The heritage plaque honouring Verity Lambert (Doctor Who‘s first producer, and a TV legend) has been rededicated, as unveiled by An Unearthly Child director, Waris Hussein, and former showrunner, Steven Moffat. The plaque was originally put in place in 2014, but when London’s Riverside Studios was being re-developed, it was put in storage. Moffat (who was showrunner when the blue plaque was…

Paul Hayes’ new book, The Long Game, is an impressively researched and very enjoyable account of the attempts to bring Doctor Who back after the TARDIS spun off into franchising limbo at the end of the 1996 TV Movie. The Long Game is based on interviews with some 30 of the key people involved in trying to resurrect Doctor Who in the years between 1996 -when the TV Movie was screened – and 2003,…

I have been reading two excellent, and very long, books about Star Trek by Mark A. Altman and Edward Gross: The Fifty Year Mission – The First 25 Years and The Fifty Year Mission – The Next 25 Years. Together, these weigh in at 1200 pages of admirably well-researched interviews with crew, cast, and writers of the different incarnations of Star Trek. They focus particularly on producers, writers,…

You’ve got the role and you’re part of the legend. A television institution. But things are not all sunny. The producer insists upon The Coat. It grates upon British dignity, serenity, and sensibility. And there’s the little matter of you trying to choke the life out of the companion in your first story. There seems to be less tolerance for previously established precedents in general.

Surely…

Michael Grade, the inexplicably famous television producer and noted cigar-tease, has once again restated his deep dislike for classic Doctor Who. This will come as a deep shock to all those fans who either died before 1984 or  – having not lunged with sufficient vigour for the ‘off’ switch during Part 2 of The Twin Dilemma – have only recently wakened from that deep, kind coma.

Grade restated…

Actually, I quite like Trial of a Time Lord. I didn’t like it at all when it was first transmitted – another example of Who fans disliking something when it’s first aired and then thoroughly revising their opinions. It’s not perfect Doctor Who and it never gets above the level of “pretty good”. Some bits are dreadful; some bits are badly incoherent; some bits are “meh” (the first four episodes,…