Pete Messum Reviews...

With Doctor Who: The Collection - Season 23 releasing on Blu-ray on 7th October 2019, a special preview event for the boxset took place at the BFI Southbank on 14th September, including a screening of ' Doctor Who: Mindwarp ', alongside a Q&A and signing. I was very lucky to attend, and was able to watch the extended edits of the four featured episodes, as well as some clips from some of the extras on the boxset, including ' The Doctor Who Cookbook Revisited ', ' Behind the Sofa ', an outtakes reel and two specially-made trailers for the Blu-ray. ' Mindwarp ', for those who don't know, is the sort-of-nickname given to ' The Trial of a Time Lord ' Parts Five through to Eight. ' The Trial of a Time Lord ' itself was the umbrella title given to Doctor Who's twenty-third season, airing after an eighteen month hiatus (during which it was briefly cancelled by Michael Grade), which consisted of fourteen, twenty-five minute e...

Its difficult to be a Doctor Who fan on the internet without coming across outcries from certain members of the fan base about how "terrible" Series 11 was. Aired from 7th October 2018 to 1st January 2019, Series 11 (or Season 37) featured not only the show's first female lead with Jodie Whittaker as the Thirteenth Doctor, but a larger and more diverse ensemble cast with Bradley Walsh as Graham, Tosin Cole as Ryan and Mandip Gill as Yaz. This, coupled with the series' emphasis on real-world issues - including episodes focused on Rosa Parks, the Indian partition, 17th Century witch trials, a mock-Amazon company and a Trump-esque billionaire - caused many people to call the series "overly-political", in spite of the obvious argument that this was nothing new. Whilst some journalists will publish articles on "PC Who", many fans took this idea further, moaning about "SJW Doctor Who"...whatever that means. For the record, Doctor Who has al...

Doctor Who rocketed onto our television screens last night after (yet another) eighteen month hiatus with...a guy trying to ride a bike. Chris Chibnall's opening episode, 'The Woman Who Fell To Earth', is filled with subtle, small-scale character moments like this. Ryan talking about "the greatest woman [he's] ever met"; Graham's heartfelt speech at the funeral; Grace recognising Yaz from Ryan's school ("hello Ryan's nan!"); and the Doctor's little speech about her family near the end. Amongst all the alien shenanigans you expect from Doctor Who, there are these smaller moments built on character in a way I haven't really seen the show do for a long time. Whilst Bill and Nardole were unique and likable characters, neither of them had character arcs, while Clara's character arcs never felt fully-formed or were contradicted at the last second. Even Amy's character journey seemed to have concluded by the end of Series 5...

Heaven Sent is a brilliant episode of Doctor Who . Just putting Peter Capaldi in a constantly re-setting and isolated castle with a silent monster slowly chasing after him is a fascinating and original concept, and believe it or not, is pulled off to almost perfection. Sure, with the big time travel twist in the episode there are a few plot holes - such as The Doctor mentioning how he has only travelled in space and not time, the fact that he couldn't have seen the bird message if he hadn't been there before, and the fact that the diamond-like wall didn't re-set with the rest of the rooms. These are all minor plot holes that I don't mind, and I think that if the episode tried to answer some of these questions it would take away from the overall episode and possibly make it not quite as entertaining. This is Steven Moffat's best script in ages, although I think that Rachel Talalay's direction and Peter Capaldi's performance bring it to life. It seems li...

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...

Midnight has earned its place as one the most popular and fan-acclaimed Doctor Who stories of all time (and space). Its in many fans' Top 10 lists and even Classic Who die-hards love this story. So, what is it about Midnight that makes it so beloved? The story follows The Doctor and companion Donna Noble relaxing on the planet Midnight. The Doctor wants to go on a bus to see the planet's sapphire waterfalls, but Donna isn't interested, so The Doctor goes on the tour by himself, meeting and getting to know all of the passengers, the two drivers and the hostess along the way. However, the journey has some unexpected turbulence when a creature is seen by one of the drivers, only for a few minutes later have the driver's cockpit completely dismantled from the bus (leaving everyone stranded). As the passengers become more and more panicked and paranoid, one of them - Skye Silvestri - is possessed by the creature outside, and when she begins to copy what everyone else is s...

I've been waiting to see what big, mad idea Chris Chibnall has for his Doctor Who for a while now - essentially since a "five year plan" was teased back in 2017 - and whilst ' Spyfall ' earlier this season teased a new status quo for the Doctor, ' Fugitive of the Judoon ' comes along as a big mid-season shake-up that the show desperately needed, and something that the Who fan-base definitely needed. But despite being possibly the best thing to happen to the show for a long time, ' Fugitive ' is also quite possibly the worst thing to happen to Doctor Who for all of the same reasons. The episode was teased as a fun monster-of-the-week episode featuring the return of the Judoon (voiced by Nicholas Briggs , first seen in Series 3's ' Smith and Jones '), who were hunting a mysterious fugitive character ( Neil Stuke ), except then it turns out that he's not the real fugitive, and that his wife Ruth ( Jo Martin ) is. The Doctor and ...

Series 9 of Doctor Who has promised to shake up the two-part story formula, and here with The Girl Who Died and The Woman Who Lived, we really get this traditional Who formula played around with. Each episode has a different plot and writer, but both are connected by Maisie William's Ashildr. Ultimately, The Girl Who Died suffers from being just good enough. It never seems to decide on what it wants to be. It can be a very bizarre Vikings vs. Aliens story one minute, and then turn into a deep character piece about The Doctor's effect on other people the next. The entire episode seems to throw around themes about storytelling around but nothing ever really sticks - the deus ex machima ending isn't really explained properly and Ashildr might as well be named "we'll come back to her later" as her role in the plot is ultimately to be the titular girl who died, and to save the day. By no means is The Girl Who Died bad - far, far from it - but it has no idea wh...

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...

I remember 2014 being a very exciting year for a Doctor Who fan. Despite having yet another nine-month wait for the next series, news, leaks and spoilers were abound. We were just coming off the back of the show's 50th anniversary year, and I was still riding high on the celebrations of such an event. We had a new Doctor in Peter Capaldi, a relatively new companion in Clara Oswald (Jenna Coleman), and a whole new era to look forward to. Steven Moffat's era B, if you will. Throughout the year we had official photos from the new years, vague behind the scenes snaps, the usual Radio Times episode guide and the World Tour - as the first episode ' Deep Breath ' screened in seven cities across five continents, building the excitement in the weeks before it aired on BBC One. I had come back from a week's holiday just in time to see Episode 1, and was absolutely ecstatic. It saddens me somewhat to say that when I revisited ' Deep Breath ' a little while ago, I f...

A staple of Classic Doctor Who, 'Earthshock' is regularly cited as a seminal episode in the series as a whole. Part One's shocking (pun intended) cliffhanger has become iconic in the show's history, while the ending to Part Four has become more memorable for it's surprisingly strong execution. The sixth story in Doctor Who's nineteenth season (and Peter Davison's first), 'Earthshock' marked the return of the Cybermen - not seen since 1975's 'Revenge of the Cybermen' in Tom Baker's first season - in a brand-new iteration that would continue to return in 'The Five Doctors', 'Attack of the Cybermen' and 'Silver Nemesis' before the show's cancellation in 1989. Peter Davison himself has cited the Cybermen as one of Doctor Who's scariest monsters, so giving him to opportunity to face them in his first season (and the Daleks in his last) seemed appropriate. I was able to watch the special BFI screening o...

We're now mere weeks away from the start of Doctor Who's eleventh (technically thirty-seventh) series on BBC One, and with a huge shift behind the scenes, the show is hoping to reclaim some of its lost magic with viewers and fans alike. Whether or not this will succeed is up in the air until the series finishes later this year, but there's certainly some controversy behind many of the new creative decisions. Chris Chibnall's selection as showrunner for the series was strangely-enough the most logical, despite him not being at the top of many, if arguably any fans' lists. Having written and executive produced three incredibly successful seasons of Broadchurch for ITV, it makes sense that the BBC would want to draw Chibnall back, and given his interest in writing Doctor Who beforehand, selecting him as showrunner seems like a safe bet - at the very least from a production standpoint, given that he'd be the most experienced of the regular writers likely to take...