Saturday 26 April 2025

The Well

The surprising return of a decades-old monster leads not only to the urgent revision of a long-dormant TARDIS Wikia page, but also to an unexpected addition to the current season of 500 Year Diary. So join us, as we join Steven B for one more visit to a diamond planet called Midnight — it’s The Well.

In Midnight, Sky Sylvestry was played Lesley Sharp, who had worked with Russell in The Second Coming (2003), where she played the best friend of Christopher Eccleston’s character Stephen Baxter, who (it turns out) was the Second Coming of Christ.

This video on the BBC’s official YouTube channel explains how the Midnight Entity™ ended up in this episode. As Russell himself explains, the Doctor and Belinda were to have met the Orisha, divine spirits who are part of the Yoruba religion, but Russell was concerned that it would be impossible to turn them into Doctor Who monsters while still being respectful of the religious tradition.

Our Doctor Who flashcast The Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire recorded our first impressions of The Well just a few weeks ago in Episode 15.

Nathan is on Bluesky at @nathanbottomley.com, Simon is @simonmoore.bsky.social, and Steven is @steedstylin.bsky.social. The 500 Year Diary theme was composed by Cameron Lam.

500 Year Diary shares a social media presence with Flight Through Entirety, which means you can follow us on Mastodon and Bluesky, as well as on X and Facebook. Our website is at 500yeardiary.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on Apple Podcasts, or when you’re not looking we’ll stick a post-it note on your back that says KICK ME.

You can find links to all of the podcasts we’re involved in on our podcasts page. But here’s where we’re up to right now.

Keen on more Steven B–based content? Well, you’re in luck: today sees the release of the latest episode of Brendan, Steven and Richard’s Avengers podcast The Three-Handed Game. It’s the first episode of a new triptych called The End of Empire: the boys watch The Gilded Cage, in which Honor Blackman gears up for the next stage of her career by staging a gold robbery in order to trap a criminal mastermind.

Finally, we also released another episode of our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford, who watched an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine called To the Death, which contained levels of latex content hazardous to human health.

Monday 1 December 2008

Enemy of the Bane

We return to Bannerman Road this week for the second coming of Samantha Bond as Mrs Wormwood, and she’s just as wonderful as you would expect. We also get the second coming of Kaagh the Slayer as well, at no extra charge.

We discussed this story’s predecessor Invasion of the Bane in Season 1, Episode 6: Where Kelsey Went.

Not Sufficiently Executed Enough is the title of Flight Through Entirety, Episode 45 on The Hand of Fear. It’s a riff on the Hinchcliffe-Era trope of the villain being an Evil from the Dawn of Time. (See also Sutekh, Morbius and the Master.)

When this episode airs, Anjli Mohindra is 18 years old and Gita Anwar is 39. Nicholas Courtney is 78.

Mrs Wormwood returns in the second box set of the series Rani Takes on the World, The Revenge of Wormwood, released in December 2023. A wonderful six-minute interview with Samantha Bond accompanied the release.

Nathan is on Bluesky at @nathanbottomley.com, Adam is @adamrichard.com.au, Brendan is @retrobrendo.bsky.social, and James is @ohjamessellwood.bsky.social. The 500 Year Diary theme was composed by Cameron Lam.

If you want to hear more of Adam’s theories about the world of Doctor Who, you can tune into his daily Doctor Who podcast Adam Richard Has a Theory.

500 Year Diary shares a social media presence with Flight Through Entirety, which means you can follow us on Mastodon and Bluesky, as well as on X and Facebook. Our website is at 500yeardiary.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on Apple Podcasts, or we’ll open up an unconvincing CGI portal in the middle of Milbury and ruin one of your formative childhood experiences.

You can find links to all of the podcasts we’re involved in on our podcasts page. But here’s where we’re up to right now.

Last week, we released another episode of our Space: 1999 podcast Startling Barbara Bain. Christopher Lee makes a terrifying visit to Moonbase Alpha, but it’s terrifying mostly because he’s so unexpectedly nice, and one of the Alphans is keen to be awfully mean to him.

And this week, we released another episode of our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford, who watched an episode of Star Trek: Picard with an incredible musical number in the middle, which is, for that reason, immune to any kind of criticism. It’s Two of One.

Saturday 4 June 2005

Boom Town

This week, a New Series villain returns for the first time just six weeks after her first appearance — it’s Blon Fel-Fotch Passameer-Day Slitheen, wonderfully played by Annette Badland. Hannah Cooper and Pete Lambert join us.

The entire UK bans smoking in pubs and restaurants from the middle of 2007, but the ban is announced just a couple of months after Boom Town airs, in October 2005.

Cordelia’s “it’s all about me!” realisation comes in the Series 1 Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode Out of Mind, Out of Sight way back in 1997.

Annette Badland plays Hazel Woolley on The Archers. She’s known as Poisonous Hazel, and she visited Ambridge in summer 2005, perhaps watching Boom Town on BBC1 while she was there.

The dialogue Nathan tries to remember from The Parting of the Ways is actually Rose responding to the Doctor’s claim that this new race of Daleks was made from dead human beings. Rose says, “That makes them half human,” to which the Dalek Emperor replies, “That is blasphemy.”

Flight Through Entirety discussed Boom Town in Episode 142: Going One-on-One.

Nathan is on Bluesky at @nathanbottomley.com, James is @ohjamessellwood.bsky.social, Hannah is @hannahcooper.bsky.social, and Pete is @quiteamess.bsky.social. The 500 Year Diary theme was composed by Cameron Lam.

500 Year Diary shares a social media presence with Flight Through Entirety, which means you can follow us on Mastodon and Bluesky, as well as on X and Facebook. Our website is at 500yeardiary.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on Apple Podcasts, or we’ll invite you to join us for some ice-skating. In a very suspicious way.

You can find links to all of the podcasts we’re involved in on our podcasts page. But here’s where we’re up to right now.

Yesterday, we released another episode of Startling Barbara Bain. Christopher Lee makes a terrifying visit to Moonbase Alpha, but it’s terrifying mostly because he’s so unexpectedly nice, and one of the Alphans is keen to be awfully mean to him.

And this week, we released another episode of our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford, who watched a funny and likeable episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine — The Forsaken.

Monday 7 September 1987

Time and the Rani

Another classic 80s villain makes her first reappearance on Doctor Who this week. But what will four serious teenage fanboys make of the fact that she has decided to dress up as Bonnie Langford?

In Dynasty, Kate O’Mara’s character Caress Morrell is the younger sister of Joan Collins’s Alexis Colby. She was in 19 episodes of Dynasty in 1986.

Mel’s delightfully overplayed line in The Reality War comes in just before the Rani beams into UNIT HQ: “She’s ruthless. Worse than ruthless. She’s indifferent to any pain or morality or humanity. The whole universe is just an experiment to her.”

Bonnie Langford’s interview with Benjamin Cook in Doctor Who Magazine appears in Issue 595 from October 2023. Here she is talking about her performance as Mel in the 1980s: “I read Russell’s scripts and thought, ahh, glorious! It is glorious, isn’t it?” says Bonnie. “I just feel really personally grateful, and delighted, and lucky to be able to revisit something that I didn’t necessarily think I did very well before.” Did she really not? “I just thought, oh God, I was really awful in it back in the day. I tried too hard.”

Bondfinger’s short series of commentaries on some of Kate O’Mara’s television performances can be found here.

Just a few days before the broadcast of The Reality War (and the recording of this episode), Russell T Davies posted on Instagram an introduction to the Rani and an explanation of the elements of her character he thought it was important to bring back.

Flight Through Entirety discussed Time and the Rani in Episode 116: Terrified of Tinsel.

Nathan is on Bluesky at @nathanbottomley.com, Simon is @simonmoore.bsky.social, and Todd is @toddbeilby.bsky.social. The 500 Year Diary theme was composed by Cameron Lam.

500 Year Diary shares a social media presence with Flight Through Entirety, which means you can follow us on Mastodon and Bluesky, as well as on X and Facebook. Our website is at 500yeardiary.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on Apple Podcasts, or we’ll hang you upside down from the ceiling until your face is really, really puffy.

You can find links to all of the podcasts we’re involved in on our podcasts page. But here’s where we’re up to right now.

This week, we released another episode of our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford, who watched a top-tier episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation — Tapestry. There will be a new episode released next Friday.

Saturday 4 October 1986

Mindwarp

This week, the 1980s brings back its most iconic original villain (possibly) to face off against the Sixth Doctor for the second time. But is the reunion a success? Kate Orman joins us again, to discuss Mindwarp.

Sigourney Weaver in Aliens (1986) and Linda Hamilton in The Terminator (1984) are both mid-80s female leads who are strong and independent without being primarily sex objects.

Paul Cornell, Martin Day and Keith Topping’s The Discontinuity Guide has this to say about Mindwarp: “Crozier’s sip of tea before saving Kiv is way-cool.”

The music for Mindwarp was composed by Richard Hartley, who had a long career composing film scores, including the incidental music for The Rocky Horror Picture Show (and its much less well-known sequel).

Dudley Simpson used a gong to herald the appearance of Ginka, one of Servalan’s henchmen, played by Malaysian-born Ric Young, in the Blake’s 7 episode Children of Auron. We discuss it on Maximum Power, in Episode 38: The Ginka Show.

During the production of Trial of a Time Lord, Eric Saward quit as script editor, taking with him his script for Part 14. However, the script exists online, and it was performed as a radio drama by the Flight Through Entirety team in Episode 112: Time Inc.

Trials and Tribulations is a documentary on the history of the Colin Baker era, focusing on the cancellation and the hiatus. It can be found on the DVD of The Ultimate Foe and in the Season 23 box set.

Flight Through Entirety discussed Mindwarp in Episode 109: Dark Colours.

Nathan is on Bluesky at @nathanbottomley.com, Simon is @simonmoore.bsky.social, and Kate is @kateorman.bsky.social. The 500 Year Diary theme was composed by Cameron Lam.

500 Year Diary shares a social media presence with Flight Through Entirety, which means you can follow us on Mastodon and Bluesky, as well as on X and Facebook. Our website is at 500yeardiary.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on Apple Podcasts, or we’ll do a very slipshod job of planning your next surprise party.

You can find links to all of the podcasts we’re involved in on our podcasts page. But here’s where we’re up to right now.

The final episode of The Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire (perhaps) was out on Monday, discussing the last Doctor Who story of this entire era The Reality War.

Last week saw the release of the latest episode of Brendan, Steven and Richard’s Avengers podcast The Three-Handed Game. It’s the final episode of their triptych This Green Unpleasant Land, Wish You Were Here, in which Tara King finds herself in a parody of The Prisoner featuring a number of Doctor Who guest actors from the 60s and 70s.

And there’s also our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. We’ll be returning this week — God willing — with a random episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. (Spoiler alert: it’s Tapestry.)

Thursday 5 January 1984

Warriors of the Deep

This week, the Earth’s original inhabitants wake up from hibernation after about a decade, put on their best fibreglass vests and samurai outfits, and invade an undersea base at 0.5× speed. The Silurians and Sea Devils are back — but why?

In the first season of Space: 1999, Moonbase Alpha’s operations were run from Main Mission, a spectacularly huge and beautiful set at Pinewood Studios. Seabase 4’s bridge is similar (but smaller and cheaper).

The actor who plays Bulic, Nigel Humphries, appeared in an episode of Blake’s 7 called Mission to Destiny, which we discuss in Maximum Power Episode 7: Jeopardy Space Meteorites.

The memory cheats. The book Doctor Who Special Effects by Mat Irvine (1986) features an extreme close up of a Silurian mask from 1970’s Doctor Who and the Silurians.

Room 101 (1994–2018) was a talk show in which a celebrity guest would discuss the things they hated most. In the episode broadcast on 15 April 2002, former Controller of BBC One Michael Grade appeared and nominated Doctor Who. You can see the relevent clip from the episode here. (He also nominated Shirley Bassey, so he’s clearly a monster.)

These days we think of the Cold War taking place in the 50s and 60s, but it was still going strong in 1984. We mention a few relevant films. We already talked about Threads (1984) in our discussion of The Dalek Invasion of Earth: it was a British TV movie depicting Sheffield in the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust. The Day After (1983) was an American TV movie depicting a nuclear strike on the United States. And WarGames (1983) was a popular Hollywood movie about a teenage computer enthusiast whose hacking nearly kicks off World War III.

Flight Through Entirety discussed Warriors of the Deep in Episode 92: Is Ichtar Okdel?.

Nathan is on Bluesky at @nathanbottomley.com, Simon is @simonmoore.bsky.social, and Todd is is @toddbeilby.bsky.social. The 500 Year Diary theme was composed by Cameron Lam.

500 Year Diary shares a social media presence with Flight Through Entirety, which means you can follow us on Mastodon and Bluesky, as well as on X and Facebook. Our website is at 500yeardiary.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on Apple Podcasts, or we’ll enter your house uninvited and very very slowly and fill your bed with goannas.

You can find links to all of the podcasts we’re involved in on our podcasts page. But here’s where we’re up to right now.

The final episode of The Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire (perhaps) will be out on Monday: we’ll be supplying you with our urgent hot takes on the season finale The Reality War.

Today sees the release of the latest episode of Brendan, Steven and Richard’s Avengers podcast The Three-Handed Game. It’s the final episode of their triptych This Green Unpleasant Land, Wish You Were Here, in which Tara King finds herself in a parody of The Prisoner featuring a number of Doctor Who guest actors from the 60s and 70s.

And there’s also our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. This week, we roared with laughter watching the astonishingly boring Season 6 Star Trek: Voyager episode Alice.

Monday 17 January 1983

Snakedance

This week, the people of the planet Manussa are about to discover that all their ancient myths are true, and that their own thirst and dissatisfaction are rearing up to strike them in rubbery serpentine form. Kate Orman joins us to discuss the second coming of the Mara.

Tanha is the Pali word for thirst or craving. It is associated with dukkha, (“dissatisfaction”), which is the subject of Buddhism’s Four Noble Truths.

The bhavachakra is the Wheel of Life. In Tibetan Buddhism, depictions of the wheel are used as a focus of meditation; the wheel itself is an image of samsara, the cyclic nature of existence. Hence the visually striking imagery at the end of Part 3 of Kinda.

According to the readership of Doctor Who Magazine (Issue 69, October 1982), Kinda was the least popular story of Season 19. From best to worst, the results were Earthshock, The Visitation, Black Orchid, Time-Flight, Castrovalva, Four to Doomsday and Kinda.

Flight Through Entirety discussed Snakedance in Episode 85: Tiny Little Petty Flaws.

Nathan is on Bluesky at @nathanbottomley.com, Simon is @simonmoore.bsky.social, and Kate is is @kateorman.bsky.social. The 500 Year Diary theme was composed by Cameron Lam.

500 Year Diary shares a social media presence with Flight Through Entirety, which means you can follow us on Mastodon and Bluesky, as well as on X and Facebook. Our website is at 500yeardiary.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on Apple Podcasts, or we’ll start making rude remarks about how fat you look in that distorting funhouse mirror.

You can find links to all of the podcasts we’re involved in on our podcasts page. But here’s where we’re up to right now.

The next episode of The Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire will be out on Monday: we’ll be supplying you with our urgent hot takes on Wish World.

Last week, we released an episode of our Space: 1999 commentary podcast Startling Barbara Bain, in which Helena’s zombie husband turned up on the base to warn everyone not to settle on the poisonous planet nearby that everyone was so excited about.

And finally there’s our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. This week, we said a heartfelt farewell to Star Trek: Lower Decks as we watched its finale The New Next Generation.

Saturday 22 February 1975

The Sontaran Experiment

It’s cold and rainy this weekend, and so we’ve decided to catch up with Mark McManus and spend the day larking around Devonshire, falling down holes, and generally hiding from Kevin Lindsay while he brings the Sontarans to the screen for the second time.

As we discuss right off the bat, much of the TV of this period was shot on videotape in the studio and on film on location, giving it a very distinctive look. This look is remarked on by Graham Chapman in this sketch from Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

Naturally, Nathan mentions El Sandifer about fifteen mintues in. This time, it’s her essay on The Time Warrior, surprisingly. (And although Nathan doesn’t mention it, her essay on The Sontaran Experiment has a lot to say about the use of video cameras on location in this story.)

Every imaginable detail of the history of the screening of Doctor Who on ABC-TV is recorded on the BroadDWCast website, which chronicles the history of the broadcast of Doctor Who round the world. Go to this page to learn about the airdates that were so formative for Simon, Peter, Todd, Richard, Nathan during the 1970s and 80s.

Flight Through Entirety discussed The Sontaran Experiment in Episode 34: Choc Bit Breast Plates.

Nathan is on Bluesky at @nathanbottomley.com, Mark is @quarkmcmalus.bsky.social, Simon is @simonmoore.bsky.social, and James is @ohjamessellwood.bsky.social. The 500 Year Diary theme was composed by Cameron Lam.

500 Year Diary shares a social media presence with Flight Through Entirety, which means you can follow us on Mastodon and Bluesky, as well as on X (for now) and Facebook. Our website is at 500yeardiary.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on Apple Podcasts, or we’ll call up your boss and tell him about all the Balatro you’ve been playing during work hours.

You can find links to all of the podcasts we’re involved in on our podcasts page. But here’s where we’re up to right now.

The next episode of The Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire will be out on Monday: we’ll be trying keep it together as we discuss The Interstellar Song Contest.

Yesterday we released an episode of our Space: 1999 commentary podcast Startling Barbara Bain, in which Helena’s long-dead husband returned to life to warn the crew not to settle on that nearby idyllic planet and start eating all its antimatter vegetables. With only moderate success.

And finally there’s our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. This week, we watched a gentle and hilarious Star Trek: Lower Decks episode called Fully Dilated.

Saturday 25 January 1969

The Seeds of Death

It’s Invaders from Mars this week, as the terrifying monsters we thawed out in 5000 AD last year make an early appearance on the Moon just sixteen years after the visit of the Cybermen. Their goal: to cement their position somewhere on the top ten list of recurring Doctor Who monsters. Jeremy Radick joins us as we try to work out exactly where.

Peter mentions that the 2003 DVD release of The Seeds of Death was the first DVD release to use VidFire, a technology that uses frame interpolation to restore the videotape look to episodes that now only exist as film recordings.

Nathan is thinking of Gary Russell’s 1994 Virgin New Adventures novel Legacy, a sequel to the two Peladon stories that heavily features the Ice Warriors.

Of course, we mention H G Wells’s The War of the Worlds (1898) again, particularly the red weed, which is a Martian plant that starts spreading across the countryside after the invasion.

Jeremy suggests that the first transporter-focused Star Trek story might be James Blish’s Spock Must Die! (1970), in which an evil Mr Spock is created when an experiment with the transporter goes horribly wrong.

Inevitably, Nathan mentions El Sandifer’s TARDIS Eruditorum essay on The Seeds of Death.

In March 2021, the container ship Ever Given ran aground in the Suez Canal, blocking it completely for six days. The BBC reported that it was holding up USD 9.6 billion worth of goods each day.

Toby Hadoke can be heard praising Ronald Leigh-Hunt’s performance in the Blakes 7 episode Children of Auron in Maximum Power Episode 59: Snogging & Nihilism.

Flight Through Entirety discussed The Seeds of Death in Episode 18: Sideburn Trouble.

Nathan is on Bluesky at @nathanbottomley.com and Simon is @simonmoore.bsky.social. The 500 Year Diary theme was composed by Cameron Lam.

500 Year Diary shares a social media presence with Flight Through Entirety, which means you can follow us on Mastodon and Bluesky, as well as on X (for now) and Facebook. Our website is at 500yeardiary.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on Apple Podcasts, or we’ll break into your house, fiddle with the settings on the air conditioner, and make off with all your woolly jumpers.

You can find links to all of the podcasts we’re involved in on our podcasts page. But here’s where we’re up to right now.

The next episode of The Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire will be out on Monday: we’ll be trying to work out what we thought about The Story & the Engine.

Last weekend, Brendan, Steven and Richard’s Avengers podcast The Three-Handed Game released their take on the New Avengers episode Emily, Part 2 of their triptych This Green Unpleasant Land.

And finally there’s our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. This week, we watched a bafflingly undercooked Star Trek: The Original Series episode called The Empath.

Saturday 11 February 1967

The Moonbase

We’re walking on eggshells this week as we await the arrival of an army of marching Cybermen, approaching the Moonbase with a dastardly plan to change Doctor Who for ever. For the better, on the whole.

The Moonbase was novelised by Gerry Davis as Doctor Who and the Cybermen, published in 1975. The audiobook is read by Anneke Wills and was released in 2009.

The article Peter cites as a source for the phrase “behind the sofa” was called “The metamorphoses of Who”, written by Stanley Reynolds and published in The Times on 9 April 1973.

If you want to hear more of Adam’s theories about the world of Doctor Who, and of course you do, you can tune into his daily Doctor Who podcast Adam Richard Has a Theory.

Nathan is on Bluesky at @nathanbottomley.com, Todd is @toddbeilby.bsky.social, and Adam is @adamrichard.com.au. The 500 Year Diary theme was composed by Cameron Lam.

500 Year Diary shares a social media presence with Flight Through Entirety, which means you can follow us on Mastodon and Bluesky, as well as on X (for now) and Facebook. Our website is at 500yeardiary.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on Apple Podcasts, or we’ll go through all your cupboards and drink everything with even a hint of hydrocarbons.

You can find links to all of the podcasts we’re involved in on our podcasts page. But here’s where we’re up to right now.

The next episode of The Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire will be out on Monday: we’ll be offering our lukewarm takes on Lucky Day.

Brendan, Steven and Richard’s Avengers podcast The Three-Handed Game has just released their take on the New Avengers episode Emily, Part 2 of their triptych This Green Unpleasant Land.

Our Space: 1999 commentary podcast Startling Barbara Bain has reached Episode 12, End of Eternity. Plans are underway to record Episode 13 some time this month.

And finally there’s our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. This week, we watched a classic Star Trek: The Next Generation episode from the show’s imperial phase, The Drumhead, guest starring Jean Simmons.