Across eight instalments last year, from March to May, the nation was gripped with the mystery surrounded the murder of eleven year old Danny Latimer. Delivering a slow burn and achieving rare ‘appointment TV’ status, the drama kept us guessing right up until the end when 9 million viewers tuned in for the finale. Working … >
With episodes lost to the mists of time, as expensive videotape was routinely reused, a mere two full episodes exist from the first series of The Avengers. Of course, we are not talking about the popular Marvel franchise here, but rather the British 1960s television series of the same name which focussed on the exploits … >
Occasionally a Doctor Who story comes along with such a great premise that you cannot believe it has not been tackled before. ‘The Abandoned’, despite its somewhat generic title, has just that. While it has been repeatedly established over the years that the Doctor stole his TARDIS from Gallifrey, or it stole him, we have … >
Holmes devotees will know that The Great Detective’s last canon adventure was ‘His Last Bow’, in which he foiled the German agent Von Bork on the eve of World War One. It ends with Holmes in an oddly reflective mood: ‘There’s an east wind coming all the same, such a wind as never blew on … >
This month, the Doctor Who main range presents one of its occasional anthology releases, with four short stories starring Colin Baker’s Sixth Doctor and Nicola Bryant’s Peri. The first, ‘Breaking Bubbles’, finds the time travellers in a set of formal gardens much to the surprise of its sole resident. Safira Valtris is a deposed royal … >
The last in the latest trilogy of stories begins in surprising circumstances with the arrival of a famed English Doctor, his ward Miss Nyssa and her governess, who come by invitation for an audience with the Marquise De Rimdelle. The year is 1770 and we are asked to imagine the Doctor in a powdered wig! … >
Doctor Who spin-off publishing often lives in the cracks, judiciously slotted in-between televised tales, but during the Eleventh Doctor’s finale ‘The Time of the Doctor’ we were offered great jumps in the narrative just begging for further adventures to be told. The ‘Tales of Trenzalore’ are exactly that, four short stories which chronicle occasions when … >
For the final edition of The Companion Chronicles, the range returns to the story of Zoe long after her travels in the TARDIS. Conscious of her missing memories, courtesy of the Time Lords, she recalls only her first encounter with the Doctor and Jamie although intensive memory probing has revealed other adventures that we have … >
With a temporal twist worthy of the Doctor himself, the story which was planned to introduce Nicholas Briggs’ new villain to the Big Finish canon has actually turned out to be the third to employ them. ‘The Eminence’, a malevolent gaseous entity with which humanity has endured a lengthy conflict, troubled both the Sixth Doctor … >
My life was sad, and distinctly lacking Honour. My Bat’leth had grown dull and rusted after many years without shedding an enemy’s blood. And I was pretty sure that the Romulans were laughing at me behind my back whenever I went to the toilet. Then I read The Klingon Art of War and now my … >