Apparently there's just one place in all of Gloucester that sells coffee

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Ruth Clayton is a thoroughly average married woman and unappreciated tour guide to the dribbling dimwits visiting the cathedral city of Gloucester, where if the jealousy and hostility from the failed barman-cum-barista are to be believed, there’s only one place anyone can buy coffee. Although to his credit he does rock a pretty sweet dossier.

Cue the Judoon harpooning the toon with a cocoon, at which point Ruth’s shifty husband Lee makes plans to evacuate, and Doc and Fam intervene to ensure none of the applicable regulations are breached. Turns out Ruth has a past that’s secret even to both of her, and Captain Jack swings back into view with a crucial communiqué of his own.

Entirely different mind transplant technologies and Chekhov's waisted stinger

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As the trial of our favourite Time Lord continues, the court is MST3K’d to the Doctor’s most recent adventure on the planet of Thoros Beta, a planet so mesmerizingly and distractingly coloured that he and Peri soon venture below ground instead. There, they encounter a sharp-toothed monster, but the first of many genetically manipulated creatures in this world, and learn that the population of Thoros Beta are at the economical despotic mercy of none other than Sil (of Vengeance on Varos fame) and his master Kiv.

Kiv is suffering from an overly expansive cerebellum and needs a brain transplant pronto, which is why they keep a mad scientist on payroll. Crozier—that’s the demented surgeon in question—has not only been scientifically enslaving people to work for Kiv, but has been working to perfect his ultimate creation: a device that allows him to transplant the mind of any living being into any other. And with Doc and Peri on Thoros Beta, it would seem he has two fresh subjects for his experiments.

An incomprehensible train sequence and, erm... So, Tesla has a working death ray now?

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The Thirteenth Doctor and Fam fall Through The Mists of Time into the domain of a chap who’s absolutely obsessed with High Voltage. It’s only that Live Wire Nikola Tesla, don’t you know! And a floating sci-fi orb has caught his attention, as has a band of electric zombie creatures who are out to get him. Hells Bells, guess it’s time for a very abrupt cut to a Rock N Roll Train where Doc gets Hard as a Rock at the reveal of Tesla’s name and off they pop to the Big Apple, 

But they’re not Safe in New York City, because Tesla’s rival Edison thinks he’s got Big Balls and wants his Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, and the electric zombie chaps are Back in Black, Shooting to Thrill and out to kill. Then all of a sudden a floating ship’s worth of alien scorpions are bringing out the Big Guns and demanding Tesla and Doc join them upstairs to fix their War Machine. It’s A Long Way To The Top, however, and they’re about to get Thunderstruck.

The Doctor, The Valeyard and The Inquisitor sit down to MST3K a great episode of Doctor Who

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Doc is on trial! It would seem that the Time Lords have been monitoring his exploits and aren’t too happy with the way he’s interfered with other life forms and civilizations. The prosecution, trying to hold Doc to account, is in the form of a Gallifreyan called the Valeyard (or Scrapyard as Doc would much rather call him). And the judge is called The Inquisitor, so it’s quite clear that the Time Lords are as mad as a box of frogs and the concept of a “fair trial” might be missing from these proceedings. The first piece of evidence the Valeyard would like the court, mainly The Inquisitor herself, to consider is a convenient 20-ish minute playback of this one time that Doc and Peri went to Ravolox, a suspiciously Earth-like planet that was meant to have been fireballed to death and yet seems a very green and pleasant land.

Oh ho, plot twist. Ravolox is in fact Earth, it’s just a couple of light years away from where it’s meant to be. That’s not as big a plot point as it might seem though; the real problem is that there’s a crazy robot running around the place calling himself The Immortal and trying to oppress the few hundred remaining organics (a.k.a. humans). The Immortal, or Drathro to his friends, is powered by a black light machine. Unfortunately, said machine is compromised by the mercenary duo of Glitz and Dibber. Without Doc’s intervention, there’s a real possibility that this black light machine could kill all life on the planet or even, the whole universe. Objection! Sustained. Said intervention might not wholly conform to Gallifreyan law. Dum dum dum!

We did our very best not to get upset with this episode, but do sincerely wish that you’d recycle nonetheless.

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Graham’s in his Speedos, so like it or not, that giant post-coital squid tentacle will have to remain rotting on the TARDIS floor until the fam get back from holiday at the Tranquillity Spa, an off-world fake-cation resort where the sentient squirrel staff don’t look askance no matter what you pull out of your friend’s steam room.

What on earth? Our heroes’ repose is obliterated by a twin onslaught of overlooked autochthons and daughters. But who might they be, and is there any chance these fanged, ferocious beasties harbour a dark secret of their own? The fam may not get the holiday they expected, but perhaps they’ll get to the bottom of this mystery by searching for a kidnapped codger who this craptastic chronicle constantly clarifies is called Benni. 

What? What?! WHAT?! We sat down to discuss Jodie Whittaker's final adventure as The Thirteenth Doctor mere moments after watching it unfold on TV

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Wow! Jodie Whittaker's Thirteenth Doctor regenerated only yesterday (!) into The Tenth Doctor (?!) and Drew and Leon sat down to watch the adventure unfold in realtime, only to stand up, mix a fresh drink and sit right back down again to review it.

Thus, behold, here is our Instant(ish) Reaction Review! So, Drew knocked it out of the park with his regeneration prediction in B084 Predictions of the Power of the Doctor, and how do we feel about it? And while we're at it, what are our immediate(ish) thoughts on:

• Yaz saving Doc and the day
• Classic Companions Ace and Tegan returning, not to mention Ian, Jo and Mel
• The Master's Dalek Plan
• The myriad special effects
• The amount of lasers per square inch of television on screen at any time
• And of course Jodie's farewell performance

Oh, my goodness, and so much more!

Be sure to check out our re-review of this epic Doctor Who adventure, when we finally caught up with the show: N175 The Power of The Doctor (re-review)

Half an hour of uninformed, exuberant rambling about what The Power of The Doctor MIGHT be about

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Holy Moly, as this episode drops into your earballs, The Power of The Doctor, the Whittaker and Chibnall Doctor Who finale, is a mere two days away from airing. And while we will of course be providing an Instant(ish) Reaction Review of it the day after the premiere, we thought we'd have some fun predicting what it's going to be all about.

Thus, here is about half an hour of exuberant rambling, in which we expound our theories, hopes and aspirations for this upcoming, era-concluding regeneration extravaganza. Among other things, we deliberate:

• Into whom will The Thirteenth Doctor regenerate?
• What's The Master up to?
• Is this going to be a Multi-Doctor story?
• What's the role of the Classic Who companions?
• And what are the different planets in the trailer?

Perk your ears, dearest Podcastland, and revel in our uninformed prattling. Are we right? Are we wrong? Are the potential plot points we're proposing perfectly preposterous, prodigious or passable?

A trilogy of cybertronic audio adventures meanders towards a decline and we can't help but object to the fate of two legendary Classic companions

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After the traumatic events of The Reaping, Kathy Chambers has found a new drive, sailed through medical school, and flown down to Brisbane, Australia to escape the law and keep her nearly-catatonic nearly-cybertronic brother Nate in half-converted suspense, until she and her manipulative accomplice James Clarke can corral the xeno-knowhow to finish the procedure.

Unbeknownst to Kathy though, her new patient Tegan Jovanka shares with her a figure from her tragic past: the Doctor. Tegan’s been out of the game for 20 years; she gave it all up, kept her head down, moved to a quiet little suburb to feed her animals and grow her time-tumours, never so much as went on holiday. But now Doc has returned, just as Kathy wants to pick her brains…

It's the long-awaited continuation of Whovian bants with Steven of New To Who Fame!

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It's been over two months since B082 NewToWhoBackWhen, Part 1 dropped—apologies for the long delay—but here it is, finally, the continuation of NewToWhoBackWhen, aka NewTwoWhoBackWhen!

Imagine it, Podcastland. Steven of New To Who fame had popped round Oxford for a couple of days to do some sightseeing, hang out with WhoBackWhen's Leon and chat about everything under the suns. And then one evening, just as they high-fived, lightning struck a sound mixer in the room and a happy transporter accident and/or Freaky Friday of Whovian podcasting ensued.

As mentioned in B082, you'll no doubt already know Steven as the consummate Whovian expert who intricately dissects the very best Doctor Who stories with which to introduce the show to someone who is entirely New To Who. On that fateful evening, inspiration was drawn from this ingenious concept to fashion from the ether these bonus eps. Thus, Steven and Leon sat down to discuss some of the best and worst stories one might pick from each of the Doctors who have so far been reviewed in full on Who Back When, with which to introduce Doctor Who to a total noob.

The chat went on for so long that the recording was cleft in twain. B082 NewToWhoBackWhen, Part 1 covered the Classic Doctors only. Here (Part 2) are the NewWho Doctors!

The Master doles out diminutive deaths and, wow, those laser shoes really paid off in the end!

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Opening on Part 1’s epic cliffhanger, Doc is stuck in a brainforest, Team TARDIS is plummeting to Earth in a cockpit-less plane, “O” was in fact The Master all along, and mankind is about to be reformatted. Oh, yes, didn’t we mention that before? Extra-dimensional space aliens, the Cassavin, are moments away from having Daniel Barton implement their plan of world dominance. How do they plan to achieve that? By him technically having us all agree to DNA reformatting in the Ts & Cs, naturally.

Kablammo! It’s one paragraph later now and Doc has since escaped the brainforest, teamed up with Ada Lovelace and Noor Khan, and is now speeding across Nazi-occupied Paris, attempting to steal The Master’s TARDIS to get herself back to the future. And in the meantime, the rest of Team TARDIS are on an adventure of their own to put the kibosh on Barton’s software roll-out. It’s set to be a marvellous adventure — as long as Doc remembers to retroactively Bill-and-Ted that plane from paragraph one.

This is the second time we've discussed Spyfall on Who Back When. Have a listen to our very first, instant-reaction review of the whole two-parter, B065 Spyfall – Series 12 Opener, pronto!