What was your favourite things about this then? Come on, tell us.

How many favourite things? Okay, I mean...

I love that it opens with Shakespeare and it's basically two fingers up to the audience who don't like historicals because it's doing a few lines of what people think a historical is going to sound like because they're all talking in Shakespearean.

And then they're commenting on it and Perry and MMM are spoilering Richard III for the audience.

I love the letter sequence, which is very Curse of Fatal Death, actually, where he's sending letters to each other across kind of two different time periods.

I love, I mean, going back to Timeworks and how that doesn't really sell two things going on simultaneously in different time zones.

Here, it's done really well, I think.

I suppose it's one of those big mysteries of history where we can sort of, you

We knew that.

Well, we, we didn't, because I feel like we, we have an issue here which, uh, I mean, I th- I think we can trace this back w- way into the Classic era, but wh- where the Doctor started to become a mythical figure rather than just a traveler.

Um, and I feel like Moffat, to some extent, is trying to put the genie back in the bottle here.

I feel like he's gone, "Okay, we've, we've had enough of..." I mean, he's as, he's more guilty of it than most, but we've had enough of this kind of introspection and the, the Doctor as a, as a great Gallifreyan and, um, y- you know, whether that's the Other or the, the, the, the Doctor as the savior of Gallifrey, the, uh, and the destroyer of Gallifrey, the War L- all this stuff that we've done.

We've done the m- the mythical Doctor.

I think Moffat is, is trying to completely recalibrate the program and go, "No, he is just...

He's, he's an idiot with a box." Um-

They're finally smashing their way through the windows, look.

Oh, for sure, and one of the worst.

And one [laughs] who ...

Well, this is the, this is the thing.

Here's the thing.

I think that, um, I think Russell, also a great writer in many ways, um, can be a lazy writer.

And I think that when Russell T. Davies is on form, we get real magic, but I think he's a little bit too confident in his own formula, a little bit too, little bit too blase about his own brilliance, and we quite often get Russell T. Davies just coasting, and it's, and it's a little bit meh.

Now, I don't think that accusation could be leveled at Moffat.

Why don't you like this scene, James?

No.

No.

I think Victoria stays for exactly the right amount of time, because I think she has a really interesting journey and, and one that I wouldn't want to lose.

Uh, and obviously then we get Zoe and, and there's a chemistry there that's, that's, that's quite special.

I think, uh, for me, uh, it's really telling that, as I said, I experienced most of this stuff on cassette, 'cause it was the only way that you could, you could get most of it in the '90s.

And for those of you who've got these stories all animated now and beautifully cleaned up by Marquez, I should make it clear that these cassettes, it was like listening mostly to a, a s- a static storm, and occasionally you get bits of dialogue or, or, or music.

Long periods of nothing happening.

He's haunted in it, isn't he?

Uh-

Then of course, then of course, he, he does bring back the Daleks, and he does it in s- in a way that is incredibly intelligent, because he reinvents them.

And he, he does for the Daleks what Dalek did, um, in 2005.

He makes them scary again, and he makes them strange and alien.

Um, and, and, uh, so even when he's bringing back the icons and, and then spy fall, like, I was absolutely floored by the revelation that he was the Master.

Um, so it was, it was basically, it seemed to me, that he'd planned really carefully how to gradually reintroduce the, the old icons from the show but in a way that was gonna be really effective.

So Fugitive of the Judoon I think starts off really well, and I, um, I love those scenes with, uh, Jo Martin in Gloucester.

No. [laughs]

Oh

...

The Christmas Carol.

That's not on either of my lists, but it's certainly nowhere near my top list.

Um, so yeah.

Removing the song though, he's gone to the ultimate source for a Christmas story.

Now, I am a dyed-in-the-wall Dickens fan.

No

Well, yeah, it's supposed to be ice, James.

When you walk on the ice, Joe, how do you ...

Do you slide around like that? I tend not to walk on ice too much When it, when it, when it's icy outside, do you not take small footsteps in order to avoid sliding around? Because it seems to me that one of the most dangerous things you could do would be to spread eagle yourself around like McCoy does.

That's not a safe way of walking on ice.

I said it time and again, you know, he's a performer, not an actor.

He's performing for you there.

It's a, I think that there's less of a gap between the two than you think there is.

[laughs] That's what I like in-

I'm not sure there is, no.

It's got so much that's great about it.

And I know that if you read the book, and Ben Aaronovitch was disappointed that it wasn't his original vision, and it's a bit spangly and sparkly, and actually the direction's not terribly great.

I th- but it's got Jean bloody Marsh acting her socks off.

It's got Nicholas Courtney properly kind of back, not as a school teacher, but as an army.

It's got helicopters.

It's got knights with swords.

Tell me why.

So how does this theme song stack up for you?

It's a version of...

With...

Potent nostalgia for me because of the amount of Tom Baker that was available on VHS quite early on.

And I became a Doctor Who fan right at the end, just as they were about to cancel it.

So I have an inherent love for Sylvester McCoy and that version of the theme tune.

The thing of it being my doctor.

So next we're in a real quarry, which is fun because Doctor Who's always in quarries.

I'm not having this anti-TV movie propaganda on Hand to a Blood Pen knife.

It's the, it's the, it's the Leisure Hive writ large.

It's, it's all, everything has changed.

It di- it...

And I re- and of course, Doctor Who, Doctor Who, Doctor Who, um, the, or, like Toby Hadoke's always talking about how Doctor Who didn't look like Doctor Who to him when he was watching it actually at the time because he thought Doctor Who looked like John Pertwee Doctor Who.

Like, there's always this thing of, like, you have to give it some years before it looks.

But when they were printing pictures of the Doctors, the, you've got that weird thing where photographs, stills from 1963 alongside stills from 1989 look like they're part of the same program 'cause that's the thing that you've, you, your brain has, has been telling you all these years.

Um, and I think, I think you're right, y- you're right, James, that-

Saturday, May the 4th.

I've watched the first four parts of The Invasion of Time.

I think it's quite good apart from the Vardans.

Their shimmering appearance is comical and they couldn't have got any worse when they materialized properly.

Except they did! They didn't look like a threat of any sort.

A pathetic group of weirdos dressed up in old-fashioned clothes.

on.

It's a gorgeous soundtrack.