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Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 285: Inferno, Episode Seven

Dear diary,

Is it just me, or is the Doctor’s return to his regular universe all a bit… sudden? I said yesterday that I was surprised he didn’t leave them behind during the cliffhanger, but today…! We get the reprise, the Doctor shouts that he can’t try to get the console working because there isn’t enough power yet. Petra screams out for Greg as they all turn and watch the lava flow towards the open door…

And then the Doctor wakes up. Back in his regular universe. There’s none of the odd sparkly effect to indicate that he’s moving between dimensions, no shot of him fading away complete with car and console. It’s a bit jarring, and I’m not sure if it leaves me feeling like I’ve been wrenched out of the parallel universe in a good way that makes it seem as though it’s suddenly ‘ended’ or if it’s just left me feeling a bit out of place. I would have at least expected the screen to white out…

Still, the story doesn’t give you enough time to really focus on it, and there’s a lot packed into these final 25 minutes. It helps to really keep the pace up, and rounds out the tale nicely. I was really worried that when the Doctor returned, we’d be stuck with a ‘cuddly’ Brigadier to highlight the differences between him and the Brigade Leader, but he’s as much of an obstacle to the Doctor as anyone in the other world. Having watched time run out for the planet once in this story, it feels almost inconceivable that no one is really listening to the Doctor’s warnings, but you can see why everyone thinks he’s simply unwell – the Doctor comes across as a complete lunatic here. When he bursts into the control room of the drilling project and starts to smash up the equipment, you can almost agree with the Brigadier when the order is given to take the Time Lord away.

It feels like a theme that’s been running through this entire season – the Doctor and the Brigadier locking horns. The final scene, in which the Doctor announces that he’s had enough of the man before attempting to take off with the TARDIS console (again!) could well serve as a good coda to this era – I’m guessing that we’ll start to see a real change in their approaches with each other from now on.

That scene also makes for a fairly good farewell to Liz Shaw. It’s never really bothered me before that she simply disappears between Seasons Seven and Eight, but having spent a month in her company, I’ve been completely won over. It was suggested to me before I started on this season that I should swap the running order of The Ambassadors of Death and this story, as it made her departure more natural. I can’t say I can see how that would have been the case, and the fact that some of the Doctor’s final words to her today are ‘Goodbye, Liz. I shall miss you’ makes this feel like just the right way to watch the stories. I’m also pleased that we get such a lovely shot of the pair hugging once the drill has been stopped, and the Earth has been saved. The final image of the story – and the season – is one of Liz laughing, which seems entirely appropriate.

I’m pleased to report that – as you’ll no doubt have noticed over the last few weeks – I’ve been completely surprised by the start of the Pertwee era. I’ve spent such a long time not looking forward to this part of the marathon, but it’s really good! I’m past the three-seven-part-stories-in-a-row phase that seemed like such a stumbling block before (and, indeed, that’s the end of seven-part stories completely! A form for the programme since the second story, it’s all six-parters and less from here on out, with the exception of Trial of a Time Lord, depending how you look at it), and now that I’m sold on Jon Pertwee’s performance in a way I never have been I think I’m really excited for the next phase of the programme. Here’s hoping it’s as good as this season has generally been…

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Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 284: Inferno, Episode Six

Dear diary,

I'm really pleased to see that aside from this story, Don Houghton also wrote The Mind of Evil for Season Eight. As I've noted, I'm less familiar with this period of Doctor Who history than I was with the 1960s, so as we start saying goodbye to writers like David Whitaker, it's nice to know that there's new people like Houghton and Robert Holmes stepping in, ready to take up the reigns.

Today's episode, much like the rest of the story, is absolutely filled with brilliant dialogue. Once again, my notes seem to comprise every third line from the script, and I've had to carefully pick and choose which ones are worth my attention when I come to write this entry up. I think it's fair to say that there is a standout winner from today, and it's the Doctor' comment upon seeing Sutton's reaction to the TARDIS console - 'What did you expect? Some kind of space rocket with Batman at the controls?' I hope they have Batman in the parallel universe.

It's fitting that we should get to see so much of the console in this story, especially towards the end of today's episode. Inferno marks the last appearance of the console built way back in 1963 for An Unearthly Child. I've never really tracked the evolution of the machine as I've gone along, but looking at it in some of the shots today, you can clearly see that it's full of bits and pieces I've seen before. Even if I've not been making a point of picking up on it, there's been a kind of subconscious thread linking these first three Doctors together in the form of this console.

I'm sure I commented on it right at the start of Season One, but that original design for the TARDIS real did hit the ground running. I know that Doctor Who never had the budget to constantly update and renew the design (though I think it gets a few makeovers before Pertwee hands in the keys to the police box), but there's a reason they stuck to this basic template for the entire classic run. As much as I love the current console room, I really do like this one. I must make a point of visiting the Doctor Who Experience again to see the replica of this console - they added it only a few days after my last visit!

I'm really pleased that I've enjoyed today's episode as much as this. Having really loved the addition of the parallel world a few days ago when it first turned up, the last few instalments haven't quite gripped me in the same way. Now that we're ready to transfer back to Earth A, I'm finding myself reluctant to say goodbye to this reality! It's been another great example of the Doctor changing people just by being in their presence, and it's nice that he was there in their final moments. I was expecting the episode to conclude with the Doctor vanishing again, so I'm hoping these few characters don't get let down by having to stick around for a few minutes at the start of the next episode.

By the same token, I'm really glad that the Doctor's only headed 'home' for the last 25 minutes of the story. I worried that we'd have to spend a few episodes watching him try to convince Stahlman that they needed to stop the drilling, and that we'd simply end up with a rehash of the last few days. With such a tight timeframe to finish up in, I'm hopeful that the tension will really carry through for the last little push.

Just briefly - it's a return to my monitoring of the Sonic Screwdriver. It turned up earlier in the story being used as a door handle to the Doctor's temporary lab, and now we see that Liz has her own (technically, she was seen using one the other day, but I wasn't sure if it might have been the same device. Now I know he's got one in the parallel world, the one in her bag must be a copy for Liz!) It's still not referred to as being a Sonic Screwdriver, though we get confirmation that the Doctor invented it - a rose by any other name? I'm wondering if Liz might be helping the Doctor to refine the design of it. She is a scientist, after all, and he's been tinkering with it for two whole seasons, now. We're drawing closer and closer to the point where it will become the all-purpose tool we know it as today, so I'm loving the idea that it might have taken a companion's touch to get it to the final stage!

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Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 283: Inferno, Episode Five

Dear diary,

The first half of today's episode is fairly talk-y, with little action. In the past, episodes like this have come in for both praise and criticism during this marathon, and I'm not entirely where this one sits. On the one hand, it's beautifully done. The way that the volcanic noises carry on in the background for so long that they just disappear into the back of your mind is fantastic - every now and then the noise creeps up a little, and you find yourself caught up in the methodic rhythm. It really helps to sell the idea that we've passed the point of no return and that there's no hope for saving this world.

I'm so pleased that they're using the parallel world format to tell an interesting story. It's not simply about meeting up with 'evil' versions of all our regular characters (although the lack of moustache on the Brigade Leader, and the absence of Professor Stahlman's beard suggests that facial hair in alternate dimensions of the Doctor Who universe works in the opposite way to those in the Star Trek franchise!), but rather a chance for the production team to blow up the Earth - really! - without actually endangering the programme's future.

I think I've worked out (roughly) where things will be headed from here, so I'm treating all the guest cast as though they're on borrowed time. What's going to be interesting is to see how much of what happens on this world also occurs in the regular one. For the sake of ease, I'm going to call the regular World 'Earth A' and the Republic 'Earth B'. 'The Petra of Earth B is a lot colder than the one we saw on Earth A, even if they do share similar traits, just emphasised in different ways. Despite that, in the moment of crisis, she's turned to Sutton for comfort. WIll we see that happening once the Doctor gets back to Earth A? Will the technicians all end up being transformed into monsters in our world? Will Sir Keith make it out alive? The only thing I assume it's fair to say is that Benton won't be turning into a Primord in both realities, though.

It's nice to see the Doctor demonstrating the TARDIS console to Liz and the Brigade Leader by pulling the same 'moving a few seconds into the future' trick that was seen back at the start of The Ambassadors of Death. More and more, I'm finding little moments like this that help Season Seven to feel as though it's one big story. In some ways, it's the closest in tone to the 21st century version of the series that we've seen from the classic show so far - taking seemingly insignificant moments and seeding them throughout the entire series.

To that end, it's almost a shame that we don't get a few more of these little references. I wondered back in Doctor Who and the Silurians (to myself, rather than in my entry - it felt like a silly thing to say then, but perfectly right for now!) if it would have been fun to see Masters among the government officials on display at Madame Tussaud's. Equally, I thought the same about Sir James in the last story, and I think having Stahlman there could have been fun for this tale, too. It would be equally nice to have the mentions in this story about the government being so desperate for Stahlman's project to succeed be because of the loss of the Wenley Moor facility. Suddenly, with that one blown up, there's going to be more pressure on the National Grid!

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Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 282, Inferno, Episode Four

Dear diary,

One of the things I loved about yesterday’s episode was that we weren’t simply plunged right into the parallel world. We get a few minutes in the regular setting first, with the Brigadier and Liz hunting for their absent colleague. It means that we get a little bit of time to re-establish the situation, before everything gets turned on its head. We get to see Sir Keith making threatening a trip to the ministry and make his formal complaints, and generally catch up with the rest of events.

It means that when we get to the parallel world and discover that their version of Sir Keith was killed in a (highly suspicious) car accident en route to the ministry, it chimes with us – because we know that’s where our chap is now heading. I have to admit that I’d assumed we’d be stuck in this alternate universe for a while now, right up until the Doctor crosses back over to ours. It came as a bit of a surprise, then, when the screen blurred and we entered back into the sparkly void between realities.

If anything, it was slightly odd. Even after such a relatively short period of time, I’ve gotten used to Liz with her dark hair, so when we emerge back into a real close up of the Liz we’ve known since the start of the season, it didn’t look quite right. It’s a shame that the return to our regular world ends up as a bit of a rehash from yesterday. Sir Keith pops up to remind us that he’s not dead and that he’s got a car outside to take him to London. Liz and the Brigadier hunt around for the Doctor. Nothing all that much happens, and before you know it, we’re back in the Republic.

It’s funny just how much I’ve been drawn into this parallel world, but I think it’s a testament to just how well realised it is, and how fantastic the performances are. Nick Courtney is so easy to love that I have to make a conscious decision to not praise him every day, but he’s especially good toward the cliffhanger today, when he orders the Doctor around and then pulls a gun on him. The one thing that perhaps lets it down a little is that he spends a few minutes strutting around in front of his soldiers as the tension is being ramped up, and it’s perhaps a bit too casual. The Brigade Leader has a carefree side!

I am very impressed by the handling of today’s cliffhanger in general. The presence of a definite ‘end’ point for the action (in this case a countdown) is usually a troubling sign – I’m thinking specifically of Vengeance on Varos, where they move slowly towards the image of a dying Doctor on the monitor before the voice comes though ‘and cut it… now!’, before we linger a few more seconds! It robs that cliffhanger of all the tension, and I worried the same might happen here. As it is, we get the final number of the countdown spoken over the image of the closing credits. Anything could be happening in that control room!

Speaking of the control room – how great is that set? For a start, it’s huge, and split into several areas. You get the impression when characters move from all the contros to the drilling room that they really have covered a lot of ground. It’s great to see so many supporting artists in there, too, all decked out in their lab coats and going about their business. There’s a shot in today’s episode where Pertwee walks over to one of the control panels to play with a few settings, and there’s loads of other people around him getting on with their job. It makes the place seem real, with a lot going on, and it’s as though every member of ‘staff’ has a role to play.

We used to get a similar format quite often in the Troughton Era, where the action revolves around one ‘main’ set with a few smaller ones dotted around (I think the best example is probably in The Moonbase, where I praised the set for reasons very similar to those I’ve mentioned today.)

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Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 281: Inferno, Episode Three

Dear diary,

I always used to find it so strange that Doctor Who waited seven years and fifty-something adventures before it went for that old sci-fi cliché, the ‘parallel universe’, but actually, having been through everything that comes before Inferno, it suddenly makes complete sense. Even though we’ve been in a different location for each story this season, they’ve all felt relatively close together. Trapping the Doctor on Earth, and giving him a wider circle of acquaintances (People can’t even agree on whether Sara Kingdom is a companion, so I doubt there’s any hope of getting all of UNIT added to the list!) means that when we follow him across the sparkly void and into the alternate universe, there’s a real impact to it.

That’s not to say that it couldn’t have worked to see the Doctor confronted by an evil version of Ian and Barbara, but if you set it out on some far-flung alien world, there’s far less of an impact. The Stahlman project, on the outside, looks just like the location from The Ambassadors of Death. Wasn’t the Brigadier chasing someone over some very similar gangways (though much closer to the ground) a few episodes ago? It’s not even that far removed from the location we see used as the factory in Spearhead From Space, which was previously used for The Invasion. I think that’s the big success of this story – it’s taking something which is readily in danger of simply becoming normal for Doctor Who, and it turns it completely on its head.

The same thing is being done to UNIT. When the Doctor emerges from what should be his lab, and a soldier starts to shoot at him, it genuinely feels unnerving. It’s why I’m so pleased that Benton turned up at the tale end of The Ambassadors of Death - I know that he’s a big part of the UNIT ‘family’, because I’m coming to this story more than 40 years after the fact, but today’s cliffhanger doesn’t pack half as much of a punch if it’s simply that Sergeant who turned up two episodes ago threatening the Doctor.

I’m not sure that the Doctor has too much to fear from his former friends here, though, because as in the last story UNIT are absolutely terrible. They spend several minutes chasing after the Doctor and taking shots at him (it has to be said that the chase scene in this story is far more thrilling than many of the action set pieces in the last one – hooray for the return of Douglas Camfield!), and then manage to completely lose him. As soon as they spotted people up high on the roof, I was willing to bet a considerable amount of money that they’d hit the infected soldier rather than our misplaced Time Lord.

One of the things that’s really impressing me is just how much back story about this parallel universe has already been seeded in, without it feeling like a massive info dump. I knew that we’d be seeing an alternate world in this story (I’ve head the eyepatch story enough times to recite it backwards!), but I didn’t know anything really about it. Right from the moment the Doctor arrives in this new world, we’re given lots of hints about this place. From the poster on the wall of his lab – ‘Unity is Strength’, a phrase which instantly says ‘totalitarian regime’ to anyone who’s read Orwell’s 1984 - to the odd symbols on the door of the lab. Even the Doctor lingers to give both a puzzled look, making sure that we get plenty of opportunities to take it all in.

(While I’m on the subject, there’s another one of those ridiculous things that I want to praise. The symbol stuck to the door of the ‘lab’ is all battered up. Now, I know it’s simply because the BBC props men have been lugging it around for a while before sticking it up onto the door, but it has the effect of making it look like the sign has been there for ages. I know it’s a stupid thing to draw attention to, but I’d not have been surprised to find that everything added to the sets to denote them as being from the parallel world looked brand new…)

We’re given lots of beautiful dialogue between the Doctor and the Brigade Leader to help establish the kind of world we’ve ended up in, too. My favourite is possibly the moment that the Brigadier describes the ‘Republic’ and the Doctor asks what’s happened to the Royal Family. He’s cut off mid sentence, simply told that they were executed. All of them.'

Perhaps my absolute favourite piece of dialogue from today's episode - possibly from the season so far - is the Brigade Leader's response to the Doctor's protests that he 'doesn't exist' in this world - 'then you won't feel the bullets when we shoot you.' Brilliant!

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Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 280: Inferno, Episode Two

Dear diary,

There’s a danger that I’m just going to end up repeating myself here, but frankly I’m so surprised by it that it really does bear repeating – I’m finding myself completely won over by the Third Doctor. I spoke yesterday about the fact that he was so willing to use UNIT as a way of getting access to the drilling project simply so that he could steal power (and let’s be honest, that’s exactly what he’s doing!) and try to get the TARDIS working again.

I really love the idea that he only works with UNIT because he’s stuck on Earth and he needs something to be doing. Today’s episode makes it almost quite dark – there’s a very real danger that everyone on this drilling project could be dead before long. There’s at least one person roaming the site murdering for no apparent reason. The Doctor has seen the effect of getting to close to those people who are infected (though he follows a primordial UNIT soldier across the gangways for a while, then seemingly forgets all about this!), and knows the danger of drilling down this deep – heck they’ve already come close to wiping themselves out.

And yet when Professor Stahlman cuts his power and manages to dispose of the computer circuit before the Brigadier can be alerted to the danger the man poses… the Doctor simply leaves. He announces that he could be doing something better with his time anyway, and heads off to tinker with the TARDIS some more. He even goes as far as to lie to Liz simply to get her out of the way while he makes a runner. It really does feel like a return to the personality that Hartnell’s Doctor had right back at the very beginning, when he was willing to kidnap people just to stop them revealing the secret of the TARDIS, or endanger them all to satisfy his own curiosity. I’m imagining that the Doctor will mellow and grow to accept his current lot (I always remember him as enjoying his time with UNIT, but maybe that’s simply my lack of affinity with this era), but for now it’s creating a really interesting dynamic.

It works pretty well when you give Pertwee some great guest characters to play off, too. He really works brilliantly opposite Olaf Pooley as Stahlman, and you can quite easily believe that the pair would wind each other up no end. Even Nick Courtney, who’s always on the top of his game, seems to be turning in an especially good performance here. The only problem I’ve got with the cast is that every time Christopher Benjamin turns up on screen, I find myself loudly saying ‘Henry Gordon Jago!’ to an empty room, especially having finished the Sixth Season of Jago & Litefoot just this morning.

This feels like a good time to heap some praise on Caroline John, too, considering that this is her last story. Liz has always been one of those companions I’ve never really had much time for. She’s only in four stories (Well, five if you count The Five Doctors, I suppose), and they’re from this era of the programme that I’ve never paid that much attention to. Up until this story, I was more-or-less ready to claim that – despite how good she might be – Liz wasn’t really a companion. She’s far more independent than a companion would usually be, and she’s really got her own life outside of the Doctor.

I think it’s helped by the whole format of Season Seven. Because the Doctor and Liz are having all their adventures within comfortable driving distance from London, you get the impression that Liz goes home to her flat at the end of each day, while the Doctor spends his time underneath St Pancras station, trying to kick start the TARDIS. When this story started, I was going to concede my point and suggest that maybe she was a companion, simply on the basis that she’s his friend, and he’s specifically asked her to help with his escape attempt (there’s implication in Episode One of this story that she’s been helping him with these ‘experiments’ for a while). As it is, though, he’s simply using her – he needs that extra knowledge on hand if he’s in with any chance of making the console work, and he’s willing to get her out of the way if he thinks she’ll get in the way of him making a break for it.

I’m going to keep the jury out on Liz’s companion status for the rest of this story, but I’m glad that there’s a new depth to it. Just like the new slightly morally ambiguous Doctor, it’s a fresh dynamic for the programme, and it’s really helped to freshen things up following the trend of companions all being a bit samey towards the end of the 1960s (no matter how much I ended up loving Zoe!)

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Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 279: Inferno, Episode One

Dear diary,

'This isn't an oil rig,' Petra points out early in this episode. What they're drilling for isn't anything like North Sea gas, we're later told. And yet… I'm watching Fury From the Deep! There's the drilling project, a mysterious substance from the deep, a person in charge who's adamant that the project can't be shut down (there it was because Robson didn't want to ruin his record for continuous drilling, while here Professor Stahlman doesn't want any delays to the schedule.) As if there were any doubt left, we get the first appearance of the Sonic Screwdriver in a Third Doctor story*!

And yet, whereas Fury From the Deep bored me at the time, being made up of so many elements that we'd seen too recently, here it feels like greeting some old friends, and I'm actually excited by them! That's not to say that Inferno isn't showing signs of repetition - there's a number of elements present in this episode that seem to be cropping up a lot during Season Seven, but I don't think I've had time to grow weary of them yet.

I think what's interested me the most about all this is the way that the Doctor and the brigadier interact with each other. During Doctor Who and the Silurians, I praised the way that they didn't exactly see eye-to-eye over how to deal with the threat. They were a bit more chummy in the last story (though only just), but they still don't seem to be the best of friends here. While I think they do respect each other, they're more 'colleagues' than 'friends'.

The way the Doctor strolls into the Brigadier's makeshift office suggests that the pair haven't seen each other for a little while. The same scene goes on to confirm that while Liz may 'have the misfortune of working for [UNIT]', the Doctor is a 'free agent'. The implication at the end of Spearhead From Space was very much that the Doctor was going to be employed on a permanent basis to the organisation - he even got Bessie as a company car! - but here we get to find out a little more about their arrangement.

I rather like the idea that he's not simply tied to working for the Brigadier, and that he's simply using UNIT as an excuse to get access into this drilling project. It gives the Doctor a kind of selfish edge that we've not seen much of since right back in the early days of Season One. There was a flash of it at the very start of Pertwee's tenure, when he tries to take off in the TARDIS during the Nestene invasion, but I thought that had all died down by now.

I'm also finding more and more that I love his outfit. I've never really thought all that much about the Third Doctor's costume - it's always been a lot of different coloured velvet jackets and capes for me - but it really does suit him in this season. There's a point when it's described as 'fancy dress', but he does cut a very definite figure amongst all the other people in the control room. I'm hoping that I'll keep being drawn to it when we start seeing all the variants creep in.

It's becoming apparent that Pertwee seems to have a particular clause in his contract, though. Every story of the season has given him an opportunity to gurn away, and today's episode is no exception. Having said that, the scene where he's thrown into the 'limbo' and the image distorts as he seemingly cries with pain is really effective - it's putting him into another situation we're not used to seeing, and making the threat seem very apparent. Forget the werewolves running around and killing people - it's the Doctor's own experiments which are causing the danger right now…

*Yeah, yeah, I know he doesn't call it the Sonic Screwdriver (he actually says 'it's only a door handle'), but we all know that it is…

BBC Consumer Products have sent DWO the cover and details for the Doctor Who DVD release of Inferno: Special Edition.

Inferno: Special Edition
Featuring: The 3rd Doctor

An experiment gone awry sends the Doctor (Jon Pertwee) to a parallel universe where his friends and companions are members of a fascist regime in this thrilling and popular episode from the long-running science fiction series Doctor Who.

Inferno is the name of a project designed to drill into the Earth's core and release a powerful energy source called Stahlman's Gas; what's yielded instead is an insidious substance that transforms men into monsters.

The resulting chaos interrupts the Doctor's travel in the TARDIS and knocks him into an alternate Earth run by a military dictatorship, and where Project Inferno's progress threatens to bring about an apocalypse.

Special Features:

To be updated later today...

+  Inferno: Special Edition is released on 27th May 2013, priced £20.42.

+  Compare Prices for this product on CompareTheDalek.com.

+  Check Out the DWO Release Guide entry for this product.

[Source: BBC Consumer Products]

BBC Consumer Products have confirmed the majority of the 2013 Classic Series Doctor Who DVD releases.

February 25th - The Ark in Space: Special Edition

March 11th - The Aztecs: Special Edition (plus Galaxy 4 reconstruction)

May 6th - The Visitation: Special Edition

May 27th - Inferno: Special Edition

June 3rd - The Mind of Evil

June 24th - Terror of the Zygons

July 15th - Spearhead from Space (Blu-Ray)

August 5th - The Green Death: Special Edition

August 26th - The Ice Warriors

September 16th - Scream of the Shalka

+  Discuss all the Doctor Who DVD releases in the DWO Forums.

[Source: BBC Consumer Products]

AudioGO have sent DWO the cover and details for the forthcoming CD release of Inferno.

In this exciting reading of a Doctor Who novelisation, first published by Target Books in 1984, the Doctor is trapped in a parallel world, unable to act as the Earth is threatened by a poisonous liquid leaking from top-secret drilling project Inferno.

This title is read by Caroline John.

+  Inferno is released on 7th April 2011, priced £13.25.

+  Compare Prices for this product on CompareTheDalek.com!

[Source: AudioGO]

There’s no doubt that the appearance of Doctor Who on LOVEFiLM’s catalogue has gotten us excited – the chance to enjoy our favourites whenever we like (within reason) seems a good enough reason as any to get in a good mood.

And while the presence of Matt Smith’s recent outing is good enough for now, one thing that has caught our eye is the wealth of old episodes that LOVEFiLM has to offer.

We all know that the Doctor has been on fire since 2005 and we need little excuse to revisit any one of hundreds of moments from the run. However, it’s reassuring to know that if we need to recap an episode, catch up with one that we’ve missed or simply relive the excitement all over again, LOVEFiLM has it covered.

To have classics such as Jon Pertwee’s Inferno, Tom Baker’s City of Death, and Sylvester McCoy’s The Curse of Fenric available as well as other movies online whenever you want them, thanks to the LOVEFiLM Player, is a treat that we’re really looking forward to – even if it doesn’t come to fruition.

For now, of course we’re happy with whatever we’re given, and LOVEFiLM are allowing us to get our hands on copies of Doctor Who for a fraction of what it would cost to buy the box set, or even to rent it in the conventional way.

So, in truth, there’s no excuse for going without a Doctor Who fix thanks to LOVEFiLM, providing a fantastic TV back catalogue at a great price!

[Sources: Doctor Who Online; LOVEFILM]