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N179 The Church on Ruby Road — The 2023 Christmas Special
Inter-temporal infanticide and a divisive song-and-dance number? We spend more than twice its runtime dissecting The Fifteenth Doctor's first big adve...B096 The Fourteenth Doctor Retrospective
Tennant is back, inexplicably yet fabulously, prompting a customary, cocktail-fuelled retrospective... - Articles
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"Right now, I’m alone." — A data log was found in a colony in the future. This is what it contained....The Eighth Doctor: An Episode Guide
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Do you prefer listening to us rant about episodes we really liked or disliked? Coolio, then head on over to the stats section and find an episode we rated exceptionally highly/incredibly disparagingly!
And there are PLENTY of ways to get involved beyond listening to the show and exploring the article archives. Point your eyestalks at some of these links to learn more! - Merch!
roup had some very humble beginnings, with at times no more than 2 people playing all the parts. Their very early stories (some which are not available) sound like little more than two guys, a Star Trek soundtrack and a tape recorder.
Monster of the Week
The lesser-quality productions usually fall down due to the same recurring problems. DWAD productions can often falter from excessive exposition (usually thrown at you all at once), excessive dialog where action and sound should have taken place, and an underestimation of the audience’s ability to understand what is going on. There are also often pacing issues. Entire episodes pass where nothing relevant happens, no plot point is furthered and no characters are developed. They also need to learn to rethink and avoid those scenes where a character talks us through their actions. Some stories are plagued with way too much dialog, especially (and yet somewhat forgivably) the early ones.
Drama
A cliffside walk to a castle is ominous indeed. When the characters develop feelings for one another, or are freezing to death, or are betrayed, or break down, you understand it and can empathize.
I’ll finish by saying that the later stories tend to have a bit more philosophical depth than some of the earlier productions. You’ll often walk away thinking you haven’t heard all that went on around the characters. This is as it should be. The stories frequently present something to postulate and ponder. Yet like an RTD story, they often cram the issue down your throat, thus suffocating the production. Their most recent efforts have had both a philosophical and meta side that sometimes interfere with simply telling a good story. After all, we’re here for adventure and drama, not lecture and debate. Truthfully, I understand it’s all another part of their willingness to explore new terrain in storytelling, and that’s simply wonderful. However one wishes for a showrunner that would reign such things in when they go too far.
What I’ll send you away with is the idea that when these guys are on, they are indeed better than some of the television episodes you’ve seen. When they’re off, it’s disappointing, but rarely offensive. There are some stories you will simply love and not only return to often, but think about when you’re doing other things. I always look forward to a new DWAD in the hopes that it will match some of their most memorable ones, because theirs are moments that will indeed be with you for quite some time.
