Posts Tagged Dr Who

Film Is Fabulous: Good News For Doctor Who Fans

November 11, 2025 at 10:02 am · Filed under Doctor Who, TV Shows ·Tagged

An illustration of a blue police box with light on top, emitting a warm glow, surrounded by film reels, symbolizing the recovery of lost media.

The Missing Episodes

Most readers are likely aware of the backstory of the long-running saga of the ninety-seven missing Doctor Who episodes. But, for those who aren’t, here’s a quick recap.

In the 1950s and 1960s, television was seen as an ephemeral medium, with most shows made to be broadcast once, maybe repeated a couple of times if they were popular, and copies sold internationally if there was demand. Then, they were often literally erased with the tape reused for another show. For popular shows like Doctor Who and The Avengers, the majority might be preserved for the archives, but certainly not all.

In the fifties, many programmes were performed and broadcast live. With these broadcasts, we’re lucky if they were recorded at all, and luckier still if that tape still exists today. The second performance of the 1954 version of Orwell’s 1984 starring Peter Cushion survived, and you can read my recent review here Review of the 1954 BBC Adaptation of Orwell’s 1984 But the first Quatermass serial from the previous year is gone forever.

It’s easy to be critical in retrospect, but who could have known that, six decades later, there would be a clamour to see the 1965 Doctor Who serial Marco Polo, of which all seven episodes are missing, or the early television apparencies of here-today-gone-tomorrow ‘pop groups’ with names like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, TheKinksor The Who?

It tends to be the BBC that gets it in the neck for most for these acts of cultural vandalism, obviously so when it comes to Doctor Who, but this was a widespread practice. Nothing remains of the first series of The Avengers, an ITV show, and such destructive practices occurred in other countries, too.

The same is true in the medium of film, which I’ll touch on later. Only around 10% of all the silent movies made before the dawn of the roaring twenties are known to exist. That’s a sadly substantial gap in the history of the development of cinema.

As well as the belief that these artefacts of visual media would, aside from exceptional cases like 1953’s Coronation of Queen Elizabeth 11, be of no interest beyond the current audience, the expensive nature of tape was also a big factor at work, as much in the 1960s as in the 1920s.

 The Bicycle System

At one time, 136 episodes of Doctor Who were missing from the archives, all from the 1960s black and white era, with a large chunk of the second Doctor Patrick Troughton’s time in the lead role from 1966-69 seemingly lost to time. It’s thanks to the tireless work of individuals like Philip Morris that thirty-nine of these episodes have been recovered.

Most of these finds came through following the trail of the BBC’s foreign sales.

These  sales were made using what has come to be known as ‘The Bicycle System.’ Instead of sending out multiple copies, one each to all of the foreign television services willing to buy them, which would have increased costs, they would send one single copy on a mini world tour. The tape might be sent to Australia, then once it had been broadcast there, be sent on to New Zealand, to Canada, and to various African nations. Some of these countries made their own copies of the tape for repeat purposes, and some didn’t. Some returned their copy to the BBC, some didn’t.

It was through making contact with, then visiting and searching through the archives in countries where lost episodes were known to have been shown, that Morris and Co. were able to significantly reduce the list of ‘lost’ episodes.

The Dump

Having given the BBC a bit of a free pass so far, what they did in the mid-seventies is unforgivable. From 1972 onwards, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation returned every episode of Doctor Who they had bought and broadcast to the BBC. Thus, at this point, every episode of the show ever made existed in the BBC archives.

But, for reasons of storage space, they ordered large numbers of them (and other shows, but we’ll stick with Doctor Who, for now) to be sent to landfill.

By this time, it was obvious that some television material had lasting interest, at least to some people, so they really should have known better.

Of course, there was nothing to stop BBC employees or contractors tasked with disposing of these tapes from rifling through them and deciding to keep a few rolls for themselves, either for later material gain or simply because they liked some of these shows and thought it a shame for them to be destroyed.

The Detectives

The first recoveries made by following the ‘bicycle trail’ came in 1983, but it was during what fans have come to know as The Wilderness Years that interest in recovering the missing episodes intensified. This was the period between 1989 and 2005 when, apart from the one-off 1996 TV Movie starring Paul McGann, and the occasional repeats of old stories, Doctor Who was absent from our screens.

It was during this period that many of us first became aware that ‘missing episodes’ existed (or rather, didn’t exist), and it was exciting whenever news broke that long lost treasures like the Troughton era Tomb of the Cybermen had been unearthed.

With the advent of VHS and then DVDs, television channels like the BBC had learned the error of their past ways, if only because they now realised there was solid profit to be made through physical media sales.

The last great find was made by Morris in Nigeria in 2013. It was here that, in a rolled-up carpet in an otherwise empty room in a disused television station, he found all six episodes of two long-lost Troughton stories, The Enemy of the World and The Web of Fear.

A great discovery, only slightly spoiled by episode three of the latter somehow disappearing in transit.

You can hear Morris tell this story in a great podcast interview here DOCTOR WHO – PHILIP MORRIS LIVE – MISSING EPISODES? RTD? CURRENT STATE OF DR WHO? SEASON 2?

In the ensuing twelve years, there has been nothing, and it seems likely that the ‘bicycle system’ avenue of enquiry has run its course, that everything that had long languished in the former HQs of obscure African television stations awaiting discovery has been discovered.

This being the case, the only hope for the ‘lost 97’ lay with private collectors.

Enter Film is Fabulous.

Film is Fabulous

Film Is Fabulous emerged when members of the film collecting community, especially during the covid period, began to receive an increasing number of calls from the loved ones of fellow collectors along the lines of ‘My dad has passed away. He left no will, so we don’t know what to do with his films.’

Given that in many cases they were talking abut thousands upon thousands of rolls of film, that the receivers of these calls had no storage facilities beyond that reserved for their own collections, and had no legal rights to do anything at all with other people’s collections without explicit instruction, this was a big question indeed, and sadly, some of these collections were summarily disposed of.

A small group of younger members of this mostly ageing group of niche and dedicated hobbyists decided to discuss the means by which these problems might be addressed.

It’s best to listen to the whole story as told by two of the members of this group in their own words via a recent appearance on the always excellent Doctor Who Missing Episodes Podcast Doctor Who: The Missing Episodes Podcast – Special Edition – Film is Fabulous!, but the bottom line is that after a determined campaign, Film is Fabulous was born, and has now attained charitable status.

The advantage of this status is that they can now receive public donations, and I will include a link to how readers can donate at the end of this article. Adequate funding means that they can at least start to at least receive expenses for the work they’re already doing, perhaps be able to employ paid staff at some point, and attain suitable premises for storage.

(Since I wrote the above, I’ve learned that FIF have now been granted access to suitable storage facilities by Montfort University in Leicester)

It also gives them the gravitas to start approaching collectors or their executors, to gain permission to begin cataloguing these collections, to see exactly what is there (no easy task, given that, on work completed so far, FIF estimate that 18% of reels do not match the label on the cannister), assessing its condition, and looking into the legal aspects of who owns the rights to whatever is there. Once that is done, they can return their discoveries to their legal owners who, hopefully, will begin the task of restoration, archiving and, if there is sufficient demand, making items available to the public.

It’s the legal aspects of this work that are perhaps the hardest. I’ll return here to our possibly mythical BBC contractor. If he (most likely a ‘he’) did indeed ignore orders to dispose of certain items, then in the eyes of fans of certain shows, with particular reference to Doctor Who fandom, he will have done the world a huge favour. But, despite ordering its destruction, these reels will still rightfully belong to the BBC.

In other cases, legal ownership might not be so easy to discern.

Confusion and the fear of possible reprisals may have prevented some collectors from coming forward for decades. It’s good news that the BBC have made it clear that no collectors who ended up in possession of BBC-owned material, by whatever means, will face prosecution.

The Good News

The important headline from a recent statement made by FIF, and which their representees amplify on the Missing Episodes podcast, is that ‘Several episodes of Doctor Who currently missing from the BBC archives exist in several collections.’

Naturally, fans have taken to discerning the meaning of ‘several’. It has no universally agreed-upon meaning, but it’s definitely more than a couple. So a minimum of three. Thus, several times several make at least nine, which would be great, and the grapevine suggests it could be more.

In his Sense of Sphere interview, Philip Morris, who is not a part of FIF but is in contact with them and clearly knows more than the rest of us, stated that ‘Fans won’t be disappointed when an announcement is made.’

That sounds promising indeed.

Unfortunately, a small number of members of the lunatic fringe of Who-fandom have been hassling FIF, issuing threats, demanding to know what they’ve found, and when we will get a chance to see it.

This is the epitome of zealous stupidity. First, we don’t know the quality of the discoveries: Is the film salvageable? If it is, then it will be down to the BBC to begin the work of restoration, and to make decisions as to how and when we will be able to see it: On the iPlayer, all in one place at the same time, on a special Blu Ray or with newly found episodes slotted into the relevant seasons as part of the ongoing, and excellent, Collection series?

And What Else?

FIF have made it clear that their work is much broader than seeking out missing Doctor Who episodes.

They themselves, and most members of the Collector’s community, are interested primarily in feature films. Some have specialised in subsets of this, like early/silent films. Others have been more interested in factual documentaries and information, for instance, in the Pathe newsreels.

A focus on vintage television is rare, so random episodes of old television shows are generally something that fell into their hands almost incidentally in the process of amassing their collection.

Personally, I’m interested in all of these areas, fascinated by lost media of all types. I’m therefore excited by the whole project.

Already, it’s believed that Oliver Hardy’s first-ever film appearance, believed to be long lost, has been recovered. There’s also a photograph of a missing episode of Softly Softly, a Z Cars spin-off I remember from my childhood, being returned to the BBC. It’s also been made known that some lost episodes of The Avengers have been found.

Apart from that, we know very little. But I suspect we are in for some nice surprises over the next year or two.

Wish List

Aside from Doctor Who, and briefly donning my Beatlesbuff hat, I’d love to see the long-lost episode of Juke Box Jury, when the Fabs comprised the panel; and it’s ironic that all we have of them performing (or miming to) Ticket To Ride on Top Of The Pops is a few seconds on the Tardis monitor in the First Doctor story The Rescue.

It’d be nice to see this properly, and to recover other lost Beatles, other great sixties bands, and even early British rockers from the fifties performing on sparsely preserved shows like The Six-Five-Special, Ready Steady Go or Oh Boy!

To return to our main topic, after a blank twelve years, the recovery and restoration of any more lost Doctor Who is to be welcomed.

Wish List

Given the choice, I’d go for anything from the aforementioned Marco Polo, hopefully enough to make it worthwhile for the BBC to animate the rest, to make a Series One Collection box viable.

For the sake of completion, Harnell’s last appearance, in episode four of The Tenth Planet, would be nice, as would episode one of Troughton’s first story, The Power of the Daleks. We do have the show’s very first regeneration, from Hartnell to Troughton, thanks to a preserved clip from Blue Peter. But it would be great to have the last and first episodes of these two giants in complete form.

Something from The Highlanders, the last of the 1960’s ‘Pure Historicals’, which featured the first appearance of Troughton’s companion for the rest of his run, Jamie played by Fraser Hines (best known as Joe in Emmerdale Farm), would also be high on my list.

I was going to conclude by saying that, as we face a likely long hiatus for the modern show, a Wilderness Years 2.0, the rediscovery of lost sixties Doctor Who is especially welcome. But in the last few days, it’s been announced that the show will return for a 2026 Christmas Special, written by Russell T Davis, in what is almost certain to be his swansong, possibly with a new series under a different team to follow.

But I’m guessing that I’m far from alone in being much more excited by the prospect of being able to see some hitherto lost Hartnell and Troughton episodes than by whatever is to come in 2026/7.

Donations can be made to the good people at Film Is Fabulous  here Film is Fabulous | Film Collectors | Cinema | Vintage Television

Anthony C Green, November 2025

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Doctor Who Season 2 Episode 2 Review: Lux Analysis

April 28, 2025 at 6:48 am · Filed under Doctor Who, TV Shows ·Tagged , , , , ,

2,251 words, 12 minutes read time.

A critic asked to summarise Lux in two sentences, at some unspecified point in the future might write, ‘It was ambitious and innovative, had loads of potential, retains many good points, but, like almost every episode from the ‘RTD 2 era’, it is an incoherent, unsatisfying mess. Lux is remembered primarily for one ‘Meta’ scene that both referenced and hastened the show’s long hiatus.’

Plot

After last week’s more traditional Science Fiction season opener, The Robot Revolution, we’re back to the Pantheon of Gods, which Russell T Davies (RTD) first introduced us to in The Giggle, the last of the three Sixtieth anniversary specials in late 2023.

This time in the spotlight, almost literally, we have Lux, the God of Light, who manifests in the form of a traditional, old-school Disney-type animated character, Mr. Ring-a-Ding, in a cinema in Miami, Florida, 1952. Breaking free of the cinema screen, he imprisons fifteen local cinema goers within the frames of celluloid film.

The Doctor and Belinda, as part of the ongoing season arc of attempting to return the new companion home to England on the date she left, May 24th this year, find themselves in Miami and begin to investigate the disappearance of the ‘Miami 15’. In their interactions with the lead villain, they too find themselves trapped within celluloid, briefly turned into animated form themselves, before finally escaping by smashing through a modern flat TV screen into a British living room where they interact with ‘Doctor Who fans’. These three fans advise on how to defeat Lux. Returning to Miami, our heroes follow this advice, and with the help of Mr. Pye, the cinema projectionist, who sacrifices himself with the help of his dead wife by setting alight to the many rolls of film, burning down the cinema. This exposes Lux to outside sunlight, an influx of light so great that he begins to grow, to lose his animated form, ultimately merging to become ‘all light’. The missing fifteen walk free from the cinema, seemingly unharmed.

That’s a simplified version, and much else happens along the way, but that’s essentially it.

Positives

It looks great. Miami, 1952, at least an idealised, Disney-fied version of it, is very well realised, the cars, the clothes, the gaudy neon signs, the diner, the ‘picturehouse’…

An early shot of one of the ’15’ screaming out from the frames of film looks genuinely terrifying. The animations of Mr.-Ring-a-Ding and of the Doctor and Belinda were impressive and, based on my admittedly limited knowledge in this area, looked appropriate to the period. Close to the end of the episode, the distorted image of Lux as he began his transformation away from his animated Mr Ring-a-Ding manifestation towards infinity was also impressively horrifying.

Even the ‘fourth wall’/Meta-break is visually striking.

Ncuti Gatwa continued the improvement seen in his portrayal of the Doctor in last week’s season opener. Arguably, he even finally had his proper ‘Doctor moment.’ This was in the diner when he had been explaining to a shocked Belinda that they were at a point in history when segregation was still in place in America. He responded to her incredulity that he wasn’t as outraged as she was about this fact by saying, ‘I’ve toppled worlds. Sometimes I wait for them to topple themselves.’ I shine.’ Good lines, well-delivered, which could have come from the mouth of any of the modern Doctors not played by Jodie Whittaker.

Grudging credit must be given to Davies for his tackling of the segregation theme in general. We might have expected him to go to town on this, but, for once, he showed restraint. Or, maybe, as I mentioned in my review of The Robot Revolution, much work was put into post-production and re-editing in response to criticisms of last year’s series. Of course, there was no necessity to set the episode in segregation era America in the first place, either, and it could be argued that the contrast between the restraint displayed here and the histrionics on race-related issues at the end of Dot and Bubble shows an inconsistency of characterisation. True, characters should grow and develop over time, but that was a mere five episodes ago, and the Doctor was, supposedly, no less a Time Lord then than he is in Lux.

Sadly, though not unexpectedly, Ncuti’s good work was undercut by his usual array of campy posturing, with no consideration given by Davies to how adding such flamboyant characteristics, clothes and modes of speech (‘honey,’ ‘babes’) to his skin colour would likely have been received at this time, in this place.

Gatwa’s threads look very nice, but once again, he’s deprived of a recognisable ‘Doctor costume’ which immediately signals to the viewer that this is the character he is portraying.

Verada’s Sethu’s Belinda was a much more engaging character here than in the season opener, with less moaning and ‘pushing back’ against the Doctor and more entering into the spirit of being a companion at the beginning of what ought to be a series of epic adventures through space and time.

There was some good dialogue and banter between Doctor and companion, and other characters, and some good one-liners from Mr Ring-a-Ding (‘I never should have learnt perspective!’), and it’s probably a bit late in the day to be mentioning how superbly voiced the ‘villain’ was by Alan Cummings. I believe he does this sort of thing for a day job, and you can see, or at least hear, why. 

Negatives

As much more of a Science Fiction than a Fantasyfan, I’m not greatly impressed by the move in this direction since Davies once more took over as showrunner. I can certainly appreciate the genre in the hands of masters such as Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Ursula Le Guin, and even J.K. Rowling. But these writers spent decades, a lifetime in the case of the former, building complex, internally consistent worlds full of characters who are believable in the context of those worlds. RTD is no Tolkien. As far as I know, he has no track record of writing Fantasy, and I have no sense of him believing in his ‘Pantheon of Gods’ to the extent of being able to stand even a few minutes of questioning concerning the nature of these ‘Gods’ and how they relate to one another. For Davies, it seems the ‘Fantasy’ tag is merely a convenience that frees him from the need to write plots that make sense to anyone other than himself.

In addition, as Brendan, host of my favourite Doctor Who podcast (‘Sense Sphere’) puts it, ‘These Gods are crap!’ turning up in random places which may or may not be related to the Doctor turning up at the same place and time, and then being quickly and easily defeated after causing harm to a limited number of people for a while or, this case, maybe not defeated, because becoming at one with all light is presumably where Lux as the God (or ‘a’ God?) of Light, started from before randomly manifesting as a cartoon character in a cinema because of a chance occurrence (moonlight reflected from a spoon).

I also don’t feel invested in the Belinda ‘Journey home narrative’. It worked fine with Ian and Barbara in the early days of the show, because it was clear at that point that the Doctor had no control of where and when the Tardis materialised.

But here?

As I understand it, the Tardis can’t land on the target date of May 25th, so the Doctor has built a gadget, the Vortex Indicator (Vindicator), which, in theory, could, by getting somewhere (and somewhen) in the right vicinity, drag the Tardis to the desired destination. In which case, why are they in Miami in 1952? It would make sense for the Doctor to at least attempt to materialise on May 24th and, if successful, take Belinda to one of his favourite clubs for a few hours until the clock strikes midnight and, voila, it’s the 25th. She can say a quick ‘Hi,’ to celloist mum and karaoke dad (new information gained in Lux. What a surprise that it’s only the mum who is given a proper career), have a few hours’ sleep and be at the hospital in time for her 2-10 shift preventing the NHS from collapse.

Job done.

Such things are logistic plot-point problems writers can easily deal with, explaining away as necessary, if they are aware of them. But that will often require an editor with the confidence and authority to read through their work and drop them a friendly email saying ‘Very good, but…’

Pacing

Like so much of this incarnation of the show, the actual plot is slight and could be raced through in much less than its forty-five-minute time allocation. But telling it in such a way that it doesn’t strain the viewer’s credulity, at the same time as peopling it with believable characters we feel we’ve come to know and have grown to care about, can’t be. So, that early image of the character we saw screaming from within a celluloid frame was never capitalised upon, because we never saw this character again until he miraculously walked free from the cinema at the end. He didn’t even have a name (only Tommy Lee, son of one of the characters at the diner, had that), so why should we feel relieved that he’s been rescued from his horrifying ordeal?

A lack of consequences is another big problem with the show in its current run. Almost every major character was dissolved into dust early in the season one finale The Empire of Death. By the end, they’d all been resurrected. Similarly, Mr. Pye was the only character who died in Lux.

Linus Roche, a fine character actor in his own right as well as the son of William Roche (Ken Barlow in Coronation Street), deserves a lot of credit for his portrayal of the projectionist. But he got no more than a few minutes of screen time, so, again, why should we care?

***

Over the last week, I’ve watched the latest run of six Black Mirror episodes on Netflix, and this set me thinking that, in at least one future world, Doctor Who could be improved if it could be detached from the BBC completely (as far as new content is concerned). The move from Channel Four to a fully streamed service allowed Black Mirror to achieve what Davies had said was his ambition for Who, to take it from being a niche British show to a truly global phenomenon which enjoys both public and critical acclaim. Netflix provided Black Mirror with a much bigger budget than could have been imagined during its first two series, which were funded by and shown only on Channel Four. But, more importantly, the move freed it from forty-five to fifty-minute episode time constraints. Stories now take as long as the show creator and writer, Charlie Brooker (sometimes with co-writers), feels are needed to tell them. I’d recommend watching, back-to-back, the season four episode, USS Callister and its new season seven sequel USS Callister: Into Infinity, both feature-length, both incredibly tightly written, working on several levels, including meta-Star Trek parody, but managing to incorporate genuinely thrilling SF adventures with real consequences for believable characters who viewers have formed a relationship with.

It helps that Brooker is a brilliant writer, and even his early, time-constrained episodes stand up well. But he would never have been able to produce something this ambitious within the parameters of British network television.

And Doctor Who could never attempt to emulate it, no matter how many billions Disney, or anyone else, throws at it while it remains tied to BBC television scheduling.

The ‘Meta’ Scene

I intended to say more about the ‘scene with the fans’ than I will, because it remains to be seen if this will have a significance in the series beyond Lux, in the season climax as, I think, is strongly suggested by Mrs Flood’s nod and wink references at the end of the episode. I’ll provisionally stick to three short points: 1) It put a break on the story, adding to the pacing problems 2) If the show does end up on ‘indefinite hiatus’ then, as I indicated at the beginning of the review, this is the scene that everybody will remember it for, irrespective of its many good qualities. 3) It’s the sort of indulgence that a show can perhaps get away with when it’s at the top of its game and is still clearly beloved. I doubt many Buffy fans rewatch the musical episode often, but they can forgive and even admire its existence. In a show that is haemorrhaging viewers (I’ll talk more about ratings in a future review, but a 23% drop in the overnight figures from The Robot Revolution to Lux can’t be spun in a positive direction, and now even the pretence of pretending all is well is falling away) it risks further alienating loyal viewers, whether it was affectionately stereotyping Doctor Who fans or not, as well as being incomprehensible to new viewers.  

If the show is cancelled, what photo-still from its illustrious sixty-two-year history will accompany the headlines? I’ll take a wild stab that it’ll be of Ncuti Gatwa and Veranda Sethru standing, with three cosplaying ‘fans’, next to a television screen upon which are displayed the ‘Doctor Who’ and ‘BBC’ logos as well as the legend #RIPDoctorWho.

Anthony C Green, April 2025

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Doctor Who: Season Two, Episode One, Robot Revolution, Reviewed

April 19, 2025 at 5:49 pm · Filed under Doctor Who, TV Shows ·Tagged , , , , , ,

845 words, 4 minutes read time.

Initial Impressions

Well, knit me a skirt and call me Susan Foreman. The first episode of the new series of Doctor Who was… good.
At least on first viewing.

On second watch, my opinion dipped slightly—and I expect a third will lower it further. But it remains the most enjoyable episode since Ncuti Gatwa officially took over in the 2023 Christmas Special.

I’ve deliberately avoided other reviews, much like Bob and Terry dodging football results in Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?—so what follows is purely my take.

The State of the Show

The RTD2 Era So Far

Fandom has rarely been so united in criticism as it has with Russell T Davies’s (RTD’s) second stint as showrunner, starting in 2022. Once the hero who brought Who back in 2005, RTD returned to a franchise weakened by the Chibnall/Whittaker years, with high hopes buoyed by Disney’s reported $100M partnership.

Those hopes were misplaced.

His Children in Need short undermined Davros with ill-advised political revisionism. The 60th anniversary specials, despite the return of David Tennant and Catherine Tate, fizzled rather than soared. Ncuti Gatwa’s debut, in The Giggle, saw the first use of ‘bi-generation’—leaving Tennant’s Doctor bizarrely alive and semi-retired with a working TARDIS.

Season One: A Litany of Missteps

  • Opening Disaster: Space Babies—arguably the worst Who episode ever.
  • Immediate Follow-Up: The Devil’s Chord, offensive to Beatles and Doctor Who fans alike.
  • Lazy Writing: With six episodes penned by RTD himself, most felt like first drafts.
  • Rare Bright Spots: Only Boom (written by Steven Moffat) stood out as complete and coherent.
  • Musical Numbers: Overused gimmicks (The Goblin’s Song, There’s Always A Twist…) quickly wore thin.
  • Unconvincing Relationships: Ruby Sunday and the Doctor’s bond felt forced and underdeveloped.
  • Weak Finale: Empire of Death left major questions unanswered or resolved them with laughable twists.

Sutekh—once a terrifying god-like villain—was reduced to a cartoonish giant dog, ultimately defeated with a magic rope. It would be funny if it weren’t so depressing.

The Doctor and the Gatwa Problem

Gatwa’s Doctor still lacks a defining moment. He changes outfits constantly (so no iconic look), cries often (up to five times per episode), and seems more human than alien. His sexuality was foregrounded—fine in principle, but clumsily executed in Rogue, where he ditched Ruby for a romantic rendezvous with a near-stranger.

Worst of all, the Doctor rarely saves the day anymore. The “male saviour” trope appears to have been shelved—at the expense of the show’s storytelling.

Culture War Fallout

The show’s shift from story to message has not gone unnoticed. Political soapboxing—on gender, race, reparations—has replaced the sense of wonder. RTD and Gatwa’s response to criticism? Blame the fans—accusing them of bigotry rather than acknowledging creative decline.

Robot Revolution: A Ray of Hope?

What Worked

Surprisingly, a lot:

  • The Concept: A star named after a girlfriend leads to her being abducted by giant robots years later and crowned their queen. Classic Sci-Fi hook.
  • Aesthetic Style: Ray-gun robots, 1950s rocket ships, and space cityscapes—this looked like real Doctor Who.
  • Pacing and Visuals: It didn’t drag. The time fracture effects were trippy. Disney’s budget might finally have shown up.
  • Restraint from Gatwa: Fewer manic outbursts, just one single tear (still too many), and toned-down antics helped. Post-production may have removed the worst.
  • A Solid Companion Setup: Belinda Chandra has potential—feisty, capable, but not yet loveable.

But There Were Issues…

  • The Message: Toxic masculinity was this week’s villain. The metaphor was belaboured—Alan’s marriage proposal came with weird conditions (no tight clothes, no texting after 8 PM), and Belinda’s “Planet of the Incels!” line felt jarringly on-the-nose.
  • Shaky Character Beats: Belinda was indifferent to the death of a cat and quite rude to Alan. Not ideal for a new character intro.
  • Gloating Doctor: The Doctor’s smugness at Alan’s fate was disquieting. Classic Doctors showed compassion even toward enemies.
  • Convenient Tech: The robots’ inability to process every ninth word let the Doctor and Belinda speak in code—a clever but fragile plot device.

The Bigger Picture

Despite RTD’s promise of a darker Doctor, what we got was a confused one—part clown, part political commentator. Robot Revolution hints at a course correction, but it’s not yet the show many of us fell in love with.

Moffat’s fingerprints—nonlinear storytelling, callbacks to Boom, the wordplay—were everywhere. Even Belinda’s jab at “timey-wimey” felt like a meta-apology for narrative fatigue.

The big question remains: Is there a future for this version of Doctor Who?

Rumours swirl of Disney pulling out after The War Between The Land and the Sea. Gatwa’s departure seems imminent—potentially without a replacement announced, a first since Patrick Troughton’s exit.

Final Verdict

“Better than Space Babies” is a low bar, but Robot Revolution clears it with ease. In fact, it’s probably better than anything from last season. It feels like Doctor Who again—if only faintly.

Guarded optimism replaces despair. I’m even looking forward to Lux.

Low expectations, it turns out, can be a gift.

Anthony C Green, April 18, 2025.

A promotional image for 'The Angela Suite' book by Anthony C. Green, featuring a close-up of bare feet resting on a surface, alongside a radio or speaker and a backdrop of an urban skyline.

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