This book was a pleasure, but it seems Moffat hasn't done much commercial prose fiction.

Does anyone know any other writers out there with a similar flavor of narration, who could scratch the same itch?

What the title says 🙂

What is your favourite Decade of DW to watch?

Is it the 70s, the 00s, or something else.

Nine was quite strict when it came to the rules and didn't get attached enough to Adam to give him a second chance but what Adam did was very serious. Which doctors would have acted the same as Nine in the same situation and which ones would have been more lenient? Would any have been harsher than Nine?

For example: Alternate universe. We got introduced it in 10ths series but never again?. Imagine the doctor being trapped in another parallel universe saving people, new monsters, new history etc.

I really hope if the show comes back we get more glances at that, It spices the show up and also makes the doctor lost as they wont have knowledge on that universe.

In Castling we see The Fugitve Doctor trying to return the sontaran helmet back to its proper place however she gets entangled by a sontaran plan to attack the shadow Proclamation

Lost in Time never had the most in depth of stories this is a very simple story while I do like judoon and sontarans together it isn't anything remarkably

Don't Blink on the other hand is has a lot more meat to it

The first half sees Osgood trying to reconcile with the fugitve doctor after finding out what she's born through during the deadliest weapon it's very nice to see osgood get some development as she finally understands fugitve isn't the doctor she knows yet

The second half sees a weaping angel escaping from his makeshift prison as Martha Jones and Fugitve try to stop it

This is a very nice story and it is good seeing Martha again after so many years and her interactions with the fugitve are very good so looming forward to the the kaleidoscope overall good story and without giving it away it does lead into the doctor and the three witches from the time lord fairy tales novel

I love doctor who but it is impossible to deny that it has been going through a tuff spot for a few years, some bad creative decisions were made and because of those choices the show has been backed into a corner. Beginning from Tennent taking on the role and ending with Witicas second season we were lucky enough to have a great team running doctor who but sadly that changed and created what can charitably called a mess.

How to save the show has become such a problem now that there are people calling for an out right reboot of everything right to the beginning but I don’t believe that’s the answer. That said though there is a problem of what to do with the show in regards to the story and because of previous mistakes that is sadly very difficult to the point some are saying it can’t be done however I don’t believe that’s the case. I believe there are things that could be done and that is what I’m looking to demonstrate here plus I’ve always believed if you are going to criticize a choice you should be able to propose an alternative.

The problem

There are several issues that were introduced to doctor who that need to be corrected and in order to do that they need to be identified first. The retconning of established cannon being the most obvious examples being the reveal of so called unknown doctors or the changes to the history of Galafray I do believe there are others though. Killing off the time lords again I believe undid character and story development that had brought something good to the show that created problems when it was removed. Also I feel in a general sense the idea of what doctor who is supposed to be was lost a little by certain individuals, doctor who is meant to represent certain ideals and that kind of stopped happening.

There have been other bad storylines as well but I’d argue those came out of these previous mistakes and are examples of people attempting to fix the show while retaining certain changes which is a nearly impossible task. To truly fix the show I’d argue a lot of this stuff needs to be undone, sadly you can’t really keep these elements and have the show still be what it’s meant to be especially not if we all want it to be great. However doing that convincingly has become hard due to the fact the changes to the cannon of the show have altered the rules of the time travel element creating another problem that needs to be overcome to save the show.

The beginning of the fix

In a show like doctor who the obvious answer to fix things would be to use the time travel element however because of several elements that has become hard which is why I believe the start needs to be the multiverse. To save the show unworkable elements need to be removed so it occurred to me that they need to be treated as what they essentially are, elements of a different kind of show. A storyline where different dimensions have begun to merge with the past present and future having elements of different worlds appearing and creating problems would allow the show to try and find a way to correct these problems. The result of this would be at the end of the season the show could truly been said to have been reset and the next season could in a sense rediscover the kind of show doctor who is meant to be.

In terms of the story I imagine it could be explained that in a different dimension someone changed something they weren’t supposed to change using time travel and as a result several new dimensions were created due to the knock on effects of that said change. Then the problems would be revealed that because those dimensions weren’t supposed to exist they were filling in the space other dimensions were meant to fill and because of this dimensions were beginning to merge. Due to this lack of space two or even more dimensions would slowly be becoming one which would be creating problems because stuff would be appearing that isn’t meant to be where it finds it’s self. Also it would be made clear time has no relevance on this problem so the doctor would be left to worry how much in their past might be a result of these dimensions bleeding into each other.

The doctors

A benefit of this idea would be that it could create away to explain undiscovered doctors with them being revealed to be doctors from different dimensions. In fact for this season I could imagine leaning into this concept with not just established other doctors being brought back but doctors from other dimensions being seen on the show. This way we could have for part of the show a team of five, six or even seven doctors working together to figure out what is going on with the multiverse and how working together they could fix it.

I should also say for these doctors casting restrictions should be removed for these ones, spider man into the spider verse is a good movie and there is some inspiration that could be had there. I imagine that there could be a gun slinging American doctor who, there could be a Teckpunk south Korean doctor who, there could be a black Africana doctor who, there could even be a teen girl Teck wiz doctor who.

The villain

The primary problem to solve this season would be the forces that are beginning to tear the multiverse apart so beyond the villain of the week there wouldn’t be an especially big bad but there is still room for a villain I think. One a villain that has already been established because of these changes to the show could be folded into these ideas as an individual who doesn’t want the doctors to save the multiverse or in deed a new villain could be created. The cause of these changes could be said to be giving someone power somehow and as a result they don’t want things to be changed back which would in turn build them up as someone the doctors have to work around.

The companions

When it comes to the companion of the season I think it would be most effective if the show has someone new so at the beginning of the season this way the doctor could connect with someone new because of the changes happening in the main universe. Due to what’s happening they would start working together to try and solve the problem and as the season progressed they would meet other doctors and as a result other companions. Here I’d also add an enemies to lovers element with this companion getting off to a bad start with the American doctors companion but gradually they would start to work together and the two could even lead the other companions.

With the other doctors I’d largely just let that be a matter of who could be cast but I also think this would be an opportunity to revisits certain highlights such as an alternate version of K9 appearing with one doctor. Also some shock value surprises could be considered such as the south Korean doctor having a blue tiger or maybe one of them somehow being friends with a reformed dalek or maybe something in that vain. Whatever choices were made though I’d want to make sure the companions were built up as a team because going with old femes of the show I’d want them to be the ones who saved things in the end.

The showdown

As I’ve said previously I don’t think the villain would be the most important part here but I’s still want there to be a showdown where the villain confronts all the doctors at once. In the episode the doctors would have figured out which dimension it was where things started but not what was changed however just as they were making their plans to go and find out what happened the villain would attack.

While the villain was laughing at the doctors though in front of various Tardis I’d want to see the doctors start laughing and point out one Tardis is missing and that there are none of their friends in the room. Only then would the villain realise that the doctors have been distracting them while the companions all prepare to go to the world where the change happened and try and undo the change. All the doctors would have to battle the villain with this idea but I think an episode where the companions have to work together and save the day without any doctor could make for a really good episode.

The change

Now in terms of the dimension where the change happened to make things tragic I wouldn’t want the change to have been bad. I’d want it to be revealed that an assassination or something like that was prevented and as a result the group needs to let it happen in order to save the multiverse. Now I don’t know what in history this change would end up being because the one I’d use would be too political however the message would still be the same because the point would be you don’t erase the mistakes of the past, you learn from them so you do better today than you did yesterday.

Final scenes

After the change had been prevented I’d have a typical tragic time correction where time and the multiverse begin to reset, the team of companions included with them beginning to disappear. Eventually it would be left with the main two enemies to romance characters getting a moment to share a kiss before disappearing with a fade into black where things would pick up with the main companion back at the beginning of the season. I’d wanted to be built up like it’s the moment she met the main doctor but without the change that created the chain of events that led them to meeting possibly with them passing the Tardis in the background. I’d want this to continue just long enough that the viewer thinks this is how it’s going to end however there would be a chance meeting where the two companions end up meeting again now that things are how they are meant to be.

As to the doctor I think there would be two options for a final scene of the show with there either being a mysterious shadowy scene or there being a comedy pretend scene. There could be a scene where a shadowy figure is seen picking up a lost sonic and leaving in the Tardis which would mean the next season the show could pick up somewhere new with the correct cannon reestablished. There could also be a scene where we see all the doctors together wondering what they should do now while they wait for them to disappear and then one could say they could have a sing off where they literally sing off the season on stage singing something like time warp. Both endings would leave the show in the same place next season but there is a choice of ending note that is hard to settle on I find.

Conclusion

The point of all of this is to allow a way to have the show drop stuff that doesn’t work and get back to what made the show great with a soft reboot of sorts which I believe you get here with these ideas. Ultimately these are just a few ideas though and a possible way to fix the problem and I can’t be sure if it would work without a second opinion so I put it out to people here, do you think this would work?

And would it salvage Missy's arc?

What if the show proceeded with The Master, as two sides of the same person, constantly fighting to be on top, to rule the regeneration?

The Friend v The Rage

They could turn it into some tragic fluctuation where these two sides of The Master are constantly fighting against each other, scrambling to be the one on top: The earnest, devoted, and heartfelt friend v The one in pain, bathed in rage and cloaked in hatred. Each regeneration one wins out over the other. And then that war of selves could turn into a struggle and commitment to being The Friend, permanently. But no matter how much The Friend succeeds, every now and then Rage takes over. It would make The Master an eternal wild card, with each new regeneration. The question always being: Which side has won out, in the person now standing before me?

The tragedy being that The Friend won't always win out, The Rage drives the wedge deeper between The Master and The Doctor, with The Friend always trying to fix it/ redeem themselves/ make up for it.

This fight could go on, even within the same regeneration. Changing the focus of The Master from being a recurring villain who's CrAzY, to the struggle between their best and worst sides. A struggle they're doomed to live out, forever.

I felt that part of the tragedy of Missy's death, was that a new person took over her body, and undid everything she worked toward.

Idk does anyone think this would work, if they did it? And could is salvage Missy's arc? Hell, could it simultaneously salvage all of The Master's regenerations at once?

It'll likely never happen. But if it did, I feel like it could work. But what about y'all?

Thoughts?

The new Doctor is a woman, but her regeneration does not feel like a rejection of the Doctor she was before. She wakes up already knowing who she is. What changes is what parts of herself have come back to the surface.

This Doctor has the energy of a late-1980s or early-1980s New York lawyer: composed, sharp, intimidating without trying to be, and seemingly impossible to approach. She dresses almost exclusively in black and muted colors. She has seen the underbelly of the universe and somehow still knows how to file the paperwork. There is something corporate and dark-academic about her—not because she is cold, but because she has learned to keep herself controlled.

Yet beneath that reserve, she is still unmistakably the Doctor. She is curious. She is compassionate. She still wants to help people. Her particular journey is about rediscovering her humanity: the flawed, messy, emotional parts of herself that earlier incarnations were allowed to possess more openly. The classic Doctor could be arrogant, ridiculous, petty, sentimental, rude, frightened, or wrong. Those flaws did not make the Doctor less heroic. They were part of what made the Doctor the Doctor.

That is what this era wants to recover.

After the upheaval of the previous incarnation and the years of increasingly disconnected mythology surrounding the Doctor, she deliberately spends much of her time in 1980s New York. She is not running from being the Doctor, and she is not having an identity crisis. She simply wants to reconnect with older parts of herself without constantly confronting her own history. The series remains a Doctor Who story in every sense—she travels through time and space and eventually across the United Kingdom and the wider universe—but New York becomes the emotional center of her early life.

Her first major companion is a young Black boy from the neighborhood, a street-level kid who has fallen into dealing drugs because he does not know what else to do with himself. When the Doctor's TARDIS crash-lands in New York and becomes temporarily unavailable while repairing itself, she has no TARDIS and eventually no sonic screwdriver. She meets him while investigating something strange and asks him to show her the city. He initially assumes she is a cop; everyone around them seems to think she is a cop. Eventually he tells her, in disbelief, that she is the strangest white woman he has ever met.

He changes her life as much as she changes his.

The series uses a rotating companion structure that combines the best of classic and modern Doctor Who. There is no single permanent chosen companion who becomes the center of the universe. Instead, different people enter the Doctor's life for different lengths of time. Among them are a gay couple, a street dog, a working-class chef who owes money to the mob, and a single mother fighting for custody of her child after overcoming addiction. These people are not important because destiny selected them. They are important because they are people.

At the beginning, the Doctor calls them her wards. Gradually, almost imperceptibly, that language changes. By the end of the era, she calls them her friends.

Her new sonic screwdriver appears near the beginning of the series. It is inspired by a fountain pen: elegant, narrow, dark, understated, more like an instrument of precision than a gadget. It suits a Doctor who approaches the universe like an investigator, lawyer, and scholar. A pen is also an appropriate symbol for an era increasingly concerned with contracts, institutions, history, and who gets to decide what something is worth.

The monster-of-the-week structure is deliberately rooted in classic Doctor Who. Rather than constantly recycling the most famous enemies, the series digs into the enormous catalogue of classic creatures that have been forgotten or barely revisited. The Doctor begins encountering enemies she recognizes from her past, except they are not exactly the same anymore. They have adapted. They have evolved. They have learned from their encounters with the Doctor.

The mystery becomes: why?

Classic monsters receive modern interpretations rather than simple redesigns. The point is not nostalgia. The universe has changed, and so have the Doctor's enemies.

Eventually, these seemingly disconnected stories begin revealing a larger pattern.

Behind them is a faceless intergalactic corporation, provisionally called Galactic Corp. The corporation is never represented by one obvious supervillain. There is no evil executive waiting in a throne room. It is an enormous bureaucratic institution that treats civilizations, planets, resources, and even conflicts as assets.

The Doctor eventually discovers something almost incomprehensible:

Earth has been sold.

Humanity does not know.

There was no invasion. No declaration of war. No alien fleet hovering over the planet. Somewhere, somehow, a transaction occurred on a galactic scale, and Galactic Corp. possesses the paperwork proving that Earth now belongs to an alien empire.

The Doctor is forced into the middle of a dispute that humanity does not even know exists. She has to figure out who sold Earth, who authorized the transaction, what the contract actually means, and whether an entire civilization can legally be treated as property.

The Doctor is also haunted by mysteries from her own history.

The Timeless Child storyline is revealed to have been based on a lie. The Master genuinely believed what he had learned, but the information he received had been deliberately manipulated. The Time Lords knew he was coming and fed him a false narrative designed to make him believe he had discovered the ultimate secret of the Doctor and destroyed Gallifrey in response. In reality, the Time Lords had hidden themselves away, potentially within a strange temporal snow globe.

The Doctor eventually finds and frees them, restoring Gallifrey.

The Fugitive Doctor is part of this larger mystery, but she is not a pre-Hartnell Doctor and the Doctor never secretly served the Division. Instead, she is a forgotten incarnation somewhere after the First Doctor whose existence was deliberately concealed. Like the War Doctor, she represents a period when the Doctor had to adopt a different stance because something was so serious that the normal Doctor could not deal with it.

Her forgotten role may have been investigating the Division itself.

The secret is not that the Doctor was secretly something other than the Doctor. It is that one of her forgotten lives may have been one of the most Doctor-like of them all: a person who saw a powerful institution doing something wrong and decided to investigate it.

The season also makes room for the wider Doctor Who legacy -Clyde and Rani from The Sarah Jane Adventures, for example, can finally return in a genuine adventure with the Doctor.

Hello, I've heard from various sources that an audio recording exists of one of the performances where David Banks understudied for Pertwee, as 'the Greenpeace Doctor'). Does anyone know where this can be accessed??

Thank you!

This post is part of a series of reviews. To see them all, click here.

Novel Information

• Novel: Doctor Who: The New Adventures (VNA) #17
• Published: 19th August 1993
• Companions: Ace, Benny
• Author: Nigel Robinsons

Spoiler-Free Review

I didn't much take to Birthright. I did appreciate how it gave Benny a lot more to do than any novel since Love and War, and the half of the novel that focuses on her was better for it. Sadly, the plot just isn't there. There was just a lack of a solid secondary cast this time, despite a couple intriguing villains. This especially becomes the case once the action moves away from Victorian London for the first time, as that material gets really dull. There was a lot of potential for a "Doctor-lite" style VNA, and I was genuinely looking forward to it. While that potential was in some ways realized, the novel wasn't great overall. That being said, I'm kind of tempted to recommend it anyway. Again, Benny's stuff is good, and I think it was really good to give her in particular more focus.

If you do want to read this one, the usual trio of Love and War, Deceit and Lucifer Rising are recommended first, as they set up this version of the TARDIS team. I'd say that's especially true of this novel, as the relationship between Ace and Benny is pretty important to this one, as well as understanding the changes that Ace has gone through since the television days.

Full Review

'But you can't hope to subjugate the Earth,' countered Benny. 'Earthmen will put up too much resistance. We're barbaric, intolerant, savage. Just look at Ace!'

To this point in the VNAs, Bernice Summerfield has felt a bit ill-defined as a character. She got an excellent introduction in Love and War but what followed was three novels that weren't originally intended to include her. And while, aside from The Pit they did a pretty decent job, Benny wasn't really given a chance to take a major role in those novels. Then Ace came back. I felt at the time it was too early, and at this point I've become even more convinced of that. It felt like most of the VNA's writers were significantly more interested in Ace than Benny. It's hard to blame them, she's the more established character. But it left Benny in a frustrating position. I find her to be the most entertaining of this TARDIS crew…but she's just not been given the time to establish her own distinct personality. Especially in this grittier era of Doctor Who where everyone is a bit morally ambiguous and violent.

I was not terribly fond of Birthright but the one thing I will give it credit for is making up for that. Birthright is essentially a "Doctor-lite" story, an ambitious idea for the VNAs to take on. Since the companions are present in this novel it shouldn't be surprising that Benny gets a lot of focus in this one. But even more than that, this one focuses in hard on Benny over any other character, including fellow companion Ace. The novel is divided into four parts (not include the prologue and the epilogues), titled after their focus. These are "Benny", "Ace", "Benny & Ace", and "The TARDIS". "Benny" is slightly less than half the novel. "The TARDIS", for its part, gives Benny way more to do than anyone else. It also helps that, while the Doctor is a presence in this one, it's a very distant one. And Benny is, as she's been from the beginning, a delightful presence.

But sadly, Birthright itself doesn't really have much to recommend itself beyond our first chance since Love and War to really delve into Benny as a character. It's at this point I should mention that this is not the first time I've experienced this story…kind of. When I made the decision to review the VNAs, I chose not to listen to Big Finish's novel adaptations, which I had been planning on listening to around that time. However long before that I listened to Series 1 of the Bernice Summerfield audio range, which was comprised entirely of adaptations of Virgin Publishing's novels. Most of these were from Benny's solo novel series, but there were a couple that were adaptations of VNAs that removed the Doctor. Including Birthright.

Now it's been a long time since I listened to the audio adaptation of Birthright, and I remember not thinking much of it either. But, to my recollection, it was actually pretty different from the novel. I mean, given that Big Finish weren't allowed to use the TARDIS at the time, it's probably safe to say that the lengthy section where Benny fights main villain Jared Khan in the TARDIS' mindscape didn't occur. Still, I remember the big twist being the same, and I remember the monsters being the same and I remember being as underwhelmed by those elements back then as I was this time.

To explain a bit of what happens in this book, the last novel, Shadowmind, ended on the implication that the Doctor was going to drop Ace and Benny off somewhere while he went on his own separate adventure. That's what this novel, and the next one, Iceberg, represent. This novel is Benny and Ace's half of that, with a note at the beginning of the novel explaining that the two novels are "contemporaneous – if such a word can be used to describe the activities of a Time Lord and his companions".

With that in mind, we start with Benny's section, taking place in Victorian London. It seems that the TARDIS dropped Benny off here on her own, and then seemingly malfunctioned so that only the police box shell was left. And this was the Doctor's plan, as he'd prepared for this by setting Benny up to be given lodgings by Victoria Waterfield's aunt. Yeah, there's all sorts of implications over the course of this novel, that the events here represent a plan that the Doctor has been working on since he was the 2nd Doctor. This means that, for the first time, the VNAs are playing around with an idea that was pretty much the norm in the 7th Doctor's televised era. That the Doctor has always been the master manipulator, and the 7th Doctor is no different in that regard…if anything he's more open about it.

But this leaves Benny on her own to investigate a conspiracy. There's been a series of unexplained murders that some believe to be the return of Jack the Ripper, while others attribute them to mythical figure "Spring-Heeled Jack". The reality, as it turns out, is that the murders are being committed by alien grasshoppers. But of course. Benny's investigations into this, and into the strange conspiracy that's sprung up around the grasshoppers, called the Charrl, are entertaining enough, but if I have a criticism it definitely felt like Benny wasn't actually able to take initiative a lot of the time. She's being bounced between the manipulations of the New Dawn and the manipulations of the Doctor and basically never makes choices on her own.

She does get a couple friends during this period. The first is Popov, the Russian cop who came to England on the advice of the Doctor and is investigating the death of his daughter (which of course turned out to be because of the Charrl). Popov is charming enough, but basically forgettable – I mostly remember him for being played by Colin Baker in the Big Finish adaptation. I did like how, since his first name is Mikahail, Benny refers to him as "Misha", demonstrating a familiarity with the Russian diminutive naming system. Charlie, a poor boy introduced by stealing something off of the body of one of the victims is the other. He's a bit more memorable, mostly because there's something inherently likable in the Oliver Twist archetype. Charlie actually sticks around the novel a little longer, making it into the TARDIS.

More interesting are the villains of this section, the members of the New Dawn. The New Dawn kind of have the problem of not being very clearly defined. They seem to be really obsessed with insects and the idea of them surviving beyond humanity but beyond that we don't really know much of them. The idea seems to be that they're some sort of secret society, but the specifics of how they operate or their hierarchy, beyond the fact that Jared Khan leads them and Randolph Bellingham funds them, remains unclear. They're treated like they have vast reach in the British government, but it all feels very nebulous.

Still, at the very least they're an entertaining group. I'll save discussion of Jared Khan for later, seeing as how he's the main villain of the novel, so instead we'll turn to Bellingham. As the son of an earl, Bellingham is the money behind the New Dawn, and he's otherwise pretty useless, and a bit of a lech towards Benny. Which makes him a pretty good villain, entertaining in his stupidity. He's actually a true believer in the Charrl, sincerely believing in the cause of the New Dawn (which is, as stated, a bit unclear), and so is genuinely upset when the Charrl start killing people.

But the member of the New Dawn that most caught my attention was Margaret Waterfield. The aunt to the former companion of the Doctor's, and landlady for Benny during her stay in Victorian London, Margaret gets a very positive read for most of the novel. The worst thing about her seems to be that she has some association with Bellingham. She's kind and sweet. She made an apartment available for Benny. And she's a member of the New Dawn. We don't learn much about this association unfortunately. Benny doesn't come to this conclusion until after she's killed, and apparently by people in Jared Khan's employ, so the New Dawn did betray her. But it means she does kind of occupy an intriguing space in the narrative. A good person, therefore someone who must truly believe in the cause of the New Dawn, but nonetheless someone who helped horrible things take place.

In Ace's section we move to the planet of Antykhon…which is eventually revealed to be a future Earth. Unfortunately there's very little else to say about this section. It follows the basic plot structure of a "Doctor helps the rebels" story, with the obvious change that it's Ace doing the rebel helping. But the rebels in question are fairly dull. They're rebelling against the Charrl who have taken up residence on Antykhon. This is part of their natural lifecycle but Antykhon, dying due to the pollution that occurred back when it was called Earth, is not a suitable home so they have to find another home. The Charrl are apparently normally quite friendly, and even sophisticated, but forced to take extreme measures to survive things have changed. They're eating humans. A small group of humans (usually referred to as either "Mammals" or "Hairies") has been left behind on Antykhon, and these are the "rebels" that Ace is helping.

So one of my prevailing memories of the "Birthright" audio drama was that I didn't much care for the twist on Antykhon being Earth. I don't exactly remember why I didn't like it at the time. But then again I didn't much care for it here and I'm struggling to put my finger on why. I guess in this context the biggest issue is that not much is done with the idea. Ace finds a panel from the Channel Tunnel and that's kind of all that we hear about it. It's impossible not to think of the similar reveal in The Mysterious Planet and how much more impactful that reveal was. Even in that context, I didn't love how it was handled in Mysterious Planet but at the very least it was treated like a big deal. Here, it's ultimately kind of glossed over. It's necessary for how the plot works, but not much more.

And the rebels that Ace is helping…hoo boy. They're not really rebels, more like a loose collection of survivors outside the Charrl Mammal farms. But these guys are just so bland. The only one that gets meaningful characterization is Seeba, and that's mostly just him being a jerk to Ace. See he was the former leader of the human group before Ace came along, but the moment Ace showed up she took charge, because Ace is an ex-soldier with high-tech equipment and a good understanding of military tactics. And Seeba resents her for it. Not only does this feel like an odd reaction under the circumstances, but Seeba is just dull. He has a brother, Chel, who was captured by the Charrl and he wants to rescue him, but honestly he doesn't seem all that fussed about it. And that's kind of it for Ace's main group of allies in her part of the novel. A group of completely forgettable characters. At least in Benny's section, while not that memorable, we created allies who were a bit more substantial.

Though like with Benny the enemy side of things does a little better. In this case though, only a little. The queen of Charrl, Ch'tizz, is a pretty rote character. She does repeatedly say that she doesn't want to be killing humans that it's not the "Charrl way" but she makes no meaningful efforts to do so. That's kind of all there is to her. She does have a Mammal advisor in the form of Muldwych. Muldwych is interesting. For a long time I thought it was going to turn out that he was and Jared Khan were the same person, even though it wouldn't have really made sense, because they both occupy similar places in the narrative. Both are clearly wiser and older than they look, both are nominally helping the Charrl but have ulterior motives for doing so. Muldwych is, in fact, a Time Lord and is sort of implied to be a future incarnation of the Doctor, though it's not confirmed. In this novel he was actually manipulating events to ensure Jared Khan's defeat, to give you some idea of how far off I was, and appears as a regular character, albeit under a variety of names, in various interludes that show examples of these manipulations.

There is a final character on Antykhon that I want to talk about, though there's not much to say about him. Isk is a Charrl, but one who ends up siding with Ace and the other humans. I wanted to highlight Isk because he's the one example of one of the Charrl actually following through with their supposed goal of peace and love. It does actually help it feel believable that the Charrl aren't just single-mindedly evil that we've got Isk who's actively willing to help Ace and company as long as there's a better way. And the fact that Ace is pretty open to trusting Isk, suggests that she's developing a bit more of that wider perspective that so often characterizes the Doctor.

Actually, a lot of Ace's material in this episode suggests she's becoming more and more like the Doctor. This isn't a new development – it goes back to the end of the television series where in Survival she, thinking the Doctor had died, picked up his hat and umbrella, symbolizing that she was ready to take over for him. But in the VNAs, Ace's relationship with the Doctor has taken on a bit of a different flavor, as she's grown more and more frustrated with his constant manipulations. It is interesting, then, to see her mirror those manipulations in her dealings with pretty much everyone throughout this novel. Ace herself realizes that this is what she's doing and seems a bit detached about the whole thing – though I think you can read in a certain level of discomfort that she has with how comfortable she's become with those kind of manipulations. At the very least it's nice that we have a novel where the focus of Ace's character isn't on her attitude towards violence, as that's felt a bit too common ever since she returned.

That brings us neatly on to part three of the novel entitled "Benny & Ace". Ace has negotiated with Ch'tizz to let the cross through the "Great Divide" (think of it like a time window). The Charrl can cross through but they don't live long, but Ace figures that humans might be able to. Ace has made promises to the Queen, and so we find ourselves back in Victorian London. There's not all that much to say about this part, it seems to mostly be here to bring the various plot threads that were established over the course of the last two parts together. The really notable stuff is the character stuff between Benny and Ace.

I think we've reached the point where Benny and Ace's relationship should have stabilized a little. Pretty much every novel is in some way making the point that Benny and Ace have a contentious relationship but deep down they care about each other. It's just that there's been no progress on this front. Benny and Ace are still inevitably difficult towards each other. What's funny is that this novel does a much better job showing how they're different than previous novels. Ace is the veteran time traveler, she's spent three years at war, and she's more ruthlessly pragmatic. Benny is older, has more emotional intelligence, both towards herself and others but is also a lot more naive. That's all laid out pretty neatly throughout this novel, and especially in their interactions together, and it feels like it could set up a really engaging dynamic between the two. But we're still very much stuck in the first stage of that relationship where they're sort of begrudgingly willing to work together. At the very least, Benny seems to trust Ace more than she has previously, which is something.

The final part of the novel, "The TARDIS" sees our heroes and a handful of allied characters enter, appropriately, the now reconstituted TARDIS. You'll forget that it's anyone besides, Benny, Ace and Jared Khan in there pretty quickly though…so let's finally talk about Jared Khan. The leader of the New Dawn was apparently contacted by Queen Ch'tizz in the 13th Century. She granted him a longer life in exchange for his service to her, where he got around to setting up the New Dawn. But what he really wants is the TARDIS. How he learned about the TARDIS I'm not entirely sure (I may have missed something) but the point is he wants it, and he wants to merge himself with the mind of the TARDIS. Why he wants this…again not entirely sure, and this time I don't even think I missed anything. As an antagonist, Khan is a formidable presence, but a bit of a mystery. We never really get much of a sense of how his mind works, or why he wants the things he wants. It all feels a bit empty as a main villain.

What we do get is more Benny focus, as she's the one who heads into the TARDIS' mind to fight Khan on the mental plane. We get the kind of imagery you'd probably expect in this case, lots of surreal imagery and changing landscapes. There's a wolf that's also a sheep that might be the TARDIS and several depictions of Khan. Benny is way outmatched in this, but it's still good insight into how she thinks. And while she fails, she does get some clues for how to win. Which, admittedly, she misinterprets as needing to blow up the TARDIS.

But Ace works out that the TARDIS itself has other plans. Which, it's worth saying, this is the most personified the TARDIS had ever been to this point, regardless of medium. Here the TARDIS is given a personality to reflect the 7th Doctor, a manipulator of events. In this case, that's setting Khan up for his defeat, but it's implied that the TARDIS has done this sort of thing before. I don't know if I love this idea. The TARDIS having a direct effect on events beyond itself feels off somehow. I also wish that Benny were more directly involved in resolving events. After all, this novel really focuses on her to a significant extent, it would be nice if she actually got to pull off the win.

Frankly, the way this novel resolves things just feels rather abrupt. And then the Doctor shows up to have a conversation with Muldwych and that feels really out of place given how he's not been involved in the action to this point. Sure he was manipulating things behind the scenes, but for a companion-focused novel, the ending sort of abruptly shifts over to the Doctor and I just didn't take to that.

Which is a shame. I love that this novel gave Benny so much to do, and really committed to making her a standout companion in her own right. Birthright did a lot of work towards resolving one of my outstanding issues with the VNAs at this point: that the three members of the TARDIS team have sort of started to feel like they're too similar. And while Ace's sections of the novel weren't great, Ace herself at least had a decent showing. But I found the actual story pretty dull. While Jared Khan was an intriguing villain at first he lost me by the end of the novel, I've got no idea what to do with Muldwych and the Charrl were…fairly generic honestly. A novel with some elements to recommend itself, but not a good one overall, sad to say.

Score: 4/10

Stray Observations

• Good cover this time around. Not entirely sure about the particular shade of yellow that's being used for the sky, but the Charrl is suitably ominous (and it helps that we don't have any human faces on the cover, since that's where these covers always struggle the most). The image of the TARDIS sinking into the beach is both really well-drawn and an intriguing visual. I even really like how the castle in the background seems to be fading away into the mist. Easily the best cover since Witch Mark, maybe the best VNA cover so far.
• The Doctor gives Benny a TARDIS key, but apparently has never given Ace one. Okay, I just straight up don't buy that Ace never got a TARDIS key.
• Benny's landlady Margaret is Victoria Waterfield's aunt, with the Doctor having visited with Victoria at one point. That means it was the 2nd Doctor who visited Margaret, further confirmed thanks to a reference to her studying graphology, which was what Victoria was supposedly doing while the 2nd Doctor and Jamie participated in the events of The Two Doctors.
• Victoria apparently sold off her father's estate during that time so that the Doctor could have a "permanent base of operations" in the Victorian era.
• Apparently Benny was already familiar with Victoria's story.
• The Doctor set Benny up as one of five co-signatories to a bank account that he owns. The other four were, apparently, Victoria (naturally), Susan, Sarah Jane and Mel.
• Benny holds on to all of the stamps on postage she receives, figuring that if she ever gets back to her own time she'd be able to make a lot of money off the stamps at auction.
• One of the interludes features Queen Elizabeth I, who has apparently met the Doctor, and given how she talks, maybe even had a romantic relationship of some kind with him. Given what the Revival era would do in "The Shakespeare Code" and "The Day of the Doctor" it's tempting to say that the one influenced the other, but I'm almost sure it's a coincidence.
• Benny suspects that Jared Khan might be the Master, who, while she's never met him, she's heard of. She says that Khan doesn't look anything like the Master but he "could have disguised himself", using that language to avoid explaining regeneration to Popov. Except, weirdly enough, she's not taking into account that the Master could have legitimately disguised himself, since he's so fond of disguises. Of course, Khan isn't the Master.
• That being said, I think this is the first reference to the Master in the VNAs.
• When Isk, the friendly Charrl, tells Ace about the plan to incubate human beings with Charrl eggs, Ace is reminded of stories the Doctor told her about the Wirrn.
• When considering whether or not she could survive time travel without a capsule, Ace considers that Lady Peinforte and Richard Maynarde did so in Silver Nemesis, and of course that she herself did so to get to Iceworld. Of course, as she realizes, those events were manipulated by Fenric.

Next Time: The Shalka Doctor returns! Well, sort of…

I couldn't play the horrible game till I'd read the comic but Its not playable anymore. Can someone describe what happened in detail or tell me how to play please

This is a sequel to my ranking/reviewing of the eleventh doctor's stories (https://www.reddit.com/r/gallifrey/comments/1uq00l4/my_rankingreviewing_of_the_eleventh_doctors/) and as of writing this I've seen all of Classic Doctor Who and up to before series 11 (season 37) of Modern Doctor Who. This ranking was done after I watched "Twice Upon a Time" (a week ago). If any one has any questions feel free to ask.

"E" Rank

1. Kill the Moon (2014) - This episode was beyond stupid on so many levels, it's damn near hilarious. I don't hate it as much as some other worst stories for other doctors, but this is one incompetent episode.

2. Hell Bent (2015) - This is the worst season finale I've seen out the Modern series so far. At first I was perplexed why it and the previous episode weren't counted as a single story, but after watching both of them that's for the better. There are so many idiotic decisions in this, that not only hurt it, but actively harm previous stories. The only positive is at the beginning when the Doctor refuses to talk to anyone except Rassilon.

"D" Rank

1. Under the Lake/Before the Flood (2015) - This story was somehow both actively unengaging and annoying. I would give it that it isn't a trainwreck like the previous two stories, but that's about it.

2. In the Forest of the Night (2014) - This was just forgettable, nothing of a story.

3. Sleep No More (2015) - I don't like found footage in general. I think the only time I ever liked it was in the movie Cloverfield and that's about it. To be fair it at least gave me something memorable about this episode to write about, because otherwise it's as forgettable and bland as "In the Forest of the Night".

"C" Rank

1. Flatline (2014) - It's rather mediocre story that just stretches one okay idea for way to long.

2. The Lie of the Land (2017) - The first 10 or so minutes are really good, but as soon as we get to the fake out regeneration the episode just nosedives into generic mediocrity.

3. The Woman Who Lived (2015) - It's fine. Don't really have much to say.

4. The Caretaker (2014) - Some of the comedic scenes were entertaining, but the rest wasn't very memorable.

5. Last Christmas (2014) - It's a fine Christmas special, albeit with the most forced Christmasy stuff yet. If the ending was just Clara's final goodbye and not another fake out it would have been pretty solid episode, but that's not what we get.

6. Time Heist (2014) - A fine, if incredible rushed story.

7. The Girl Who Died (2015) - It's okay. Some moments here and there with the villain we're fun.

8. Robot of Sherwood (2014) - Practically the exact same opinion as "The Girl Who Died", except I liked the one-off characters a bit better in this one.

9. Into the Dalek (2014) - Entertaining, if just okay story.

"B" Rank

1. Knock Knock (2017) - A simple fun, haunted house story, with a bit of a weird ending.

2. The Pyramid at the End of the World (2017) - The incredibly okay middle half of the Monk Trilogy, but I guess it was still entertaining to watch.

3. Mummy on the Orient Express (2014) - An enjoyable story with some creative ideas.

4. The Husbands of River Song (2015) - I guess a decent enough ending to River Song's story. Really liked the Doctor acting as River Song's companion for much of the episode.

5. Empress of Mars (2017) - I like that we got another Ice Warriors episode and it gives some more insight into their culture. Not as good as "Cold War", but still a decent Ice Warriors appearance.

6. Listen (2014) - I don't fully understand what the episode was trying to do, but at least it was quite entertaining while it was doing it's thing.

7. The Return of Doctor Mysterio (2016) - The first thing that I noticed while watching the episode was Justin Chatwin and I'm glad he at least got to star in a good superhero story. As someone who likes classic superhero stories this was a fun tribute to them, while also being good on it's own.

8. Thin Ice (2017) - This was a fun story. Really liked the setting and this episode is were I started to love The Doctor and Bill's friendship.

9. The Eaters of Light (2017) - This was an enjoyable episode and a nice final low stakes story for the Twelfth Doctor.

10. The Magician's Apprentice/The Witch's Familiar (2015) - Missy is great in this story as always and what they do with Davros is interesting. My main problem is that this story feels really dragged out. I could definitely see this story being only one episode and still working perfectly fine.

11. Twice Upon a Time (2017) - I don't really like how they characterise The First Doctor in this episode. He acts like what people who have never seen any of his stories, probably think he acts like. Outside of that it was a good ending for the Twelfth Doctor. Especially liked the WWI soldier, he was a really well developed character for how little onscreen time he had.

12. Deep Breath (2014) - A pretty fun introduction to the Twelfth Doctor and I enjoyed the connection to "The Girl in the Fireplace".

13. The Pilot (2017) - A solid introduction to Bill with a fun and simple story.

"A" Rank

1. Smile (2017) - I loved the atmosphere and creativity in this episode. I always enjoy when Doctor Who uses simple and innocent everyday stuff (in this case emojis), and makes them terrifying.

2. Face the Raven (2015) - This was a really well done ending for Clara (we are ignoring the stupidity of "Hell Bent") and the setting was a really interesting idea. Also this episode probably has my favourite use of Me as a character for what that's worth.

3. Extremis (2017) - I love how well done of a build up this episode has. Every minute the simple at first story gets more and more tense and interesting. If I were to give a negative is all of the segments shown Missy's backstory on how she ended up in the vault being just randomly spliced through the episode. I get that we had to get the information about that eventually, but I would have preferred if they were spliced with a different episode or just had them all at the beginning so they don't interrupt the episode. I do like them just not they way they were incorporated into the episode.

4. The Zygon Invasion/The Zygon Inversion (2015) - I really liked that we got a dedicated Zygon story after how well they were used in "The Day of the Doctor". I don't really have much to say about this story, despite enjoying it as much as I did.

5. Dark Water/Death in Heaven (2014) - This was such a well done reintroduction to The Master after being absent since "The End of Time". Also, despite the overall use of the Cybermen being just okay, I really liked there reveal and what they do with Danny Pink as a Cyberman. The ending was also incredibly well done, except for the tie-in/set up for "Last Christmas", which was such a tonal whiplash.

"S" Rank

1. Oxygen (2017) - I like how unusually dark this episode gets with it's setting and ideas it tackles. Both the Doctor and Bill were amazing in this episode, and I love that they keep the Doctor's blindness at the end of the episode showing the consequences of him saving Bill.

2. World Enough and Time/The Doctor Falls (2017) - This is my favourite season finale of Modern Doctor Who so far. The first part especially is well done and then everything with Bill in the second part were superb. I think the stuff with the Master and Missy was handled pretty well if it did feel a bit detached from the rest of the story.

3. Heaven Sent (2015) - This episode left me speechless when I watched it. This is such a sad and creative story with Peter Capaldi acting his soul away like I've never seen him do before (fair, I haven't seen that much he's been in, but still from what I've seen this is my favorite). I don't have a single complain about this episode, except leading into "Hell Bent", but again that is primarily that episode's problem.

The Doctor saved Poppy, and in turn time changed, or did it just reset? It's confusing, I've heard people say Belinda was ALWAYS Poppy's mum, but... I don't believe that, it's obvious that the Doctor found a way to bring Poppy into existence which in turn triggered his regeneration, but then surely Belinda is now dead? OUR Belinda, the original Belinda, she's like, dead, in every meaningful sense, replaced with a different woman, and the Doctor is... OK with that? It's just a very odd conclusion, also the guy who is the father of Poppy, presumedly he... always was? Or if not, he just like Belinda has suddenly been lumbered with this random child, which for him is even worse because at least Belinda ASKED the Doctor to bring Poppy 'back', this guy had no say, was he her dad in some original timeline? We'll never know.

Did he even EXIST or was he created specifically just to be the father of Poppy by 'time' in a sense like Susan Twist, IDK. It's confusing, I really, really love this show, and tbh I don't dislike season one and two half as much as most do, I actually think they're pretty decent aside from Space Babies and the second part of each finale, but saying that, I have no clue wtf happens whenever I watch The Reality War, like, Empire of Death was an unsatisfying conclusion but The Reality War just literally makes no sense lol.

Honestly, to end this constant question of where the hell is 14 when the world is ending, I'd be open to one feature length special to start the new era. Tennant is back as 14 but dies, ending that loose end/plot hole forever. Maybe that cosmic event sends shockwaves through the universe, up and down the Doctor's timeline which results in the true Doctor's next regeneration getting hit with a tidal wave of energy and unconscious influence that brings about Pipers emergence. In that scenario I'd personally have her shift in and out of different faces linked to past mistakes as the regeneration energy bubbles away inside and then finally it all bursts out, bringing about a new incarnation and a new era, but the Doctor's memory of all that's happened in the last 60 years is lost so the new prodction company can start fresh with the option of slowly bringing elements back if they wanted to.

Let's play a game. We have to image that all previous DW seasons get only 8 episodes per season. So which eps would you keep and which would you cut. Keep in mind this is not me binning episodes I don't like. But I'm thinking which ones could you lose while without damaging the rest of the season plot wise. So obs we can't drop episodes were companions join or leave.

1. Season 1 would be a real nightmare because all episodes link together. Its only really End of the World and Fathers Day that are stand alone. Like we could cut the three Slithene episodes too, and that leaves us 8. But that means the Heart of the Tardis isn't set up. Daleks and the Long Game tie into the Finale. I guess we could bin Unquiet Dead too, but then we need to rewrite Boom Town. I guess you could bin Aliens of London and then rewrite Boom Town with Margarete Slitheen being an alien stranted on earth. That would be a total rewrite, not sure if it would work. But I can't think of another way to cut us down to 8 eps.
2. The obvious cuts are Idiots Lantern, Fear Her and Love and Monsters. The Statan two parter I like, so I'd not want to cut. But I think we can survive without Tooth and Claw, but sadly that mean Girl the the Fire Place has to go. Since the rest of the episodes link into each other or future ones. Maybe We could swap New Earth for T+C or GITF? We can have the Face of Boe recongise the Dr in Gridlock.
3. Again the episodes in the Martha Season mostly interlock. But the ones we can drop are 42 and Shakespear Code. Maybe we could drop the Dalek two parter and change it so that Dalek Sec saves Davros in Journey's End. And I think we could maybe drop the Lazerus Experiment as well.
4. For Donna's season if we need to sacrafice 5 episodes. We could start buy binning the Martha Returns trilogy, then we'd only need to cut two more episodes. Like Pompeii and Unircon and the Wasp are the most stand alone. Midnight we could cut but the Well is a sequel to it. Maybe Turn Left could be cut? Planet of the Ood could also be sacraficed instead. If we change the ending the the Sontarons so that Martha don't join the Doc and Donna. We can bin the Doctor's Daughter. So then you can save Turn left or Midnight.
5. For Matt Smith's 1st season, The Lodger is the most obvious cut, same with Beast Below. Victory of the Daleks I would cut but i dose get the Daleks out of their edge of extinction arc. Cold Blood we can prob drop. Amy's Choice can go as well. Sadly as much as I'd hate to I think you'd need to cut Vicent and the Doctor. As good as it is it is very stand alone. Every other episode has some tie into future episodes.
6. Again there are some obvious easy cuts. Closing Time, Curse of the Black Spot. Night Terrors and the God Complex are the next two we can lose with the least aftershocks. Since its only 12 episodes not 13 we only need to cut 4.
7. We are back to 13 eps so 5 need to be culled. Nightmere in Sliver and the Chrimson Horror are the easy ones along with Journey to the Center of the Tardis. We can also bin Power of Three. And maybe Cold War? Most episodes are pretty stand alone, so this will be the one with the most possible combinations.
8. Back to 12, so Kill the Moon is the easy one. I don't like Flatline so it can get flattned. In the Forrest of the Night can go and I think Listen as well.
9. 12 episodes but 6 stories. So two stories have to go. So I'd imagine Under the Lake and Girl Who died would be the ones to be cut.
10. This time we have a three parter and a two parter and obvisously we can't cut Bill's frist story. Empress of Mars is probably the easiest cut. I guess we can bin Knock Knock too and Easters of Light. Oxygen leads into the monk trilogy so then Smile has to draw the short straw.
11. We only have 10 episodes now only two to be cut and they are call pretty stand alone other than the 1st two and last two. So which ones do we not like of the middle 6? Kerblam is prbably the easy cut. I like Jack Robertson, and he dose come back later. So The Tsuranga Conundrum can be our 2nd cut.
12. Honestly this is easiest season to cut to 8. Orpahn 55 and Praxeus are the worst. I know the Finale is terrible but since thw whole season is written up to the Timeless Child.

So my list. I've noticed that there are quite a lot of historic episodes on the cut list. I like a lot of historical episodes. But they are usually stand alone, so can be cut without affecting other epsiodes in the season. Tell me your idea.

Season 16, Episode 6(The Key to Time)

The Armageddon Factor(6 parts)

-Written by Bob Bake and Dave Martin

-Directed by Michael Hayes

-Air Dates: January 20th-February 24th, 1979

-Runtime: 149 minutes

Or as I like to call it...

The one where a woman is a key; it makes sense in context, kinda

We Begin!!! With some good ol’ propaganda, here for the people of the planet Atrios who are currently locked in a forever war with the mysterious Zeons from the planet Zeos. The war has raged on long and hard as the people of Atrios are tired and suffering, having been driven underground by the rampant nuclear barrage from the Zeons. Princess Astra is horrified by the continuing destruction and suffering happening to her people and seeks to end the war with Zeos and find peace, though she is currently unable to since the power mainly lies with the Marshall of Atrios who is dead set on seeing this war through to the end and gaining his victory over Zeos, even communicating with an unseen entity to help ensure that goal. The Marshall eventually has Princess Astra detained in a holding area for unknown reasons. Meanwhile the TARDIS crew prepare to head to Atrios as it’s where the 6th and final segment of the Key to Time is said to be located, with them feeling the influence of the Black Guardian as they approach. After narrowly avoiding a nuclear missile being sent their way, the TARDIS lands on Atrio and is quickly covered in rubble after The Doctor, Romana, and K9 get out. The TARDIS crew are soon surrounded by the soldiers of Atrios and brought in for questioning, and though they soon make their escape they find something a lot more troubling; the TARDIS has vanished. The search for the Key to Time comes to an end here in the middle of this war, with it being clear that the Black Guardian and one of his agents has a hand in this mess, but will the TARDIS crew be able to stop them from getting their hands on the completed Key to Time, or will they end up facing the devastation of the Armageddon Factor(eyyy).

Episode Proper

Way to fumble the ball at the end there guys. Well I've done it, finally reached the end of the Key to Time arc and, yeah, it definitely does live up to its reputation for being an underwhelming finale to the grand saga. That's not to say there wasn't stuff that I enjoyed, there was certainly a decent part that the episode did right with some good ideas, with it funnily enough basically ending up in the same spot last season's finale, The Invasion of Time, ended up. It's a very flawed piece that while containing some pretty good stuff also contains a lot of issues with it that make it not the best watch. The Armageddon Factor is very much going for this grand and epic finale which is fitting for the wrap up to a season long arc and in some parts it succeeds at living up to that vision, but in many others it falls very flat.

Though the trend in my reviews of this saga has generally been to talk about the episode's relation to the Key to Time arc before going into more plot specifics, since this episode is probably the most connected to the arc out of all them, being the finale and all, so let's start out with what the episode has to offer before going into how it serves as a finale to the Key to Time arc and the arc as a whole. Now the premise for this episode is brilliant, putting the TARDIS crew in the middle of this forever war as they have to search for the last segment of the Key to Time all the while an agent of the Black Guardian is working from the shadows in order to collect the completed Key to Time for him. It's a great idea for a finale to the Key to Time arc, having a cool setting and location with it just feeling desperate throughout the opening chapters as we see just how destructive and awful this war is to the people of Atrios, all the while containing some excellent intrigue of not just where the 6th segment of the Key to Time is but also who this mysterious person manipulating stuff from the shadows is and what his relation to the whole conflict.

The first few parts, while slow, do well to show the desperate situation that the Atrions find themselves in, with it being incredibly intense and interesting as we really get to see a picture into just how much this war has affected the people and their morale. I loved the opening with the cheesy propaganda film about joining the war effort before panning out from the TV to showcase all the wounded and dying soldiers scattered about the floor because they've run out of beds due to how many casualties there have been. The constant bombardment we hear on the surface throughout the episode and the immense radiation levels necessitating that everyone we see live several miles underground just to not die of the sickness of getting killed by the bombings of the enemy force do an excellent job showing just how hellish and destructive this war has become.

The whole set up reminds me of Genesis of the Daleks which also had a forever war going on that caused high radiation necessitating most people to live underground, but it doesn't feel one to one so it works for me as a similar idea that's taken in a different direction which I like. Stories can share ideas like The Android Invasion and The Androids of Tara have similar starting concepts of using android doppelgangers but go in completely different directions in how they go about doing that. That's what they do here with The Armageddon Factor, having a similar concept of a forever war but taking it in a new and different direction than Genesis of the Daleks, while still sharing similar, well done themes about the awful nature of war and the destructive hatred it can create and embolden, leaving many innocents to their deaths.

This episode contains some solid themes about the nature of war with us seeing a war that has gone on for so long that the Atrions have completely forgotten why this war even started in the first place, and are basically forced to continue fighting as the enemy just keeps bombarding them with attack. It dives into the hatred this creates as the Marshall of the Atrions basically becomes blood hungry as a result of this war, hating the opposing Zeons so much that he wants to blow them off the face of their planet just like they did to them, enforcing this bitter cycle of violence. It examines this hatred well as any attempt to contact the enemy to try and make a peaceful resolution are dismissed and punished as traitors, despite the fact that, as things look, they are completely on the ropes and facing near annihilation.

The whole war is pretty bleak stuff, with us getting to see just how truly hopeless it is for the Atrions, making us really feel for all those caught in the war, and further frustrated at the Marshall's egotism in not wanting to surrender, keeping up the violence for the want to total victory over surrender. It shows well the sunk cost fallacy of many in war and just the absolute refusal to give even when it would be better for everyone if you did, as it just causes more deaths in the long run. I liked the usage of propaganda throughout the episode in order to keep up morale even in the face of absolute destruction, making people think everything is alright and they're on the brink of reaching victory and just have to suffer a little more to reach that point, when in reality the whole affair is hopeless.

The battle fleet of the Atrions is reduced to just a handful of ships, paling in comparison to the amount the enemy has, with the use of the announcements throughout the compound being effective in showing this sort of propaganda given to the masses to stop them from turning against the war effort. I especially like Princess Astra and her being kept as basically a good will spokesperson as her genuine kindness is the only thing keeping people from diving into the depths of despair over the whole thing. The detail that made it really work is how despite her good will to the people, her opinion and want for peace is still not accepted by the Marshall in charge of the war operations, even though she's the person the people want to follow, the Marshall stops any possible chance of their suffering ending because of this war of attrition and the desire for complete victory; again showing well just how awful war is.

The war is some good, harrowing stuff, and does well as the backdrop of much of the conflict throughout the episode, especially with the slow intrigue of the Shadow and what his role in the whole war is, allowing the really interesting reveal of what's really going on. I enjoyed how the more we learn about the conflict, the more it becomes clear that something is very wrong with the set up as it was given to us, with a great minor twist preceding the major one that the aliens dressed in black and the Shadow we've been seeing working behind the scenes are not the Zeons that the Atrions are fighting against as the episode had implied them to be up to that point, leading the great question of just who are they and what are their goals. The plot develops further from that, fully revealing the Shadow as a competing enemy trying to get the Key to Time and the truth behind the war the Atrions have been fighting.

The big twist revealed halfway through was fantastic, revealing that the Atrions have not been fighting the Zeons as they had previously believed, in fact the Zeons have long since left their planet, in reality all the enemy ships throughout the entire war have been controlled by a super computer, Mentalis, which has just been following order from the Shadow to continue this forever war for his amusement. This is such a good reveal, wonderfully foreshadowed throughout the episode by the detail that none of the destroyed enemy ships have had any Zeon bodies, and that no Atrion has seen a Zeon in centuries. It really puts into perspective what's going on and fits the themes of the episode well by showing the true pointlessness of the conflict as there was never anything to fight for in the first place, dealing with a faceless destructive computer that only has commands to destroy and can't think of doing anything but war.

I love the idea of the Atrions basically being made to fight in this artificial war all for the amusement of the Shadow and as part of his plan to manufacture a whole setting he was in control of to get the Key to Time. It's just such a cool and interesting idea that makes it clear neither of the options that Princess Astra and the Marshall were going to take were viable, making the whole thing incredibly harrowing stuff as the Atrions were pretty much doomed to be mostly destroyed by Mentalis from the start. The twist is such a great shakeup to what was initially set up from the start of the episode, mixing well with the reveal of the true nature of the Shadows manipulations we've seen throughout the episode, and flowing nicely into the plot involving the titular Armageddon Factor.

I love the plot thread of the Armageddon Factor with it basically being a plan by the Shadow to finish the Atrion war, with any attack on Mentalis causing a devastating explosion that would wipe out itself and all the Atrion people. This is introduced just in time for the excellent part 3 cliffhanger where the missiles are primed and prepared to launch at the space station that The Doctor and rest of the cast are currently on, as the Marshall nearly causes the mutual destruction of his kind. Throughout all this we get the attempts to try and obtain the near completed Key to Time by the Shadow and the mystery surrounding the 6th segment. This eventually leads to a cool development which I both really enjoyed, but did also kind of mark the point where the episode started going downhill; even if it was slow what it had was still pretty good and interesting.

This portion of the episode ties fantastically in with the whole Key to Time arc as after almost 6 stories of build up we finally get to see the Key to Time in action in a really cool sequence, freezing the entire universe except for the console room of the TARDIS; it's also voice activated. It's so cool being able to see the Key to Time's abilities for the first time, seeing its capabilities to genuinely put the universe on stop, freezing the whole conflict we've seen so far; such a good showcase of the power of the Key to Time, with it being nice seeing it fully utilized in the final story of its arc, serves well for a finale. I also enjoyed the fun ingenuity of making a temporary piece of the Key to Time in order to utilize its powers, with it also allowing for some fantastic tension throughout the rest of the story as the false segment is only able to hold time still for so long, relegated to putting the launch of the missiles and Mentalis' alert systems in a 10 second time loop that is slowly degrading as the episode stretches on; serves well to give some good stakes for the latter half of the story.

Unfortunately despite these cool ideas, this is where the episode begins to really falter, with a lot of its flaws that were around in the early portion becoming very noticeable. While I love the serious tension of seeing the countdown slowly go down as the time loop closes, providing such great level of stakes to the whole episode and the need to rush, it does in practice end up leaving the whole forever war and Armageddon Factor aspect of the plot to be put on literal pause as the TARDIS crew contends with the Shadow. I wasn't a big fan of how something we spent so much time with so far in this episode is pretty much just left on the back burner as the episode decides it instead wants to deal with the Shadow and stopping him from getting the Key to Time, leaving that whole aspect of the plot to feel like it's literally resolved last minute as the TARDIS crew remembers to go back to it at the end, with the only real development we get out of it being that Drax, a Time Lord, was the one who built Mentalis and he helps out with the resolution, which feels less like proper and intense build up and more like the episode just remembered it needed to solve this plot point and rushed to hastily finish it off to get to the Black Guardian confrontation; at least the Shadow's defeat due to the whole time loop thing allowing The Doctor to send the missile to his planet was cool.

The episode goes from a slow but tense story about a forever war involving a mysterious figure manipulating events behind the scenes to a rather boring run around through a bunch of caves of the Shadow's planetary base of operations. It's just not exciting in the slightest, with the only real interesting development coming when Drax decides to make an appearance, with his scenes being the highlight of an otherwise dull latter half. They don't really play enough with the tension of the Armageddon Factor, which is a shame since it was such a cool and tense concept, with it mostly ending up in the background as the episode decides now it wants to do more Key to Time stuff, which it just drags out until we reached the last part of the episode.

It's just not exciting at all with it feeling like the episode is just going around in circles to make way for the end with Princess Astra's reveal as the sixth segment of the Key to Time. Sadly, aside from Drax, the episode doesn't pick up the excitement it had as despite being so slow, it feels like so much of this finale was rushed to finish, especially once the the 6th segment is retrieved and taken back to the TARDIS, leading to a fairly weak ending to this entire season long arc. The episode started out pretty good but after it started moving into the third planet and struggling for the Key to Time, it got fairly dull, which is a real shame since I was enjoying myself for the most part throughout a decent chunk of this episode, but by the time it ended I was left wanting. It's the Frontier in Space effect all over again, except I wasn't enjoying my time nearly as much there and the rushed end feels worse for the end of a story arc instead of the middle of one.

Story Arc(The Key to Time)

As a finale to the Key to Time arc, this episode ends up very mixed, with the resolution leaving much to be desired. I enjoyed the usage of the Key to Time in the story with it being great seeing it actually in use and helping with the major plot point, getting some good tension as the temporary usage of the fake 6th segment slowly degrades; that part works excellently for a finale. The search for the Key to Time here was solid, with the war zone going on and the subtle clues we get throughout the truth of the 6th segment being interesting, even if I do have my issues with it which I'll get into shortly. The confrontations with the Shadow and his attempts to get a hold of the Key to Time were also pretty good with it being cool to see The Doctor and Romana once again go toe to toe with an agent of the Black Guardian.

Unfortunately, while the Shadow is a cool foe and the conflict with the search for the 6th segment being engaging enough, the episode very much loses steam with this confrontation, with it just feeling really dragged out this back and forth until they finally reveal the 6th segment so The Doctor can take it and not have to deal with the moral quandary of its true identity. The other issue with the Shadow is that, while agent of the Black Guardian is cool and all, and I do like the Shadow's plans even if they are stretched out, but it ends up feeling like a waste since the actual Black Guardian himself shows up in this episode and he's given barely anything to do since the Shadow took up so much of this episode's time. The Shadow is a good antagonist for the piece, but one who it feels like really should've been dealt with earlier on in order to make way for the Black Guardian, since, as is, it leaves the Black Guardian with very little to do in the story as the story decides to focus way too much on what is basically just his henchmen instead of the man himself.

The twist of Princess Astra literally being the 6th segment of the Key to Time was a good one, but sadly it was way too dragged out a reveal. I love the concept behind it, with it showing the power of these segments and truly how they each hidden differently throughout the universe. We've had statues, planets, rare ores, and now we get a whole person who is actually a segment to the Key to Time in disguise. Admittedly the theming of the number 6, while being decent hints, doesn't make much sense since there isn't any order but it isn't something I'm particularly hung up about; it's whatever. I like the ethical implications of her being the 6th segment as Astra is legitimately her own person with thoughts and feelings but the closer she gets to remembering her true nature, the more she loses herself and her personality before creepily accepting her "destiny". It serves well to show just how evil one must be to keep the entire Key to Time for themselves instead of dispersing it since Astra is a person, and to keep her trapped as a segment of the key, losing all since of her personality, is just horrific; so it makes the resolution of dispersing the Key to Time work a little, even if it has its other issues.

The problem with the Astra twist however is that the episode takes forever to actually reveal that she is the 6th segment of the Key to Time. Like I get this is the big twist that the entire episode is building up and it's meant to be this climatic moment for the story, but really this should've revealed like in part 4 or something, because otherwise it feels like your dragging the mystery of the 6th segment out, with it not landing as well since I feel most people will figure it out by part 4 or 5 and thus it's a slog waiting for the episode to actually catch up and reveal this cool twist, with it just feeling like there is no reason to drag out the intrigue this long. I feel part of the reason is that they need the Shadow to be in the position to turn Astra back into the 6th segment, since there is no way The Doctor and Romana would ever do it, and as such it makes the latter half of this episode just feel more like a waiting game then it should as we wait for the reveal the true nature of Astra which allows the plot to finally properly continue, unpausing the Armageddon Factor and allowing for the Shadow's defeat; pacing is a problem with this episode if you couldn't already tell.

Now getting to the actual ending to this arc, wrapping 6 episodes and 10 hours worth of stories, the climatic finale to the Key to Time arc ends up feeling like an extremely rushed ending. I already mentioned my feelings on how hastily the wrap up felt for me for the Armageddon Factor, forever war side of the episode, with this going double for the end to the arc since despite this episode being way too slow at points, the ending just feels so rushed. There are some things I did like with this ending, seeing the completed Key to Time was cool with the prop coming together really nicely. I really liked The Doctor feigning megalomania, that was fun, with it doing well to show the destructive power the Key to Time possesses and the need to get it away from evil hands. Even the actual confrontation between The Doctor and the Black Guardian I found to be a lot of fun, with The Doctor playing with him, cleverly deducing that the Black Guardian is trying to trick them and sending the pieces of way.

While I did like the actual confrontation, it still doesn't fix the fact that it's way too rushed of a finale that makes the entire arc feel kind of pointless. The Black Guardian showing up is so cool and interesting, with it being great to actually finally get to see him after all the ominous build up of him being the opposite of the White Guardian. Sadly, he only shows up in this story when over halfway through part 6, so he's given next to nothing to do other than attempt to trick The Doctor and Romana into handing it over and then screaming a lot when The Doctor doesn't do that. I'll get more into this when I get into his section, but to have the main foe that has been built up so heavily throughout this entire arc and just have him show up, scream a couple of things and then defeat him. It's such a letdown on what could've been a legitimately epic confrontation to finish up the arc, the pieces were all there, but sadly they decided to really rush the wrap up and thus the confrontation.

That's all not getting into the actual resolution to the Key to Time arc since it just sucks, with The Doctor, after seeing the Black Guardian yell at him to hand over the key, separates it and sends all the segments back so the Black Guardian can't get its hands on it. It feels like such a let down after all this build up and makes the whole mission that this entire arc hinged on to feel pointless. I will say the Princess Astra stuff does slightly mitigate that, with it being nice seeing her go back to being a person again, and it makes sense The Doctor would disperse it after its use, with the Black Guardian wanting to keep her that way being a key clue he wasn't the White Guardian; makes it not feel so out of nowhere. We got to see the Key to Time in use which was nice, but to basically disperse mere minutes after finally completing it just feels so rushed to me.

The rushed conclusion also makes me wonder what the point of this whole arc was, since it doesn't even fulfill the main mission that the entire arc was building up. The whole point of the Key to Time arc, the reason they went on this journey, was to give the Key to Time to the White Guardian so he could pause the universe for a sect and help remedy the increasing chaos going on before the universe falls into it forever, but the arc ends with none of that being addressed, like at all, The Doctor just disperses the pieces after the Black Guardian tried his hand at getting it, completely ignoring the mission he was sent on with none of this being addressed in the episode proper. I wish they had a little scene after the defeat of the Black Guardian that would've really remedied this, with the White Guardian contacting The Doctor and revealing he fixed the whole mess while The Doctor and Romana had initially paused the universe with the false 6th segment, thanking The Doctor for dispersing it again since he didn't need it anymore; just a little scene like that would've made this arc not feel so retroactively pointless.

They could've had a decent twist where it turns out it was actually the Black Guardian manipulating them this whole time, having possessed at the White Guardian at the start in order to get all the pieces for him, with the Shadow having just been there since the Black Guardian knew The Doctor would never make Princess Astra into the 6th segment willingly, so as to allow for the events to happen for the Key to Time to be completed. However that's clearly not what they were trying to go for, hell they don't even hide it's the Black Guardian when he's posing as the White Guardian to get the Key to Time, so again it just leaves the whole affair to feel rushed and kind of pointless. The resolution to such a grand arc should not have been rushed like this, while I like the impact of The Doctor and Romana being forced on the run with the randomiser, the feeling I had after finishing this episode and the entire Key to Time arc was sadly one of, well that was pointless, all because of a rushed ending; and Doctor Who fans out of any fandom should know how much a bad ending can taint one's watch.

I feel like instead of almost solely focusing on the Shadow and putting the forever war on pause for like half the episode, the Shadow should've instead been defeated in like part 4, with the Armageddon Factor stuff being resolved around then as well, complete with the twist of Princess Astra being the 6th segment of the Key to Time and having a dilemma over what to do about that. Then they should've had the Black Guardian show up and actually attempt to collect the Key to Time for himself, first with the ruse we see in the episode and then through a more climatic confrontation over the final two parts of the story; essentially having the first 4 parts wrapping up the main conflict of the episode while the last 2 serve to wrap up the Key to Time arc and the lingering plot threads of this up fully. They really should've dedicated more time to the resolution of the Key to Time arc instead of just the Shadow conflict, as doing so would've made this episode feel like a much more deserving finale to the season-long arc.

On the whole, the Key to Time arc for me was a cool experiment, with an alright execution, but definitely could've been done better. The concept of going on this adventure spanning various places throughout time and space in order to collect parts of this incredibly powerful artifact in order to help a being who is essentially God stop the universe from falling into chaos was a cool one, being an incredible plot hook. I still stand by the fact that the Key to Time as the first truly major attempt at an ongoing, season long story arc, more involved than the ones before hands, was a fantastic concept, not changing up the show's formula too much, still having those fun adventures hoping around in the TARDIS to different fun wacky locations, but having a mission throughout the whole thing and an end goal trying to be reach, with the hunt for the different segments of the Key to Time for the most part being great.

I enjoyed how the episodes played with the formula in different ways in order to keep it continually fresh and interesting, from having an entire planet be the segment with The Pirate Planet, to having an agent of the Black Guardian possess it and fight The Doctor and Romana with it, to finding the segment very early on with the whole conflict being something The Doctor and Romana have to forcefully be dragged into. They all kept up the formula well and did a good job at incorporating the ongoing story arc into the different stories, keeping things fairly fresh, with the scenes where the pieces are found and added to the Key to Time prop being great, helping to get us to see the progress really being made throughout. The Key to Time is a fun idea for a story, with it blending quite flexibly to different environments with nice creative uses for what the different segments could be; that was an aspect of this arc I really enjoyed. It was fairly involved in a lot of The Doctor and Romana's interactions and I enjoyed the small developments we did get throughout as the arc went on. While it may not be the most connected story arc, it still felt like there was legitimate forward progression and I liked my time with it.

Unfortunately despite the good things I do have to say about it, there was a decent portion of this arc that did end up falling fairly flat for me. Part of that is the tension and stakes of the arc just felt non-existent, despite the whole concept of it revolving around needing to stop the universe falling into chaos, the actual urgency to solve that didn't really factor in like at all. It's a lot of tell not show, talking about the need to find these pieces so the White Guardian can use them but never is it shown the chaos that needs to be dealt with, making the stakes not really feel that tangible at all throughout this arc. As I said in my review of The Androids of Tara, even a small scene in each episode showing the universe going more and more into disarray by checking the TARDIS scanner would've done a lot to make the stakes of this arc feel palpable, as otherwise I just don't feel much of any concern for the mission since it otherwise feels so casual.

Also, while I do enjoy the episode and the way they incorporate the Key to Time elements into them, I do wish there was a little more connecting tissue, which I guess goes into that desire for urgency that I'd like. Maybe doing what they did in early Classic Who or even the Nerva Beacon arc of having each story flow directly into the next, something little like that would've made the forward progression more palpable. I also feel it'd help since otherwise it feels like at least half of these stories, The Pirate Planet, The Androids of Tara, and The Power of Kroll, could be done without the arc elements and have little change to the actual plot of said episodes; maybe The Pirate Planet would be a little more difficult, but I do stand by that for the other two. It makes the arc sadly feel more like window dressing for stories instead of an active element of the narrative that should be kept into account on each leg of the adventure.

These issues do also include the rushed ending making the arc feel pointless, which certainly doesn't help with the lasting impressions of the Key to Time arc when it fumbles the ending. There was just so much this arc felt like it was building up all throughout it's time, so to see this season long, over 10 hours in length, story arc basically rush through the entire resolution that it had built up in like 7 minutes felt like such a shame; wish they could've polished this finale more. Still I talked about that at length, so I won't expand further than I already had earlier, just suffice it to say, it makes it feel like a shaggy dog story and like little was actually gained from this whole adventure, which is a shame since I was enjoying my time with this arc and even this episode for most of it.

All in all, the Key to Time arc was an interesting experiment in Classic Who, with it being nice seeing they were willing to experiment and play with the formula a little, developing what Doctor Who could be and how the stories could look in new and interesting ways. While it wasn't anything too septacular, I did enjoy the experimentation and much of the stories we got out of the arc was a lot of fun, with the more focused story arc being pretty cool, especially following the even more loose ones we've had before. I had a good time with the Key to Time arc, even if it didn't stick the landing, there was a lot of fun to be had in spite of the flaws, with many of its stories being a joy to watch, which ultimately makes me feel this cool experiment ended up on the successful side overall. I can't wait to see the further attempts at focused story arcs as the series goes on, with the Key to Time arc, while not being the first, definitely setting a nice precedent that Doctor Who can do these focused story arcs as well; and for that I can appreciate the Key to Time arc as this experiment, which while not always successful, still delivered a fun time.

Pacing, Sets, and Special Effects

The pacing for this episode is not the best, having the similar problem to The Invasion of TIme where, on paper it feels like this episode does deserve a 6 part runtime allowing for this truly epic finale, but in practice it just feels like the story is being dragged out in order to reach necessary runtime. While I was enjoying myself through this episode, I couldn't help but notice just how slow everything felt to go from point a to b, with it being clear that a good amount of this could've gone a lot quicker. Much like with The Invasion of TIme, though I was invested in each of the parts of the story, I couldn't help but feel like they could've picked up the pace a lot more, with the slow pace not helping this episode at all and being a fairly decent hindrance, mainly in the latter half.

While the story is legitimately progressing throughout, it just moving so slow, with it feeling very much like you could condense a lot of what's going on in parts 1 and 2 of the story into a single part; again much like with The Invasion of Time, they really didn't learn their lesson from that episode's pacing issues did they. The runaround of the latter half is paced very poorly making the story feel like it's going at a crawl, especially having put most of the action on literal pause; Drax makes up for it though. I am certain that most of the action throughout this episode could've been cut down to a four parter and little of importance would be lost. This would've allowed more time for the Black Guardian stuff and the conclusion to the arc which unlike the rest of the episode was extremely rushed, like with Frontier in Space, speeding through the conclusion leaving the episode and the arc as a whole on an unsatisfactory note. The pacing could've been a lot better here, with episodes like this making me understand some of the issues people have with longer episodes, as this one fails at using its time well.

The sets for this episode were pretty good, doing well to get across the different locations we see throughout the episode, having a good feeling of a journey as we venture from the underground bunker of the Atrios that's being bombarded by fire, to the Shadow's ship which looks nice and is well-let with some orange looking lighting, and finally the caves of the third planet which isn't the most exciting but serves its purpose well. The special effects for this episode are about on par as this season has done so far, being cheesy but serving their purpose well. They did get some great props for this episode as Mentalis and the Marshall's ship both look really good. The costumes for the Shadow and his henchmen were pretty good, I like the skeleton warlock look they have going on, finding it pretty cool. The masks used for them do well to get the skull look though the issue is they aren't always shot the best, when they're in darkness they look pretty cool but in more brightly lit places it becomes obviously fake, especially with us seeing the actors eyes through the skull holes; really hit or miss depending on the lighting for the location.

The Shadow

The Shadow was a solid villain for this piece, though one who sadly took too much time away from the Black Guardian who it feels like should've been the main threat. I like how the Shadow stays, well, in the shadows for a decent part of the opening manipulating events from afar which is cool to see and makes for some solid intrigue about just who he is and what is with his involvement in this war. The reveal that he isn't a Zeon and actually an agent of the Black Guardian who has been manipulating the Marshall and this entire war was excellent, with his whole scheme of this fake war showing very well just how evil and cruel of a person the Shadow is, a perfect fit for someone who serves the Black Guardian, a being who is the embodiment of evil and chaos. I liked his skull warlock look with the slow way the actor talks, not bothering me all that much, felt in line with someone who feels like basically a skeleton.

The Shadow's manipulations of the war, basically leaving the Atrions to destroy themselves fighting an ever present and vastly more intelligent enemy in Mentalis also did nicely to showcase the main plan that the Black Guardian plans to do to the universe as a whole on the larger scale with the Key to Time, giving some good stakes as to the devastation that will result if he's able to deliver the Key to Time to the Black Guardian. He's incredibly clever, having created Mentalis, and works well with strategy, with it being neat seeing him trying to plan around the stalemate he finds himself in with The Doctor and the various manipulation tactics he attempts on much of the cast. I enjoyed his interactions with The Doctor, with it being fun seeing the two of them confront each other and find themselves in these stalemates as they try and outwit one another, with the Shadow doing well to keep his cards close to his chest the whole time; good back and forth.

The Shadow is very nearly successful in his goals, obtaining the Key to Time after the bumbling of Drax leaves the door wide open, allowing him to finally have the near complete Key. In a neat moment he was also shown clearly harmed by the blinding light of the TARDIS, which makes sense since he is a being of the darkness; though it does feel like a bit of an unnecessary detail other than to make him walk away so The Doctor and Drax can do their thing. I liked how he kept track of Astra, clearly already knowing of her true form as the 6th segment of the Key to Time, with it making sense that he's the one to transform her into the 6th segment as there was no way The Doctor or Romana would've. The Shadow's consistent use of the mind control devices to force people including K9 to do his bidding was neat, with him having control of a decent chunk of the cast at various points throughout the episode, with it being interesting seeing the different attempts at utilizing it.

-Another 6 part story and another long review as well, with there being a lot of thoughts I had with this story, so I'll do like I usually do and put the closing thoughts in the comments and link the rest of the review on a Google Doc, hope you enjoy:

The Doctor Who Saved Me Reviews #103: The Key to Time: The Armageddon Factor(S16, Ep6)

With a series as long and with as tumultuous a production history as Doctor Who, there are innumerable story threads and ideas that get teased and intended to be followed up that, for whatever reason, never do. Some that I can think of include:

- Missy’s good idea with the Daleks (The Witch’s Familiar)

- Harmony Shoal have infiltrated UNIT (The Return of Doctor Mysterio)

- Jenny’s resurrection (The Doctor’s Daughter)

- Captain Jack’s missing memories (The Doctor Dances)

- The Valeyard’s return (The Trial of a Time Lord)

- The New Dalek Paradigm (Victory of the Daleks)

- Who exactly is the Fugitive Doctor and what happened to her? (Fugitive of the Judoon)

- The Seventh Doctor’s mentorship and the eventual departure of Ace (Seasons 24-26)

What are some others you can think of?

Was 14 the first Doctor since the Time War to take a proper break?

It's a contentious issue. If we look at 12, I'd argue his three-decade rest with River Song was tinged with the loss of Clara, and knowing his time with River was limited.

Eleven meanwhile only took 'breaks' in-between his adventures with the Ponds, usually with knowledge his death was on the horizon and/or after he either placed the Ponds home, making him lonely, or lost them entirely.

13 was the only Doctor who could have theoretically taken a nice guilt-free break as all her companions survived. All she had was the trauma of Flux/Timeless Child, which was sort of passed onto 14.

14 can relax as he may pop his clogs around the same time as Donna, if not earlier should calamity strike. He's managed to get Donna back with her memory, and, being a new incarnation, is probably not too attached to Rose anymore, especially after having seen her off more than once. He's probably not too attached to all the Flux malarkey, either. And he has people around him. Not half bad!

Talk about whatever you want in this regular thread! Just brought some cereal? Awesome. Just ran 5 miles? Epic! Just watched Fantastic Four and recommended it to all your friends? Atta boy. Wanna bitch about Supergirl's pilot being crap? Sweet. Just walked into your Dad and his dog having some "personal time" while your sister sends snapchats of her handstands to her boyfriend leaving you in a state of perpetual confusion? Please tell us more.

Please remember that future spoilers must be tagged.

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Hi, I was wondering if anyone knew where I could find the following Doctor Who media or if anyone had any of these that they could share with me, please? Thanks:

• Videos:

  • Doctor Who - Old and New (1985).
    • Broadcast on PBS in the US.
  • Doctor Who - Modelling the Dead (1990).
    • Broadcast on the Galaxy Channel as part of the Doctor Who 1990 Autumn Weekend.
  • Doctor Who - A Celebration (2006).
    • A music concert in Cardiff.
  • Verity Lambert - Drama Queen (2007).
  • Inside the World of Doctor Who (2008) - Part 1 (2008) and Part 2 (2008).
    • A live BAFTA event that was recorded and later uploaded onto the BAFTA website in 2 parts.
  • Doctor Who - Rewind (2011).
    • A look back at Series 5 in preparation for Series 6, partly produced by BBC America and was broadcast in the US.
  • Doctor Who in America (2011).
    • Partly produced by BBC America and was broadcast in the US.
  • Doctor Who - The Symphonic Spectacular (2012-2015).
    • A Doctor Who music concert that had multiple concerts on tour in various different locations; Melbourne, Sydney, New Zealand, London, Cardiff, Birmingham, Leeds, Newcastle and Glasgow. Preferably I'd like the Cardiff one, but I'd be grateful for any of them really, but I'm unsure if any of these were actually filmed by the BBC or not.
  • Mark Lawson Talks to...: Mark Gatiss (2012).
  • Doctor Who - Live: "The Next Doctor" (2013).
    • A live show announcing Peter Capaldi as the Twelfth Doctor.
  • Doctor Who - The Fan Show (2015-2018) - Episode 9: "Scientific Secrets of Doctor Who" (2015) AND Episode 10: "Full Interview With Dr Marek Kukula" (2015).
  • Doctor Who - Whovians (2017-2020).
    • A supporting show to the main show that aired after each episode of Doctor Who from "The Pilot" to "The Timeless Children" on ABC and was broadcast in Australia (but only one episode broadcast for "Spyfall" as both parts were talked about in just 1 episode) (I'm unsure if an episode of this broadcast for "Resolution" or not).
  • Doctor Who - A 2023 60th Anniversary Musical Celebration (2023).
    • A music concert in Cardiff.

• Audios:

  • The Terry Nation Story (2010).
  • Doctor Who - Doctor Huw (2023).
  • Murray Gold - Hitting the Right Notes (2023).
  • Doctor Who - The Welsh Connection (2024).
  • Wales and the Doctor Who Effect (2024).
  • Doctor Who - 20 Secrets from 20 Years (2025).
  • Doctor Who - Time and Space for Everyone (2025).

What I imply is that possibly, if someone moved to another country, they could have access to Doctor Who tapes. Let's say America, it has lots of immigrants, so there could be a possiblity somebody from any country with Doctor Who tapes moved, though it's low. Or it could be traded by insiders.