These days we face little more than bleak threats of lockdown in the outside world and angry social media with information overload online. But it was not always so. There were golden times not so long ago. Simpler times decades ago where tales were exciting, heroes were not dark and gritty and the baddies were dastardly rather than shades of grey ciphers of ourselves that require deep introspection. Supermind is a gateway back into this more innocent age: 10-15 minute episodes providing dives into 1930s style escapades of adventure and intrigue, mirroring the formats of the time.
Hand on heart I never thought we’d get sets like these. This is pure squee, compressed intensely like dwarf star alloy. Not only are we getting a Sensorite set we’re getting a Voord set with stunning Ian Chesterton figure!
Christmas 2017 brought with it the very latest interpretation of Shada – a story with a powerful grip on Doctor Who fans by virtue of never being completed. It is a story I hold in very high regard, and I was delighted to see it imagined as it was (almost) intended. One moment early on in what would have been episode 2 provoked an interesting line of thought: What if Lalla Ward had become the Fifth Doctor at the end of Season 16?
Alan Barnes has had a varied career… editor, producer, director, writer, he’s had a thumb in a lot of pies, if you can excuse the phrase. Transfering comic book creation Izzy to audio was just one of the challenges I talked to him about when I hid behind a corner and caught him in a bag as he made his way from Big Finish Towers, and it took two of us to get him into The Mind Probe…
Considering the amount of stories you’ve written for the Eighth Dctor/Izzy in comic form, wa sit a difficult transition to transfer that to audio for A Company of Friends…?
From our interview archives, Eddie talks to Lance Parkin about Bennice Summerfield.
So tell us a bit about Benny’s Story…
It’s one of four stories on Company of Friends, it has the working title ‘Tempting Fate’, it’s the eighth Doctor meeting the older Benny of the audio series. Someone has summoned the Doctor, and there’s a giant green lion and some killer robots, but it’s mainly a way to see the Doctor and Benny together again.
Did you get a say in the companion or era you wrote for?
None whatsoever, but they’re without a shadow of a doubt the two who’d be top of my list.
Kate Orman was one of the pioneers of new, original Doctor Who writing and a contemporary of Paul Cornell, Mark Gatiss, Gareth Roberts and Russell T Davies. She helped shape the series in a way still resonating on the TV version now, and is responsible at least in part for some of the most iconic stories of the series literary history and, of course, helped plot with Paul Cornell, the novel Human Nature. I beamed to Australia and back in one evening to initiate the Mind Probe… no… not the Mind Probe! Not again!!!
Some of Doctor Who’s most renowned illustrators discuss their techniques: Chris Achilléos, Colin Howard, Martin Geraghty, Stuart Crouch, Anthony Dry and Anthony Lamb all speak exclusively to DWM.
Television producer John Lloyd discusses his never-realised 1979 four-parter The Doomsday Contract ahead of its Big Finish release.
Meet the collectors committed to acquiring the autographs of their favourite stars.
Doctor Who: Chronicles is a new series of bookazines from the makers of Doctor Who Magazine. Examining the landmark years of the show’s history in unprecedented detail, the first issue looks at 1965, when the most popular episodes of Doctor Who attracted more than 13 million viewers and Dalekmania reached its peak with the release of the first feature film based on the series.
This 116-page bookazine features newly discovered images and all-new features, including: