but I'd have much rather seen at least one full scene with Martin in the role again. Perhaps she shot her snippets alongsid...

Prior to watching War of the Sontarans on Sunday, I revisited the first chapter of Doctor Who: Flux , and I have to say that I enjoyed it a lot more. Was it the weight of expectations? The overwhelming number of disparate plot threads? Well, I still find the episode to be a little muddled, but it's a fun adventure, and if nothing else the dangling plot threads are all quite interesting. How would that cliffhanger be resolved?! Off-screen, it turns out... The best summary I have for War of the Sontarans is FUN . It's great to see the Sontarans back again, and I'm glad that writer Chris Chibnall dedicated 2/3 of the episode to them. J onathan Watson is great as his two Sontaran commanders, while Dan Starkey 's supporting role is a nice bit of continuity from previous Sontar tales. Having seen a number of set photos last year, I had expected the Crimean War storyline and modern day invasion to take place over two instalments of a two-parter; alas, it turns out that it...

I've always believed that Doctor Who thrives on production limitations. Take Midnight , a story restricted to one set and no monsters, or Blink , an episode in which the Doctor (for scheduling reasons) barely appears, or Bad Wolf / The Parting of the Ways , which returns to Satellite 5 from an earlier episode purely to reuse the same sets and save money, but ends up retroactively resolving the rather open ending to The Long Game . All of these episodes are not only highly regarded by fans, but some of the best Doctor Who stories to ever grace our screens. The Coronavirus pandemic may have caused issues all over the world, but perhaps this could provide a spark of much-needed inspiration for the current production team on Doctor Who ? That's not to say that the last two series have been bad at all. We've had quite a few good episodes - predominantly the historical tales - but the show has struggled to adapt to a changing television landscape. Producing eleven standalone e...

Venom was very much the victim of an awkward custody battle between Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios / Disney: A Spider-Man spin-off film which couldn’t feature or reference Spider-Man, arguably a key selling point for this kind of franchise expansion. Somehow, turning classic Spidey villain Venom into a sort-of good guy played by Tom Hardy turned into an $800 million smash hit, and a sequel was almost immediately greenlit. While the first film was “like a turd in the wind” (one of the film’s memorable, terrible lines of dialogue), this second film needed to somehow recreate the success whilst also hoping to make something that might be considered “good enough” for audiences to invest in future sequels (possibly why the first film ends with an apology: “I’m sorry about Venom” says Michelle Williams ). Enter Andy Serkis , hot off the heels of drama Breathe (starring ex-Spidey Andrew Garfield ) and Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle (a poorly timed Jungle Book adaptation dumped onto Net...

Marvel Studios’ What If…? concluded on Wednesday in a season finale which managed to epitomise the show in all its best and worst aspects. It’s nice to see the Marvel Cinematic Universe branching out into standalone, more varied stories, where everything that happens doesn’t have to fit into the “canon”. The animation work is lovely throughout, with some rich textures and lighting that put many other 2D and 3D animated features to shame. It’s also hugely impressive that the creative team managed all this – and snagged several A-list stars into a voice booth – in the midst of a global pandemic. The resulting series should be an all-time classic, but alas What If feels like a missed opportunity – nothing more than another infinity stone in Marvel’s gauntlet. At 30-35 minutes each, the episodes either feel too short to delve into their subject matter or too long to really pack a punch. The Captain Carter episode (centring on a super soldier incarnation of Hayley Atwell ’s Peggy Carter...

No Time to Die marks a significant moment in the James Bond franchise – not just because the film has been delayed various times since its original November 2019 slot, but because it’s the first time that the 007 series has actually ended . Unlike the lead actors before him, Daniel Craig has received a farewell film, a definitive end to his Bond and the running storylines across all five of his entries. The resulting No Time to Die ends up feeling like an entirely unique Bond flick, devoid of most of the formulas and tropes in favour of a deeply personal story determined to reach a definitive conclusion. Cary Joji Fukunaga ’s entry is filled to the brim with a story so complex it threatens to collapse in on itself at any moment, hanging on the central romance between Craig’s Bond and Madeline Swann ( Léa Seydoux ), who at the end of Spectre went off to travel round the world in an Aston Martin. But as with all spy movies, the past catches up – albeit not with Bond, but with Madel...

  She's back...and it's about time! It feels like an eternity since the Doctor last appeared on our screens, but at long last Doctor Who is back for a feature-length special. ' Revolution of the Daleks ' has a lot going for it: the Doctor's in prison, the "fam" are stuck on Earth, Captain Jack Harkness returns, ' Arachnids in the UK ''s Jack Roberston is back and the planet is about to be invaded by a new breed of Daleks. It's an episode with a lot going on, and after such a difficult ten months away from TV, with unrealistically heightened expectations that the production team could never have imagined (the special was filmed in October 2019), it's no surprise that ' Revolution of the Daleks ' doesn't live up to the hype. This is a blockbuster episode in a lot of ways, with scope, spectacle and some tremendous-looking visual effects shots, but also lacking in the overall narrative. In 71 minutes, ' Revolution ' roc...

Flashback to 2018. Doctor Who had undergone its biggest creative shift since 2010, with a new showrunner, new Doctor and a new stylistic approach. The first few episodes of Series 11 had been a really mixed bag, but now we were at the mid-point - the episode that needed to cement this new direction for the show. Unfortunately, ' The Tsuranga Conundrum ' wasn't quite "it", instead feeling a bit cobbled-together and uncertain, and by the end of its fifty-minute-running-time, the overall fan reaction was pretty negative. Revisiting ' The Tsuranga Conundrum ' almost two years later, it's easy to see why this episode failed to engage the Doctor Who fan base. It's an incredibly wordy episode, with frequent exposition dumps raced through at such a pace that it's difficult not to get dialogue whiplash. The episode clearly wants to start-off at a good pace, but sadly - whether it be a symptom of editing or  Jennifer Perrott 's direction - it n...