La! but someone has to strike the pose
And bear the weight of well-tailored clothes
And that is why the Lord created MEN!The Doctor has had many hats of varying fabulosity over the course of the series. The fez tends to get particular play recently, and at one point his catchphrase was "I should very much like a hat like that." He does,after all ( Read more... )

I have written about "the Space Museum" before in this space, but I can't say I really did it justice. Who could? It's one of my very favorite episodes in the entire show. So let's talk about its villains: the Moroks ( Read more... )

"The Massacre of Saint Bartholomew's Eve," often abbreviated to "the Massacre," is an exceptionally dark story, set around an exceptionally dark period of human history. It's also an exceptionally odd story, and is perhaps the one that would benefit most from being found. That is to say, things like "Marco Polo" you can tell are excellent even ( Read more... )

General Cutler is the leader of Snowcap Base, the Antarctic space mission control base in "the Tenth Planet." Before I get on to him, I want to briefly talk about Snowcap Base and what fantastic world-building is wrapped up in that extremely economic package. In the distant utopian future of 1986, Snowcap is an international operation that exists ( Read more... )

Occasionally a planet is so significant that it is almost a character in its own right. Skaro is one such, second only to Gallifrey itself. The homeworld of the Daleks, font of the greatest evil in the whoniverse; its very landscape is a thing of legends ( Read more... )

Finishing up Dragon Month, let's talk about Sandy the Sand Beast. It is, naturally, a large quasi-reptilian monstery thing, native to the planet Dido. Our heroes encounter it (him?) during their escape from the mountainside temple where the TARDIS has inopportunely deposited them. Swords coming out of the wall Indiana Jones style force Ian ( Read more... )

This last week has been Hartnell History Week, a celebration of the magnificent Historical episodes that characterize the First Doctor era. History is of course not the sole province of the Hartnell era - it is a show about time travel, after all - but the very early show has the bulk of the "pure" historicals, by contrast to later para-historical ( Read more... )

Invisibility is one of those things that seem like it would be super useful, but in practice just...really not so much. Well, not quite. Invisibility is always narratively useful, even if practically it's not something you'd want all the time ( Read more... )

"The Keys of Marinus" has an episodic structure that is virtually unique in the series. It is a McGuffin Hunt through disparate worlds, each episode set in a different place with no contact or connection to any of the others. Each has its own flavor and its own villains and challenges. And the villains for episode 2, "the Velvet Web," are a set ( Read more... )

The Monoids are a race of bipedal monoptical humanoids who are, alongside humanity, coinhabitants of the titular ark in "the Ark." They may or may not also be green. (I tend to assume they're green ( Read more... )