Doctor Who Social Club

Doctor Who meets Eurovision in this high-octane episode

This is another BBC media package where everybody interviewed is gushing over everything else. Interviewees are guest stars ~~Mark~~ Rylan Clark and Freddie Fox, plus writer Juno Dawson and director Ben A Williams (no relation to Rory, presumably).

A few things stand out from the enthusiastic politeness, though. The following are things I hadn't gleaned from trailers.

Freddie Fox:

Kid is a charismatic, devious, revolutionary leader of a group. They are trying to get justice for wrongs that he wants to tell the galaxy and the universe about.

What you're saying then is, Israel is still part of this 900 years later? 😬 I'm slightly worried where the show's sympathies would fall on this, but it would be a gutsy move either way.

Juno Dawson:

Russell initially pitched the bare bones concept of Eurovision meets Die Hard, which were two things I knew really well. […] What would happen if an enemy faction planned an attack on the Eurovision Song Contest in space?

I think people are certainly going to expect it to be … let’s just say camp. I mean of course it is, it’s the Interstellar Song Contest. But also, it’s action-packed. It doesn’t let up for a second. It’s a really high-octane episode.

In places it’s quite harrowing. I think the best science fiction and fantasy should always have something to say about the world.

And finally, something for the Murray Gold fans out there:

Ben A Williams:

Murray (Gold) has created a song that is weapons-grade catchy. I played it once to my 2-year-old. He hasn’t stopped singing it since.

So, in a nutshell — hitting that shared target segment between Eurovision and Doctor Who 🤣 Plus potentially controversial terrorism. Should be fun!

Edit: got Rylan Clark's name really wrong because I'm not really big on British ESC traditions.

Some different looks at the making of "The story & the engine" than you may have seen in DW unleashed (and a couple of repeats).

There are some nice behind the scenes footage, especially of the camaraderie between the barbershop actors; an art department interview, and short sitdowns with Gatwa, Sethu, and Martin.

Stick around for another cheeky cameo in the "don't forget to click and subscribe" part, too 🙂

Random fact I just realised about this episode — the "spooky kid" Belinda saw in the alley as she was running through Lagos? She's played by Sienna-Robyn Mavanga-Phipps, who was Captain Poppy in "Space babies". The character is even credited as "Poppy" in "The story & the engine".

Please don't @ me about your great intense love (or otherwise) for "Space babies"... but let's just sit for a second with what a deep, weird cut this is. I have no idea how or if it's going to tie in with anything, ever.

While Lucky Day came to a kind of resolution, it also left viewers with a feeling of unease as Anita Dobson's enigmatic Mrs Flood freed Conrad from incarceration for reasons that are as-yet unclear – but will be explained soon.

"I can say that Jonah comes back – the battle is not won," teased Gibson on last night's episode of The One Show.

"He comes back and Russell [T Davies] has written an amazing script, as always. I come back as well and I'm reunited with the Doctor and Belinda, played by Varada Sethu."

In Dot and Bubble, the Doctor is a victim of racism, while in The Story and the Engine, the "colour of his skin is part of how he interacts with people".

Ellams added: "I just want to see more stories like that, that are deeply nuanced and personable and rich, but don't get in the way of the Doctor’s primary objectives, which is to save the day, regardless of who's in front of him."

—From Radio Times: Doctor Who writer reveals why next episode is a companion piece to Dot and Bubble

The moral of the story is to give credit where it’s due. And I took that little idea and expanded it, and really drew it out. It is a huge story, but also a very simple that sits on a lot of social history. It’s one location, a lot of fun, a lot of mythology written into it, but a new myth too.

I guess what I’m trying to show is a little bit of the magic of Lagos, a little bit of the sparkles that exist when you choose to discover it. Doctor Who is full of incredible stories, and this is what happens in barber shops. Incredible stories are told. So, I was trying to unite them all.

—From Cult Box: Doctor Who ‘The Story & The Engine’: always give credit where it’s due

It’s strange, in many ways, to be back, or at least back under these circumstances, watching Doctor Who tick down to the first time since Time of the Doctor [2013] that an episode will air when the next episode hasn’t been shot. And that was a two week period towards a commissioned episode—Deep Breath shot in January [2014]. Here we head towards the great unknown, perhaps even the wilderness. It’s faintly unsettling—I’ve not written about Doctor Who in a moment where it might not come back before.

— Elisabeth Sandifer, in her review of "The robot revolution"

I'm not going to wallow in predictions of doom and gloom here, just note that what Sandifer outlines here is fairly out of the ordinary. It certainly shows that the joint venture with Disney hasn't played out as expected.

To rewind a little, when Russell T Davies returned as a showrunner, he announced that an initially two-season distribution deal with Disney+ would guarantee a steady pace of one season plus a christmas special per year, no gap years.

The part of this not spoke out loud was the implied expectation that Disney would be blown away by the first new season and just set up a recurring allowance. In that case, the BBC, Davies, and Bad Wolf Productions would get to work on season 3 and 4 before the second one had even aired. It seems everybody expected to start shooting early this year; Ncuti Gatwa said as much on a talk show.

Well... that didn't happen, in part because the streaming market has gotten ever tighter, but presumably also due to the show not quite performing to Disney's expectations — Gatwa's live remarks were edited out in the streaming version. Instead, the House of the Mouse has decided to remain undecided on future funding until season 2 has aired. So you see that planned production buffer that ensured yearly seasons without gaps? Yeah, no. That's because it isn't there anymore.

Even if Disney agree to distribute another season or two, we should definitely expect a gap year until we see new Who episodes again (not counting the upcoming War between the land and the sea spin-off). First hitch is, if the BBC doesn't secure another deal with Disney, they'll have to find a new funding partner. The Beeb is in fairly dire financial straits, certainly in terms of producing a costly, effects-heavy show like Doctor Who.

Second hitch — leaving an in-demand young star like Ncuti Gatwa hanging when he expected to be working through the first half of the year could turn out to cost Doctor Who its lead. Gatwa will be playing on stage during fall, so that's pretty much any slim hope of a christmas special for 2025 shot down. The rumour mill has it he has checked out of the show entirely by now, but that remains unconfirmed.

Overall it seems we need to acknowledge that Davies' grand plan has suffered a severe setback. Maybe a new season will appear in 2027 at the earliest? But then. with what international partner? And featuring which actor in the lead? We're in for interesting times, I suppose.

Note: I didn't source all information in the above beside the Sandifer quote, but I'm 99% certain I can dig up references to support everything without resorting to pure speculation. Or, a quick online search could get you similar results without me having to :)

Also, I know our mod @[email protected] isn't keen on speculation and Fantasy Football-esque media analyses, so give me a heads up if this is completely OT for this community.

I like Murray Gold. I feel like everyone likes Murray Gold.

But part of me was disappointed when it was announced he was returning to DW. I thought Segun Akinola's work during the Chibnall era added a unique...otherworldliness to the score. It was incredibly atmospheric (perhaps at the expense of seeming "musical"), and there are times I miss that.

The Thirteenth Doctor's Theme

At a time where the show's broadcast viewership appears to dip lower than ever before (specifically with the objectively amazing episode "Lux", and the most recent "Lucky day"), let's take this as a positive sign that the show has a larger audience on other platforms.

To what extent this correlates with streaming audiences, I can't be sure. Nor do I care to compare this subscription number to those of outrage peddling youtubers who have waged a scare campaign that the show is somehow dead.

Edited to add a link to the ratings for "Lucky day".

Written by: Pete McTighe

Directed by: Peter Hoar

So I'm landlocked at home while I wait for a parcel to arrive, and I have nothing better to do than think about the most recent episode of Doctor Who. It's a dirty job, but I'm up for it!

I'd say upon a rewatch my first impression still stands — this episode being a sequel to "Midnight" is tenuous at best. But since it's spelled out in dialogue that this is the same planet and entity, let me one-up that a bit.

1. "The well" is a double sequel.

Between my first and second watches of this one, I went back and rewatched "Midnight", but also "Listen". I still think there are more elements from the latter in "The well":

CLARA: You know, sometimes we think there's something behind us. And the space under your bed is what's behind you at night. Simple as that. There's nothing to be afraid of.

(The bed creaks as someone sits on it. It sags to within inches of Clara's nose. Rupert starts breathing quickly.)

CLARA: (sotto) Who else is in this room?

RUPERT: (sotto) Nobody.

That's not a cut and dried connection, but the whole scene with whatever it is behind them in Rupert's bedroom just has more resonance with this recent episode's entity than the parroting one possessing Skye in "Midnight". So, I'll meet you halfway and propose that "The well" is also a cheeky, unofficial sequel-of-sorts to "Listen".

2. Shaya is a Doctor stand-in:

I ran as a child. I ran from the wildlands. I ran from those monsters and never looked back. And I ran across the galaxy, with one aim. To do my duty. To help. To protect. To bring hope.

That pretty much sums up the Doctor too, right? At the very least their MO when companions or other bystanders are concerned — running, and hope. "Hey, we ran, you and me. Didn't we run, Lorna?"

But what are the "monsters" Shaya talks about? Do they have to do with the implied devastation of Earth, or is it just going to be a given without further elaboration that there will always be monsters out to get human-like civilisations?

I'm hoping this will come to bear on the finale as well.

3. There is a real deep genre reference to all of the episode:

I didn't think of this myself, Bleeding Cool's writer did:

"The Well" is virtually a remake of the 1965 Italian-US-Spanish space horror movie Planet of the Vampires, directed by Mario Bava.

By '65 I'm fairly certain Doctor Who had already broken in the "base under siege" formula, but Planet of the Vampires is widely acknowledged to have inspired a more modern milestone in scifi/horror — Alien.

It also has the basic premise of a space crew landing on a barren planet to investigate the disappearence of the last people to go there. Oh, and invisible monsters. Besides, PotV is a pretty cool, atmospheric movie in its own right. Very recommended for the cinematography alone.

Bleeding Cool thinks that

the biggest visual homage and clue that the makers of "The Well" have seen Planet of the Vampires is the dark blue skintight astronaut suits they wore in the episode

but to be honest I think Bryan Singer's X-men has more of that design DNA... But wait! There was also:

4. That time the Doctor found a derelict spaceship and met actual vampires

In "State of decay" (1980) the fourth Doctor and Romana investigated a medieval castle that turned out to actually be a downed spacecraft, and buried deep beneath — not in a well, but down several stairwells as I recall — lay the king of the Great Vampires. So with a bit of finagling we might even tie a 45 years old story into the package and declare the "Midnight"/"Listen" entity one of the Great Vampires, ancient enemy of the Time Lords.

Well(!), I think I theorised that into the ground, and my parcel still hasn't arrived! Thanks for reading, I'll probably have to do some real work now.

According to the VUE website, the final episode of Doctor Who Season Two, The Reality War, will be shown in UK movie theatres on 30 May 2025.

The scheduled transmission date for The Reality War is 31 May 2025 so UK theatre audiences will have the opportunity to see the Doctor Who finale a day early.

UNIT are back and facing a deadly new threat - The Shreek!

This is a bit of the usual media package fluff that talks more about how lovely everybody else was on set, avoiding any substantial plot reveals. But we do get insights into the background of Ruby's boyfriend, and the dynamics at UNIT. And of course the name of this week's monster, "the Shreek".

For the writer and director's part, there seem to be some deliberate callbacks to classic Who stories "The five Doctors" and "The dæmons", so that's promising!

This being the rote standard interview form, everybody is asked where they'd go in the TARDIS given the chance. Speaking of classic episodes, I rather like writer Pete McTighe's response:

I would park myself on a comfy sofa in cold November 1963, and spend the next six years watching (and recording, to share with you guys) all the missing episodes of Doctor Who!

Yes please! Just beam "Marco Polo" into my living room already 🙂

Season 15 of Doctor Who saw a substantial bounce in the overnight ratings for the third episode, rebounding from last week’s series low.

The Well aired on BBC One at 6.50pm on Saturday 26th April and received an overnight rating of 1.9 million viewers.

That’s a huge bump from last week’s episode Lux, which drew only 1.58 million viewers, marking the lowest overnight viewership ratings in the show's history.

Once again, those are only over-the-air numbers from Saturday, and pretty much confirm that word of mouth about the previous episode has made viewers return for the "appointment TV" broadcast.

This will pretty surely also bolster the streaming views of episodes 1 and 2 as people catch up on iPlayer. Simultaneously, this whole race to follow the instant and 7 day viewing numbers — and the #RIPDoctorWho prognoses often derived from them — appear more and more irrelevant as the media landscape sprints away from such onesided metrics.