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Chris Knight's avatar

Before sharing my thoughts on this week’s delightfully entertaining new episode of Doctor Who, check these pics out.  The first is from the set of the fiftieth anniversary special, still filming right now.  Here we see guest star John Hurt wearing some rather intriguing attire…

Doctor Who, John Hurt, fiftieth anniversary, costume, filming

Ignoring the modern jacket and Hurt looks… almost like a renegade Time Lord?  Let the speculation run amok!

But here’s the pic that has gotten this fan-boy stoked most of all…

Doctor Who, fiftieth anniversary, Totter's Lane, junk yard, scrap yard, junkyard, scrapyard, special, An Unearthly Child

eeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEKKKKKKKKK!!!  And there’s also a photograph floating about of Coal Hill School with a sign reading “I. Chesterton” as its headmaster.

Looks like the Doctor Who Fiftieth Anniversary special is going back to where it all began.  And bay-bee, when I say “where it all began”, I mean where it REALLY all began!

Now, onto this week’s episode: “The Crimson Horror”…

Doctor Who, The Crimson Horror, BBC, televisionI found this story to be a drastic ...

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Doctor Who, Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS, BBC, television, science fictionIn the past few days since watching it I’ve tried hard to make myself enjoy “Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS” and I simply can’t.

The title of the latest episode of Doctor Who promised an awful lot.  I mean, how many times over the years have we gotten to see anything substantial of the TARDIS past the Console Room?  The only thing that comes to mind is “The Invasion of Time” from the Tom Baker era (how many times could a single episode use the same descending stairs in one scene?).  The Cloister Room has been shown a number of times, notably in the 1996 television movie.  And there was a fleeting look at the wardrobe in “The Christmas Invasion”.  But that’s shockingly little to be seen for a time/space ship that’s at least as spacious as a skyscraper packed within an old-school police box can be…

So ...

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I think the overall problem with this half-season of Doctor Who has been how every story thus far has been a high-stakes mega-tale.  “The Bells of Saint John” had the whole heapin’ world threatened by Wi-Fi and last week’s “Cold War” set Earth poised on the brink of nuclear annihilation.  Only “The Rings of Akhaten” really worked: mostly by being set on a distant alien planet and assaulting us with senses-overdriven spectacle the likes of which we haven’t seen since Jack Kirby was around.

But “Hide” – this week’s new episode of Doctor Who – brings the series back to the fine form its fans expect, nay, demand.  And it does it with a genre that Doctor Who has excelled at over the years: gripping horror… with a twist.

Doctor Who, Hide, Matt Smith, Jenna-Louise Coleman, BBC, television

It was a dark and stormy night when The Doctor and Clara arrive at the doors of Caliburn House, somewhere ...

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Doctor Who, The Name of the Doctor, Matt Smith, Steven Moffat, BBC, television, science fiction

That has to be the most ominous title of a Doctor Who story in the entire history of the franchise. My spine shivered when I read that this morning.

“The Name of the Doctor”…




The question. The first question. The oldest question of all. The question that must never be answered. Hidden in plain sight. The question he has been running from all his life…

“Doctor who?”

“The Name of the Doctor” transmits on BBC and BBC America on May 18th. Steven Moffat should start making plans to go into hiding from fans for the next several weeks after its broadcast....

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Last week’s “The Rings of Akhetan” split the Doctor Who fan base like no other episode than I can remember in a great many years.  Many loved, many hated it and there was no middle ground. Personally, I loved it!  It was high-concept storytelling for the romantic soul.  A jaw-dropping gorgeous episode, the highlight of which was The Doctor staring down a worlds-sized dark god with a speech that shattered the mold of epic soliloquies.

But I thought that “Cold War” – this week’s episode – was a stew of awesome elements which never coalesced into a story that lived up to its full potential.

It’s 1983: the height of tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union. Somewhere below the Arctic Ocean surface a Russian nuclear submarine glides beneath the frozen sea, carrying to Moscow an unidentified specimen – locked in a block of ice and vaguely humanoid ...

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“Come on then… Take mine.  Take my memories.  But I hope you’ve got a big
appetite, because I’ve lived a long life and I’ve seen a few things.  I walked away from the Last Great Time War.  I marked the passing of the
Time Lords.  I saw the birth of the universe and I watched as time ran
out, moment by moment, until nothing remained.  No time.  No space.  Just me!  I’ve walked in universes where the laws of physics were devised by the mind of a MAD… MAN.  I’ve watched universes freeze and creations burn.  I have seen things you wouldn’t believe.  I have lost things you’ll never understand!  And I know things.  Secrets that must never be told.  Knowledge that must never be spoken.  Knowledge that will make parasite gods BLAZE!  SO COME OOOOON THEN!  TAKE IT!  TAKE IT ALL, BABY!! 
...
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It took me an hour and a half after the episode aired on BBC America before I could turn in a blog post about “The Bells of Saint John”…

So along with statues, shadows, clocks, gas masks, cracks in the walls and Lord knows what else, now we have to be afraid of our Wi-Fi networks.  Damn you Steven Moffat!  DAMN YOU!!

(But he sure knows how to run Doctor Who like nobody’s business, doesn’t he?)

Three months after we last saw The Doctor (Matt Smith) in the 2012 Christmas special “The Snowmen”, our hero is again sulking in solitude: this time at a monastery in England circa 1207.  Considered mad by his fellow monks (not the first no doubt), we find the last Time Lord contemplating, perhaps obsessing, with the newest enigma of his long life: Clara Oswin (Jenna Louise-Coleman, in her first regular Doctor Who episode as ...

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During the first afternoon of Mysticon in Roanoke this past weekend, following the opening panel with Peter Davison there was a special treat(?) presented by the good folks at Gallifrey Pirate Radio.  This was the last time that all of the then-surviving Doctors were brought together for a story.  Although as you can see the canonicity of this is debatable (okay, pretty much null and void) and you’ll no doubt notice how William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton are resurrected with all the glorious CGI capability that the early Nineties had to offer, it’s still a fun lil’ vignette for Doctor Who fans…

Fourth Doctor: “Mayday! Mayday! This is an urgent message for all the Doctors. It’s vitally important that you listen carefully to me for once. Our whole existence is being threatened by a renegade Time Lord known only as the Rani! She hates me. She even hates children!

...
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Mysticon 2013 transpired across space and time at the Holiday Inn Tanglewood in Roanoke, Virginia this past weekend!  Among the special guests were bestselling science-fiction author Orson Scott Card (I finally have a signed copy of Speaker for the Dead, the book that dang nearly destroyed my Spanish grade in my sophomore year of high school and I mean that in a good way) and none other than Peter Davison.  Yup, the Fifth Doctor himself!

And speaking of Doctor Who, I have never seen the Doctor and his mythology so represented by fans at a sci-fi convention.  I mean, there were people in TARDIS costumes, fercryinoutloud!  Those were mostly ladies in blue dresses bedecked with windows and the “Police Box” plaque on the door.  There were literally dozens of guys in Eleventh Doctor costumes (including not a few red fezzes), along with a healthy dose of Fourth Doctors, ...

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