To support this blog, you can offer a one-time donation at Ko-fi or subscribe for as little as $1 on Patreon. George Mann has laid down a warning: that a simulacra, the hyper-real world built upon a semiotic absence, is vulnerable to the conditions of the material world. I could turn to Ian Chesterton, his… Read More Past Doctor Adventures: The Witch Hunters
Do you enjoy supporting things? Well, for $1 per post (or more, if you’re into regular extra goodies) you can support THIS blog on Patreon, or shout me a coffee on Ko-fi! If you would like to own a copy of “Rise and Fall” of your very own, it’s available here through the Big Finish… Read More Short Trips: Rise and Fall
Did you know that I have a Patreon now? If you enjoy the blog sign up for $1 per post (or more, if you’re into regular extra goodies), or shout me a coffee on Ko-fi! The last time that we were here in history, John Lucarotti laid down a challenge: to find a new way… Read More The Reign of Terror
If you enjoy this post, feel free to shout me a coffee on Ko-fi! The date is October 23, 2003. It’s been a while since we were last lingering here in the earliest days of my exposure to Doctor Who. The last time we were here, we were talking about cavemen and first experiences. Although… Read More The Sensorites
If you enjoy this post, feel free to shout me a coffee on Ko-fi! This is the essay that’s long been in the making. In The Dead Planet I preempted this piece by coining the term “Whitaker’s Original Sin” to describe a racialised rot at the origins of Doctor Who, and in Marco Polo I… Read More The Aztecs
If you enjoy this post, feel free to shout me a coffee on Ko-fi! The Keys of Marinus is a hard story to get a grip on—partly because here we suddenly have something utterly weird. In The Tribe of Gum, the viewer at least knows the episode is about a power struggle for fire—a symbol… Read More The Keys of Marinus
If you enjoy this post, feel free to shout me a coffee on Ko-fi! It is here in the highest peaks of the Himalayas where we lay our scene, a frozen mountain pass on the roof of the world that travellers call the Plains of Pamir. Hidden away amidst falling snow lies an object most… Read More Marco Polo
If you enjoy this post, feel free to shout me a coffee on Ko-fi! I’ve discussed David Whitaker at length in this project already. Over the course of both The Tribe of Gum and The Dead Planet, the picture we’ve seen of him so far is two-sided: David Whitaker as one of the creative geniuses… Read More The Edge of Destruction
If you enjoy this post, feel free to shout me a coffee on Ko-fi! Let’s do a bit of demythologising here. This is The Dead Planet, and we’re going to trace how the first episode of this serial is a thematic outgrowth from The Tribe of Gum. This cross-serial thematic cohesion is truly what makes… Read More The Dead Planet
If you enjoy this post, feel free to shout me a coffee on Ko-fi! I ended my previous entry, which covered the first episode of Doctor Who (“An Unearthly Child”), by raising two critical concepts—Darko Suvin’s “novum” and Bertolt Brecht’s Verfremdungseffekt (V-Effekt). I used these models to try and understand what that episode’s final act… Read More The Tribe of Gum
Chair with a Panda 