The Writers' Room

In honor of Halloween this month, Erik and Kyle are looking at Doctor Who's attempt at a found-footage horror movie, that being Mark Gatiss' conceptually adventurous "Sleep No More." We've made no secret of the fact that we don't think it's good, but the ways in which it isn't good are certainly fascinating.

This month, Kyle and Erik are seeing double as they tackle Peter Harness and Steven Moffat's shape-shifting follow-up to "The Day of the Doctor," "The Zygon Invasion/The Zygon Inversion." People really like this one, especially the big speech the Doctor gives at the end. Do your intrepid hosts feel that way 11 years later?

This month, Kyle and Erik look at a pair of episodes tied together through a guest actor/character...if you can even really call them the same character. Of course, this is "The Girl Who Died" written by Jamie Mathieson and Steven Moffat and "The Woman Who Lived" written by Catherine Tregenna. Get you a girl who can do both, live AND die.

This month, we're taking a timey-wimey trip to the lake (it's summer, ya know?) for a two-part adventure from our old friend, writer Toby Whithouse. It's "Under the Lake/Before the Flood," which has aquatic ghosts, an alien harbinger of death, and even more fascinating Twelve/Clara messiness.

This month, we get to discuss the first of an entire season of two-parters with Steven Moffat's treatise on morality and Daleks with "The Magician's Apprentice/The Witch's Familiar," which features not just the Daleks but Davros and Missy too. It's a banger all around.

Somehow we've made to the end of Series 8 (basically) and with it, a pair of Steven Moffat episodes that bring together the Twelve/Clara/Danny story. "Dark Water" and "Death in Heaven" might lowkey be Moffat's best finale episodes...from a certain point of view.

This month (a little late), Kyle and Erik look at the first two Doctor Who scripts by Jamie Mathieson, "Mummy on the Orient Express" and "Flatline." Conveniently, they happen to have been sequential episodes 8 and 9 from Series 8. Without giving too much away, these might be the best non-Moffat scripts of the season and the best the Clara and Twelfth Doctor relationship gets. So there's that.

This month, Kyle and Erik have to face their personal Waterloo with a pair of episodes from the middle of Series 8 that form the middle of the Doctor-Clara-Danny triangle, and which consequently are not fun to watch. Those are "The Caretaker," written by Gareth Roberts and Steven Moffat, and "Kill the Moon," written by Peter Harness. Would you rather a good episode or an interesting episode? Why not neither!

This month, Erik and Kyle are looking at the Capaldi era's first true heavy hitter, Series 8, episode 4, "Listen," as written by Steven Moffat. Twelve years after the episode first aired, how do the strange tone, sparse plotting, and complex character implications hold up? Is Rupert/Danny/Orson(?) Pink sitting well with us this go-round? And what DOES scare everyone in the universe?

Happy New Year, dear listeners! To kick off our 14th year (!!!) talking about Doctor Who on a podcast, we're discussing two episodes co-written by Steven Moffat. The first, "Into the Dalek" with Phil Ford and the second, "Time Heist" along with Stephen Thompson. What even are these episodes? What works and doesn't about them? And we get our introduction of Danny Pink. Oh Danny Boy.