By Chip Sudderth
Concentrated Commentary on the Worlds of Doctor Who
It's time for a post-Sasquan look at the 2015 Hugo Awards and Doctor Who's place in them...
OK, so that was a great second trailer for Series 9, with loads and loads of Daleks. Except for those guys introduced in "Victory of the Daleks." Alas, the New Paradigm.
It's been a couple weeks of highs (Doctor Who) and lows (politics) for the BBC. Last time I dwelled on the lows. Let's turn it around this time.
Should the BBC give up on popular commercial programming like, oh, I don't know, Doctor Who? A "green paper" to be released today reportedly calls for reconsidering the British Broadcasting Corporation's purpose, while the government plans to force the BBC to...
The Doctor and companions were threatened with maximum deletion last time, which I suppose is worse than simple deletion. I bet the Doctor had a clever way out of this one that had absolutely no deus ex machina involved, right? Well,...
If you were a classic fan who was on Team Cyberman rather than Team Dalek, this episode was long overdue. But was "Rise of the Cybermen" a proper re-introduction of the classic villains? Or were there too many stompy missteps...
2MTL comes out of a weeks-long retirement at a time when it would appear it would be easy enough to bring back the Third Doctor...
Why would a man-child geek culture hound, who has immersed himself in your Star Treks and Star Wars and Jason of Star Commands as a child, dreaming of being those characters and living in those worlds, become obsessed to the...
It was big news, even for Big Finish: Torchwood and Captain Jack Harkness are back. The producers are holding their cards close, so you know what that means: rampant speculation and bucket-listing from your humble host!
There was a time, you know. A time when Jack Harkness had never died. Let's go back to the time of the Forgotten Doctor, courtesy of Titan Comics.
My The Audio Guide to Babylon 5 cohost, occasional 2MTL contributor and spouse, Shannon, returns with a review of the recently reissued The Stone Rose by Jacqueline Rayner -- but does she do so with Rose-colored glasses? David Tennant's appearance on Colin Murray
"The Girl in the Fireplace" is a glimpse into the future: Steven Moffat's second Doctor Who story pretty much establishes the format that the show will follow when he takes over as showrunner and casts Smith, Gillan and Darvill. Plus, we...
Paul Cornell has a dream project with Titan Comics: a crossover event with all three stars of their ongoing DOCTOR WHO series! It's early yet, so Paul is circumspect about the plot, but you can find out who his artistic...
Reflections on conventions in general and Gallifrey One in particular: why they matter and how I hope to make the most of them this year. Special thanks to all of the people with positive feedback on my segment for Radio Free...
From Gallifrey One, here's my celebration of the 10th anniversary of the airing of "Rose." Thanks to my friends at Radio Free Skaro for inviting me to share the stage once more for their Friday morning live show, "Behind the...
It's been a LONG time since we've done a Throwback Review. So let's pick up where we left off: with an insufferable TARDIS couple realizing that things are just a little bit complicated, and a heaping helping of nostalgia from...
It's still Christmas, darn it! And the Doctor Who series isn't over yet! At least that's what I'm trying to convince myself, by inviting National Public Radio's Petra Mayer and Doctor Who: Verity!'s Tansy Rayner Roberts over to 2MTL to...
Jolly old St. Nick? Radagast to the Doctor's Gandalf. Dreamcrabs? Scary. Mystery North Pole outpost? More and less than it seems. "Last Christmas"? Several levels of delightful.
Sure, the Cybermen looked impressive in the Series 8 finale. But were they sufficiently Cybermenny? Is it time to rethink the Cybermen, or better yet, take a break and bring them back to first principles?
It's a Time Dilation episode of 2MTL, in which the "Two-minute" part becomes a colossal lie! Joining me in reviewing Series 8 and predicting Doctor Who's future are: Lynne Thomas of Verity! and Uncanny Magazine! Kyle Anderson of Doctor Who: The Writer's Room...
Best. Moffat. Finale. Ever. Best. Moffat. Series. Ever. And yet, somehow, I'm not sure how much more I can take!
Sometimes the BBC can't help but spoil the surprise. Sometimes the reveals aren't all that revealing. Sometimes you dismiss the obvious because it's too obvious. Sometimes it doesn't matter, because the episode is brilliant and even wickedly funny because there's no...
Series 8's more unhurried pacing reaches its apex with the "lyrical and beautiful," per Steven Moffat, "In the Forest of the Night." Did the episode hold interest? Did The Doctor and Clara resemble themselves from just a couple of episodes...
Yes, yes and more yes, as this supposedly "Doctor-Lite" episode gives us both Clara-as-the-Doctor and The-Doctor-as-someone-who's-thinking-he's-doing-his-job-too-well.
"Mummy on the Orient Express" does what it says on the tin, and. while not a "romp" as such, it's perfectly timed after last week's angst and controversy.
Six things make a podcast: "Kill the Moon" defied my attempt to do a simple, cohesive review. So here's an extended series of impressions the episode left on me. (Thanks to K and R for kibitzing.)
A rubbish brown coat (not the legendary Tennant overcoat, sadly, that would have been funny) is a paper-thin disguise for a Doctor who is a bit of a rubbish caretaker. While he endangers Coal Hill School to fire Jimmy Vee...
As a bank robber, the Doctor makes a surprisingly good bank robber. And Stephen Thompson turns in a story that is no "Curse of the Black Spot." I solemnly promise not to cite "Leverage" again this season.
The latest in Steven Moffat's series of biological functionally-titled episodes, "Listen!" is entirely about hiding behind the sofa, and why we do that, and what greatness the fear that drives it might lead us to. And, to my great surprise,...
If Robin Hood had assaulted the Doctor with a quarterstaff, with a full-on "Ho! Ha Ha! Guard! Turn! Parry! Dodge! Spin! Ha! Thrust!", I perhaps would have bought in.
Spoiler: The Daleks are back. Spoiler: The Twelfth Doctor is not especially warm and fuzzy. Spoiler: There's a lot of pew-pew-pew and boom-boom-boom. Spoiler: For the second week in a row, it's not the A-plot that has me so excited about Series 8.
Peter Capaldi delivers. Of that, there was no doubt. What else does "Deep Breath" have going for it, and does it measure up to Steven Moffat's first crack at introducing a Doctor?
So the tabloids think that season is Clara's swan song. I'm not ready to see her go, but... Guess what haters - Clara is the best companion, second maybe only to Donna.— Kyle Anderson (@FunctionalNerd) August 16, 2014 ...really, Kyle Anderson of...
The Two-minute Time Lord Podcast will have no truck with the "so bad it's good" notion. Instead, we celebrate the notion of "cleverdumb" storytelling: meticulous in certain aspects, and gleefully and purposefully washing its hands of others. Exhibit A: the...
A clickbait headline hurtles toward Ye Olde Compare-and-Contrast between the promised grim-'n'-gritty Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and the widely inferred darkness of the Twelfth Doctor.
Two thousand years! That's how old The Doctor is now, as stated by the Twelfth in the latest trailer and as implied in his predecessor's swan song, "The Time of the Doctor." That's a pretty huge leap from roughly 900...
On the power of the (leaked) written word (and the importance of Wheaton's Law)...
With apologies, the War Doctor just doesn't seem "real" enough to warrant a space on my shelf among the ordinally-numbered Doctor action figures in my collection. As magnificent as John Hurt was, why am I reluctant to include him in...
Herewith, three reasons why old-school fandom is buzzing with such excitement for Peter Capaldi, when the historic pattern has been more guarded.
Rebecca Moore and her fellow undergraduates at BYU-Idaho did a little study this year about female characters' representation in post-2005 DOCTOR WHO. You might have heard about it! I talk with Rebecca about what prompted the study, and what happened...
At the Hay Festival, showrunner Steven Moffat promised that the new season of Doctor Who will be radically different. Does casting Peter Capaldi alone make that true?
Last month the Hugo nominees were revealed and thankfully, the controversies found in other award categories were absent in the Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) category. Which Doctor Who-related work, including the non-episodes AN ADVENTURE IN SPACE AND TIME and...
A departure for 2MTL: why pontificate about a character when I can approach it fictionally? Here's a character study about Clara Oswald, and what might have been beneath her blurted confession in "The Time of the Doctor."
Eight years ago we saw a new side to the Doctor and his companion, who reached stratospheric levels of self-satisfaction. Was Queen Victoria right about what awful people they were? Are a smug Doctor and Rose worse than, say, a...
We made it through the Matt Smith era without the return of the Doctor's arch-nemesis, the Master. A couple of weeks ago, the rumors started to circulate. Is he back to face Peter Capaldi? And should he wear a new...
In this Time-Dialated, Gallifrey One-facilitated interview show, two popular media observers with impeccable DOCTOR WHO credentials -- Yer Actual Keith Telly Topping and The Incomparable's Jason Snell -- help me look outside the fishbowl to see just how well our...
In our first of two extended Time Dilation episodes of 2MTL featuring interviews from Gallifrey One, we hear from two well-known Doctor Who pros that have launched new phases of their careers. Paul Cornell talks about his novels London Falling...
Illness tried and failed to stop Billie Piper from attending her first American convention. We talked about her decision to take on the roles of Rose Tyler in 2005 and The Moment in 2013 during a break in her marathon...
My journey to Gallifrey One takes me to my brother's apartment, and one more opportunity to find the One Great Episode that will make him a Doctor Who fan.
Mirroring Doctor Who's enormous popularity, the Doctor himself has become a bigger and bigger deal in his own fictional universe, and the axis around which most of his stories have rotated in recent years. Is it time to dial things...