Will The King’s pricker stand a chance against good old-fashioned Lancashire mud?

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Doc and the stop trying to make fam happen are super-luted, the sixteenth-century version of super-jazzed, to be attending the coronation of Bloody Liz One, mate, except the TARDIS doesn’t know, ahem, witch way to turn and has ended up at Bilehurst Cragg, where the local landowner-ess is turning the village into a sausage-fest at the rate of one occultist hag a week.

At this moment, up creeps the local masked avenger, who turns out to be none other than jittery old King Jim the First, dodging Catholics and Satan on a crusade to cleanse the unwashed parts of his kingdom and finally make Mummy proud. Can Doc overcome the strange stirrings in the mud and old-fashioned gender conceptions to get to the biomechanical root of this puzzler?

Seven of eight hosts from across nine years of Who Back When assembled for our 400th Episode to discuss the State of the Whonion

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Sweet Buttery Moses, our humble podcast has been around for 400 episodes! To celebrate this milestone event, we assembled (nearly) every single person who has hosted Who Back When over the past 9 years to discuss the State of the Whonion. It obviously descended into chaos. Among other things, though, we discussed:

• Jodie Whittaker's run as The Thirteenth Doctor
• The casting of Ncuti Gatwa as The Fourteenth Doctor
• The Return of The Tenth Doctor, Donna and Wilf
• The Return of The Toymaker
• The Return of RTD
• Chibnail's legacy
• And always bringing a banana to a party

There was also a lengthy conversation about rooftop cats that will have to wait until a forthcoming Blooper reel.

A minor apology is also in order, as the sound quality is not quite optimal here: our Oxford-based audio interface broke, so we had to rely on a mixer that already broke years ago instead. Very sorry about that. If you're new to WBW, you may want to pick a regular review to start with instead. :)

Join us for some celebratory bloopers, Podcastland!

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Happy Birthday to us! Happy Birthday to us! Happy Birthday, dear Who Back Wheeeeeen... Happy Birthday to us!

Holy Moly, has it been nine years already? Feels like we started this show only yesterday.

As is tradition here at WBW Studios, we're dropping some Bloopies-and-Behind-the-Scenes apples into your ear baskets to enjoy put on your teacher's desk and/or enjoy on a picnic in the sunny forest glade of your auditory landscape. Hmm, not sure where that metaphor was heading, but there's no turning back now, because—Wowsers!—we're entering the final year of our first decade.

A huge Thank You to all of you out there in Podcastland, for listening to our ramblings, and for being so supportive and kind throughout the years!

Rock on and Ciao-Ciao for now!

WBW

Discount Danny Ocean, Ice Capades and Decapitations Galore make up this glorious return to Telos

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In an attempt to repair the legendarily ever-broken chameleon circuit, the Sixth Doctor and companion Peri are thrust back to where it all began, Foreman’s Yard on 76 Totters Lane. It’s 1985 this time, though, and the halls of Colehill School presumably still echo with gossip about perpetual skiver and clever-clogs, Susan Foreman. Strange things are afoot, though. Cybermen are lurking in the tunnels beneath London, plotting to set Halley’s Comet on a collision course with Earth, and up on the surface our old pal the Dalek-duplicate and discount Danny Ocean, Lytton, has assembled a ragtag team of misfits to orchestrate the most vaguely outlined diamond caper in criminal history.

But it’s all a ruse! Lytton’s not actually out to steal an unknown amount of diamonds from an undisclosed location in a manner we never explore. Instead, he’s there to cut a deal with the Cybermen and get himself off the miserable rock he’s been stranded on since Resurrection of the Daleks. In fact, he doesn’t even mind joining the Cybers back on their colony planet of Telos, seen here for the first time since Tomb of the Cybermen. Ruse alert again! Turns out he’s actually working for the Cryonians, the indigenous population of Telos, because despite being a ruthless serial murderer he’s actually a good-natured chap and simply misunderstood.

The Head of People tears the Heads of Robots in this unexpectedly divisive episode

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Doc gives up trying to do the impossible - outrun capitalism - and surrenders to its all-consuming pursuit, receiving from a congenial rictus-grin dubbed the Kerblam! man the gift of a fez, some innocuous bubble wrap, and a packing slip cry for help. Whereas Ryan would rather bet on it being a prank and risk someone’s death than go back to work, the others decide to investigate.

Thank the Nimon, because it turns out all is not well among the organic tenth of Kerblam!’s workforce - folks are going missing, right under the noses of the garrulous Head of People and odious Warehouse Executive, the only two suspects out of this flesh-count of 10,000. Just what have these monsters incorporated in their immeasurable conveyor system behind closed doors?

A freshly regenerated Sixth Doctor arises discombobulated and edgy, but altogether more abusive and homicidal in this rarely lauded serial

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The Doctor has just regenerated into his 6th form, and he’s an altogether edgier, less dainty and more homicidal chap. Barely out of his cricket kit and into a psychedelic clown coat, he’s already trying to kill his companion and decrees that he’s taking them to the far-off planet of Titan 3 to live as a hermit with Peri as his involuntary maid and acolyte.

Meanwhile, a pair of mathematically twin wunderkinder with apparently nefarious powers we’ll never explore in this serial are visited by an inextricably teleporting old man whom they happily mistake for a stage magician and allow to wipe their memories and spirit them away.

And to really hammer home the crazy, through a roundabout series of plot points, they end up on the planet Jaconda, which—since the last time Doc visited—has been taken over by power-hungry human-slug hybrids of Jacondan myth who plan to use the twins to change planetary orbits, create orbiting kitchen cupboards for themselves, and in the process jizz their gross slug eggs across the galaxy.

We learn about the Partition of India, while multi-ocular members of the band Lordi scare the heck out of anyone dying alone.

* * *

When Yaz asks to go back and see her grandmother in her youth, Doc casts aside any notion of non-interference and takes the whole Fam back to the eve of said Nani’s wedding. There’s a fair bit of tension in the air, however: they’ve materialised on what is about to become the border between India and Pakistan in 1947; the groom is not Yaz’s granddad; and there are alien assassins lurking in the forest.

And that’s not even the half of it! The local holy man who was meant to officiate has just been murdered; the brother of the groom is lobbying for ethnic segregation; and if Yaz isn’t careful, she might reverse-Marty-McFly herself out of existence. Time for Doc to save a wedding and possibly her companion, stop the aliens, let history unfold with no intervention whatsoever and teach us about Partition in the process.

We pour one out for the Fifth Doctor and reminisce about some of the highs and lows of his marvellous era

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It has come to yet another Doctor Retrospective. We may have been doing this show for nine years at the time of recording this bonus episode, but it feels like we've been blasting through these retros lately.

It's Peter Davison's turn this time around. Having recently wrapped up our reviews of all of The Fifth Doctor's television serials, we took a break from the temporal road and instead ventured down memory lane. Join us for a relaxed evening of reminiscing, during which we chat about, and often can't quite remember the details of, among other things:

• Some of the best and worst serials
• Terrific and/or appalling storylines
• Lumbering aliens
• And of course the plethora of companions

Farewell, Fifth Doctor!

An overlooked Futurama reference and the literal handwaving of interplanetary navigation whilst wearing marigolds. Not bad!

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It’s Team TARDIS’s second trip into space and also their second collision course with fatal death courtesy of a sonic mine, only on this occasion they’re just-in-time-scooped out of their storyline by the medical ship Tsuranga, plausibly alerted to the ordnance’s detonation by robot dredgers if we’re being very generous.

Suddenly finding themselves floating further away from the TARDIS, they’re joined by a cast of characters that is more charming and fascinating than the remaining 30 minutes will allow us to fully explore. And sound the plot-twist klaxon, because an adorable little monster has stowed away onboard as well to nibble away at the ship, and the soon-to-be-fam must sate its appetite before it inadvertently blows them out of the sky.

Mr Big Bad's new hotel is infested by mutant spiders, and only Sheffield’s sickest grime station can flush them out

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Soon-to-be-named Team TARDIS arrives in Sheffield with remarkable precision. While Graham heads home to start being haunted by visions of Grace and check for cash in the attic, Doc and Ryan are introduced to Yaz’s hospitable family, possibly hinting at future character development that no one paid much attention to at the time.

Meanwhile, Jack Robertson, an American businessman heavily invested in hotels, golf courses, and toxic waste spreading, who’s running for the highest US office and definitely not he who shan’t be named, is visiting his flagship Sheffield acquisition, a giant luxury hotel that has become overrun by gigantic bodyguard-snatching spiders.

It wouldn’t be Doctor Who without a cobwebby coinkidink, though, so it transpires Yaz’s mum is the freshly fired hotel manager, their neighbour was until recently a world-leading spider-expert, the unimaginably vast spider infestation neatly fits into a panic room built for no reason, and the spider-mum can be spider-done with a standard gun.