Recent Articles

Defense: The Sensorites — A Well-Developed Alien Species

March 19, 2012 05:00

Just as The Aztecs marks in some sense the coming-of-age of the historical episodes of the first season, so The Sensorites marks a major development in the science-fiction episodes. That’s not to say that future episodes won’t have their share of goofiness (wait until The Web Planet!),...

Defense: The Crusade (1st Doctor)–Acting Greats, Shakespearean Intrigue, Strong Women

March 18, 2012 00:58

The Crusade is riveting Who that you should make time to watch. It’s Episode 14 from the second season of the First Doctor, and a four-parter. It’s on the “Lost in Time” Hartnell collection, and two of the four episodes exist in audio format only, though its easy to find the...

Happy Pi day!

March 14, 2012 12:28

Great day to teach your kids, grandkids, nieces or nephews about pi. Challenge them to measure things and see how close they can get to the constant. My challenge to one particular little girl ended up in a flurry of 6 measurements with a tape measure, the closest of which was 3.1416. Not bad! For...

Prosecution: The Web Planet–early Who’s Weakest Hour

March 14, 2012 02:42

Last week and during my vacation, my good pal Mith and I got together for gaming, good company, and something we’d been planning for some time: we sat down for a Whoathon of epic proportions. We watched a good 24 episodes of consecutive Hartnell Who plus sundry special features, including...

Mithradates reviews The Aztecs

March 12, 2012 03:37

Early Who tried to rotate between “historical” and “sci-fi” episodes, something foreign to this Who watcher for whom actual time-traveling into the past was a rarity for Doctors 3-5 (although this has thankfully been revived for the new episodes). So after visiting the...

Mithradates reviews Keys of Marinus

March 12, 2012 03:00

Fresh from their visit to medieval China, the travelers come to Marinus. There they uncover a complex mystery: a strange structure with no obvious entrance; a sea of acid, and several minisubs piloted by humanoids in wetsuits — the Voord. This sets up the frame story for the plot, which reads...

Defense: The Romans–Early Who’s Finest Hour

March 06, 2012 16:00

No time to mince words here: my main man Mithradates gets it exactly right when he says I’ve found I don’t have the time. And so back to square one, regeneration-style. That is, this time it’s the same: but different. Per my original intent, I’m going to shoot at reviewing...

The Maturing of Dr. Who Fandom, or, 3 Reasons GallifreyOne is a Must-See for Who Fans

February 22, 2012 05:59

When I was wee, I threw myself headlong into Doctor Who. I collected the books, watched the shows when my local stations could afford them (largely accomplished via zealous and frequent fan-run fund drives). But I ached for something more serious than the average fan ‘zine, something that...

The Pause that Refreshes

January 30, 2012 04:11

So, as you may have noticed (assuming anyone was reading this to begin with), there have been no reviews since June 2011. That’s not because we abandoned our mission. In fact, it was a combination of factors: My co-author found that he didn’t have time to blog as he had hoped. I held...

Who Verdict on “The Daleks”: Acquittal!

June 27, 2011 23:38

Lime, J, delivers the opinion; Mithradates, J., concurs only in the result: I take issue with my colleague’s apparent willingness to overlook the massive plot holes that rip Titanic-sized logic holes in the serial for me. I also take issue with his implicit conclusion that there is a...