The "God of Light" turns itself into a cartoon character that, umm, captures people in celluloid?! On rewatch, we offer RTD a lot of admittedly late rewrite options.

* * *

The TARDIS is still having problems landing back on earth in 2025 so Doc and Belinda are forced to land a tad off course – specifically, by a seemingly deserted Miami cinema in 1952, where unsurprisingly a mystery awaits. Fifteen people have vanished from this very picture house, yet the projector still hums to life each night. 

Naturally, Doc and Belinda Scooby-Gang into action, and soon stumble upon the pre-credit reveal, namely, that cartoon menace "Mr. Ring-a-Ding" has Last-Action-Hero’d off the silver screen and trapped the poor cinema patrons within film reels. For he is no mere cartoon comic. He is Lux Imperator, God of Light and the latest addition to RTD’s incessant lineup of so-called Harbingers or Gods of Chaos. Who knows?

The boundaries between fiction and fact begin to blur, and soon it becomes frighteningly clear that the whimsical antics of Lux put everyone at risk. But just as they're about to put together the puzzle pieces, Doc and Bells are themselves pulled onto the silver screen, where they must face the biggest plot twist of them all: nerds.

* * *

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17 years ago, new companion Belinda was on a date with a chap called Alan and he bought her a star. Well, he bought her a bit of paper that says the star is hers. Young Belinda unfortunately doesn’t have world experience yet and thinks it’s kind of sweet. In fact, Alan is obviously a negging control freak who probably needs a swift kick in the nads to understand the word “no”. But they’re young and he doesn’t seem to fit into the picture back in the present day.

Unfortunately, the thing that is crashing into the picture of Belinda’s life is a spaceship full of robots! They come, smash some walls, kill a cat, and then demand that Belinda comes to a planet with a very familiar name. It seems that star naming was worth a bit more than the paper it was written on because these Robby Robots are pretty set on bringing Bel back to be the rightful Queen of the planet named after her.

It’s a good thing Doc was also looking for Bel. He’s just a little bit too late and has to take the long way round because of a timey-wimey rift thing between Earth and the planet currently known as Missbelindachandra. Six months later in Doc’s timeline and he’s nestled in nicely with the humanoid rebels trying to revolt against the robots. Bel might be a competent nurse, but a revolution on an alien planet is a pretty tough first day on the job for any companion. Especially when your shitty ex turns up to try and mind-meld with you!

When Doc happens upon the delightful Time Hotel in Earth’s future, he’s in for a real treat. Every room offers a different historical period and plenty of plot potential. ere he can embark on a yuletide adventure, he embroils himself in a devious plan by the military industrial complex to blow up Earth and retroactively create a brand new star to power its future tech.

No probs, enter stage left our companion of the week, Trev, a kind-hearted yet tragic hotel clerk with the best intentions. Together, they set about saving the day. Alas, Trev is not long for this world and soon succumbs to the sinister machinations of the AI-assisted star-in-waiting and our foe for this episode.

No probs, enter stage left, our companion of the week, Joy, a kind-hearted yet tragic hotel guest who talks to flies, doesn’t fear lizard men, but assumes they get up to all sorts with other chaps in hotels. One thing leads to another, and now Joy’s about to die and she and Doc are separated.

No probs, enter stage left, our companion of the week, Anita, a kind-hearted yet tragic hotelier. You get the idea…

Myriad single tears later, an old man takes credit for the women doing all the work in this season finale

* * *

Let’s pick up where we left off, shall we? Susan Triad has turned into Sutekh’s puppet, along with Harriet Arbinger, and they’re threatening everyone with some death dust. Before you know it Sue is blowing kisses to the TV crew and they fall to the floor like grains of sand. Doc and Mel manage to escape the recording studio but UNIT’s approach of “fire first, run away later” doesn’t go to plan and their HQ now needs a good old spring clean after Ms Arbinger dusts the lot of them.

While Doc and Mel outrun a dust cloud on a surprisingly speedy scooter, the rest of the planet is getting engulfed, including Ruby’s mum, grandma, and Mrs We’ll-Totally-Find-Out-All-About-Her-This-Week Flood. No time to care about that though, as Doc and Mel meet up with Ruby in the Time Window. There’s a handy memory of a TARDIS there that enigma Ruby can patch up a bit just by thinking about it, so they use it to escape into space.

Sutekh’s dust of death touches every world and every time that Doc has ever visited. You see Sutekh’s been having a piggy-back ride on the TARDIS all this time and left little Susan Triad-like presents everywhere. Things look hopeless for Doc and co, but there’s one thing that might help them stop Sutekh: solve the riddle of who Ruby’s mum is. A riddle that’s so important it’s the last concern of Sutekh before wiping out all life in the universe. Surely only a time-wimey, ingeniously planned out explanation can be waiting for us as the conclusion to this whole season, right? Right?

* * *

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Sutekh's back and Kate just had a flapjack, as RTD lines up a plethora of mysteries that surely all will be explained in the next and final episode of the series, surely

* * *

It’s mid-June and that can only mean one thing: it’s time for a Doctor Who Christmas Special! Thus, the Fifteenth Doctor brings legendarily mysterious companion Ruby Sunday to UNIT HQ and there poses three challenges to his uniformed chums: Can they identify the mysterious woman they have encountered across a series of Doctor Who and apparently a couple of adventures we really wish they could have aired; can they reach soaring new heights of flimsiness in the forming of anagrams; and do they have an overly complicated scifi wibbly wobbly, or maybe a phonebook, to identify Ruby’s mum?

Don’t be daft. It’s Junemas 2024! No one has a phone book anymore, and so UNIT has no choice but to sacrifice a floor of their skyscraper to a VHS digitisation device. Plugging a grainy video tape and the power of memory into the so-called Time Window, and pulling in a series’ worth of ancillary characters for a day’s work, however, they make a tragic discovery: they’ve been giving an old foe a free ride to every Doctor Who adventure since the middle of Series 13. Stick around for one more paragraph to learn which foe it is. 

Following the big reveal, Doc and companion-turned-undercover-agent Mel B head to a grand presentation by billionaire and Elon-Musk-but-kind, Sue Triad (S triad, TARDIS, get it?) who’s unveiling some new tech (Sue tech, get it?) and who happens to look like that intertemporal lady. She’s also the only person named Susan on the planet, so it stands to reason she might be Doc’s granddaughter. Alas, she is not. And the internet already predicted that the foe is Sutekh. Hilarity ensues.

* * *

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Toodle-Pip!

Doc cranks the flirting up to Fifteen while some posh birds hatch a plan for fatal Bridgerton cosplay

* * *

Oh, my Bridgerton, doesn’t 1813 Bath seem a wee bit familiar? With the dances, scandals and old-timey modern music, you might be mistaken for thinking you’ve fired up the wrong subscription service. But that’s our Doc on the dancefloor, about to cut a rug with that handsome chap from Mindhunter. So put the remote down, grab your hand-embroidered 13th Doc and Yaz cushion, and get ready for the most flirtatious ride of Doc’s life!

You see, Doc and Ruby aren’t the only people out of place in this setting. First up, there’s the roguishly charming bounty hunter called, well, Rogue. 1 out of 10 for name choice but 10 out of 10 for looks, wit, and fancy spaceships. This debonair chap oozes such confidence you could cut the sexual tension twixt him and Doc with an ermine glove. And wait, he’s a nerd, too? Someone please change my seat cushion because I just wet myself in with excitement! Obviously, Rogue quickly turns Doc’s head, and their flirtatious banter is flying so fast you’ll have to duck to avoid getting caught in the crossfire.

Rogue’s bounty is some cosplaying birds, aka the Chuldur, who haven’t so much crashed this party as crashed a handful of the unwitting attendees. Once the drama of this soiree has run its course, these shapeshifters intend to take their body-snatching show to London, Europe, and the rest of the British-hating world. So, the question on everyone’s lips is, can Doc and Rogue tear their eyes away from each other long enough to stop them?

* * *

Check out WHOBACKWHEN.COM for more information, Doctor Who TV Serial and Audiobook reviews, ratings and ramblings, and loads more podcast episodes.

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Holy Bananas and Cheesecakes, how can we still be blooping after eleven years?!

* * *

Happy Polling Day, UK-based Podcastlanders!

Happy Independence Day, Peeps in the US!

And Happy Birthday to us!!

Thank you for eleven years of travelling down that temporal road with us, dearest Podcastland. Fret not, regular programming will resume very soon. In the meantime, please enjoy our customary anniversary blooper reel.

Huge, Hu-uge, HUGE HUGS,

WBW

* * *

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White-power walkers are too busy influencing to notice the epic slugfest around them

* * *

In the immaculate city of Finetime, Lindy hops out of bed for another day of two hours’ work on substack processing, before spending the rest of the time hanging out with her Close Friends in her head-orbiting bubble, an arrangement she might call piss-easy if she ever had to urinate.

But the peppy Ms Pepper-Bean has been peppered with unsolicited requests from first a moustachioed rando, then some offensive Finetime Enterprises apparatchik asking her the most stupid and obvious questions, oh my gasp. It’s enough to make a bean-counter dyspeptic!

Turns out that Finetime’s gardeners have been slack about putting down pellets, because an invasion of giant slugs is slowly munching through Lindy’s friends list. And Doc can’t perform his trick of dropping a line of salt in front of the bad guys because of a pesky mono-sealed door.

Can Lindy direct her own legs without the aid of her personalised support drone, or will this orphan die in Plaza 55? Will Ricky September live to see October? Where were these slugs when Earth faced the Seeds of Doom? And will Ruby have to stand up at any point this week?

* * *

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Yes! Wow! Finally! Wales! And, honey, Wales in 2024 has a lot going for it: fresh air, cliffs, hiking trails, fairy circles that can make people disappear and interfere with causality if you break their string boundary and/or read out messages folded up inside them. Wait, what? Yep, Doctor Who is diving into the supernatural side of things this week. Next you’ll tell me they even have contactless payments!

Breaking just such a fairy circle inexplicably causes Doc to recuse himself into his TARDIS or disappear altogether, in turn triggering a Doctor-free episode of The Rube Show. That would be creepy on its own, but it’s not the half of it because a ghostly old lady is parked on the horizon, say, an inexplicably precise 73 yards away, gesticulating, mumbling and most importantly keeping her distance. How long will she do that this episode? Semper, that’s how long! 

Said strange old lady develops a habit of turning anyone who notices her long enough to listen into Colonel Run-away wannabes. What could she possibly be saying or gesticulating to make people literally scream and run away? How could someone conceive of something so awful about Ruby that, no matter who hears it, they find it beyond comprehension and flee for their lives? What amazingly crafted ending could explain all of this? Hmm?

So strap in for the mundane adventures of a companion with a socially distancing companion of her own who refuses to shout, buy a megaphone, or learn semaphore for an entire lifetime, as she goes on dates, makes an enemy out of Kegels and inexplicably goes all-in for an unnecessary career in government that could have been avoided had she just opened that app she doesn’t have in the future.

The military industrial complex doesn't stand a chance against the power of dad in this bottle episode

* * *

“Have you done your teeth?” asks literally named father John Fancis Vater as he blindly walks through a war-torn planet. No, he’s not just paying little attention, he’s a casualty of war and has been blinded in combat. So why would he be asking about dental hygiene? Because it’s bring your daughter to work week and what kind of father would forget his duties while he’s dying out on a battlefield?

Of course, death isn’t certain for all warriors blinded by the atrocities of war, so why do things seem so bleak for John and the other soldier guiding him? Because this war is all about the “bang for your buck” rather than “bang, bang you’re dead” and the capitalist forces at work don’t take kindly to soldiers that are slacking in the killing machine department. And there are Ambulances on the prowl.

Ambulances, you say, surely they’ll patch ol’ Johnny boy up and he’ll be fine and dandy from now on? Well, no, they’ll run the numbers and decide he’s not worth the resources and turn him into a death canister. War’s a bitch, am I right? Also Doc is there and he’s just stepped on a mine, so that’s the rest of this nail biting, tear squirting bottle episode. Unless you count all the anti-religious sentiment, the repetitive dialog, the repetitive dialog and the repetitive dialog.

* * *

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A musical-ish episode with an actually sonic screwdriver, but no real twist at the end

* * *

We co-launch into the soft reboot of Doctor Who with this second half of a re-premiere and the prospect of the long-awaited, Beatles-centric, musical extrava-gonzo. When Ruby asks to see The Beatles record their first ever album, Doc steers the TARDIS to London in 1963 — Ring any bells? — for a visit to EMI Studios.

Something’s clearly amiss with the timeline, though, as Back in the USSR, there’s been an anachronistic attack on Finland, The Beatles are rubbish, and music overall appears to have left human hearts. And what is humanity or indeed history without a hum and a whistle, or indeed an entire song-and-dance number? 

Turns out, back in 1925 no-name never-existed piano teacher and one-of-a-kind musical genius Timothy Drake has discovered the so-called lost chord that summons Maestro, son of The Toymaker (the one with the German accent), and sets off the chain reaction culminating in the destruction of London, mankind and mayhap some of the 60s science fiction fandoms in-between.

Anyone so much as hum or tap their finger against the Bakelite and Maestro will show up and straight-up pop a capo in their bass cleft, yet oddly the music industry is still a thing. Presumably only The Beatles will be able to save the day, though, right? This is a Beatles episode after all, right? Or should we be dreading a twist at the end?

* * *

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Babies, boogers and fart jokes remain an unexpected way to inaugurate a new era of Doctor Who

* * *

Ruby Sunday is in for a fun day, a she-gon’-have-to-run-day, as the marvellous Fifteenth Doctor with his pearly whites full-beaming gives her a whistle-stop TARDIS orientation, a quick chaos effecting and un-effecting tour of the past, then whisks her into Babystationary orbit above the planet Pacifico del Rio. And she likes the jukebox.

However, turn this baby around and Doc is showing his new-found friend a stinking corridor and a bunch of inexplicably stunted infants who are kind of CGI but not nearly enough. They’re piloting the ship with a little help from Nan-E, and—Soiler alert!—all that, a howler of a Bogeyman and a steaming pile combine to kick off this new year with a literal gas leak.

* * *

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We’ve now been treated to no less than TWO trailers for the upcoming Series 14 of Doctor Who, and so we sat down for a boozy (well, for one of us) evening of predictions and general pondering. 


How excited are we about the new series, and why?
How many Bridgerton references do we think there will be in the Bridgerton episode?
Is Agent Smith a colleague of Captain Jack’s?
Whom is Jinx Monsoon’s character playing and how do they fit into the endless hierarchy of hinted-at baddies?
Is Mrs Flood secretly The Rani? Is everyone?!
And Series 14 or Season 1?

This and more await, Podcastland. Have a listen as we get back in the podcasting saddle!
For your convenience, here are the trailers:

A mysterious cloaked figure enigmatically leaves a newborn baby behind on the collection doorstep of St. Building Atmosphere’s Church one snowy Christmas Eve, departing without so much as a “Goodbye, Ruby Sunday”. Who could hang that name on her?

Flash forward 18 years and the foundling has grown up to become another wide-eyed portion of grist for Davina McCall’s sentimentality mill. But just when Ruby hopes to find out about her family, her foster mum Carla gets a new baby with the same birthday to care for over Christmas.

Enter the Fifteenth Doctor, catching Ruby’s gin and tonic here, sprinting down roof ridges there. Turns out her accidents were no accident, this series of coincidences indeed no coincidence, as every adopted character ever fostered in the show has become fair game for the gobblin’.

David Tennant returns to Doctor Who for a brief trilogy stint (at least to start with), this time as the Fourteenth Doctor. How curious, you might think. Why did this face return, they ask at the start, and you'd think they'd have answered this question by the end. Therapy, say some. Calculated corporate commercialism, say others. In any event, it's hard to refute that the trilogy of 60th Anniversary Specials has a lot going for it! Join us as we discuss the highs and lows of The Fourteenth Doctor!

A taster of some of the topics discussed/dissected/speculated-on in this podcast episode:

* RTD's "Doctorverse"
* The companions
* The foes
* New U.N.I.T.
* The Tennant regenerations compared
* In what capacity will the 14th Doctor, Donna and Rose return?
* And why did this face come back?

And if you haven't listened to our 60th Anniversary/14th Doctor reviews, what are you waiting for?! Click here now!

It’s 1925 and John Logie Baird would have invented television already if only it weren’t for the tragic lack of a televisual crash test dummy. Fortunately, just across the road, the affable Mr Emporium’s Toy Shop stands ready and waiting. A few cuts later, a chap we’ve known was the Toymaker for at least a year now furnishes his assistant with a puppet whose noiseless, manipulative giggle will be emblazoned upon all types of screens forever. Fast-forward to 2023 and London—and by extension the world—is in turmoil.

South Korea has just launched a new television satellite into orbit and suddenly everyone in the world thinks they’re all right then about everything. Anarchy is the only logical consequence and thus Doc und Donna join the UN-gers at Stark Tower to piece it all together. Cut back to 1925, and DnD have instantly tracked down the Toymaker, enjoyed front-row seats to a scaled-back NuWho recap for the Disney+ subscribers, lost a game, and whizzed back to 2023 again, where a second-rate third act and a hopefully first-class 15th Doctor await.

Fresh from some leisurely bants asking Isaac Newton how does he like them apples, Doc and Donna hurtle to a fiery stop aboard a mysterious spaceship, where the first thing the TARDIS regenerates is its Hostile Action Displacement System so it can finally put itself back together in peace.

It turns out their landing pad was off a corridor so long that it punctures the very bounds of the universe and penetrates the inter-cosmic space/not-space nothing no-thing voidy kind of realmy-wealm. But clangs on the hull and a puzzling airlock action put them on edge at the edge of creation.

With only a succession of untranslatable words periodically refurbishing the scenery as clues, Doc and Donna must end the hostile action, and in the process come face to face to face to face with their own worst nightmares: slowing down, being called stupid, and, maybe, even a countdown.

What-Ho, Podcastland! 
Hope you’re enjoying a sensational holiday season and looking forward to the most decadent of New Year’s celebrations! 
It’s been an eventful and momentous year. We FINALLY caught up with famous-TV-show-we-all-really-really-like Doctor Who, after over 10 years of podcasting about it. Yep, indeed, we haven’t uploaded reviews of the latest three episodes yet, but fret not, Who Back When Phase 2 is well underway, and we’ll return very soon with reviews of the remaining 60th Anniversary Specials as well as of Ncuti’s first Christmas adventure. Can’t wait! :) Phase 2 also promises a tonne of other stuff. There may be the odd review here and there, and we have at least two audio adventures, possibly three, coming up soonish.
But in the meantime, here are some of our traditional New Year’s bloopers, along with an enormous Hug to say thanks, Podcastland, for being some of the best people in all of Time and Space. 
Happy New Year!! 
Catch you in 2024.
Ciao-Ciao,
WBW

The freshly re-generated 14th Doctor travels to London’s Camden Market and instantly bumps into Donna Noble, the one former companion who under no circumstances may be bumped-into. She introduces her daughter, Rose, handily volunteers information about Rose’s career to the stranger before her, and then fails to observe a spaceship crashing into a nearby disused power station. The timings frankly are so perfect, one wonders if this could really all be coincidence.

Leaving Donna once more to her fate, Doc commandeers her husband’s taxi cab and heads to the crash site. It transpires that two alien races have just arrived on Earth. One is The Meep, this year’s Disney-branded stuffed-toy of choice for Whovian minors, and the other are the insectoid Wrarth Warriors hunting it. Coincidink alert! While Doc catches up with UNIT at the crash site, it transpires The Meep deployed an escape pod and is now hiding in Rose’s shed. 

Are all cuddly aliens good, though, or ought one occasionally side with the bugs? Suddenly thrust together into an adventure once again, but not in a way Shaun Temple finds at all threatening, Doc, Donna and now also Rose must save London from being swallowed by the Earth, implement all fifteen of the sonic screwdriver’s snazzy new features, and not implode the former lottery winner’s head in the process.

We continue our trip down the temporal road that is memory lane in Part 2 of our Who Back When Retrospective.
(If you haven't listened to Part 1 yet, what are you waiting for?!)

This time, Drew and Leon were joined by former co-host and perpetual legend, jD, to talk some of the best and worst of 60 years of Doctor Who, share podcast/docpast memories and generally just catch up.

Fret not, while this is the end of Who Back When as we know it, it's not quite the end of Who Back When overall. We will continue to drop ad hoc episodes, starting with reviews of the imminent 60th anniversary specials, and there is plenty of Bonus content in the pipeline.

Thank you again, Podcastland, for being your fabulous selves!

WBW