The third serial of DOCTOR WHO’s redefining Season 24, DELTA AND THE BANNERMEN, may suffer from a clumsy and largely unsuccessful attempt to pun the all but forgotten pop group Echo And The Bunnymen, but it’s also the serial that’s surprised me the most on reappraising it. Oh sure, it still has some of the hallmarks that classic Who is often derided for (some of the make-up effects are truly…

Having opened the new era and series of DOCTOR WHO with the reassuringly familiar presence of a quarry, PARADISE TOWERS provides a similar comfort factor of that time-honoured Whovian trope of endless, conspicuously similar corridors, plus the inevitable return of the Doctor’s perennially ill-fated attempts to take a holiday. Beguiled by the sales brochure, Mel (Bonnie Langford) persuades the…

Before it was the social media battle cry of an embittered faction of Whovian fandom railing against the casting of Jodie Whittaker, “Leave the girl, it’s the man I want!” was the portentous opening line to DOCTOR WHO’s latest narrative – and real-life – regeneration as the series exploded back to life in 1987 with TIME AND THE RANI after a nail-biting nine months off-screen during which the…