Where to Start with Classic Doctor Who?

Okay, so you've watched some Modern Doctor Who. You've sampled some Tennant, knocked back some Smith and played air guitar to Capaldi. You may have braved the Chibnall years and pondered the wisdom of bringing back Russell T. Davies. You - may whatever gods you believe in help you - want to watch yet more Doctor Who, and the classic show, all 26 gloriously low-fi seasons of it, awaits. But is this a good idea? And if so, where to start watching it? Should you dive into the very first episode from 1963 and hope for the best, or try a curated run of well-regarded stories? These are all valid questions.

Before starting we should note a point of order: Classic Doctor Who uses the terminology "Season" to refer to each of its, well, seasons. Modern Doctor Who uses the terminology "Series," apart from the most recent two batches of episodes, which Russell T. Davies and Disney+ have tried to call "Season 1" and "Season 2" to maximise the vexation of Doctor Who fans and the confusion of new viewers. Fortunately, everyone just calls them "Series 14" and "Series 15," as is right and proper. You can also call them "Season 40" and "Season 41" to really maximise your street cred, or something.

The Daleks appear in a surprisingly modest 16 stories out of 157 in Classic Who's run.

Classic Doctor Who by the Terrifying Numbers

Let's outline the magnitude of the task. Classic Doctor Who ran for 26 consecutive seasons starting in 1963 and ending in 1989, with a single spin-off TV movie airing in 1996. A mind-boggling 696 episodes aired in the Classic Who period (including the TV movie), although a further story, the 6-part Shada, started filming and was abandoned due to a strike. The story has since been completed with animation and audio tracks, taking the total up to 702 episodes. 

If that sounds like "a lot," and you're nervously looking for the exit, you can take some comfort in that almost all of these episodes are only around 25 minutes long, or less than half the length of a modern episode. The exceptions are the 1983 anniversary special The Five Doctors, which along with the 1996 TV special aired as 90-minute TV movies. One story in Season 21 aired as two 45-minute episodes, and all 13 episodes of Season 22 aired as 45-minute instalments. Straightening all that out, Classic Doctor Who would therefore (roughly) equal 362 modern episodes of the show. In comparison, 196 episodes of Modern Doctor Who (including the Christmas/New Years specials) have aired since 2005, so Classic Who clearly still has a lot more material to watch.

However! Doctor Who infamously has a slight problem in that many episodes from the earliest era of the show's history have been "lost." The master tapes were wiped, junked or literally burned. Fortunately, Doctor Who fans having insane tenacity, copies of many of the "lost" episodes were recovered, usually from overseas broadcasters. As a result, "only" 97 episodes of the show are still missing, although this is still one-in-seven of the original episodes. All of the missing episodes are from the first six seasons of the show, exclusively from the black-and-white era and only afflicting the first two Doctors, namely William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton. As a result, that reduces the number of surviving episodes to 605, roughly equalling 314 modern episodes. But! Several of the missing episodes have been recreated in animation and all of the rest by combinations of audio tracks (all of the missing episodes survive in audio, thankfully) and photographs. How watchable you find these are by modern standards will vary tremendously.

The Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton) with his final companions, computer scientist Zoe Heriot (Wendy Padbury) and highland warrior Jamie McCrimmon (Frazer Hines)

Classic Doctor Who's Format

OG Who uses a different format to the modern show. The modern show mostly airs as discrete, stand-alone episodes where the primary plot is resolved in short order. The show deviates from that on occasion with two-parters or, in the case of the Flux season (Series 13), a six-parter. Each modern series (apart from Series 11) also has an "arc" or "metaplot," usually a series-spanning storyline which is referenced or pops up briefly even in unrelated episodes before being resolved in the series finale.

Classic Doctor Who does not typically use this format. Arguably only four of the twenty-six seasons (Seasons 8, 12, 16 and 23, for those counting) use any kind of metaplot. However, all of the seasons use the format of being broken up into several serials or stories, which each consisting of a number of episodes. There are 157 serials in Classic Who (including the TV movie), which immediately sounds a lot more palatable than the individual number of episodes. Four-parters - equal to a modern two-parter - are by far the most common format, accounting for well over half of the total number of stories. Six-parters are the next most common format, but every permutation from one to eight episodes is seen at one time or another. There are also single ten and twelve-part stories. Typically, stories and seasons are longer at the start of Classic Who's run and much shorter towards the end.

This has a mixed outcome: on the one hand, stories are generally longer and sometimes hugely longer than modern stories. This can sometimes mean much better pacing than the modern show (which has a tendency to gloss over plot and character beats in a mad rush to tell a story in a bespoke setting with a bespoke cast in under 50 minutes). More than half of the Classic stories are the equivalent of watching two episodes of the modern show in a modest evening mini-binge, so it's generally not that bad.

We should note that first 253 episodes of the series (well, the 156 surviving episodes from that era), making up the first six seasons and first two Doctors, are in black-and-white. For many people, this will be a total deal-breaker, whilst others won't have a problem with that at all. All episodes from the first episode of Season 7 onwards are in colour.

Doctor Who was also almost entirely shot on videotape, with only some location shooting done on film. This makes it very hard to create a consistent HD-quality image for these episodes, although the current Blu-Ray releases are trying some upscaling techniques of varying quality. Apart from the 1996 TV movie, only one story, Spearhead from Space from 1970/Season 7, was shot 100% on film and is thus the only Classic story completely available in HD. Again, this may be a complete dealbreaker for some, others won't care very much.

Fans of collectors' edition Blu-Ray and DVDs are well-catered for

Availability

In the UK, almost the entire Classic run (barring a few stories with copyright issues) is available via the BBC iPlayer service. In much of the rest of the world, the BritBox streaming service hosts the entire run (or almost) of the show.

The entire series is available on DVD, with varying solutions for the missing episodes (animation, audio files/photograph recreations).

The Classic run of the show is currently being released on Blu-Ray with a massive wealth of extra features, and unique HD upscales of the episodes. As of June 2025, Seasons 2, 7-10, 12, 14-15, 17-20 and 22-26 are available, with the remainder to follow. The BBC is holding off on most of the black-and-white/missing episodes seasons, hoping for more episode recoveries or reconstructions to be completed before they get there.

For maximum commitment, you can also read novelisations of virtually every single Classic Who story.

Enough! To answer the question, then, how to watch Classic Who? What's the best approach?

Teachers Barbara Wright (Jacqueline Hill) and Ian Chesterton (William Russell) are bemused to learn that their student Susan (Carole Ann Ford) apparently lives with her grandfather in a police box in a junkyard, surely a safeguarding issue if there ever was one?

Option 1: Start from the Very Beginning

You are fearless and indomitable. You want to experience the whole thing as the BBC intended. You have no fear of three-hour black-and-white stories with some minor-but-still-questionable 1960s stereotyping and sets made of polystyrene. You will watch a black-and-white animated reconstruction of a missing episode without a second's pause. Your imagination is unbound. Your constitution is strong.

Start with Season 1, Episode 1, An Unearthly Child, the episode that aired the day after President Kennedy was shot, and godspeed. And yes, the Doctor is kind of an arsehole in his first couple of stories. He improves.

The Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee) finds himself stuck on Earth, and has to enlist the help of his old friend Brigadier Alastair Lethbridge-Stewart (Nicholas Courtney) and Dr. Elizabeth Shaw (Caroline John) to try to repair the TARDIS. Fortunately for Earth, the planet suffers a spate of alien invasions over the next few years.

Option 2: Start from Season 7 (or the end of Season 6)

Starting from Season 7 is the preferred option for many viewers and re-watchers, for a number of very strong reasons. Season 7 is the first season that completely exists, so there is no need to worry about missing episodes from this point forwards, and it's also the first season shot and released in colour. It's also - madly - the only time in Classic Doctor Who (barring the TV movie) that they introduce a new Doctor and a new companion simultaneously (in contrast Modern Who has done this four times and counting). This season also sees a reset of the basic premise, with the Doctor exiled to Earth by the Time Lords and joining forces with the UNIT organisation under Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart to combat alien threats to Earth.

It also helps that Season 7 is a pretty strong season, with at least two of its four stories being acknowledged classics (Spearhead from Space and Inferno), one on the bubble (The Silurians), and the weakest story (Ambassadors of Death) still being a pretty fun, knockabout story with plenty of unnecessary but surprisingly solid action sequences. As a bonus, Spearhead from Space is the only story 100% shot on film, and hence the only Classic story 100% upgraded to HD quality, meaning you start with a great-looking story. On the negative side, the season can feel a bit of a marathon, with Spearhead's focused four episodes succeeded by three seven-part stories in rapid succession. They're still very good stories, but they can chug on a bit.

Season 7 also opens the Third Doctor era, which sees the introduction of the Autons, Silurians, Sea Devils, Sontarans, the Master (providing an able foil to the Doctor) and Omega, and impressive comeback stories for the Daleks and Ice Warriors. It also has the first multi-Doctor story. Fans of Modern Who will quickly feel at home with how many concepts they already know about. Jon Pertwee is a very winning, charismatic Doctor, and Katy Manning as Jo Grant and, of course, Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith are two of the all-time iconic Who companions (Caroline John as Liz Shaw tends to get forgotten a bit, but she is also very good). Roger Delgado as the Master is also outrageously good, and Nicholas Courtney is solid gold as the Brigadier. The quality of the era is also generally quite solid, with multiple classic stories (Spearhead, Inferno and Day of the Daleks immediately come to mind), a whole ton of fun-but-dumb stories, and almost no total misses, though there's perhaps a few too many stories about insanely arrogant bureaucrats, and the script for Invasion of the Dinosaurs is writing cheques the show's visual effects department can't even start to cash.

The main downside here is effectively writing off the black-and-white era until (a lot) later on, which feels a bit of cheat. Some fans vary the "start with Season 7" approach by actually starting one story earlier, with the Second Doctor's swansong The War Games. This is a great story, with good pacing despite its formidable length (ten episodes) and the final episode, where the Doctor is finally caught by the Time Lords and put on trial for interfering in the affairs of other planets, is terrific. Patrick Troughton also makes for an outstanding Doctor. The story was also recently reissued in a colourised, edited format, which is watchable, although I feel it suffers a little from not showing the full scale of the aliens' plans across their different space/time zones.

If you want to watch most of Classic Who in the most approachable way, this is probably the way to go.

If in doubt, ask Doctor Who fans. And no, you can't just watch Blink again. I mean, unless you really want to.

Option 3: Go with a Curated Fan List

An alternative approach is to take advantage of Classic Who's relaxed (and sometimes non-existent) attitude to continuity by sampling a "best of" list. There are multiple variants of these lists, with some fan using the best-rated IMDB list, or others a list of the best single story for each Doctor. These give you a wide-field sample of every Doctor and every era of the show's existence.

The IMDB List

This is simply a list of the ten highest-rated, complete Classic Who stories on IMDB. It is, generally, a credible selection.

1. Genesis of the Daleks (Season 12, 1975, Fourth Doctor)
2. The War Games (Season 6, 1969, Second Doctor)
3. City of Death (Season 17, 1979, Fourth Doctor)
4. The Caves of Androzani (Season 21, 1984, Fifth Doctor)
5. The Talons of Weng-Chiang (Season 14, 1977, Fourth Doctor)
6. The Seeds of Doom (Season 13, 1976, Fourth Doctor)
7. Earthshock (Season 19, 1982, Fifth Doctor)
8. Remembrance of the Daleks (Season 25, 1988, Seventh Doctor)
9. Pyramids of Mars (Season 13, 1975, Fourth Doctor)
10. Inferno (Season 7, 1970, Third Doctor)

The main issue with the list is that it is very Fourth Doctor-heavy, but a lot of people would consider the Fourth Doctor their favourite, with the highest number of classic stories, so that might just be the way it goes.

The Wertzone List

This list was assembled in 2011 (and tweaked in 2018) by a critic of impeccable and handsome character, and is meant to provide a broad sample of the Classic series. The order is order of transmission, rather than quality. The last two entries * are not there are as indication of overall quality, but as the best and only examples of the Sixth and Eighth Doctors (whose runs are otherwise too short and too undercooked to have many classic stories), allowing a new viewer to get a better sample of the whole field. 

1. An Unearthly Child (episode 1 only, 1963, Season 1, First Doctor)
2. The Dalek Invasion of Earth (1964, Season 2, First Doctor)
3. The War Games (1969, Season 6, Second Doctor)
4. Day of the Daleks (1972, Season 9, Third Doctor)
5. The Sea Devils (1972, Season 9, Third Doctor)
6. The Ark in Space (1975, Season 12, Fourth Doctor)
7. Genesis of the Daleks (1975, Season 12, Fourth Doctor)
8. City of Death (1979, Season 17, Fourth Doctor)
9. The Caves of Androzani (1984, Season 21, Fifth Doctor)
10. Remembrance of the Daleks (1988, Season 25, Seventh Doctor)
11. Vengeance on Varos (1985, Season 22, Sixth Doctor)*
12. The TV Movie (1996, Eighth Doctor)*

One thing that I think a lot of fans can agree on is that if you do have watch one Classic Who story, Genesis of the Daleks is a great choice for the Daleks (and horror), and City of Death is a good one for a more comedic, modern-feeling story. And if you find yourselves in a hurry and don't have time to watch The Twin Dilemma or The Horns of Nimon, that's probably just fine.

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

Written on the Dark by Guy Gavriel Kay

The great city of Orane, capital of Ferrieres, is thrown into chaos when a prominent nobleman is murdered in cold blood. Thierry Villar, an advocate-turned-poet, is enlisted by the city authorities to investigate the murder, despite the likelihood of it being political in nature, threatening the city and the kingdom's peace. But that peace is already under threat, as the armies of Angland under King Hardan V have landed on the north coast.

A new Guy Gavriel Kay novel is something to be savoured. If my previous review, of Joe Abercrombie's The Devils, said that book was a whiskey with no chaser, a new Guy Kay book is comparatively a fine wine, to be savoured and its short length to be lamented, despite that also being a strength.

Written on the Dark, like much of his work, takes place in the same world, one closely based on real medieval Europe, but with the names, geography and underlying ideals (like religion) all shifted a bit aware from reality. There is no magic, in the sense of wizards hurling fireballs, but there are prophetic dreams that often seem to come true. 

This book is set in the much-mentioned land of Ferrieres, an analogy for France, to the north-east of the lands in The Lions of Al-Rassan and north-west of those explored in the Sarantine Mosaic duology. Kay has a special affinity with France, with his early novel A Song for Arbonne taking place in a different version of that kingdom, and his later book Ysabel just straight-up taking place in actual, contemporary France. The real historical period being riffed on here is the Hundred Years War between England and France, during which time France also suffered significant internal upheaval and civil conflict, most notably between the French crown and Burgundy (here realised as Barratin). Kay provides a list of historical sources at the end of the novel, but as usual he doesn't have precise, 1:1 correlations, instead throwing together different people and events from across a couple of centuries to see what happens when they coexist. Some of the more obvious touchstones are present - Joan of Arc is present, albeit restyled as Jeanette of Broche - but these tend to be dealt with fairly curtly in favour of our main cast.

The main cast is described in impressive depth, with Thierry Villar an overconfident, possibly even arrogant, man who makes one mistake too many and has to make amends by investigating a murder, the ramifications of which could rock his entire world. His friend and tavern-worker Silvy, fellow poet (of higher station) Marina di Seressa, the king's provost Robbin de Vaux, and the somewhat-mystical Gauvard Colle, all fully-realised figures, are all drawn into the story of feuding politicians, scheming priests and marching armies.

As usual with Kay, his interest is less in mass combat and battles and more in the motivations that move people to violence and its consequences. He is not a bloodthirsty author: skirmishes which leave even a handful of casualties are shocking, and not to be relished, and mass battles are catastrophes that people will go to extraordinary lengths to avoid. The real battles here are fought with wits, penmanship and rhetoric. Thierry's preferred battlefield is the courthouse, the diplomatic table or the tavern where his improvisation, oratory and humour can be best appreciated.

The traditional strengths of Kay are on full display: his grasp of history in both the broad strokes and close-up detail, his firm grasp of who his characters are and what they want, and his measured prose, sometimes minimalist, sometimes ornate, known when to deploy words like bludgeons and when like scalpels. There is more humour in this book than perhaps some of his previous ones, but the amount of heart present will not be a surprise to established fans. The book may even mark a better onboarding place to Kay's novels for brand new readers than some other recent ones, being more firmly a total standalone (Children of Earth and Sky, A Brightness Long Ago and All the Seas of the World arguably forming a thematic trilogy, itself following on from the at-least nominally thematic duology of Under Heaven and River of Stars).

The biggest negative about the book is one that's not really a negative: at 300 pages on the money in hardcover, this may be Kay's shortest novel to date. The sumptuous expanses of some of his earlier, 500+ page novels are not to be found here. But that short length results in a razor-sharp focus that is quite compelling.

By this point it feels redundant to say it about a Kay novel, but Written on the Dark (*****) is a beautifully-written portrait of its world and its people, with added focus and clarity making it a good jumping-on point for new readers. The novel is available now worldwide.

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

Doctor Who: Series 15 (Season 41)

The Doctor has parted with his previous companion, Ruby, and is again travelling time and space alone. He meets a potential new companion, Belinda, a human abducted from Earth by alien robots, but she only wants to go home. To the Doctor's alarm, every attempt to return her home fails: the TARDIS is simply unable to return to Belinda's time. The Doctor and Belinda have to go "the long way round" in order to return to Earth in May 2025...a date of huge significance for the human race.

The fourteenth series of the relaunched Doctor Who was an attempt to clear the decks and get the show back into the big leagues, after a decade of gradual commercial decline under previous showrunners Steven Moffat and Chris Chibnall. Russell T. Davies, the superstar writer who'd relaunched the show to huge success in 2005, returned with plans for a connected number of different shows in the same universe, with the main show to be led by a charismatic new actor (the charismatic Ncuti Gatwa), all backed by big money courtesy of a new international distribution deal with Disney+.

Things didn't exactly pan out, with the show's commercial decline not only continuing but accelerating (despite a brief bump of interest in the specials led by David Tennant). Crucially, the show delivered several hugely-praised episodes (such as 73 Yards and Dot & Bubble) but also possibly the worst single episode since 2005 (Space Babies). More to the point, there was general discontent with the show's tone, which seem pitched towards very young viewers who simply weren't interested, and with the season's "mystery box" approach to storytelling, setting up companion Ruby Sunday as a puzzle to be solved, "subverting expectations" by giving her the most ordinary backstory possible and then discarding her immediately. The season had a very mixed reception as a result.

This second series under Davies' stewardship continues to be a mixed bag. The Christmas special Joy to the World, penned by Steven Moffat, has a huge amount of potential which isn't well-realised. Much-heralded guest star Nicola Coughlan hasn't got a lot to do or work with, and it's Steph de Whalley's scene-stealing turn as hotel manager Anita (who has to work with the Doctor for a year whilst he waits for his timestream to sort itself out) which becomes the most successful idea from the episode. Otherwise it's a little underwhelming.

The season itself kicks off with The Robot Revolution, introducing new companion Belinda Chandra (a great performance by Varada Sethu, of Andor fame and who had a guest spot in the previous season's Boom). Potentially clever ideas are let down by a clunky denouncement and the episode lurching between tones without much elegance or subtlety.

Lux puts the Doctor and Belinda in a Miami cinema in the 1950s, where they are menaced by a cartoon character who tears itself out of the screen. An impressive technical feat which combines real menace and tension, and a brief nod at 1950s social issues without smashing the viewer over the head with them with the subtlety of a mallet. A rare example of Davies knowing when less is more.

The Well is easily the season's - and the entire era's - highlight and sees the Doctor having to deal with a creature that can only be perceived in certain circumstances. The atmosphere is creepy, the tension builds superbly and the episode is enhanced by a terrific guest performance by Rose Ayling-Ellis.

Lucky Day is an almost wholly Doctor-and-Belinda-lite episode, with the story focusing on Ruby and UNIT on Earth as they deal with an unusual threat. There's something deliciously contrarian in the Doctor Who universe that the most successful conspiracy theorists are the ones who don't believe in aliens, telepaths or computers controlling everything, and Jonah Hauer-King gives a great performance as the supremely punchable Conrad. It's Millie Gibson, once again, who emerges as the star of the episode with her enthusiastic performance. However, once the story reaches its well-executed midpoint twist, Davies seems at a loss how to proceed, and the episode bogs down in lots of righteous shouting before an unsatisfying ending.

The Story & The Ending is an episode about the power of story and myth, as retold through a group of customers attending a barbershop in Lagos, Nigeria. It's a richly atmospheric piece, thanks to Inua Ellams' excellent script, and there's some tremendous visuals. The episode is let down a little bit by not having any real location shooting in Nigeria, an odd limitation when the press for the show is constantly hollering about the increased budget (recalling that the supposedly much cheaper Chibnall era had multiple episodes shot on location in Africa). But the inventiveness and atmosphere here is compelling.

The Interstellar Song Contest is a surprisingly enjoyable, fun bit of total nonsense, with the Doctor and Belinda attending "Eurovision but in space," complete with minor C-list celebrities and some bonkers novelty acts like the meme-generating "Dugga Doo." There's some good comic beats but the episode is let down a little by pulling its punches and teasing the return of the Doctor's long, long-missing granddaughter Susan (last seen in an episode that aired in 1983), only to not really do anything with the idea.

The show's two-part finale is a mixed bag. The first episode sees Earth transformed into an unquestioning state loyal to the Rani (a superb performance by Achie Panjabi) with even the Doctor and Belinda unable to remember their true identities. Obviously, eventually they realise something is up and lead the fight back. Wish World is a little clunky but builds up a nice feeling of dread and tension. 

Unfortunately, this promise is immediately squandered in The Reality War. As is now well-known, the original plan for the episode (which would have addressed Susan and other story threads) was completely derailed by Ncuti Gatwa's decision to leave, resulting in hasty reshoots and a complete change to the second half of the story. These decisions result in a hasty removal of the Rani, the complete pointlessness of teasing the return of Omega and then doing nothing interesting with him, and then having the Doctor stumble around for half the episode before finally regenerating. It's great to see some old faces returning, but the episode feels like it's the walking wounded, whatever original promise it had lost as it struggles to tell a different story to the one it was set up for.

As the confusing episode ends, fans will likely be left wondering what the heck happened with Susan, if the Doctor has imposed a child who shouldn't exist on his companion Belinda for no apparent reason, and why the Doctor now looks like one of his former companions. A whiff of desperation can be detected, as if Davies is more interested in stoking the fires of Reddit and celebrity columns rather than just telling a good story with a good enough reason for existing.

The fifteenth series of the relaunched Doctor Who (***½) is solid. It has a potential future classic and several very good episodes. No Space Babies here. But the season-long arc is resolved painfully blandly, the final episode is a total mess (for the second year in a row), and the season somehow ends up feeling less than the sum of its parts. The cliffhanger is daft, and there's a general lack of confidence to proceedings, which frustrates after the good work done by The Well, Lux and The Story & The Engine.

• 15X1: Joy to the World (***½)
• 15.1: The Robot Revolution (***)
• 15.2: Lux (****)
• 15.3: The Well (*****)
• 15.4: Lucky Day (***½)
• 15.5: The Story & The Engine (****)
• 15.6: The Interstellar Song Contest (***½)
• 15.7: Wish World (***½)
• 15.8: The Reality War (**½)

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

The Alters

Jan Dolski is an ordinary crewman aboard an AllyCorp spacecraft headed to a hostile planet circling the star Gliese 3804. The planet is the only known source of Rapidium, a substance with time-bending properties, allowing for the rapid growth of organic material, such allowing a farm to produce a year's worth of food in a day, a vital technology for a resource-depleted Earth. But an accident kills the entire crew apart from Jan, leaving him alone. Fortunately, a large mobile base has survived the arrival and Jan is able to get it working. He needs more crew...and the base has the capability to clone human life, and Rapidium can mature it to adulthood in hours. Jan, reluctantly, has to create duplicates of himself to crew the base and guide it to a recovery location, whilst convincing an unsympathetic corporation to send a rescue party...for a price.

The Alters is the latest game from 11 Bit Studios, the Polish company behind This War of Mine and the seminal survival city-builder Frostpunk. The Alters at first feels like it's right in their wheelhouse, being a tense survival game with you managing resources, expanding your base and making tough decisions on who lives and who dies, in service of the "the greater good" (whatever that means). But The Alters differs significantly in its presentation: this is an over-the-shoulder third person game with exploration, combat and survival mechanics. This results in a very unique-feeling game that feels like a blend of Subnautica, Frostpunk, XCOM, Fallout Shelter and, er, Alan Wake (there's some anomalies that have to be illuminated by a UV torch and then destroyed).

The game is divided into a prologue and three acts. The game upfronts the survival elements, with you exploring the area around your base, gathering resources and using those resources to build new rooms in the base, geared towards your survival (a captain's cabin, kitchen, greenhouse, infirmary, storage etc) or the expansion of the base (workshop, laboratory, refinery). A familiar survival chain kicks in as you gather resources to expand the base, and build tools and upgrades to allow you to explore further (getting a grapple gun to rappel up sheer rock faces to reach hitherto inaccessible areas, or use a mining laser to blast aside rockfalls). Success begets success. However, you also need to grow food, cook the food in a meal and sleep. You need to get enough sleep to be good for work the next day; you can exhaust yourself if not careful and end up wasting half the next day in bed. At first it's doable, but quickly the number of tasks that need to be done simultaneously starts building up.

Where the title kicks in is when you realise you can't do this alone and, helped by dubious advice via intermittent contact with Earth, you start cloning yourself. Each "Alter" is genetically identical to you but the base's quantum computer is able to go back to decisions your made in your life and simulate alternate life choices, that leads to your "Alters" becoming specialised in alternate tasks: science, mining, refining, medicine, botany and so forth. This is great, but comes at the cost of each Alter having a different psychology. You need to keep your Alters happy, as they are all dealing with understandable existential crises, but what will cheer up one Alter will anger another, forcing you to stay on your toes as you work out how to keep them all sweet. Once Alters are in circulation, you can assign them to different jobs, freeing you up to focus on other tasks (usually physically exploring each region and building mining and supply line pylons).

At any time you have to engage with multiple tasks, some of which you can delegate but most you have to tackle personally. There's a main story mission to follow, which requires a chain of research and construction projects, but also side-quests related to keeping your Alters happy. It may be tempting to say this is unnecessary in the face of impending doom and focus on the essentials, but make your Alters too angry or unhappy and they can either push themselves too hard and get themselves killed, or they can rebel and leave. Adding to the juggling act is that you can only stay in each area for a limited period of time before the sun rises and floods the area with lethal radiation, introducing a ticking clock you have to bear in mind. To be honest, the ticking clock element is nowhere near as punishing as it sounds; I usually completed each area with 3-4 days to spare, and in fact stayed on for a bit longer than necessary to maximise resources in each area before taking off.

This may sound tricky, like juggling lions, but in actuality it's pretty straightforward. You still have to prioritise tasks, but the game's slick UI gives you a lot of options to ease tasks (like ensuring you always have a set amount of food or useable tools constructed before doing anything else for the day). Frostpunk often seemed to require you to fail completely as a learning tool before playing again and perhaps winning. However, this is down to the respective games' lengths: each Frostpunk scenario can be played from start to finish in 3-4 hours, so failure and restarting is not a major problem. The Alters takes about 20 hours per run, and completely failing at, say, around hour 18 would be far more annoying, so the game has to go at least a bit easier on you (until you decide to ratchet up the difficulty level yourself). It's much easier to recover from apparent fail-states in The Alters.

Even when you complete a run, there's compelling reasons to try another. There's a whole bunch of different endings depending on the various factions you can side with, and the steps you take to ensure your Alters' survival. It's also impossible to unlock every type of Alter in one run. At least two are required to see the other characters you don't see in the first playthrough, which can result in a very different experience.

Graphically, the game is very impressive, with a nice use of Unreal Engine 5. There are some oddities and hints of un-optimisation: some areas can load a bit too slowly if you turn around too quickly, and the game seems more punishing on the graphics card and temps than better-looking and busier open-world games. There's also telltale signs that the 3rd-person exploration mode is the first time that 11 Bit has done anything like this. Your character can get caught on scenery and ends up running on the spot a bit too easily, and sometimes you can get stuck on top of rocks and have to awkwardly find the pixel-perfect way to get back off again (the absence of a jump button gets annoying after a while). The music is excellent, if not quite as stunning as Frostpunk's, and sound cues are very atmospheric.

The base view, which recalls XCOM's "antfarm" approach, or Fallout Shelter, is splendid, and it can be fun swapping room arrangements around to optimise travel routes or just because it looks cool. The rooms are packed with fun, tiny details (your Alters might get bored and start playing Frostpunk or Frostpunk 2 in the entertainment room). The game is also forgiving in that you can assign Alters to different rooms and set up production lists from anywhere in the game world (even out in the wilderness). You also don't need to return to base to pick up new equipment that your Alters build for you, it just becomes immediately available.

The Alters is not flawless. A few moments in the game hinge on single dialogue choices, and these are not as instinctively obvious as I think the game thinks they are. A bigger problem is the game's take on combat. The surface of the planet is strewn with gravity anomalies, some of which can be drawn to you and irradiate you. Destroying these requires you to illuminate them with UV lights and then detonating them with a blast of energy (a bit like Alan Wake using his torch and gun). At first this is fun, but in the last area, which throws half a dozen variant anomalies at you continuously, this becomes a bit tedious. Also, whilst the psychology of dealing with your Alters' problems is mostly well-done, there are a few moments when your Alters will act in a way that's completely unreasonable and is basically committing suicide, that just doesn't feel plausible. Still, maybe that's the point.

The Alters (****½) is the world's first psychological thriller/city builder/base builder/survival/action/strategy game. Blending genres like this could have resulted in a mess but instead results in a tense, rich, compelling gaming experience that consistently engaging, with a strong amount of replayability. I haven't even mentioned the actual live-action short films you can watch in the base's cinema, the subplot with different people back home feuding and trying to enlist you as an ally, or the pet sheep that lives on the base. It confirms 11 Bit's status as one of the most interesting game development studios out there. Thoroughly recommended.

The game is available now on PC (format reviewed), PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.

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

Doctor Who: Series 14 (Season 40)

The Thirteenth Doctor has regenerated into the Fourteenth, but the new Doctor is shocked to find himself wearing the same face as a prior incarnation. Returning to Earth, he is immediately reunited with former companion Donna Noble, and plunged into a sequence of events hinting at the arrival of a terrible old enemy. That threat resolved, the Fifteenth Doctor arrives to take over the mantle, and solve the mystery of Ruby Sunday.

It's fair to sat that the Chris Chibnall years of Doctor Who, spanning Series 11 - 13 of the "new" era, were divisive at best. His first season was weak, with variable writing and some dreadful episodes. Things improved, until his final run of episodes (the Flux mini-series and the splendid specials Eve of the Daleks and Power of the Doctor) was respectably solid, dragged down only by the awful Legend of the Sea Devils. But plunging ratings and dwindling audience appreciation saw the BBC decide to regroup and go in a new direction.

And that new direction was, er, an old one. Showrunner Russell T. Davies, who had brought the show back from the abyss in 2005, returned. He brought back David Tennant, the most popular of the new Doctors, with him, and also reintroduced Catherine Tate as Donna. The Doctor-Donna pairing helped make Series 4 arguably the strongest of Davies' original run.

This back-to-basics approach was hugely popular with the BBC but also appealed to Disney, coming on board as international distributor for the first time. It also helped celebrate the show's 60th anniversary in 2023 without having to resort to a "multi-Doctor special," something Davies was not keen on, despite the success it had last time out. Disney also seems to have been keen to try to get the show back to a clean slate to appeal to new viewers.

These three specials are...okay? They're certainly not the resounding back-to-form smash hit successes I think anyone was hoping for, but they're a long way from disastrous. The Star Beast - somewhat randomly - adapts a 1980 comic book story where the Doctor has to help the cute-and-helpless Meep, who turns out to be more than he seems. The result is a fun knockabout adventure, though it has to be said the forced comedic beats are torturous at best (and makes one recall that the first Davies era could have some of the cringiest humour you'd ever seen in your life, but you can overlook it for spectacular episodes like Human Nature or Blink).

Wild Blue Yonder is the trilogy's most "standard" adventure, with the Doctor and Donna arriving on an abandoned spacecraft and encountering some really odd creatures. This is an episode that, at its best, is eerie and discomforting in the way the best Doctor Who can be, and early on feels like a classic in the making. Unfortunately. the episode is let down by the idea not really being strong enough to fill 54 minutes, and some of the effects are downright woeful considering that the Disney influx of cast reportedly doubled the show's budget (the show looking cheaper visually than during the Chibnall era, despite having more resources, becomes a recurring problem). As a result the episode feels like a lot of unfulfilled potential.

The Giggle sees the return of old-school villain the Celestial Toymaker, now played with charismatic relish by Neil Patrick Harris, as he takes on the Doctor with the fate of reality at stake. The Doctor has to join forces with UNIT to take down this most cunning of opponents. This is easily the strongest of the three specials, thanks to Harris's superb performance and Davies giving him some terrific dialogue, with a deadly battle of wits between the Toymaker and the Doctor. Unfortunately, a promising and disturbing episode peters out at the end, with Davies feeling a little too clever in himself in coming up with the idea of "bigeneration," allowing the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Doctors (the latter played Ncuti Gatwa) to coexist and team up to take down the Toymaker. The end of the episode is well-intentioned with some nice lines on mental health and a brand new start for Fifteen, but it's also a bit vague and confusing. It feels like the need to introduce the Fifteenth Doctor through an unnecessary gimmick dilutes the episode of its power. Still, Gatwa makes an immediate, positive impression as the Fifteenth Doctor.

The Church on Ruby Road is the 2023 Christmas special, and the first Doctor Who Christmas special since 2017. The special introduces new companion Ruby Sunday, played with winning charisma by Millie Gibson. The storyline resolves around time-travelling musical goblins, which feels a bit random (though turns out to be part of a wider storyline about fantasy invading the scientifically plausible universe), but Gatwa and Gibson sell the hell out of it, resulting in a mostly watchable slice of nonsense. Davies also opens a mystery box about Ruby's origins, which (at this stage) intriguing and a bit eerie. However, there is a feeling here that we've done the whole "companion as a puzzle for the Doctor to solve" thing before with Clara, and that was done better. Still, an okay start to this Doctor - companion pairing.

That doesn't last long though. Space Babies is the first episode of Series 14 proper and is terrible. The Doctor and Ruby arrive on a spaceship and are chased around a bit by a terrifying monster. This is promising. They then find the spaceship is crewed by talking babies, which is...not so much. Cue lots of of horrible lip-synching and some over-enthusiastic voice acting, but it can't really overcome the weak script, poor dialogue and the laughable explanation for the monster. This is not a promising opening to proceedings.

The Devil's Chord fortunately sees an immediate improvement, with the Doctor having to face down the mysterious Maestro, an entity which can weaponise music. This intersects with a visit to 1963 where the Doctor and Ruby want to meet the Beatles and run afoul of Maestro. The ending of the episode is a little weak (despite the excuse for a fun musical number), but the deliciously evil performance of Jinkx Monsoon as Maestro strengthens the episode.

Boom sees the return of former showrunner Steven Moffat with what he does best, a conceptual episode. The concept is that the Doctor steps on a landmine and can't get off without killing himself, resulting in Ruby having to try to save the day solo. It's not Moffat's strongest work, but it's a solid enough piece about the commercialisation of warfare, with weightier themes than Davies' last few scripts.

By this point the new era of Doctor Who feels like it's off to an underwhelming start and needs a shot in the arm, and fortunately it immediately gets it in the form of 73 Yards. One of Davies' strongest-ever scripts, the episode see the Doctor vanish after stepping into a fairy circle, leaving Ruby alone, haunted by a woman who appears exactly 73 yards away from her. Whenever anyone speaks to the woman, they immediately flee in terror and disown Ruby, including her mother and members of UNIT. Unable to enter the TARDIS, Ruby goes on to live the entire rest of her life. As a high-concept piece, this is a rival to Midnight and Turn Left, falling short only because we never get a convincing reason why people scream and run away from the mystery woman, which feels like a rather large plot hole. Still, an eerie and strange episode with a great guest performance by Aneurin Barnard, and a totally dominant performance by Millie Gibson who was dropped in the deep end here (this was her first-filmed episode) and smashed it.

Dot & Bubble is another concept episode, this time the concept being that we're pretty much locked into the POV of guest character Lindy Pepper-Bean (a tremendous performance by Callie Cooke), a member of a species who spend their whole life locked in a literal social media bubble (a VR bubble that surrounds their heads with people messaging them, only rarely turning the bubble off). The metaphor is not the subtlest (though delivered a bit more cleverly than normal) but the setup makes for great tension as the Doctor and Ruby can only communicate with Lindy through IM and have to convince her of a looming alien threat and how to get to safety. The episode's concept is great, and it has an absolutely vicious sting in the tail that really caps the whole thing off, with Gatwa giving his best performance to date. The only reason the episode drops a note is that this is the second episode in a row which barely features the Doctor (an unfortunate side-effect of Gatwa's Sex Education Season 4 filming schedule overrunning), which feels a bit rough given we're still getting to know him.

Rogue is a Doctor Who-by-the-numbers story, a period piece set in 1813 with the Doctor and Ruby attending a period ball that's upset by shapeshifting aliens. There's a nice spin as a time-travelling bounty hunter (played with charismatic gusto by Jonathan Goff) shows up and thinks the Doctor is one of the aliens, leading to some tension as they try to prove their good intentions to one another whilst Ruby investigates the real aliens. The episode relies a little too heavily on the novelty of the Doctor and Rogue's flirtatious relationship (which is not as much of a novelty as Davies seems to think it is since, y'know, Captain Jack exists) rather than focusing on the primary conflict, but the pacing is good. The rest of the guest cast is outstanding as well, with Indira Varma giving a typically great performance and Camilla Aiko providing a winning turn.

The Legend of Ruby Sunday sets up the season finale with some genuinely chilling moments, as the Doctor tries to uncover the identity of Ruby's mother with cutting-edge UNIT technology. The tension and mystery builds with relish until we get to an epic cliffhanger ending, the effectiveness of which is only let down by the majority of viewers having zero idea whom the surprise bad guy actually is.

Empire of Death takes the promise of Legend and pretty much flushes it away. Legend built up a sense of genuine dread through good pacing and some eerie setpieces. Empire is just bland, rushed, confusing, illogical and defeats the returning villain with extreme rapidity. Everyone does their best with a confused script, but the episode just feels like a huge letdown.

Series 14 and its attendant specials (***½) are okay, two outstanding near-classics let down by a generally more juvenile tone than the era immediately before, and the sheer awfulness of Space Babies and Empire of Death. This isn't Russell T. Davies strutting back onto the stage to save the day with the greatest hits, its more like to play his new, late-career album which is okay, bordering on solid, but sound a bit like a 60-year-old guy trying to get down with the kids a bit too hard. The best episodes in this batch are when everyone forgets they're trying to save Doctor Who, chills out and just writes good episodes. When anyone (especially Davies) overthinks it, things start falling apart. Still, a long way from being the worst season of Doctor Who in its history, or since its reboot, and the optimism is there that maybe we can get back to the franchise at its best.

• 14X1: The Star Beast (***½)
• 14X2: Wild Blue Yonder (***½)
• 14X3: The Giggle (****)
• 14X4: The Church on Ruby Road (***½)
• 14.1: Space Babies (*½)
• 14.2: The Devil's Chord (***½)
• 14.3: Boom (****)
• 14.4: 73 Yards (****½)
• 14.5: Dot & Bubble (****½)
• 14.6: Rogue (***½)
• 14.7: The Legend of Ruby Sunday (****)
• 14.8: Empire of Death (**)

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

The Devils by Joe Abercrombie

Brother Diaz has been summoned to the Chapel of the Holy Expediency to receive a mission directly from the ten-year-old Pope. He is to join a group of "devils," evil-doers repenting for their sins in (unwilling) service to the Papacy. Their goal is to guide the young heir to the throne of Troy to her throne, despite four cousins all keen to ensure she never gets there. Carrying out this quest are an immortal warrior, an invisible elf, an overly-proud necromancer, a jack of all trades, a vampire, and a werewolf. This quest may see them learn the meaning of friendship and found family (but probably not), and realise that the real friends are the zombie warriors we resurrected along the way.

The Devils is the latest novel from Joe Abercrombie, the undisputed king of dysentrypunk. Through many novels he has written stories soaked in blood (not always the best printing process for easy reading, but still), told with verve, humour, and sometimes worrying psychoses. This latest book is a semi-standalone, capable of being read by itself but also setting up a loose trilogy of episodic adventures for the Holy Expediencers.

The storyline is pretty straightforward, with street orphan-turned-professional-thief Alex finding out she's the long-lost Princess of Troy, a fairly unlikely prospect but one proven by the traditional means of a holy birthmark and a long-lost sigil. The Papal Shambolics have to guide her to her destiny, which involves (as this is an Abercrombie novel) a veritable morass of slaughter, bad jokes and bodily fluids spraying in all directions. Along the way we get to know the rest of the group, their hopes, their desires, and their propensity to solve problems with sharp bits of metal. It's a solid cast of characters, likeable but (heavily) flawed, seeking redemption or something adjacent to it, drawn with reasonable colour and depth.

The Devils feels like Unfettered Abercrombie. His First Law books, particularly the recent(ish) Age of Madness Trilogy, mix the dark humour and knockabout antics with weightier stories of societal development and an extended meta-arc which, though it can be summed up as, "what if Gandalf was a total arsehole?", has a lot of depth. The Devils feels like Joe had decided he needed a break from those weightier elements and he could just have a knockabout good time. This is a veritable "beer and pretzels" book where themes and intricate worldbuilding are side-courses, not the main appeal.

This has the simultaneous effect of making The Devils possibly Abercrombie's most outright enjoyable work, with action and comedy to spare, but also maybe his slightest, and most disposable. First Law fans may bemoan a lengthy gap until we return to that world (if we ever do) and the mouth-watering Glokta vs Bayaz struggle his last book set up, and others may ponder if Joe could have been better-served by exploring fresher fields altogether (presumably less filled with recruits corpses). But that's the perennial problem: do you want your favourite artist to deliver you what they're best at, no surprises, or reach for the worrying button called "space jazz concept album?"

The Devils (****) is straight-up Abercrombie, no chaser. It's fun, funny and uncomplicated, and is on the shelves worldwide right now.

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

Mel Brooks returns for SPACEBALLS 2

In startling news, the 98-year-old Mel Brooks has confirmed he is returning to the big screen to reprise the character of Yogurt in Spaceballs 2, the sequel to his hit 1987 comedy spoof.

Released in 1987, the original Spaceballs was a homage to/satire of the 1980s visual effects sci-fi movie, riffing hard off the original Star Wars but also nodding at Alien, Star Trek, Planet of the Apes and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Mel Brooks co-wrote, directed and starred, appearing as both the wise Yogurt and the evil-ish President Skroob. The film also starred John Candy, Rick Moranis, Daphne Zuniga, Joan Rivers, George Wyner, Dick Van Patten, and was a career-making movie for Bill Pullman. The film is now widely-regarded as a fun homage to the sci-fi genre, with a slightly sharp commentary on the commodification of art ("Spaceballs the flamethrower!").

Brooks has been asked about making a sequel almost constantly since 1987. He did spend some time joking about never making a direct sequel, so the sequel would be called Spaceballs 3: The Search for Spaceballs 2, though, as ever with Brooks, it was unclear if he was joking, serious or semi-serious. At other times, including in the original movie, he suggested the sequel would be called Spaceballs 2: The Search for More Money.

Spaceballs 2 (subtitle unknown) will be directed by Josh Greenbaum, from a script by Benji Samit, Dan Hernandez and Josh Gad. Gad will also star in the movie and co-produce alongside Brooks. Bill Pullman and Rick Moranis will return as Lone Starr and Dark Helmet, whilst Keke Palmer will join the cast in an unnamed role. The project has been described as a "non-prequel non-reboot sequel part two, but with reboot elements franchise expansion film." MGM-Amazon expect to release the films in cinemas (and presumably then Amazon Prime Video) in 2027.

May the Schwartz be with you. Always.

STAR TREK: STRANGE NEW WORLDS to end with shorter fifth season

Paramount have confirmed that Star Trek: Strange New Worlds will conclude with a fifth season, which will consist of six instead of the normal ten episodes. The good news is that this is still some way off: Strange New Worlds' third season is only debuting on 17 July, with the fourth season in production.

Strange New Worlds only exists because of a fan campaign, after the characters were well-received in the second season of Star Trek: Discovery (2019). Delayed by the COVID pandemic, the show debuted in 2022 and attracted very positive reviews for its focus on standalone episodes and a lighter tone than Discovery, which had a much more critically mixed reception, as well as its casting and its focus on an ensemble. Season 2 (2023) was also well-received.

Season 3 is debuting over two years after the second season, but Paramount+ are keen to the get the next two seasons out as fast as possible, hoping to release Season 4 in 2026 and Season 5 in 2027.

The move comes after the ending of Discovery, Picard and both animated shows, Lower Decks and Prodigy. This will only leave one Star Trek series, the forthcoming Starfleet Academy, in production.

Trailer for ALIEN: EARTH released

FX has released the trailer for Alien: Earth, the first TV series based on the Aliens franchise.

The series is set in the year 2120 and opens on Neverland Research Island on Earth (this is two years before the Nostromo visits the planet LV-426 in the original movie Alien), where human-synthetic interfaces are being developed. A spacecraft has returned to Earth with five apex alien lifeforms on board, each capable of tremendous violence and destruction, crashing into Prodigy City. One of the creatures, predictably, is our favourite xenomorph, but the natures of the other three are unclear. To deal with the crisis, the Company sends in a team of synthetics to investigate further.

Alien: Earth is written and showrun by Noah Hawley, the much-feted creative force behind the TV series Fargo and Legion. It stars Sydney Chandler, Timothy Olyphant, Alex Lawther, Samuel Blenkin, Essie Davis, Adrian Edmondson and Max Rinehart, amongst many others. Ridley Scott is producing.

The series debuts on FX and Disney+ on 12 August 2025, and will run for eight episodes.

Owlcat developing EXPANSE video roleplaying game inspired by MASS EFFECT

Owlcat Games are developing an action roleplaying game set in the world of the Expanse novels and TV series. Osiris Reborn is in development now and marks the developer's first non-top-down RPG project.

The game focuses on a Pinkwater Security mercenary trapped on Eros Station during a deadly lockdown. Presumably they escape during the chaos and gain control of their own ship, which they use to travel the Solar system in search of answers and money. The game will feature some crossovers with the TV show, with some of the actors reprising their roles. The game will feature multiple familiar locations from the extant IP, including Ceres, Ganymede and Mars.

Owlcat, currently based in Cyprus, with teams operating around the world, is best-known for their massive, in-depth adaptations of existing IP. They have released two huge RPGs based on the Pathfinder tabletop roleplaying game, Kingmaker (2018) and Wrath of the Righteous (2021), and the Warhammer 40,000 RPG Rogue Trader (2023). They are currently developing a new 40K RPG, Dark Heresy. Osiris Reborn is being worked on by a new team independently of those projects.

The Expanse: Osiris Reborn is a marked shift for the company, as it will be a combat-heavy, over-the-shoulder action RPG focusing on a customisable captain character. Romances will be in the game. This is clearly heavily inspired by Mass Effect, in the same way their earlier games were heavily inspired by Baldur's Gate and its sequels. This is also the second video game project based on The Expanse, after The Expanse: A Telltale Series (2023).

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

Decades ago, the Fracture tore the world apart. Every year since, a godlike entity known as "The Paintress" has risen from her slumber to paint a new number on the side of the colossal Monolith. Every human of that age immediately dies, vanishing in a cloud of petals. Every year, an Expedition leaves the city of Lumière, vowing to be the one to defeat the Paintress and stop the slaughter. Every year, they fail. This year, Expedition 33 plans to break the cycle.

One of the most joyous experiences in life is when something comes out of nowhere to blindside you with just how damn good it is. No years of building expectations, no months of hype and trailers that leaves you tired before the thing even arrives, just something great showing up and getting into it immediately.

That "thing" for 2025 is Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. A French-made, Japanese-influenced roleplaying game with a premise China Miéville would have killed to have thought of. The product of ex-Ubisoft developers whose creativity had been caged and nearly killed off by years in the Extruded Product Mines, but here allowed to explode forth without restraint, the game makes an immediate, often stunning impression.

In the tradition of the best JRPGs, the start of the game sets out the premise and establishes an initial group of playable characters, with a single "focal" POV character (here Gustave, voiced by Daredevil star Charlie Cox). As the game continues, additional characters join the party. Each character has different abilities and combat skills, which can be developed by levelling them up. As a JRPG-influenced game, Clair Obscur's mechanics are almost wholly focused around combat. You will spend more time fighting than doing anything else, there are no dialogue choices, and the game is built around its central quest and main storyline. Whilst there are side-quests, optional areas and optional bosses to fight, the main appeal here is the main story.

Thankfully, the story is very good. The setting is basically the New Weird meets the Belle Époque, the French period of optimism that extended from the Franco-Prussian War to World War I. It's no coincidence that one of the striking images of Clair Obscur is a melted Eiffel Tower, its top weirdly canted. The story sees the people of Lumière threatened with total extinction and mounting increasingly desperate missions to save themselves, only to fail every time. Obviously, the hope is that the Expedition you happen to be part of succeeds.

The game is predominantly played in third-person, as you guide the party through successive areas. These areas are linear, but most contain branching paths leading to extra resources, money or optional battles (which will also yield resources and money, with the added bonus of experience). Your party usually has an objective in each area, with well-acted cut scenes explaining major story beats and filling in new plot revelations.

After completing the first area, you'll find yourself on a very beautiful, very Final Fantasy-esque world map, offering different locations you can go to. The next story-critical location will be clearly marked, but you can also visit optional areas for stiffer challenges, find merchants to trade with or find enemies wandering the wilderness to challenge (these periodically respawn). Initially you are very limited where you can travel, but you'll quickly make a key ally who can carry you around for faster traversal, and can eventually gain the ability to swim so you can move onto other landmasses. Borrowing a cue from the likes of Half-Life 2, which puts the Citadel in the skybox of almost every area so you can always see your destination, Clair Obscur puts the Monolith and its ominously glowing number "33" in the background of almost every level and on the world map, letting you know how far you have to travel.

Combat is mostly turn-based, with you and the enemies exchanging blows. A key feature of the game is that you can completely negate enemy damage by either dodging or parrying blows, by hitting the appropriate command at the right time. Dodging means you suffer no damage, whilst parrying means you build up action points (allowing access to higher-tier abilities on your next go) and you may also trigger counter-attacks, dealing devastating damage. Dodging is easier but gives you less advantages, whilst parrying is more useful but the timing has to be more precise, and failure will result in taking damage. Enemy animation and sound cues have to be learned to fully master parrying. I know some people dislike the intrusion of real-time, even Soulslike*, mechanics into a turn-based game. I found it refreshing and interesting, but occasionally frustrating.

I do have to say that playing on keyboard and mouse (with a second screen) seemed to confuse the game on a semi-frequent basis so that parries and dodge inputs would be missed (you can see your characters reacting onscreen to commands, even if the timing is wrong), and if I ever replay I'd probably use a controller, which is annoying for playing a game on PC, which has a rich history of running turn-based games perfectly fine. Oh well.

During combat you can execute basic attacks, use character-specific skills (you can unlock new skills using experience points) and benefit from abilities gained from pictos and lumina, which are this game's equivalent to, say, Final Fantasy VII's materia. Pictos are magical skills that can be assigned to characters. Each character can wield 3 at once. Once you have used a picto in four battles, it becomes "learned" as lumina. All party members can then "learn" the lumina (unlike a picto, which can only be assigned to one character at a time), using a pool of lumina points. There are no limits to the number of lumina that characters can learn, apart from their pool of points (the number of points available rapidly escalates as the game continues). As an example, there's a powerful picto called "Cheater," which allows your characters to take two turns in rapid succession. You equip the picto on your party-member Maelle. After Maelle takes part in four battles, "Cheater" is added to your list of luminas, and now your other party-members can all learn "Cheater" as well, so the whole party can now go twice in rapid succession.

The real power of pictos and luminas is how they can stack effects in ways that build to ridiculous levels. If you gave Maelle skills that allow her to double damage, then double damage again if under 10% health, do two attacks in a row, and give her a weapon that puts her in high-damage mode at the start of every turn, she turns into an absolutely ludicrous death machine (to maximise insanity, you can make sure you pair her with Sciel, who's skills allow her to give another party-member maximum action points and make them go immediately). The synergies in the system allow you to build very capable and powerful characters. Learning the ins and outs of this system is part of the experience, though if you are too good at it, you can break the system and one-shot most things in the game (and, by now, there's also tons of online guides and YouTube videos on how to do that).

Fortunately, the critical path is somewhat forgiving and doesn't demand that kind of attention to detail, instead allowing you to more fumble through and experiment. If you want to take on some of the optional superbosses, though, you definitely want to make this system work for you at maximum efficiency.

As well as exploring, combat and undertaking story missions, you can rest at camp, in the best RPG tradition. At camp you can upgrade your weapons and skills, re-equip and talk to other party members, gaining new insights into their backgrounds and stories. Later in the game you can start to build relationship levels with characters; maxing out these levels unlocks new combat abilities and can lead to exclusive, late-game quests. Romances are possible, though low-key.

Graphically, the game is impressive though maybe not the most cutting-edge. The game's visual triumph is more in its art design and constant imagination, throwing environments like cities torn in half by the Fracture and deposited on opposite sides of the continent, an area which appears to be underwater (complete with fish) but you can breathe normally, a battlefield with a truly stupendous amount of bodies left lying around and a vast arena you have to descend through whilst the massive boss monster dances tauntingly at you as you fight through their minions. At other parts of the game you can travel inside paintings to fight a powerful monster, descend into the pits of the Abyss to confront a betrayed soul (and the toughest fight this side of Ruby Weapon), or explore a mansion that can be accessed from all over the maps, and slowly unlocking all its rooms becomes a key sub-objective as the game unfolds.

On the audio side of things, Clair Obscur might be one of the most ear-pleasing games ever made. The voice acting is outrageously good (from the likes of Charlie Cox, Andy Serkis, Ben Starr and multiple Baldur's Gate III veterans, including Jennifer English) but the soundtrack from Lorien Testard and Alice Duport-Percier (among many other musicians) is absolute class-A. Calling it the "best video game soundtrack of all time" might be a bit premature, but it certainly sails immediately into the Top Ten. Whether it's the operatic and sweeping "Alicia," the singalong "Lumière" or synth-bass-funky boss music "Rain from the Ground," the soundtrack (all eight hours of it) never stops impressing.

The game's story is well-thought-out and impressively weird and off-kilter. The backstory revelations of why the world is the way it is and what relation it has to our world (Lumière appears to be a warped version of the real Paris) are given out sparingly over the course of the game's runtime, with a powerful emotional impact accompanying the story's development. If possible, try to avoid spoilers and go in cold with this one, it's well worth it.

The game also has very laudable, focused pacing. A story-first playthrough will take you around 30 hours, but an exhaustive exploration of all optional areas, bosses and battles will double that to about 55-60 hours, a very laudable amount of content for what is not a full-price release.

So, outstanding worldbuilding, writing, characterisation, music, combat and graphics? Is the game flawless? Not quite. As mentioned earlier, the game is really not too happy with mouse and keyboard controls (especially if you have a second screen), and after 60 hours mashing the "E" button to parry with such force I literally injured my finger, I wish now I'd played on a more forgiving controller. Something PC players might want to bear in mind. The game also had some technical issues, ironically introduced by a patch; on launch the game was technically flawless but after the patch started crashing occasionally, at random. This wasn't frequent (four times total in 60 hours) but enough to mildly irritate. The game's UI could be sharper, rotating through different menu screens - some accessible anywhere, some only at camping flags - to sort out weapons, lumina, pictos and skills could be cumbersome. The lack of a minimap in larger areas is mildly irritating if you're trying to track where you've been and not been. The story's progression becomes a bit more divisive as it goes along.

Relatively minor problems, which can't detract from the overwhelmingly impressive artistry that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (****½) exudes from every pore. This is a fun video game, an astonishing musical jam, a great story and an atmospheric, at times eerie work of art. Highly recommended, the game is available now on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, and via Xbox Game Pass.

* Mechanics derived from the Dark Souls trilogy and other games by the same team, such as Sekiro and Elden Ring, which heavily favour parrying, dodging and countering attacks based on audio/visual cues.

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