Debating Doctor Who

Fire up the news klaxons, we've got a big return to discuss! Doctor Who turned 57 on Monday, and it was kind enough to get us a birthday present: a tiny teaser for the upcoming festive special, "Revolution Of The Daleks", revealing that Captain Jack will once again be back. We somehow manage to spin forty minutes of discussion out of this, including what kind of continuity we expect, just how rare it is for someone to come back in such a featured role after so much time away (counting this as a continuation of his "Fugitive Of The Judoon" appearance, that is), and what this might hint at about the overall story.

The world got busy around us once again, but Doctor Who is coming back, which means Debating Doctor Who must as well. Except, in both cases, we're improvising through the circumstances around us. For us, that means Allison is taking a little break through the holidays, meaning Rorypalooza must wait until the new year. But! We'll still both be doing a live show on Saturday, December 12 at 6:30 Eastern/5:30 Central. And Alasdair is going to enlist friends old and new to start exploring some potentially foundational works by new Doctor Who's most important creative voices, starting with Russell T. Davies and David Tennant's miniseries Casanova. Oh, right, and we talk about how series 13 has begun filming, how COVID-19 has affected production, and just who exactly is going to star in it alongside Jodie Whittaker...

We wrap up our trilogy of Clara episodes with a look at some stories from her final season aboard the TARDIS. We examine what "Under The Lake"/"Before The Flood" has to say about her willingness to do what needs to be done to save the day, and then how "Face The Raven" reveals just how dangerous acting like the Doctor can be. Also, we briefly reconsider "Sleep No More", and even Alasdair admits they've met their match on this one. We also talk generally about why this is probably our favorite season of new Doctor Who, and how essential Clara's character arc is to that. Next time, join us for Rory... well, just listen to the end for what silly name we give to our Rory special.

Our deep dive into all things Clara Oswald somehow gets even deeper in the second edition, as we look at no less than four of the episodes from series eight. That's a third of the entire season! We look at her re-beginnings in "Deep Breath", then Alasdair mounts a spirited defense of "In The Forest Of The Night", much to Allison's patient bemusement, and then we wrap up by taking another looking at the finale, "Dark Water"/"Death In Heaven." Honestly this whole season just seems to get better and better the more we look back on it... and we do A LOT of looking back on it this time around.

Our long-awaited (by us, anyway) deep dive into Clara Oswald begins! We take a look at a pair of stories from Series 7B, when Clara was more a mystery than a character and the 11th Doctor was kind of... is awful too strong a word? In "Journey To The Centre Of The TARDIS," at least, 'awful' doesn't feel unjustified, as he's on his very worst behavior there. But anyway, we take a look at that and "The Rings Of Akhaten" to see what we can find in Clara's early days. There's a leaf, we can say that much. Also an all-time great costume. We're sure there are other things as well. Nah, we kid, there's some good stuff in these episodes... kinda. Credit for the bit at the very end of the episode goes to OdinNorse7 on YouTube.

We get back (after an unexpected but at this point probably not surprising delay) to our regularly scheduled programming with a look at a pair of Danny Pink stories, "Listen" and "The Caretaker." The former still stands as one hell of an episode, with plenty to say about all sorts of things, Danny very much included. The latter... well, it's not very good. And honestly, that's probably the most charitable way we can put it, considering we have way worse to say in the episode proper. Plus toward the end we get into a debate about the morality of the military and being a soldier that neither of us had prepared for at all, and so has more than its fair share of hedging and stammering, yet still we'd say is considerably better thought through than the Doctor's hatred of soldiers in that episode. Anyway, the real point is that Samuel Anderson is nothing short of incredible, and we're lucky to have had him on the show. Next time, join us for the long-awaited beginning of our Clarastravaganza/Clarathon with "The Rings Of Akhaten" and "Journey To The Centre Of The TARDIS."

We'll be back soon with our regularly scheduled look at companion showcase episodes -- Danny Pink is next! -- but first, we wanted to take an episode to remember a legend of film and television. Diana Rigg died last week at 82, so we revisit her absolute delight of a performance as Mrs. Gillyflower in "The Crimson Horror." Sure, the rest of the episode isn't all that great, but! It's Diana Rigg having a complete blast as the villain, acting alongside her daughter Rachel Stirling, who is the other great part of this episode. A worthy showcase for them both, we'd say.

First thing's first: Allison has a book out! It's called "How TV Can Make You Smarter", available now at Bookshop.org and elsewhere! Plus she has a special offer for our listeners who get the book! As for the episode, well, before we return to the Capaldi era with our Danny Pink episode next week -- a prelude of sorts to the much-anticipated Clarastravaganza/Clarathon -- we take a wee break to open the mailbag. We talk some more about the specifics of Jodie Whittaker's performance, kick around a brilliant listener idea for the Jo Martin Doctor, and go on a merry digression about Steven Moffat's Jekyll, which Alasdair loves arguably a bit too much. (Nah, it's the correct amount.)

Going to be honest with you, friends: We really didn't expect being able to fill an entire hour with nothing but Nardole discussion. We... we apparently aren't familiar with our own show as we should be, because yeah, we talked at length about how Nardole grew from his initial performance, and how "Extremis" is, leaving aside all its other virtues, a tremendous showcase for all that Matt Lucas brings to the role. Also, some upcoming episode announcements at the start for what we're doing next week, and then just how much time we'll be devoting to one Clara Oswald. (Spoiler: Quite a bit!)

We're back, and after a perfectly normal intro that is completely like all the others we've done, we get into discussing Bill Potts in a pair of episodes the proved very Bill-centric indeed. So, well done us. First up is "Thin Ice", one of our favorite entries from series 10. Will it still stand up? Oh hell yes, give or take one moment we have mixed feelings about. Which, somewhat shockingly, ends up being our updated take on "The Lie Of The Land", which we didn't care much for first time around but found a lot to like on this rewatch. And, my goodness, is it good to spend time with Bill again...