MASS EFFECT TV series to be an original story set after the original video game trilogy

BioWare have confirmed that Amazon's upcoming Mass Effect TV series will be an original story, set after the original video game trilogy.

Amazon have been developing a TV project based on the video game franchise for some years now. The original announcement sounded like the show would be based directly on the events of the original games, Mass Effect (2007), Mass Effect 2 (2010) and Mass Effect 3 (2012). The original story depicts humanity trying to establish itself on the galactic scene, where several, much older races dominate a multi-civilisation society based at an ancient, gargantuan space station known as the Citadel. The protagonist, Commander Shepard, becomes the first human accepted into the elite Spectre organisation, given wide latitude to track down a renegade agent named Saren. From a small start, the trilogy expanded into a massive war story with the galaxy under attack from an ancient alien force known as the Reapers and Shepard having to assemble a vast fleet and army to stand against them.

The fourth game in the series, Mass Effect: Andromeda (2017) avoided having to commit to any outcome from the story by being set centuries later and over two million light years away, with a fleet of exploration ships reaching the Andromeda galaxy after centuries in stasis. The game was not as well-received as others in the series. BioWare did enjoy success with the release of Mass Effect: Legendary Edition in 2022, a moderate remaster of the series.

Reportedly the Mass Effect TV series is still a year away from shooting, let alone airing. Doug Jung is producing and showrunning. Meanwhile, BioWare are developing a new Mass Effect video game, but there hasn't been much news about the game for a while.

Doctor Who: Season 23 - The Trial of a Time Lord

The Doctor has been summoned by the Time Lords to a remote space station, there to stand trial again for interfering in the affairs of other worlds and times. His memory of recent events wiped (and his concern for his missing companion Peri growing), the Doctor has to formulate a defence in a trial where he doesn't know the rules, and the other side is not playing fair.

During the transmission of the twenty-second season of Doctor Who in early 1985, BBC controller Michael Grade tried to cancel the show. The resulting blowback of public opinion saw the BBC give it a stay of execution, an eighteen-month break to recover its creative mojo and come back swinging, but with a reduced count of just fourteen, 25-minute episodes, the shortest season in the show's history (and, in runtime at least, shorter than even the most recent Disney co-produced seasons).

Surprisingly, the BBC made no effort to refresh the show's creative team. Executive producer John Nathan-Turner and script editor Eric Saward remained in-situ (to even their own bemusement) and were given very little direction on how to handle the show's return. They did decide to dump the scripts they were developing, including the return of the Celestial Toymaker (that would have to wait for another forty years, in the event), the Ice Warriors and Sil, and instead developed a new story arc. They decided that, since the show was on trial by the BBC in reality, they would put the Doctor on trial in the story itself, an idea some (including star Colin Baker) found too cute, but does have a sort of perverse appeal.

Technically, Season 23 consists of one fourteen-part story called The Trial of a Time Lord, although this is a bit cheesy. More accurately, the season consists of three four-part stories that are linked by scenes back in the courtroom before the story is resolved in a concluding two-parter. These scenes are well-played by Colin Baker, the superb Lynda Bellingham as the Inquisitor and the accomplished Michael Jayston as the prosecutor, the Valeyard, though their use can be variable: sometimes commenting intelligently on the story, and at other times descending into acrimonious bickering.

The first four-parter, informally known as The Mysterious Planet, sees the Doctor and Peri arrive on the planet Ravolox, where they get involved in mysterious events revolving around two alien mercenaries, Sabalom Glitz and Dibber, the primitives who inhabit the surface of Ravolox and the more sophisticated society living in an underground society under the oversight of a robot with a very stupidly-sized head. The story is a classic Who culture clash playing off the different factions.

This is the effective swansong of legendary scriptwriter Robert Holmes, who had written or script-edited almost all of Doctor Who's all-time greatest stories and made a return in Season 21 with the epic The Caves of Androzani (and Season 22's okay Mark of the Rani). The Mysterious Planet was written when he was very ill, and is not among his best scripts. However, many of the Classic Holmes Hallmarks are present and correct. The secondary cast is very good, spearheaded by the Glitz-and-Dibber double act (Tony Selby and Glen Murphy sparking off one another superbly), and the robot villain is channelling 150% pure Douglas Adams energy. Joan Sims feels like she should be miscast as Queen Katryca, but instead it's a barmy bit of casting that works better than it should.

The story does descend into more running-around-corridors than it really should, and the Planet of the Apes-esque story elements are not as effective as they should be, but overall this is okay. A mid-tier slice of Robert Holmes whimsy, enlivened by some hints that things are not as they first appear. The story is enlivened by its opening visual effects sequence, a motion control tracking shot of the Time Lord space station with the TARDIS caught in its tractor beam, easily the most striking model shot in all twenty-six seasons of the original run of the show (and, given its insane cost, not one to be repeated again).

Mindwarp, the second serial, is a sequel-of-sorts to the preceding season's Vengeance on Varos and sees the return of the revolting Sil, played again with wicked relish by Nabil Shaban. The story this time revolves around Sil's boss, Kiv (a more stately performance by Christopher Ryan), who is dying and whose brain needs to be transplanted to another body, resulting in a lot of scheming as he looks for another host candidate, whilst simultaneously trying to take economic advantage of a planet ruled by King Yrcanos, played with scene-stealing thunder by Brian Blessed.

Yes! After many years, Doctor Who was finally able to snatch up a guest role by the legendary King of Shout himself, between his more standard activities of climbing K2 equipped only with spoons and a mask to drain more oxygen than normal from him, for the challenge. Blessed not only steals the story, he packs it up and slings it over his shoulder before travelling to Mars purely under his own motive power. Your tolerance for the story will entirely depend on your tolerance for Brian Blessed at his absolutely least-restrained and most unhinged. "WE MUST FIND WEAPONS, SUCH AS THOSE THAT TURN OUR ENEMIES INTO SLIME! WE'LL PILE THE HEADS OF OUR ENEMIES BEFORE US LIKE MELONS IN A HEAP!"

If your TV speakers survive that ordeal, there are some additional pluses, like a fully throttleable performance by Patrick Ryecart as the brain-transplanting doctor Crozier, and, of course, that ending. The ending to Mindwarp was, for six weeks anyway, Doctor Who at its absolutely most mind-blowingly tragic, horrible and shocking, far moreso than when Adric wiped out the dinosaurs with his own mediocrity (and several million tons of exploding antimatter attached to a starship travelling at insane velocity, but still). It's one of the very rare times when the show feels like it's gone out of control and doing something fresh, dangerous and mind-blowing, all helped by Nicola Bryant giving her best performance to date. Of course, the show manages to torpedo even that a few weeks later, but it's still a brain-melting end to a Classic Doctor Who story that not just breaks its normal rules, but atomises them.

Unfortunately, outside of the ending, some solid performances and Blessed's Defcon 1-level shouting, the story suffers a little in pacing. Whilst Shaban is outstanding, Sil doesn't actually have much to do in the story given the villain duties are being carried out by Kiv and Crozier, and Blessed is dominating everything else. There's also more the whiff of panto about this season than any prior, and this story is probably the most panto-like of the lot. Still, it's quite an unusual Doctor Who story in many respects.

Terror of the Vervoids is, perhaps to make up for Mindwarp, almost an aggressively normal story in comparison. The Doctor and new companion Mel have arrived on a space liner transporting a bunch of people through space. Murders take place, and the Doctor - who is handily known to the captain - has to investigate.

This story isn't the best-regarded, which is interesting as it may be the strongest of the season. The standard murder mystery plot in a constrained setting is a good fit for Doctor Who, making it odd it hasn't been used more often, and the decision to have the Doctor already known to the captain, thus avoiding two episodes of the Doctor being the prime suspect, is a very smart way of sidestepping that problem, allowing him to just investigate. The mystery is reasonable, and the cast of characters who may be involved is well-drawn, including a splendid guest turn from Honor Blackman (Cathy Gale from The Avengers, an early genre rival of Doctor Who's).

The story probably gets its reputation from the introduction of Bonnie Langford as Mel. Rotating off the popular Nicola Bryant in favour of a musical star and dancer not known for her heavyweight acting deeply annoyed the fans at the time, but it has to be said that time has been kind to Langford in the role. Her more recent appearances in the modern show have been strong, and her performance in Season 23 is actually very credibly good. It's only in Season 24 where the writers don't seem to know what to do with her that she risks becoming grating. In this story she's bossy and takes charge, but this is a fresh change from Peri, who was often far too passive in the face of the Doctor's bluster. The story also suffers from the mystery element giving way to a more standard "monsters running amok" ending, although the Vervoids are at least a striking and memorable design, and their motivation - survival - is effective.

The end of the story is also interesting, with the Doctor backed into a corner and having to morally question his decisions in a way that he didn't all that often in the classic series, in the process inadvertently giving the Valeyard the ammunition he needs to close his case and push for the Doctor's execution.

As people I think more commonly know, the season was supposed to end with a two-parter co-written by Robert Holmes and Eric Saward, but Holmes passed away having delivered only a rough draft of the first episode of the two. Saward and Nathan-Turner clashed horrendously over the finale, which ended on a cliffhanger with the Doctor and Valeyard locked in combat and falling into space, which Nathan-Turner felt was a gift to allow the BBC to cancel the show. Saward, who wanted to honour Holmes's dying request to end the story that way, was not to be moved and quit on the spot, taking his own draft for the final episode with him. Nathan-Turner had to call in Vervoids writers Pip and Jane Baker to pen the finale with no recourse to Saward's script at all.

The resulting two-parter, The Ultimate Foe, is not fantastic, and clearly had some major writing compromises going on, but it holds together better than you might expect (as even Saward had to admit many years later). The first part recalls The Deadly Assassin, with the Doctor and Valeyard doing battle amidst surreal imagery inside the Matrix, the Time Lord computer system. The second part sees the Doctor joined by Sabalom Glitz, Mel and even the Master as they team up to take down the Valeyard. It's okay, with some solid scares (the cliffhanger with the Doctor being sucked into quicksand is memorable, and the resolution quite amusing), but it wraps up the entire season arc far too perfunctorily, and somehow manages to introduce a new cliffhanger that the show never resolves again, whilst also retconning the splendidly dark ending of Mindwarp out of existence.

Overall, Season 23 of Doctor Who (***) is the definition of okay-but-underwhelming. None of the four stories are absolutely terrible or unwatchable, but it is overall less than the sum of its parts. It's a season straining almost visibly under the weight of behind-the-scenes chaos, but managing to deliver some watchable entertainment for all of that.

The season is available on DVD and Blu-Ray as well as streaming on BBC iPlayer in the UK and various services overseas.

• 23.1 - 23.4: The Mysterious Planet (***)
• 23.5 - 23.8: Mindwarp (***)
• 23.9 - 23.12: Terror of the Vervoids (***½)
• 23.13 - 23.14: The Ultimate Foe (**½)

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.

No Life Forsaken by Steven Erikson

Yet again, rebellion is stirring on the subcontinent of Seven Cities. More than a decade ago, the native tribes launched a vast rebellion, the Whirlwind, to destroy the occupying armies of the Malazan Empire. Through the legendary last stand of Coltaine and his army, escorting thousands of refugees to safety, and the arrival of the legendary Bonehunters, the rebellion was defeated. But the embers continue to burn and threaten to ignite once more. Events are converging on the city of G'danisban, seat of High Fist Arenfall, as both the Malazans and the followers of the goddess Va'Shaik seek to set in motion the rebellion and resulting bloodbath...or try to stop it.

Twenty years ago, Steven Erikson was gleefully producing his Malazan Book of the Fallen sequence at a pace that even Brandon Sanderson might feel was a bit much. Every year-and-a-bit, Erikson would unload a near-thousand-page brick packed with epic battles, moral philosophising and wry humour. We ate well, my friends, and perhaps took it for granted.

In the decade and a half since the Malazan Book of the Fallen was completed in all its yak-stunning, shelf-bending, potsherd-uncovering glory, Erikson has switched to a more well-deserved, chilled pace. He has produced two volumes of a prequel trilogy (put on hold due to slow sales, but he's back at work on the finale now), Kharkanas; several unrelated science fiction works; and has now delivered the second of four books in a planned Malazan sequel series, checking in on the Malazan Empire and its world ten years after the events of The Crippled God.

This new series - The Tales of Witness - feels like the main Malazan sequence in miniature. The original series opened on the continent of Genabackis before switching to Seven Cities. The first book in this new series, The God is Not Willing (2021), checked in on Genabackis and here this second volume switches gears and visits Seven Cities once again. No Life Forsaken acts as a sequel or coda to the entire Seven Cities arc from the original series, in fact, including House of Chains and The Bonehunters. That arc in the original series was about Seven Cities fighting for its independence and ultimately failing, whilst here the original, failed rebellion is now inspiration for a bloodier, renewed fight.

No Life Forsaken muses on the idealism of the cause. The Malazan Empire, especially under the redoubtable Emperor Mallick Rel (the effective villain of the original Seven Cities arc, particularly the monumental Deadhouse Gates), is an imperial, occupying, exploitative power and the natives demanding their independence is understandable. But the natives of Seven Cities are also a fractious and unruly lot, more likely to plunge the subcontinent into an orgy of violence, religious blood-letting, ancestral score-settling and a genocidal pursuit of ideological or holy purity than they are to usher in a new age of enlightened peace. It's interesting that there are those on both sides who seem eager for war and also those anxious to stop the carnage before it can start.

As usual with Erikson, the story rotates through a cast of almost entirely new faces (only three characters and a donkey show up from earlier novels and have a bare handful of paragraphs between them). We have the High Fist of Seven Cities and the Adjunct of the Emperor, who has shown up to gauge the threat of rebellion from both the natives and the charismatic Fist himself. The Claw, the sorcerous and elite agents of the Emperor's will, are on the scene as well. Malazan soldiers and marines, philosopher-savants one and all, also provide perspectives on events, alongside the High Priestess of Va'Shaik in G'danisban and even the goddess herself, along with her Inquisitor, a figure noted for his peculiar brand of atheism. Mercenaries, criminals, a random Toblakai (no, not that one), an Elder God or two, and of course Nub, King of the Bhokaral (all hail Nub!), all chime in. The book may be promising more than its modest page count can allow, in fact, and several subplots are left to unfold off-screen.

Also as usual, Erikson is more interested in the themes of his story than delivering crowd-pleasing results. The book hints at gargantuan battles of apocalyptic proportions and teases vast scenes of carnage, but never quite gets there. Everyone involved in the story seems to have read Deadhouse Gates and The Bonehunters as well, and are not eager to blow up more cities and kill tens of thousands of people for the spectacle. The struggle in the book is less between opposed ideologies or politics or faiths, but between common sense and those who measure success in how high the innocent dead can be stacked like cordwood. No life should be forsaken, indeed.

It's certainly a slower, more thoughtful book than The God is Not Willing, which felt like a more crowd-pleasing, focused, directed slice of Malazan. This book is the other side of the series, the more philosophical, chewing-the-fat and enjoying wry humour side of things. It's not Malazan at its most indulgent - the book fills just 400 pages, making it a novella by some of Erikson's earlier standards - and the story benefits from its slimline approach, but there's definitely less of an urge to deliver the Greatest Hits to readers. Karsa fans will probably be unsurprised to hear that, once again, he is playing the role of Sir Not-Appearing-In-This-Volume. On the negative side the book feels like it takes a while to find its feet but, once it does, events accelerate to a typically impressive conclusion.

No Life Forsaken (****½) is a dusty, thoughtful book that takes a while to get going, but once it does it delivers a thoughtful and striking piece of compassionate, intelligent fantasy. And the good news is that we won't have too long to wait for more, as Erikson completed the third book in the series, Legacies of Betrayal, at the same time as this one, and hopefully that should be with us next year.

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China Miéville announces new novel, THE ROUSE, for 2026

China Miéville and Picador have announced a new novel. The book will be Miéville's first full-length, solo novel since 2012's Railsea.

Miéville has been working on the novel for over twenty years and has suggested it will be his magnum opus. The book is currently listed as 1,264 pages in length, which would comfortably be his longest-ever novel.

Details on the novel are light, although it will be published by Picador rather than the more genre-oriented imprint Tor UK, which has handled most of Miéville's work to date. The blurb is as follows:

From the bestselling and award-winning master of speculative fiction comes a deeply moving, decade- and continent-spanning epic: forced to investigate a devastating personal tragedy, an ordinary woman stumbles on dark conspiracies, and provokes the attention of uncanny forces.

The Rouse will be published on 17 September 2026 in the UK.

Doctor Who: Season 22

The Doctor continues his adventures in time and space in his new sixth incarnation, along with his American companion Peri. The Doctor's latest adventures see him crossing wits with the Daleks, Cybermen, the Master and the Rani, among others.

The twenty-second season of Doctor Who aired in 1985 and came at a strange time for the show's fortunes. Peter Davison had departed the previous season as the Fifth Doctor and we'd already experienced a full serial with Colin Baker as the Sixth Doctor, one in which he'd memorably tried to kill his assistant Peri in the throes of post-regenerative madness. Fans were sceptical of the new incarnation and the BBC was suffering a series of renewed complaints about the show being too dark and too violent. The new BBC1 controller, Michael Grade, also hated the show and controversially decided to cancel it after the production of the twenty-second season, sparking massive public outcry (and a charity single so horrible that all record of it needs to be struck from existence). The BBC commuted Doctor Who's death sentence to instead a longer-than-normal hiatus, mandating changes to production and improvements in quality for its return (orders that were, arguably not really followed through on).

This was all too late to impact Season 22 itself though. The show returned to airing on Saturday nights, its spiritual home, with a new format. Instead of most serials consisting of four 25-minute episodes (through, between the credits and recaps, the amount of actual new material in an episode averaged 20-22 minutes), this season consisted mostly of serials of two 45-minute episodes, with one coming in at three. The season was still the same length as almost every season since Jon Pertwee's debut in 1970, but how that length was assigned had changed.

Whether it improved things or not is questionable: script editor Eric Saward was keen, feeling it enabled a longer setup of the plot and characters, with less of a mad rush to get the Doctor involved, but fans seemed to feel that this could mean the Doctor not joining the action until too late in the day. The longer setups were sometimes effective, but also sometimes meant a rushed conclusion instead. There was also the practical consideration that the BBC also asked for 25-minute edits of the episodes for overseas transmission, meaning that a mini-cliffhanger had to occur halfway through every episode anyway, so in some cases the longer episodes just feel like two standard episodes squashed together. Still, an interesting idea and one that would be picked up again by the modern show when it began in 2005.

Things initiate with Attack of the Cybermen. The Cybermen had impressed with their return in force in Season 19's Earthshock and their short appearances in the anniversary special The Five Doctors, so bringing them back again was a no-brainer. John Nathan-Turner was interested in bringing in the topical element of Halley's Comet, whose return in 1986 was being hugely hyped up, and also in doing a story that tied in with Doctor Who's past. Fan consultant Ian Levine was talked to extensively about the ideas for the story, resulting in a decision to bring in elements from The Tenth Planet (the first Cyberman story from Season 4, airing in 1966) and Tomb of the Cybermen (a Season 5 story from 1967). The problem was that in 1985, Doctor Who fans did not have access to on-demand streaming or media releases, and neither story was available on VHS (The Tenth Planet missing its final episode and Tomb of the Cybermen being completely missing until its fortuitous discovery and return to the BBC archive seven years after this story transmitted). Levine also suggested some random references to the very first Doctor Who story, An Unearthly Child, such as a return to the Totter's Lane junkyard. Finally, Saward was keen to reintroduce the character of Lytton from the preceding season's Resurrection of the Daleks.

The result is a story that is belaboured and bowed by the weight of continuity, although it ironically suffers less from this today, when you can actually watch most of the those preceding Cyber-stories on the BBC iPlayer without too much trouble. It's again heavy on action, with lots of exploding Cybermen and fierce laser gun battles, and this can be fun (and certainly a change from the normal problem of Doctor Who monsters being indestructible to normal weapons) but threatens to be monotonous. The story also suffers from a bit too many elements (a common Saward trope) with Halley's Comet, the fixing of the TARDIS chameleon circuit, the Lytton story, the Cryon story, the Cybermen machinations, a failed bank heist and the Doctor and Peri still trying to find their post-regenerative footing all vying for screen time. For all that, the story actually holds together reasonably well and the pacing is certainly very brisk. Production values are reasonable, for once, although the Cyber Controller (reinstated in the story at John Nathan-Turner's insistent, somewhat redundantly) is wasted.

The story also marks the continuation of Nicola Bryant being asked to walk around in ridiculously revealing outfits (her pink leotard is a bit incongruous in the London sewers), culminating in even the Cybermen thinking it's a bit much and insisting she change into something more sensible for their trip to Telos. When Bryant is allowed to actually act as Peri and is given some meaty dialogue or emotions to play, she does very well, but these opportunities are few and far between in the story. The story also fails to capitalise on something it only realises in its closing minutes, that the Doctor has badly misjudged Lytton and failed to realise he is capable of redemption, leading to bitter regret. For all that Saward has a mixed reputation in Who fan circles, he does at least try to make his guest characters more complex, realistic characters. The casting for this story is also superb, with a brilliant turn in particular from Maurice Colbourne as Lytton and Brian Glover as Griffiths, though once again Saward seems inclined to kill characters the second they stop serving a story function, a trope which is starting to verge on the comedic. An interesting story, but a messy one with a lot of unfulfilled potential.

The second story, Vengeance on Varos, is stronger and cleverer. The Doctor arrives on a planet where politicians have to keep their constituents happy not just around the time of elections, but every single day. Instant popularity polls are carried out for every decision and if the elected officials are not up to snuff, they can be punished with pain or even death. The satire verges on the Malcolm Hulkeian (though its actually newcomer-to-the-show Phillip Martin writing), with the secondary characters as well-drawn as any Robert Holmes story. Particularly, utterly magnificent is Nabil Shaban as Sil, the most repulsive villain in Doctor Who history with easily the best prosthetics work. Martin Jarvis is also very strong as the Governor, and Jason Connery provides some rare eye candy for the other side as he is forced to spend half the story in a state of undress. Game of Thrones fans may also spot a young Owen Teale (Alliser Thorne) as a villainous guard.

The story is also notable for its wonderfully modern-feeling metaplot, as much of the adventure is recorded and transmitted to the people of Varos as it unfolds, leading to some superb commentary from the characters watching the story unfold. In a stronger season, the story would perhaps not stand out as much, but arguably it's the strongest or joint-strongest story of the season, so is more notable.

The Mark of the Rani introduces the titular Rani, a renegade Time Lord who, unlike the Master, is not totally evil but instead amoral, interested only in pure research. A superb setup sees the Doctor and Peri arrive in an early 19th Century mining village riven by tensions between the local industrialist and Luddite workers scared of being replaced by machines (oddly topical!), with the Rani (a barnstorming performance by Kate O'Mara) manipulating the situation to her advantage. Unfortunately, the story takes a bit of a nosedive due to the interference of Anthony Ainley's Master, who feels very awkwardly shoehorned into the script. Pip and Jane Baker, not the most popular Doctor Who writers, actually deliver some good work in their debut, the Rani's TARDIS is a very good bit of slightly surreal design (with dinosaur embryos suspended around a central console that arguably puts the Doctor's to shame) and there's both exceptional location filming and some impressive stuntwork. The over-acting and cheesy dialogue for the Master derail (pun intended) what could have been a much stronger piece. Still, it's watchably entertaining and nobody can take over a scene like O'Mara can.

The Two Doctors came from John Nathan-Turner feeling that The Five Doctors was a big hit, so he asked Patrick Troughton and Frazer Hines if they wanted to come back for a further story down the line. The story sees the Second Doctor and Jamie running afoul of a conspiracy between the villainous Androgums and the Sontarans, with the Sixth Doctor and Peri showing up to lend a hand. The story is again enhanced by a wonderful guest cast, led by Troughton and Hines at their best, but with Blake's 7's immortally villainous Jacqueline Pearce threatening to steal every scene she's in. John Stratton, Laurence Payne, James Saxon and Carmen Gomez all deliver great performances in possibly one of Who's strongest-ever guest casts, all with a script by the returning Robert Holmes, unleashing devastatingly witty lines.

All of this is extremely good, but the direction is a bit pedestrian, and the story's length - at three 45-minute episodes this is the longest Doctor Who story to air since Season 16's The Armageddon Factor - sees a fair bit of filler added in. The Sontarans also feel a bit pointless, and the story could have easily taken place without them. The location filming in Seville is beautiful and they clearly want to show off the locations by having characters wander around the city and the surrounding Spanish countryside for a bit longer than is optimal, whilst this probably the most egregious story for using Peri as eye candy, although she is also given a bit more do in the story than most of her instalments, which is a relief. It's also clear that Patrick Troughton is having an absolute whale of time, with formidable comic timing and some of the most outrageously good eyebrow-acting you will ever see. His passing just a couple of years after this story was very sad. It just feels the story is overlong and a bit flat in its direction, otherwise this could have been the season highlight.

Timelash, on the other hand, is clearly the season lowlight. The idea isn't bad, with the Doctor returning to a planet he has visited previously to see it crushed under the heel of the villainous Borad, who likes to punish people by throwing them into the time vortex. There's a bunch of rebels who need to rebel (mostly by running around corridors, in the time-proven manner) and need the Doctor's help to do so, and a fascinating secondary villain performance by Blake's 7 star Paul Darrow, here delivering an over-the-top performance that sort of works (reportedly to get back at Colin Baker for a scene-stealing turn on the third season of Blake's 7 five years earlier). The problem is that the story is thin, the secondary cast is undistinguished, and the gimmick of having a temporary companion who turns out to be a famous person is under-utilised. There's also some appalling effects, bad sets and some flat performances (reportedly the result of Nathan-Turner pulling his stars out of rehearsal to go and do PR in the States) resulting in a story that is, at best, deeply insipid.

The season ends with Revelation of the Daleks, an interesting and offbeat story by Saward. Some of his tropes are present here, but the story is less action-packed and more thoughtful than normal, with a well-drawn secondary cast with some great performances, particularly by Terry Molloy, Eleanor Bron, William Gaunt and Clive Swift. Alexei Sayle and Jenny Tomasin give more acquired performances, interesting but more arguable in their success. It's a bit of an odd story with Davros harvesting the dead to turn into Daleks and various factions in the mortuary of Tranquil Repose feuding with one another. The Doctor and Peri spend more than half the story just getting into the building, leaving little time to formulate plans to defeat Davros, and the Daleks are at their least interesting here, despite the great paintjob for Davros's Imperial Daleks (who will be revisited more formidably in Season 25's Remembrance of the Daleks).

There are some really effective horror moments, as well as black comedy, and Saward even remembers to leave a few characters alive at the end so the Doctor can pretend to have achieved an actual victory. There are some stupid moments, with the episode one cliffhanger (in which Davros engineers a polystyrene statue to fall onto the Doctor to not kill him, just scare him) being one of the most underwhelming and weirdly-contrived in the show's history. Still, Graeme Harper's direction is outstanding, the musical score is superb and the horror vibe is for once effectively melded into a Doctor Who story, with some good location filming and a more chill relationship between the Doctor and Peri being much more welcome.

Season 22 of Doctor Who (***½) is perfectly watchable, if rarely outstanding. Colin Baker improves as the Doctor over the course of the season, and every story bar Timelash has some merit to it. Even Timelash arguably falls into the "so bad it's good" category thanks to the sheer volume of scene-chewing going on by Paul Darrow. Nobody's going to call it the best season of Who ever, but if anything it's probably slightly underrated.

The season is available on DVD and Blu-Ray as well as streaming on BBC iPlayer in the UK and various services overseas.

• 22.1 - 22.2: Attack of the Cybermen (***½)
• 22.3 - 22.4: Vengeance on Varos (****)
• 22.5 - 22.6: The Mark of the Rani (***½)
• 22.7 - 22.9: The Two Doctors (***½)
• 22.10 - 22.11: Timelash (*½)
• 22.12 - 22.13: Revelation of the Daleks (****)

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.

Blogging Roundup: 1 September to 1 November 2025

 

The Wertzone

News

• Doctor Who to return with new special in 2026, ends partnership with Disney
• RUMOUR: One missing Doctor Who episode has been located
• Yellowjackets to end with its fourth season
• Trailer for A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms released
• Star Trek fans finally get the Battle of Wolf 359 they were denied in the 1990s
• New Star Trek video game will let you decide whether to murder Tuvix or not
• Next Star Wars movie gets its first trailer
• Pinnacle Entertainment launches Deadlands: The Dark Ages Kickstarter
• Daniel Abraham provides update on final Kithamar Trilogy novel

Reviews

• The Forest
• Thud! by Terry Pratchett
• Doctor Who: Season 21
• Alien: Earth - Season 1
• Doctor Who: Season 20
• Doctor Who: Season 19
• Titanfall 2 (campaign)
• Doctor Who: Season 18
• Doctor Who: Season 17
• House of the Dragon: Season 2
• Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Definitive Edition
• Wheel World
• Foundation: Season 3
• Going Postal by Terry Pratchett
• Doctor Who: Season 16 - The Key to Time

Atlas of Ice and Fire

• A World Map of Carnival Row

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, pleae consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.

DOCTOR WHO to return with new special in 2026, ends partnership with Disney

The BBC has confirmed that Doctor Who will return in 2026 with a Christmas special to be written by Russell T. Davies, with a further series to follow. The news was announced alongside the widely-expected confirmation that Disney will cease its international coproduction and distribution agreement for the series.

The BBC and Disney joined forces to produce Doctor Who in 2022, with Russell T. Davies returning to helm the show he'd previously run from 2005 to 2010, bringing it to massive levels of international success. The show's popularity had waned during the latter part of the long run of Davies' success Steven Moffat and that of a further showrunner, Chris Chibnall, forcing a rethink of the BBC's approach. The decision was made to partner with Disney to ensure there was one global streaming location for the show, rather than the previous hodgepodge approach.

The initial return of the show, in 2023 with three specials featuring the return of David Tennant as the Doctor to celebrate the franchise's 60th anniversary, was successful, but the subsequent Series 14 (confusingly rebranded as "Season 1" on Disney+) starring Ncuti Gatwa as the Fifteenth Doctor saw a sharp decline in ratings, despite critical praise for several episodes. Series 15 repeated this pattern. Both seasons also saw sharp criticism for their messy and incoherent finales, and a greater reliance on magic and strange storytelling decisions rather than science. Gatwa also made a late choice to leave the series, resulting in extensive reshoots, including his somewhat bizarre regeneration into what appeared to be a new incarnation played by Billie Piper, who had previously played the Doctor's companion Rose from 2005 to 2007 and a Time Lord sentient weapon, the Moment, in the 50th Anniversary Special in 2013. Both the BBC and Russell have been vague on if Piper is indeed playing the Sixteenth Doctor or not. 

Disney also went some seismic changes during this time period, with a change in chief executive and a decision to refocus on films and entertainment rather than producing a vast number of streaming shows (a strategy also blamed for the decline in popularity of both Star Wars and the Marvel Cinematic Universe). Doctor Who's performance on Disney+ also appears to have been moderate at best, though given Disney's rumoured budget for the show (reportedly only $3.5 million per episode, matched by the BBC, a far cry from the $30 million+ spent per episode on some of its premium franchise shows), the investment was also not steep.

Other criticisms include that Disney was unable to secure the global repeat rights for the existing series, which remain scattered across multiple streaming platforms and physical media options worldwide. There are also rumours of creative clashes, with Disney and some BBC executives reportedly keen to chase those Doctor Who fans who watched Davies' first era as little kids and teenagers and are now in their twenties and thirties, whilst Davies wanted to chase the modern family audience, something that does not necessarily exist in the same way it did in 2005 (with little kids now more likely to be watching YouTube videos or playing Roblox).

The BBC announcement confirms that Doctor Who will return with a new Christmas Special to air in December 2026, and discussions about Series 16 have now begun. The existing sets remain intact at Bad Wolf Studios in Wales. The departure of Disney will certainly result in a reduced budget, though something on the order of $3-4 million per episode would still be quite high by British standards. Despite the low initial broadcast ratings for the previous series, the show continues to perform surprisingly well in physical media sales (which are otherwise drying up) and legacy streaming. The BBC also has limited other options for well-known, popular franchises with built-in audiences.

The Forest

Eric LeBlanc, a survival expert, is travelling with his son Timmy when their aircraft crash lands in a remote, coastal region of Canada. The last thing Eric remembers is a strange man, covered in red paint, removing the unconscious Timmy from the wreck. By the time Eric recovers, all of the other passengers still on the plane are dead, but many are missing. Finding himself alone in a hostile, remote wilderness with no way of contacting the outside world, Eric has to survive, learn the lay of the land and whom his enemies are, and find a way of rescuing his son.

The Forest is a first-person survival horror game, originally released in 2018 by Endnight Games after a lengthy stint in Early Access. Like most of its genre, the game has the player up against the odds, having to find food, water and shelter whilst surviving in a hostile wilderness. The Forest adds a narrative element, with the game requiring you to also track down your missing son and discover the secrets of the area the game takes place in, known as the Peninsula.

The game recalls, in a somewhat drier manner, the king of survival games, Subnautica. Like that game, it opens with a horrendous crash, leaving you alone in a hostile wilderness with zero idea of what to do. The game holds your hand even less than Subnautica's still fairly harsh opening, with your sole clues coming from a survival guide book, in which your character scribbles notes whilst also consulting it for information on how to build a fire, a log cabin, traps for animals etc.

The Forest can lure you into a false sense of security, by allowing you to build a formidable redoubt right next to your crash site early on, and you quickly fall into the loop of working out what you want to build per day and executing those tasks, whether it's resource-gathering, going hunting or fish, or exploring the landmass further. The landmass feels massive but is relatively compact, allowing you to traverse most of the map and back again in a single in-game day. However, The Forest is unusual in that its map is not static and will react to player activity. The Peninsula's tribal inhabitants are at first very wary of your presence and will not engage, but as you expand your operations, chop down trees, and start killing them, they will quickly mount a more hostile response. If they locate your base, they will start sending substantial forces against it, unless you vacate the area. In this way the game tries to allow you to build up a base of operations, but it also wants to encourage you to take a more active exploratory role on the map. Setting up multiple bases and moving between them, abandoning one area as the heat builds up only to return later, is a fine stratagem. There are also areas of the map much more remote from native activity, allowing you to build a more substantial fortress away from interference, at least for a while.

There are shades of Fallout 4 here, with the game throwing so much at you that it's easy to forget that you are on a quest to find your son (several achievements even riff on this, with the reward for building your first gazebo being a dry question, "Who's Timmy?"). The only clue the game can give you at the start is if you come close to a cave opening, with the game prompting you to explore them. Given that each cave tends to be crawling with...weird things, this can be a daunting process. Once you have worked out how to build some weapons (the bow is a lifesaver), don some makeshift armour and create light sources, the caves can gradually be tamed. The caves contain clues to your son's whereabouts and information on the other missing crewmembers, as well as starting to explain what the hell's been going on in this place to result in hordes of hungry cannibals and the creation of strange, barely-human creatures.

The Forest's narrative is light, lighter than even Subnautica's mostly-hands-off story and certainly much more than Grounded. The game's main goal here is atmosphere. The game builds an atmosphere of foreboding dread and horror, with brilliant visuals (these forests are among the best ever seen in a video game, even now) and absolutely fantastic sound effects: the whistling of the wind through the trees, the far-off cries of things in the woods which may or may not be aware of your proximity, waves crashing against rocks. The caves are foreboding, dark and disturbing, even more off-putting than the first time in Subnautica when you realise you have to drop really deep into the ocean to uncover the next clue on your road home.

Resource management is key, as in most survival games, and you have to proceed with caution as your character is quite squishy and fragile. You have to keep topped up with food and water, and finding a source of fresh water can be a headache all by itself. In a nice touch, you don't start with a map or compass, but can locate them later in the game. You fill in the map by physically travelling around locations, and gradually learn the lay of the land. This is a great touch, overcoming one weakness of those survival games which either give you a map straight up and make the game too easy, or don't give you a map at all, even when it's extremely illogical to do so.

The Forest is also a game that respects your time. All you really need to do is establish a small shelter with access to food (game is plentiful across the Peninsula) and water. You don't actually need to build a massive multi-level fortress surrounded by wooded walls which in turn are surrounded by rock walls with massive traps laid in front of them, with catapults located in your base to bombard attacking enemies. I never built a single zipline in my entire playthrough. The fact that the game allows you to do that is quite impressive. The game even allows you to play co-op with up to seven friends on PC (four players total on PlayStation), where the massive increase in manpower allows you to build some absolutely bonkers structures pretty quickly, although possibly at the expense of suspense and tension. An eight-man rumble squad with armour, bows and hatchets is going to tear through most enemies in the game very easily. Still, it's fun, and the game can also be played in VR.

If you take a single-minded, story-based approach, you can put The Forest away in well under 20 hours (though you may also end up wondering if the game should have been called The Caves, as you'll spend almost as much of your playthrough below ground as above), with the story also having multiple endings, though only one is canonical, and leads into the sequel, Sons of the Forest. If you decide to go mad building crazy stuff and ransacking the Peninsula for supplies, you can easily lose hundreds of hours on side-projects. The amount of freedom in the game is impressive.

On the negative side, although the environmental graphics are mostly excellent, creature and human character models are decidedly unimpressive. The game can definitely be obtuse at the start, and it can take a while to crack the proper gameplay loop of what you should be doing. Combat can be a bit janky, and though the AI of the enemy in how it patrols the Peninsula and hunts you down is excellent, enemy AI in direct combat situations is risible, with it being rather easy to get enemies stuck on geometry. Minor bugs can still be found, though given the game's openness and adaptability, some may have been unavoidable.

The Forest (****) is outstanding in its tone and atmosphere, the freedom for you to do what you want, and its light-touch horror storyline which still ends up being quite disturbing. This is a game which will stick you for a while, even if you don't spend that long in finishing it off. It's not perfect, but the jankiness resulting from its modest budget can add to the charm.

The Forest is available on PC and PlayStation 4 (and, via compatibility mode, PS5). A sequel, Sons of the Forest, was released last year.

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Thud! by Terry Pratchett

The anniversary of the Battle of Koom Valley is looming. Everyone knows this was the great battle where the dwarfs ambushed the trolls. Or the trolls ambushed the dwarfs. Tensions between Ankh-Morpork's dwarf and troll communities are rising, so this would be the worst time for a prominent city dwarf to be murdered by a troll. When this duly happens, it gives Commander Sam Vimes of the City Watch a major headache he could do without. Civil war, rioting, protests, urban unrest and delicate political intrigue are distractions for Vimes from his greatest obligation: getting home every night to read his infant son from that tome of great wisdom, Where's My Cow?

Urban centres divided by racial (well, species-al) tensions; demonstrations that some call protests, others riots; cynical demagogues riding the coattails of popularism into positions of power. If there's one thing that Terry Pratchett is, it's timely and topical. Although in this case, Thud! (the thirty-fourth novel in the Discworld sequence) was published twenty years ago, and Sir Terry himself passed away nine years ago. That just goes to show how formidable a student of history and human nature Pratchett was, and how depressingly cyclical human nature is. A joyous escape from the modern world, this book very much is not.

What it is is a formidably well-written, brilliantly-characterised piece of fantasy fiction. By this point Ankh-Morpork's claim to be the greatest fantasy city of all time, convincing in its depiction and detail from top to bottom, had been well-established and Pratchett furthers that here as he surveys the tensions in the city from the lowest rungs of the ladder (via Brick, a confused troll) to the highest (the Patrician himself). I often feel that Pratchett was a writer divided between cynicism and optimism, and that internal war can be felt in these pages. Pratchett has a city divided by class, species, income and politics, but where media is (more or less) responsible and the police mostly free from corruption (though not for want of some trying), although it is amusing that the plot partially resolves because of a copper helping himself to some loot he shouldn't have been touching.

It's also a brilliant bit of worldbuilding, as Pratchett delves into the history, legends and culture of the dwarfs ("dwarves" being an affront to Pratchett's grammatical perfectionism, despite his unabashed love of Tolkien, but "elfs" is an unacceptable step too far for him), with a bit of troll history thrown in as well. In fantasy settings where the traditional species are depicted, dwarfs usually get the short end of the stick (so to speak) but Pratchett fleshes them out here with details of their spirituality, faith, politics and culture.

There are laughs, such as Colon and Nobby's unexpectedly effective side-investigation of an art theft (a bit like asking the Keystone Kops to solve the Great Train Robbery) and Vimes' increasingly convoluted trips home to read to his son before bedtime, but these are held in check by Pratchett's anger at the stupidity of the world. Pratchett motivated by anger can result in terrific art, such as in Small Gods and Night Watch, and though Thud! doesn't quite rise to those heights, it's not a million miles away.

Despite being on the longer side for a Discworld book (at 430 pages, nothing too outrageous), the plot unfolds with verve, Pratchett again demonstrating a mastery of pacing. The resolution gets a bit too metaphysical at times (not Pratchett's strongest suit) but the epilogue section which goes into more detail than normal about the fallout from the latest shenanigans is quite amusing, as well as setting up some ideas which are about to carry the Discworld setting across the technological divide into proto-steampunk. Thirty-four volumes in and Pratchett is still freshening things up and changing gears to try new ideas. It's quite impressive.

Thud! (****½) is one of the strongest Discworld novels, exploring its world and characters with skill and depth (literally, in this case). Remarkably, this is also a Discworld novel with its own dedicated spin-off children's book, Where's My Cow? (not part of the core series, but an interesting curiosity).

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Doctor Who: Season 21

The Doctor's adventures continue, but are getting bloodier and darker, to the consternation of companions old and new. As the Fifth Doctor's time draws to an end, his regeneration sparks the arrival of a more assertive Doctor...and a more dangerously unpredictable one.

The twentieth anniversary year of Doctor Who had been a great success, but with perhaps a slight pall over proceedings: after just two years in the role, Peter Davison announced he would be departing after his third season. Producer John Nathan-Turner had hoped he would last at least a year or two longer, but Davison had followed the advice from Second Doctor Patrick Troughton, that three seasons in the role was optimal.

For Season 21, the production team had to introduce a new Doctor, a new companion and shake up the show's atmosphere and tone. By this time the positive viewer reception to (very relatively) high-octane, high-action stories like Earthshock and The Five Doctors had led script editor Eric Saward that this approach could be explored in more stories, despite the production difficulties and costs incurred.

First up was Warriors of the Deep, a political-action thriller set on an underwater seabase in the year 2084. The Silurians and Sea Devils return for the first time since the early Jon Pertwee era, on a mission to capture the base and use its proton missiles to trigger a global holocaust, which the Silurians and Sea Devils stand to benefit from. It's a strong premise, especially with some nice political intrigue on the base between representatives from the two different power blocs on the verge of war.

Unfortunately the story was stymied by a formidable foe: Margaret Thatcher. The then-British Prime Minister called a surprise general election just as the show went into production, which meant that BBC News needed the extra studio space for its election coverage. Warriors had to wrap two weeks ahead of schedule, meaning that shooting and rehearsal time was slashed, not to mention set construction time, costume fittings and prosthetics.

Knowing that may make the resulting show more forgivable. If anything, the okay model work, excellent Silurian prosthetics, okay Sea Devil ones and funky futuristic makeup and sets might impress more knowing they were thrown together in five seconds flat. But even they can't help the Myrka, a terrible creature design effectively realised as a pantomime horse, nor the poorly-choreographed action sequences where nobody knows how use cover or flanking. The story is also decidedly gratuitous in a way the Holmes/Hinchcliffe era flirted with but never went all-in on, with several characters killed just for the sake of it rather than because it makes sense. The Fifth Doctor has some good moments, as does Turlough when he is drafted as a soldier, but in the face of production limitations, the story never really has a chance to come together. It also destroys credibility that the Doctor and his companions would be accepted into helping the seabase crew so easily given the political and military tension. There are some good moments - the Silurians are generally used effectively - but the story is less than the sum of its parts.

The Awakening starts well with a very intriguing mystery, with a contemporary English village where the people are stuck re-enacting battles from the past with unusual vigour. There are some very strong guest performances, and the realisation of the villainous Malus behind a wall is one of Doctor Who's more striking cliffhangers (and the vfx for realising the creature are impressive by 1984 standards). Unfortunately, the story is slight, the resolution slightly pat and the latter part of the story feels like a direct retread of The Dæmons. But it's enjoyable enough and quite short.

Frontios starts off with the TARDIS arriving on a planet in the remote future, where the colonists might be the last humans alive in the entire universe, a concept so good that Modern Doctor Who has used it twice (in Utopia and Ascension of the Cybermen). The setup, in which the TARDIS is apparently destroyed, has also fuelled more than one season of Moffat-era Doctor Who. As a Chris Bidmead story, there are some hard SF (or at least harder-SF-than-normal) ideas in play, and the Tractators are a fabulous creature design, and mostly executed well on-screen. The guest cast is very good, with an early role for future British comedy and drama stalwart Jeff Rawle, as well as a great guest role for Lesley Dunlop, whose character Norma strikes up a formidable team with Turlough. The story falters in its home stretch, though, and may have been stronger as a three-parter. The ease with which the TARDIS subplot is resolved is a bit credibility-straining, to say the least.

Resurrection of the Daleks is the big, crowd-pleasing return of the Daleks in force for the first time since Season 17's underwhelming Destiny of the Daleks. The story is pleasingly epic, with action unfolding simultaneously in the then-contemporary London Docklands and a space station in the distant future, where the Daleks are trying to liberate their creator Davros and gain his help in defeating a Movellan virus that has devastated the species. Davros, still sore over being betrayed by his creations, is willing to help, but is also playing his own game to ensure the Daleks are totally loyal to only him. The result is a complex web of competing aims, complicated by the intervention of British soldiers, the crew of the prison and a squad of mercenaries employed by the Daleks and led by the redoubtable Lytton, who quickly realises he is unlikely to survive to get his payment.

The story has a lot going on and a large cast, although given Saward's tendency to murder characters the second they cease to be of use, the size of the cast drops quickly. Maurice Colbourne arguably steals the show as the mercenary Lytton, though Saward seems a bit too enamoured of him and keeps him around longer than he should have. Leslie Grantham is effective as Davros' reluctant minion Kiston, and it's amusing to think it was his performance in this story led to his casting as "Dirty" Den on EastEnders a few months after this story aired. A cast-against-type Rodney Bewes does his best as Stien, and is excellent in some scenes and terrible in others, though generally only when the dialogue is not up to the task ("I can't stand the confusion in my mind!"). The real plaudits go to Terry Molloy as Davros. With Michael Wisher from Genesis of the Daleks not available and David Gooderson having impressed nobody in Destiny, Molloy does a bang-up job of properly succeeding Wisher with aplomb.

Again, Turlough gets some good stuff to do, but Tegan spends a large chunk of it out of commission with concussion before leaving at the end. They try to build up her departure by showing her revulsion at the growing number of fatalities, but it's a still a bit undersold. It's also annoying to learn that Janet Fielding would have stayed longer, but Nathan-Turner didn't want a companion to be around longer than her Doctor, which is a frankly bizarre rule. Resurrection is bleak, bordering on the nihilistic, but the plotting is clever, and the continuation of the very slowly-unfolded "Davros Saga" is satisfying (fortunately, we won't have to wait as long for the next two parts).

Also, a minor point of historical trivia, but Resurrection of the Daleks is the first Doctor Who story to air as 45-minute episodes, due to the need to condense the viewing schedule to make room for coverage of the 1984 Olympics. This format, of course, would be used again the following season before becoming standard in Modern Who.

Planet of Fire is a bit of an odd story. It writes out Turlough, but John Nathan-Turner and Eric Saward seemingly realised at the last minute that despite introducing Turlough in Season 20 in a blaze of mystery, they'd proceeded to do nothing much with him or his enigmatic backstory. As a result we get a full origin story and background download for Turlough, at the same time as also having to write out the robot companion Kamelion (introduced only in the previous season's The King's Demons and promptly never mentioned again) and write in new companion Peri, played by Nicola Bryant. Bryant, a solid actress, has little to work with here as Peri's only characterisation note is "American." There are hints of a strange relationship between her and her stepfather which are never explored further, and Bryant has little to do but walk around in a bikini in Doctor Who's most blatant nod towards audience-boosting eye candy yet.

The story does use a lot of location filming in Lanzarote, which is very effective as both the actual Lanzarote and the alien planet Sarn. The sweeping location vistas are more impressive than almost anything that we've seen before in the series. The story also makes surprisingly good use of Peter Wyngarde, a British actor normally noted for his flamboyance and screen-chewing tendencies in shows like Department S and Jason King. Wyngarde adopts a more subdued tone here, inspired by Peter O'Toole in Lawrence of Arabia, and his performance is impressive, probably more than the story deserves.

As it stands the good worldbuilding, reasonable pacing and stunning location shooting is let down the Crushingly Inevitable Return of the Master, though it does gain a point for the legendary scene where Peri almost kills him with her shoe, which would have automatically qualified for the most ignoble death of a recurring villain in the whole show.

Not sure how to follow that up, Nathan-Turner and Saward decided to call in the big guns: Robert Holmes. The legendary Doctor Who writer had not written for the show since his last turn on The Power of Kroll in Season 16, which he'd felt had been underwhelming due to the demand of him to include a monster in the story. Lines of communication had reopened when he was courted to write the 20th Anniversary Special, although that job had eventually gone to Terrance Dicks. Holmes agreed to write a story for the following season instead, and after consulting with Nathan-Turner and Saward it was also decided this story would be the swansong of Peter Davison's Doctor.

The result is a masterpiece, absolute Peak Doctor Who. The Caves of Androzani comfortably goes toe-to-toe with the likes of Genesis of the Daleks, City of Death and The Ark in Space as a candidate for the greatest Doctor Who story of all time. It's the synergy between Holmes' relentless script and the absolute stellar direction of Graeme Harper (whom, many years later would return to work on the modern show) which catches fire and doesn't let up. The guest cast is outrageously good, from Christopher Gable's genuinely disturbing turn as Sharaz Jek to John Normington's charismatically evil Morgus to Martin Cochrane's turn as the slightly bumbling general Chellack. British drama stalwart Robert Glenister is also outstanding in two roles, and Barbara Kinghorn does a lot with a tiny part.

The story has excellent production values, almost rivalling Planet of Fire despite the much less glamorous location filming, a phenomenal musical score and some unique conceits, like Morgus breaking the fourth wall to directly address the audience with the reasoning for his actions. The story also arguably has two of the show's best cliffhangers, and easily Davison's best performance as the Doctor as the sheer magnitude of what he has to do to save Peri and himself fully hits him and then drives him off the edge of reason, culminating in him gleefully crashes a starship at high speed into a planet with only limited concern for the other passengers (who are, to be fair, all arseholes). The regeneration scene is also superb, with the Fifth Doctor going out in the diametric opposite way to the Fourth, who sacrificed himself to save the entire universe. The Fifth instead sacrifices himself in the dark, for just one life, someone he's only just met. We finally get to see the Fifth Doctor that could have been instead of the slightly more fuzzily-defined one we ended up with: Peter Davison was a superb actor but only occasionally had scripts that rose to the occasion.

Because John Nathan-Turner was a bit of a lunatic, he decided to give the Sixth Doctor a full story to bed in before ending the season, resulting in the notorious The Twin Dilemma. More than one Doctor Who Magazine, online or fanzine poll had rated The Caves of Androzani as the greatest Doctor Who story of all time (new and old) and The Twin Dilemma as the very worst (new and old), which lowers expectations so much that it's actually pretty impossible for the story to meet them.

The Twin Dilemma is indeed chronically underwhelming. The main plot, about twin genius teenage mathematicians (think of Wesley Crusher, but two of them, written to be even more annoying, and played by far worse non-actors) kidnapped by a giant slug to blow up a solar system, is bonkers enough, but kind of entertaining. The guest cast is okay, though the elderly Maurice Denham might be a bit too overstretched by the requirements of the role. Most of the other actors are fine, and Doctor Who trivia fans might note the casting here of a very young Kevin McNally as heroic space pilot Hugo Lang; McNally would return to the franchise thirty-seven years later as the fan-favourite Professor Jericho in Flux.

Where the story hits a stumbling block (made of razor blades) is its characterisation of the Sixth Doctor. The Doctor is shown to be completely unstable after his regeneration, almost throttles Peri, cowers behind her to avoid capture, and spends a large amount of the story uninterested in what's going on because he wants to become a hermit. Colin Baker does his best - with gusto! - to meet the demands of the script, but you can't help but feel this was all just a really bad idea. Making the audience hate the Doctor is the dumbest possible thing you can do in Doctor Who, and then leaving fans on the between-season break not sure if they want to see this Doctor continue could have been fatal to the programme (some might argue it almost was). The main beneficiary of these scenes is Nicola Bryant, who plays Peri's confusion, revulsion but ultimate strength as she angrily defies the crazed Doctor and then the alien enemies of the story in a rather impressive way. But although the story is weak, it's probably not as poor as The Horns of Nimon, or a fair bit of Seasons 23 and 24.

Season 21 of Doctor Who (***½) is all over the place. It has two of the weakest stories in the show's run for some years (Warriors of the Deep and The Twin Dilemma) and one of the all-time absolute classics (The Caves of Androzani) as well as a solid Dalek story (Resurrection of the Daleks) and possibly three of the most forgettable and least-discussed Doctor Who stories of the entire franchise (The Awakening, Frontios and Planet of Fire). But it's never fundamentally unwatchable (though the opening episode of The Twin Dilemma comes close), Davison has his best-ever moments as the Doctor, and it's quite remarkable that the season dedicates most of its length to sequentially writing out regular characters and/or writing them in, resulting in a systematic replacement of the entire show's cast from start to finish, something most other shows simply can't do. Ultimately, a watchable and fascinating - if not always for the right reasons - season.

The season is available on DVD as well as streaming on BBC iPlayer in the UK and various services overseas. The season is scheduled for release on Blu-Ray in 2026.

21.1 - 21.4: Warriors of the Deep (**½)

21.5 - 21.6: The Awakening (***)

21.7 - 21.10: Frontios (***½)

21.11 - 21.12: Resurrection of the Daleks (****) (2x 45-minute episodes)

21.13 - 21.16: Planet of Fire (***)

21.17 - 21.20: The Caves of Androzani (*****)

21.21 - 21.24: The Twin Dilemma (**½)

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.