Days Like Crazy Paving - A Doctor Who Fan Blog

 17. Mummy on the Orient Express If you see a mummy on a train - Run! 66 seconds - that's all you get. Jamie Matherson's first (and best!) Doctor Who script is a doozy! The concept of the episode is a mythical mummy figure that appears 66 seconds to the person it is set to kill. And it's first victim that we see is Janet Henfrey, last seen as Miss Hardaker, being killed off by vampire evacuees in the Curse of Fenric. The clock is ticking, the costuming indicates we're in the 1920s and there's a distinct Agatha Christie vibe. Then the camera pans out to show this train is in space... Mummy was a return to form after the pretentious Listen, the dull Caretaker and tyr woefully misguided Kill the Moon (although Time Heist was great fun!) At the start there's still the fallout between the Doctor and Clara initially and this trip is the last trip to end it on, the last hurrah! Jenna Coleman is suitably glam in her flapper-style dress, looking like she's stepped ou...

 18. The Talons of Weng Chiang  You can't change the past but you can learn from it! (Part 2) This will disappoint some to see this story high up on my list or on the list at all. There is the elephant in the room with this six parter and it's the casting of Caucasian actor John Bennett as the villainous Li H'Sen Chang. This is problematic and for many people unforgivable. Now the serial's inclusion in this list should in no way be seen as condoning this casting but as always, a little context is required. As a kid growing up, one of my favourite Disney movies was One of Our Dinosaurs is Missing, a sort of Disney /Carry On mash-up thanks to the casting of Joan Sims and Bernard, plus Jon Pertwee in a cameo as a mad old major! But again, this film would not be found on terrestrial tv these days thanks to casting Bernard along with Peter Ustinov and Clive Revill as Chinese villains. Same goes for Murder by Death, the Neil Simon classic Whodunnit parody that features Peter ...

19: Rosa You can't change the past but you can learn from it! Chris Chibnall is definitely channelling the David Whittaker style of historicals in series 11, with both this and Rosa taking the stance that you can't change history, not one line! For Jodie's first historical, we go back to 1955 and a landmark historical event - Rosa Parks' refusal to give up her seat on the bus for a white man. It's very much in the remit of the original series to educate as well as to entertain. If this is what being "woke" is all about, then bring it on!  I have a confession to make, in that I was well into adulthood before I had even heard of Rosa Parks (and likewise Mary Seacole!) I'm pleased to say that in my work I cannot go into primary schools now without seeing books, posters and even school houses named after her. So it's not surprising that Chris Chibnall chose her story to be turned into an episode. It's inspirational; one woman raging against the sys...

20: The Time Meddler I know what a space helmet for a cow looks like!  I'm writing this blog entry in the same week that Joe Ford releases his Hamster with a Blunt Penknife podcast on this story that I recorded with him, as well as the premiere of the Tales of the TARDIS vignettes, one of which features actors Peter Purves and Maureen O'Brien recreating their roles near sixty years after they made this story. And now I have to write about it as well!  But that's OK, because it is a great little story, and one that changes the future of the direction the series took back in 1965. It introduced the concept of the pseudo historical, a buzzword that fans have used for those stories set in the past with a science fiction element in them. This features Peter Butterworth playing the Monk, a time meddler intent on changing history for what he considers the better. Butterworth has a wonderfully expressive face, which was am actors dream and he even looks a little sinister on the fir...

21: Flux I guess a Flux isn't out of the question! Initially I was going to choose two episodes from the Flux season to be in this list. But then I thought to heck with it, I'm having all six in one go and that meant I could have an extra story!  Flux is nothing short of a miracle. In terms of the production, the Doctor Who crew led by showrunner Chris Chibnall ensured that six episodes were produced in 2021, rather than none at all. With new health and safety protocols and restrictions it meant filming each episode of Doctor Who was taking significantly longer than previously. And time means money, even for a Time Lord.  But this seemed to spur the production team on, rather than make them take the easy route. Chibnall was quoted as saying, "You could go 'let's do lots of tiny little episodes in one room, with no monsters,' or we could throw down the gauntlet and do the biggest story we've ever done... definitely the most ambitious thing we've done sin...

 22: The Ambassadors of Death  Not all Ambassadors spoil you with Ferrero Roche... Everyone of a certain age remembers the famous advert of the Ambassadors reception where a butler hands out those posh chocolates that you can actually get from a petrol station. Well us Doctor Who fans can name the butler: John Abineri, veteran character actor of four classic Doctor Who stories, some more classic than others. And this is probably his finest hour. Abineri plays General Carrington, the villain of the piece, except he isn't really, that's Reegan played by the William Dysart. Or is Taltallian, the oh-so French scientist who taunts the Doctor and pulls a gun on him at the end of episode one... That's the problem with this story, received fan wisdom (Oh joy!) derided this story as rather confusing and convoluted as if our favourite show shouldn't do confusing and convoluted. As a result, it was one of those stories that seemed to get forgotten, apart from the fact Liz Shaw wea...

 23: The Empty Child & The Doctor Dances Yes, she is your mummy? It feels sometimes that series one of the modern series gets forgotten about or discarded, possibly because of the fact that Christopher Eccleston left after one series. “He had no moral right to take the part if he was going to leave after one year!” shouted one fan (probably with his caps lock on!) Even though he’s working with Big Finish as the Ninth Doctor again, Eccles gets a rough ride by some fans, despite his single series being of an overall high standard. And they don’t come much higher than this; Steven Moffat’s first script for the series, a Comic Relief special episode notwithstanding, and Russell T Davies entrusted him with one of the three two-parters of that season, with only the words “World War Two” and “Captain Jack” on the pitch document. Moffat took those two disparate elements and crafted them into one of the strongest and scariest two-part stories the modern series has ever seen. We tend to ...