Pull To Open
161 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 17 hours ago -There are many Doctor Who podcasts. Only one dares review the entire show... in entirely random order!
Join journalists Pete Pachal and Chris Taylor as they summarize stories in record time, play the Whomoji game, enter the History Corner, answer the Four Questions to Doomsday, and cower in fear before the almighty Randomizer.
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Episodes
Rage of Empires (Beguiling “Frontier in Space”)
June 24, 2023 10:00 - 1 hour - 106 MBIf you have two enormous, powerful entities, sure as hell someone will think it’s a great idea to have them fight. If they’re galactic space empires, so much the better for raising the stakes — at least on paper. But what Frontier in Space is really about is fear: fear of the unknown, the unfamiliar, the notion you might be wrong, and how that fear can lead people (and Draconians) to do terrible things. Oh, it’s also about getting captured repeatedly, and the varying ways one can escape from...
A Bug’s Strife (Sterilizing “The Ark in Space”)
June 17, 2023 10:00 - 1 hour - 97.3 MBWe’ve all been there: After waking up from a long sleep, you open your eyes only to witness a buzzing insect that’s invaded your bedroom. So we can all relate to the human refugees on Nerva Station, although when the pest is a man-sized space parasite that wants to consume you and absorb your memories PLUS you and your friends are the last of the human race — well, the stakes get a bit raised. There’s no question The Ark in Space sets up a suspenseful tale for the ages, and even functions as...
Sphere of Fear (Plundering “The Pirate Planet”)
June 10, 2023 10:00 - 2 hours - 115 MBThe hottest sci-fi writer on the planet in 1978 was Douglas Adams. Not only was he about to bestow upon the world the original radio plays of The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, he also wrote his first Doctor Who adventure, The Pirate Planet. There are so many similarities — in tone, plotting, and effortlessly clever dialogue — that it’s easy to tell this story came out of the same creative spigot as Hitch Hiker’s, but the recycling doesn’t detract from this incredibly ambitious story abo...
In Dickens and in Gelth (Reanimating “The Unquiet Dead”)
June 03, 2023 10:00 - 1 hour - 102 MBHow does a family show like Doctor Who do a zombie horror story? You start by subtracting (most of) the gore, then add a sci-fi twist. That’s good, but what would really make it stand out is if you take a real person from history and cast the best possible actor to play the role. The Unquiet Dead ticks all those eerie boxes, deftly telling a tale of walking corpses, teasing the show’s (then) new mythology of the Time War, and showcasing the show’s central premise of time travel by involving ...
Big Trouble in Ancient China (Traversing “Marco Polo”)
May 27, 2023 10:00 - 1 hour - 110 MBOften when Doctor Who visits Earth’s past, a lot is made of whether the characters can “change” history or not. Outcomes vary, but it’s oddly refreshing to look back on the series’ first historical, Marco Polo, where the question never comes up. Instead, the story creates stakes by thrusting the TARDIS team smack in the middle of the rivalries, duplicity and politics of quasi-real events in history, and letting the drama naturally unfold. At seven episodes, it’s a gradual unfolding — and som...
Ultimate Fighting Championship (Disarming “The War Games”)
May 20, 2023 10:00 - 2 hours - 131 MBThe Doctor tends to find himself thrust in the middle of many battles throughout history, but what if he landed in the middle of all of them? That may well have been the inspiration for The War Games, the epic-length finale of the Patrick Troughton era of Doctor Who. By taking the idea of multiple wars — each a live-action board game played for the amusement of powerful aliens — with the soldiers eventually realizing the deception and resisting, the story puts forward one of the most powerfu...
The Trouble With Gallifrey
May 13, 2023 11:00 - 1 hour - 64.5 MBThe original revelation of the Doctor’s origins was a slow burn: It took Doctor Who six seasons to finally give concrete answers to who he was and where he came from. But after the landmark reveal at the end of The War Games, going back to Gallifrey seemed to be an exercise in diminishing returns for the show. True, The Deadly Assassin gave a compelling new perspective on Time Lord society, though if you look at what came after — Arc of Infinity, The Trial of a Time Lord, and even Hell Bent ...
Rage-Quitting Doctor Who: A History
May 06, 2023 11:00 - 1 hour - 59.1 MBWhether you’re a fan of a TV show, movie series or comic book, it’s almost guaranteed your fandom will be tested at some point. As creative teams come and go, as changes in direction stack up, as the medium evolves, the flavor of something can change radically. And if you don’t like the taste, it can be a rapid progression from disappointment to hate-watching to quitting in disgust. Doctor Who is no exception to this, and it probably goes double given its built-in reboot device of regenerat...
Hospital Food (Regurgitating “The Tsuranga Conundrum”)
April 29, 2023 10:00 - 1 hour - 97.1 MBIf you’re going to attempt a tense thriller in Doctor Who, sometimes the horror can get really intense, such as in The Waters of Mars. And sometimes it can go 100% in the other direction and serve up an unexpected monster in the form of a baby-faced cartoon character, such as here, in The Tsuranga Conundrum. Is one approach superior to the other? We’re here to say, definitively, yes. Yep, the Pting’s bad — there’s no way around it — but as long as we have Brett Goldstein’s eyebrows to lose ...
Jones and Smith (Courting “The Doctor’s Wife,” with guest Dave Kitchen)
April 22, 2023 11:00 - 1 hour - 97.6 MBWhen is a TARDIS not a TARDIS? When it’s a bitey mad lady, of course. Yes, The Doctor's Wife shows a side of the show’s signature blue box that we’ve never seen before, personifying the Doctor’s “ship” in a way that’s unexpected, insanely quirky and… well, sexy. That’s thanks in large part to Suranne Jones’ pitch-perfect performance as Idris, a woman possessed with the essence of the TARDIS, the Doctor’s longest-running companion. Neil Gamian’s clever script wisely gives her a lot of time op...
Jones and Smith (Courting “The Doctor’s Wife”)
April 22, 2023 11:00 - 1 hour - 97.6 MBWhen is a TARDIS not a TARDIS? When it’s a bitey mad lady, of course. Yes, The Doctor's Wife shows a side of the show’s signature blue box that we’ve never seen before, personifying the Doctor’s “ship” in a way that’s unexpected, insanely quirky and… well, sexy. That’s thanks in large part to Suranne Jones’ pitch-perfect performance as Idris, a woman possessed with the essence of the TARDIS, the Doctor’s longest-running companion. Neil Gamian’s clever script wisely gives her a lot of time op...
Invasion Inception (Thwarting “The Invasion of Time”)
April 15, 2023 13:34 - 2 hours - 114 MBYou’ve got to hand it to the Doctor — he’s single-handedly saved Gallifrey almost as many times as the Earth, and The Invasion of Time even lets him double dip! Rescuing the Time Lords from the Vardans was just a warm-up, with the Sontarans laying in wait to have their crack at the planet once the production runs out of tinfoil. The story is a bizarro Russian doll of invasions, seemingly orchestrated by a borderline-megalomaniacal Doctor, set against the backdrop of Robert Holmes’ delightful...
Who Counts as a True Companion?
April 08, 2023 11:00 - 46 minutes - 42.5 MBIt’s a long-debated subject among Doctor Who fans: Who counts as a companion? It used to be that traveling in the TARDS, typically across different stories, meant you made the list — and might even end up in a support group years later with Kate Stewart et al. But a mere TARDIS ride is too low a bar: Does that mean the policemen in Black Orchid are companions? You could say you need to be in more than one story, but then Astrid and Sara Kingdom are out. And what about “bad” TARDIS passengers...
Treasure Flap (Pillaging “The Smugglers”)
April 01, 2023 11:00 - 1 hour - 79.2 MBIn the new series, it’s customary to offer freshly onboarded TARDIS crewmembers a choice: Would you like to go to the future or the past? Back in the ’60s, there was no choice involved — the Doctor didn’t have the first clue how to steer his time machine, something he states explicitly in The Smugglers to accidental companions Ben and Polly. But if he had the goal of showing them just how brutally violent traveling through time can be, he couldn’t do much better than this mostly forgotten “p...
One Really Small Step (Eclipsing “Kill the Moon”)
March 25, 2023 11:00 - 1 hour - 104 MB“Fearlessly bonkers” is how director Paul Wilmshurst described Kill the Moon, a — shall we say ambitious? — episode of Doctor Who that presumes the moon we see shining in the sky every night is actually an enormous egg. Yes. Hold on… how did we not notice it’s made of eggshell? How does the moon “put on weight” so quickly that it has the same gravity of Earth? Why would the “bacteria” protecting it look and behave exactly like giant spiders? Best not to ask such questions and simply run down...
Decoding the Codex (A Pull To Open Short Trip)
March 18, 2023 11:00 - 32 minutes - 30 MBThe question of what constitutes a complete story in Doctor Who isn't a straightforward as it may seem. The issue actually first reared its rubber-masked head fairly early on, when, in the third season, the show decided to "tease" its most epic adventure yet, The Daleks' Masterplan, with a single one-off episode called Mission to the Unknown. It even gave Mission a unique production code that tied it to that 12-part(!) adventure. So... is it its own story, or what? Years later, The Trial of ...
Bitter Dregs (Stranding “Orphan 55”)
March 11, 2023 11:30 - 1 hour - 89.8 MBOrphan 55 stands apart from the rest of Doctor Who canon in two key ways: First, its idea of an indeterminate always-in-flux future is at odds with virtually every other adventure set in the future. And second, probably no other episode has ever dared to spell out its message so explicitly, ending with an ominous speech from Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor about the terrible consequences of neglecting our planet. To be fair, the story is much more fun than that sounds, with jokes about speedos and ...
Robot Roll Call (Fulfilling “Destiny of the Daleks”)
March 04, 2023 11:00 - 2 hours - 117 MBIs there a story that gets the Daleks wrong more than Destiny of the Daleks? While Douglas Adams’ run on Doctor Who as script editor is revered for many reasons (mostly the story immediately following this one), his first outing is arguably a misstep. Bringing back the Daleks after a five-year absence isn’t a bad idea, but shoehorning the show’s most crowd-pleasing monsters into a story about two rival races of “robots” in a galactic military stalemate robs them of the essence of their terro...
UNIT on the Brain (Rethinking “The Mind of Evil”)
February 25, 2023 12:00 - 1 hour - 88.5 MBIf you tuned into Doctor Who in the early ’70s, chances are you saw Jon Pertwee in a colorful tuxedo arguing with the Brigadier and UNIT on the best way to take down some inhuman menace whose strings are being pulled by Roger Delgado’s Master. You get that in spades in The Mind of Evil, which makes it a 100% proof 1970s Who adventure, though at times the bloated story feels like they decided to coast almost entirely on the formula, without much attention given to whether any of the multiplyi...
Jurassic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Rerouting “Dinosaurs on a Spaceship”)
February 18, 2023 12:00 - 1 hour - 90.8 MBTime travel and dinosaurs — they go together like teeth and curls. Strange, then, that Doctor Who has only ventured on a rousing adventure with these colossal prehistoric monsters twice, in stories about 40 years apart. At least in the latter outing, Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, the special effects are leveled-up from stop motion to CGI. The TARDIS crew also gets enhanced, recruiting a pair of fish-out-of-water historical figures to help the Doctor solve the immediate problem: a Canada-size spa...
Last Time Lord Standing (Flooding “The Waters of Mars,” with guests from The Cloister Bell podcast)
February 11, 2023 12:00 - 2 hours - 115 MBWhen the Doctor travels to the past he obviously has a great deal of foreknowledge about what’s taken place and, moreover, what must take place in order for history as we know it to be preserved. It’s refreshing, then, to see that same idea applied to future history in The Waters of Mars, a thrilling story that uses that device to amplify its impact by an order of magnitude above your typical base-under-siege adventure. When you add a healthy helping of zombie horror and a dark twist at the ...
Last Time Lord Standing (Flooding “The Waters of Mars”)
February 11, 2023 12:00 - 2 hours - 115 MBWhen the Doctor travels to the past he obviously has a great deal of foreknowledge about what’s taken place and, moreover, what must take place in order for history as we know it to be preserved. It’s refreshing, then, to see that same idea applied to future history in The Waters of Mars, a thrilling story that uses that device to amplify its impact by an order of magnitude above your typical base-under-siege adventure. When you add a healthy helping of zombie horror and a dark twist at the ...
Present Danger (Unwrapping “The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe”)
February 04, 2023 12:00 - 1 hour - 109 MBMatt Smith’s Doctor is known for being a few notches higher on the Bonkers Scale than his predecessors, a measure that arguably reaches its peak in The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe. His captivating antics early in this story — where he takes a London family on a tour of a country manor that he’s upgraded with with playrooms, hammocks and taps that spout lemonade — underscore the 11th Doctor’s “mad man in a box” appeal, and set the stage for a emotional story with surprising weight. The...
Last Faction Hero (Quelling “Revolution of the Daleks”)
January 28, 2023 12:00 - 2 hours - 134 MBAs Doctor Who’s ultimate monsters, the Daleks have been rebooted more times than a MacBook doing a janky system update. The most recent revamp came via Revolution of the Daleks, where the children of Davros got a new look inspired by the previous holiday special, Resolution, complete with sleek black casing and his and hers colored LEDs. But Dalek design isn’t the only thing up for revision here: we also get new takes on a pair of Jacks — Harkness and Robertson — who both try on something di...
Threat Gala (Fertilizing “Black Orchid”)
January 21, 2023 13:09 - 1 hour - 107 MBThe Fifth Doctor’s cricket outfit seemed a bit random at first, but Black Orchid is the story that shows it’s more than just a signature look. In an unusual twist, the Doctor isn’t the mysterious stranger seemingly come to save the day — he’s completely expected, and the thing he’s expected to do is play cricket. Of course, he does so like a boss who’s had centuries to hone his bowling skills, and then serves up an encore by solving a double murder at the estate of an aristocratic English fa...
Game Controller (Pwning “The Celestial Toymaker”)
January 14, 2023 12:00 - 1 hour - 95.5 MBEntering the pocket reality of a powerful entity that loves to play games isn’t something that happens every day, but if you’re a character on Doctor Who, it’s an occupational hazard. The Celestial Toymaker is the first realization of that idea onscreen, made more interesting by the revelation that it’s not the first time the Doctor has met this potentially problematic villain. In Who canon, the story is well-remembered if not revered — for the implied history between the two characters, for...
The Retcon Episode (Amending Our Story Ratings, Seasons 1-3)
January 07, 2023 21:39 - 1 hour - 63.3 MBWhen Pull To Open debuted three years ago, we didn’t even have a rating system — just a sound of drums in our heads, convincing us to bring thoughtful commentary about Doctor Who stories from the perspective of longtime fans who are also journalists. As we went deeper into the show and installed the key component in our journey — the Pull To Open Randomizer — we developed a shorthand for signaling if we considered an episode good (a Dalek) or not so good (an Ogron). Eventually we created rat...
Bullet Time (Lassoing “The Gunfighters”)
December 31, 2022 12:00 - 1 hour - 79.9 MBIf you’re a time-traveling alien with a toothache, obviously your first stop is going to be the Old West. It’s not just because of the oddly easy-to-find dentistry services, but the chance of getting mixed up in a farcical case of mistaken identity with lots of gunplay is quite high. Doctor Who’s first (and for a long time, only) attempt at a western is arguably a bold experiment and unquestionably a high-quality production, but like the gunslinging Clantons themselves, The Gunfighters has b...
Opposite Day (Relishing “Utopia,” “The Sound of Drums” and “Last of the Time Lords”)
December 24, 2022 12:00 - 2 hours - 137 MBBy Series 3 of NuWho, showrunner Russell T. Davies was two-for-two at successfully re-introducing classic bad guys in the Daleks and the Cybermen. To complete the trifecta, Davies naturally turned to the Doctor’s ideological opposite, the Master, and he raised the stakes with the new series’ first three-parter in Utopia, The Sound of Drums and Last of the Time Lords — a story that sees the Earth not just threatened, but conquered and subjugated. That’s a lot to work with when your job is to ...
War Is for Suckers (Impersonating “The Zygon Invasion” and “The Zygon Inversion”)
December 17, 2022 12:38 - 1 hour - 93.6 MBAs alien baddies go, the Zygons are one of the more nuanced races that have tried to take over the Earth. Turns out they want to just live in peace and chill, man — just like the rest of us. That’s some nice background for The Zygon Invasion/Inversion, a story that focuses on the extremists among us who are determined to stir up animosity to further their own idealized vision of how society should be. Kinda sounds relevant, but it’s going to take a speech for the ages, delivered by a leading...
Wings of Glory (Observing “Blink”)
December 10, 2022 12:00 - 1 hour - 105 MBIs there a better episode to introduce new viewers to Doctor Who than Blink? Sure, it’s a little unrepresentative of the show considering the Doctor is barely in it, but the essential elements are there: a fantastical world, a normal person pulled slowly into it, and a monster for the ages. Blink had both hardcore Whovians and casual fans buzzing when it debuted in 2007, but has it been long enough that cracks are starting to show in the stone facade? We dare to climb the pedestal where Blin...
Small World (Reducing “Planet of Giants”)
December 03, 2022 12:00 - 1 hour - 68 MBWhat is so fascinating about the micro world that almost every sci-fi franchise has been inspired to include an episode where the characters shrink to the size of insects? The Doctor’s first foray into diminished circumstances came pretty early: William Hartnell’s second-season opener, Planet of Giants, sees the original TARDIS crew taking on giant bugs, deadly water faucets, and a ruthless killer indifferent to a looming environmental catastrophe. Seen through a magnifying glass, Doctor Who...
Why Did “The Power of the Doctor” Regenerate the Doctor’s Clothes? (A Pull To Open Short Trip)
November 26, 2022 12:00 - 44 minutes - 41 MBJodie Whittaker’s regeneration wasn’t just unusual for — spoiler alert — marking the first “repeat” Doctor when she morphed into David Tennant at the end of “The Power of the Doctor.” It was also one of the only regenerations to also regenerate the Doctor’s clothes. The in-show reason for this will likely be revealed in next year’s 60th anniversary special, but incoming showrunner Russell T. Davies discussed in the latest issue of Doctor Who Magazine why he was “absolutely certain” the cloth...
Frail Whale (Baiting “The Beast Below”)
November 19, 2022 12:00 - 1 hour - 87.7 MBWhy did it take Doctor Who so long to do the “star whale” concept? If the show was waiting for a particularly strong script, it probably should have sailed right on by The Beast Below, which doesn’t exactly bestow the idea with a lot of dignity: it could be the only time Doctor Who has introduced a creature by showing it barfing. Even though the show is mostly using this cosmic cetacean as a metaphor for an ancient semi-god who just wants to be nice to children and help out when they’re cryi...
Is "The Power of the Doctor" the Best Regeneration Episode? (A Pull To Open Short Trip)
November 12, 2022 12:00 - 43 minutes - 39.7 MBRegeneration. It's been a pivotal part of Doctor Who for almost 60 years, but let's face it: Some regenerations have been better than others. When a new Doctor takes over, it's always dramatic, but there are several more boxes to tick to make the episode a classic. The story should be epic in impact if not in stakes, the incumbent Doctor should have apt and memorable final lines, and the regeneration itself should tickle both the eyes and the mind. So where does The Power of the Doctor — the...
Death Becomes Him (Exalting "Dalek")
November 05, 2022 11:00 - 2 hours - 122 MBThe simple, straightforward title of Dalek belies so much: This story doesn’t just re-introduce the Daleks for a new generation of Doctor Who viewers — it makes them interesting, upgraded, and scary in ways they always deserved to be but never quite achieved in the classic series. Stellar performances from the cast — including an arguably best-of-his-run showstopper from Christopher Eccleston as the Doctor overcome by his hatred for these machine-creatures — certainly hep to make Dalek both ...
Abyss of the Spider Woman (Chasing “The Runaway Bride”)
October 29, 2022 11:00 - 1 hour - 103 MBWhen companions go, sometimes it’s sad (brave heart, Tegan), sometimes it’s bittersweet (London, 1965!), and sometimes it’s a nonevent (Dodo who?). But the heartbreaking departure of Rose in Doomsday is on another level altogether, and it simply requires repercussions. Those shockwaves are front and center in The Runaway Bride, yet somehow the story ends up being one of the most fun in the entire series. That’s thanks in no small part to the brilliant comedic banter between David Tennant and...
Mile-High Flub (Piloting “Time-Flight,” with guest Christopher Burgess)
October 22, 2022 11:01 - 2 hours - 121 MBWhen you hear “a Doctor Who story set in the Jurassic period,” the picture you conjure in your head probably looks quite a bit different from Time-Flight. That’s not necessarily a strike against it: The finale of Season 19 is notorious for being light on budget, so it’s probably a blessing that they didn’t even try to show a single allosaurus stomping around the barren plains of prehistoric London. Instead we get the Xeraphin, a telepathic race of morally conflicted humanoids that are almost...
Bad Weed (Drenching “Fury From the Deep”)
October 08, 2022 11:00 - 1 hour - 103 MBIs there any Doctor Who format as reliable as the base under siege? You can see why: All you need is one set, an excuse to keep the TARDIS out of reach, and one illogically obstinate person in charge, and you’re about 90% there. The key ingredient, of course, is a convincing and creepy monster, and though mutant seaweed might not be your first choice to fill that role, it’s what Fury From the Deep has to work with. Nonetheless, even in animation, “the weed” produces more scares than any host...
That Witch You Seek (Exposing “The Witchfinders”)
October 01, 2022 11:00 - 1 hour - 94.8 MBJodie Whittaker’s first season as the Doctor took the show in a new direction, but The Witchfinders is almost a return to a very old format: the pure historical. True, this outing to the witch-obsessed England of the 17th century doesn’t quite qualify — what with alien mud creatures reanimating left and right in the final act — but the most interesting thing about this story is certainly the dramatization of the horrific witch trials of the era. An excellent guest cast helps, made all the mo...
Past Sins (Witnessing “Rosa”)
September 24, 2022 11:00 - 1 hour - 108 MBOften Doctor Who travels to the past to showcase historical events, but it rarely shows what life in those eras was like for the less privileged. Rosa is a jarring exception to the rule, with its lens pointed directly at the racist past of the American South. While there is an antagonist from the future present, the real evil force here is state-sanctioned segregation. And the hero who must confront it isn’t the title character we tune in to see from week to week, but Rosa Parks, the black w...
Gold Turkey (Transmuting “Revenge of the Cybermen”)
September 17, 2022 11:00 - 2 hours - 116 MBIf you lack emotions, can you seek revenge? It’s the burden of Doctor Who fans to ponder questions like this, since Revenge of the Cybermen attributes emotion to the show’s notoriously unfeeling monsters right there in the title. More likely, we suspect some future historian did their best to characterize the Cybermen’s incursion on Nerva Beacon in the 29th century with some fanciful language to give the whole episode some gravitas. Heaven knows the story could use it — unless you’re talking...
Pair o’ Docs (Devouring “The Two Doctors”)
September 03, 2022 10:45 - 1 hour - 89.6 MBWhen more than one Doctor is present, you know something’s gone disastrously wrong. While that usually applies to something within the show, in the case of The Two Doctors, you might be talking about the show itself. In some ways, it’s not the story’s fault — the production was famously plagued with problems behind the scenes — but a misfired location shoot can’t explain away the script’s icky obsession with carnivorism or those utterly extraneous Sontarans. At least we can all agree that we...
The Once and Future Doctor (Mythologizing “Battlefield”)
August 27, 2022 11:00 - 1 hour - 94.9 MBSummer is peak season for action romps, we’re told, so that must be why the Randomzier plopped us in the middle of Battlefield, the opening story of Classic Doctor Who’s final year, and one that seems to continuously feature guns shooting, swords clashing, and all manner of things blowing up. I mean, you’d expect nothing less from the last official appearance of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, but is it all just smokescreen to keep us from realizing the story — ostensibly about transdimensiona...
Invading Earth for Dummies (Waxing "Spearhead From Space")
August 20, 2022 11:00 - 1 hour - 90.7 MBRebooting Doctor Who is a feature of the show, not a bug, but it was still uncertain territory when Jon Pertwee took over in 1970. Sure, Patrick Troughton had taken over from William Hartnell a few years before, but it was very much the same show, following the adventures of a mysterious traveler and his human companions throughout all of time and space. Spearhead From Space boldly tosses out that formula, centers the show on contemporary Earth, and recasts the Doctor as a flamboyant action ...
All Creatures Great and Small (Magnifying “Carnival of Monsters”)
July 23, 2022 11:00 - 1 hour - 95.6 MBDoctor Who can be dramatic, captivating, and even epic, but some of the most memorable episodes are just plain fun! Carnival of Monsters definitely qualifies as one of the fun ones, made all the more interesting with an intriguing first-episode mystery and some subversive messaging in Robert Holmes’s almost-too-clever script. Come for the fearsome drashigs, stay for the brilliant political satire on Inter Minor. And, as ever, don’t blink, lest you miss the surprising backstory about the Doct...
A Logical End (Mastering “Logopolis”)
July 16, 2022 13:07 - 1 hour - 97.2 MBIf a regeneration story means the end of an era in Doctor Who, Logopolis is an extinction-level event. It bears the extra weight of being the final story in the epic run of Tom Baker, who, to many, was the definitive actor to play the Doctor. Christopher H. Bidmead’s script doesn’t shy away from this impossible task, with the premise, the villain, and the stakes all appropriately elevated. You’d be forgiven for thinking this might not have been the best time to stuff the TARDIS full of new c...
Industrial Devolution (Blemishing “The Mark of the Rani”)
July 09, 2022 11:00 - 1 hour - 93.7 MBTime Lords come and Time Lords go, but what about Time Ladies? The Rani is a peculiar case among Gallifrey’s ruling class: an amoral cosmic elitist who just wants to be left alone and occasionally perform horrible experiments on various folks — and isn’t the slightest bit interested in the Doctor. That’s a refreshing change, made even more memorable by holding it right up against the status-quo opposite: the Master himself. Before Missy, before Time Lord gender-flops, and before the Master s...
SHORT TRIP: The Real Captain Jack
July 02, 2022 11:00 - 20 minutes - 19.1 MBLongtime Pull To Open listeners have heard his name again and again, but exactly who is this mysterious “Jack?” It’s time for a surprise reveal: Pete’s son Jack takes a little time off from being a kid to visit the podcast and share his thoughts on Doctor Who, including what he thinks of the classic series after growing up on NuWho, how the show is sometimes too scary, and of course who his favorite Doctor is. We might be biased, but the future of fandom is in good hands. Please leave a rev...
No Place Like Rome (Indulging “The Romans”)
June 04, 2022 11:00 - 1 hour - 75.3 MBSome say Doctor Who’s The Romans is just a romp, a bit of silliness, and not that consequential. Don’t you believe it. It’s arguably the story where the Doctor has the most sweeping and destructive effect on history as we know it. We might all be living in the “bad” timeline right now — one where Rome burned and Nero’s expensive reconstruction hastened the weakening of the empire. Consider the outcome if a certain Time Lord’s spectacles didn’t incinerate the emperor’s plans: a stronger Rome,...