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Doctor Who: Season 8

The Doctor's exile on Earth continues, to his consternation. A new threat arises with the arrival of the Master, a fellow renegade Time Lord but one who bends his skills towards conquest and destruction. UNIT, the Doctor, and new assistant Jo Grant have to take on the Master in a series of battles with the fate of Earth hanging in the balance.

The seventh season of Doctor Who saw an improvement in the show's fortunes, which had been looking dicey as the 1960s came to an end. The show moved into full colour with a new Doctor, a new companion and a whole new paradigm, along with more action, explosions, stunts and gadgets. Season 8, airing in 1971, saw the production team refusing to rest on their laurels and changed things up again, though a bit more modestly this time around. They decided to make five stories rather than four, meaning they could drop the episode count per serial. The three seven-part stories in Season 7 were a bit on the long side. Season 8 would instead have two four-parters, two-six parters and, splitting the difference, a five-parter.

The decision was also made, for the very first time in Doctor Who history but certainly not the last, to have a season-spanning arc, revolving around a new Time Lord nemesis called the Master. The Doctor had previously - twice! - faced off against an antagonistic Time Lord called the Monk (in Season 2's The Time Meddler and Season 3's The Daleks' Master Plan) but the feeling was that he was more of a bumbling comedy foe than a serious threat. The Master was conceived of as a Moriarty to the Doctor's Sherlock Holmes, his direct nemesis and counterpart on the side of evil. Not only was the decision made to introduce the Master, but to have him in every story of the season, with a loose linking storyline with the Doctor trying to capture his foe whilst he in turn is trying to escape Earth (after the Doctor inadvertently traps him there in the first story of the season). Roger Delgado plays the Master with absolute charm and relish, and sparks off Jon Pertwee most excellently.

Things kick off in Terror of the Autons, a direct sequel to the previous season's excellent Spearhead from Space. The alien Nestenes are once again planning to invade Earth with their plastic-controlling powers and Auton warrior-constructs. The Master joins forces with them, but the Doctor is alerted to his presence by the Time Lords, who are concerned about the Master's level of threat to them and to innocent lifeforms. The Doctor also has to join forces with a new companion, UNIT assistant Jo Grant (the splendid Katy Manning) after the somewhat abrupt, off-screen departure of Liz Shaw. The resulting story is a bit overstuffed - it has multiple guest stars, the first appearance of the Time Lords since the Doctor's exile started, and also introduces Richard Franklin as UNIT Captain Yates - given its runtime. It also has some of the less effective vfx of the season, such as the character killed by an inflatable sofa and the ugliest murderous doll known to man. It's entertaining but not a patch on Spearhead, though at least Roger Delgado gets a good workout from carrying the serial on his shoulders.

The Mind of Evil makes better use of its greater episode count to incorporate more characters and tell a bigger story. The Master plans to use a mind-control machine, disguised as a way of curing career criminals, to help him start WWIII by sabotaging a peace conference between the United States and China, which the UK is hosting. This plan involves taking over a prison and capturing a passing biological warhead (as you do). Oh, and he also needs to recover his missing TARDIS dematerialisation circuit, so has to lure the Doctor into a trap.

The result is a surprisingly pacy story with lots gong on, with returning writer Don Houghton employing some of the same techniques that made Inferno such a success in the preceding season (sadly, this would be Houghton's last script for Who). The segues from diplomatic thriller to prison break-out drama to action movie as UNIT storms the prison are well-handled, and the guest cast is great. The story even manages to be pretty good (by early 1970s standards) at how it handles the China subplot, employing actors of Chinese origin and having a minor plot point revolve around being able to speak Hokkien rather than the more common Mandarin (we'll assume the TARDIS was totally offline in this story, so its translation circuits were not working...I'll get my coat). Jo is also on great form here, using her UNIT skills to single-handedly stop a prison riot in its tracks and constantly working to undermine the Master's plans. Throw in some decent action sequences and you have a reasonably entertaining story, though not as good as Inferno.

The Claws of Axos is the most disappointing story of the season, despite the presence of a respectably gargantuan frog. It has a terrific opening as UNIT is collaborating with British and American forces on how to find the Master, only for an alien spaceship to arrive on a collision course with the Earth. Cue fusillades of defensive missiles, the Doctor arguing with a bloodthirsty-but-dim British politician as only Pertwee can, with the Brigadier caught in the crossfire. Things improve as we find out the Master is a prisoner of the Axons (putting him on the same side as the Doctor and UNIT from the off, for once) and the humanoid Axons are terrifically realised, with some great prosthetics work and eery performances.

Unfortunately the story goes for a bit of a wander, and the story feels more poorly-paced than Mind of Evil despite being an hour shorter. The conclusion to the story is unnecessarily convoluted as well, and Jo gets a lot less to do (though her single-handedly storming an alien spaceship to rescue the Doctor is kind of badass). Still, there's a lot of great ideas here, like the Brigadier having to reluctantly employ the Master as interim scientific advisor in the Doctor's absence, even if they don't entirely succeed.

Colony in Space is a test-run for the producers hoping to end the Doctor's exile on Earth, with the Time Lords reactivating the TARDIS and sending it (with the Doctor and Jo on board) to the planet Uxarieus in the year 2472 to apprehend the Master, although oddly the Time Lords don't actually bother telling the Doctor any of this, hoping he'll figure it out. On Uxarieus, the Doctor finds a group of peaceful colonists at odds with a ship from an interstellar mining corporation which is planning to strip-mine the planet, whilst the native inhabitants are either ignored or killed. This is a Malcolm Hulke (The Silurians) special, putting together some complex worldbuilding and dealing with themes like colonialism, corporate corruption and environmental devastation, but wrapping it in a lot of fistfights, gun battles and creepy aliens. The episode is let down by some terrible effects (the colonists being scared off by a back-projected image of an iguana is particularly dumb) but some very effective location filming in a quarry. The Master feels a bit shoehorned in and the six-episode length kills the pacing in the home run, with the colonists and mining corporation turning the tables on one another so often you often forget who's got the upper hand at any moment. The ending also feels a bit random. But, an entertaining enough story.

The season wraps up with The Dæmons, a story whose reputation has waxed and waned over the years. At one point it was considered the best Pertwee story and one of the best Classic Who stories full stop (top ten, certainly), but it then went through a lengthy period of derision. Watching it for the first time in around thirty years, I was relieved to find it's closer to the former than the latter. This is easily the best-written Pertwee story to date, with a witty script full of top banter between the UNIT crew and the Doctor. Captain Yates and Corporal Benton have way more to do than normal, including at one point flying into the threatened village in a helicopter hilariously emblazoned with G-UNIT on the side, with Yates wearing a most fabulous coat. Guest star Damaris Hayman destroys everyone else with her unhinged-but-upper-crust performance as a white witch (who 100% ruthlessly seduces Benton the second this story is over), and the Master as the leader of a sinister coven prone to saying things like, "so mote it be!" is 100% a brilliant idea.

The story also goes to some wild places, with the entire village sealed off from the entire world via a "heat dome" that will make you ponder if Stephen King and/or the writers of The Simpsons Movie watched this story at some point, and a tone that veers seamlessly from The Wicker Man to Hot Fuzz. The Brigadier unable to get into the village and having to work with his Doctor-from-Temu Sergeant Osgood (probably the father/grandfather/uncle of UNIT's Petronella Osgood from New Who's Series 7 through 9) is also comic gold. The only major weaknesses are that Jo really does get sod-all to do, and in fact is treated rather harshly by both the Doctor and Yates for no real reason, and the way the sinister Azal is defeated is a bit out of left field, likely a result of the last minute rewrite that saw the story move from a six to a five-parter. 

Season 8 of Doctor Who isn't quite as accomplished as its predecessor, but is still an entertaining enough instalment of the show. Roger Delgado is charming, charismatic and occasionally menacing as the Master, but he's also overused here, with too many rapid-fire appearances diluting the character. The stories can also be a tad repetitive: the Master joins forces with the evil alien invaders of the week, only to realise they're going to double-cross him, so he then swaps sides and helps the Doctor defeat them instead, and manages a last-minute escape. The stories here - especially The Dæmons - thus benefit more from being watched individually than binged sequentially. Even in the weaker moments there's usually some good ideas going on. We also get a splendid new companion with Jo Grant, but she suffers from serious character decline over the season, with the effective UNIT agent trained in escapology, armed and unarmed combat of the first two stories replaced by a standard ditz-who-needs-constant-rescuing by the end. Still, future seasons offer opportunities for improvement.

The eighth season of Doctor Who (****) can be seen right now on the BBC iPlayer in the UK, BritBox in much of the rest of the world, and is also available on DVD and Blu-Ray.

• 8.1 - 8.4: Terror of the Autons (***½)
• 8.5 - 8.10: The Mind of Evil (****)
• 8.11 - 8.14: The Claws of Axos (***)
• 8.15 - 8.20: Colony in Space (***½)
• 8.21 - 8.25: The Dæmons (*****)

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Doctor Who: Season 7

The Doctor has been finally tracked down and captured by his own people, the Time Lords. Found guilty of interfering in the affairs of other planets, he has been exiled to the planet Earth in the late 20th Century, his TARDIS disabled and even his knowledge of space/time travel blocked. He's also forced to regenerate. Arriving on Earth, the new Doctor joins forces with his old ally, Brigadier Alastair Lethbridge-Stewart of the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce (UNIT), just in time to help thwart a series of attacks on the planet by aliens, obstinate scientists and even its ancient, original inhabitants.

If you're going to start watching Classic Doctor Who, probably the optimal entry point is the start of Season 7. Originally airing in 1970, this was the first season of the show to be made in full colour and to adopt a restrained episode count of 25-26 half-hour instalments. It's also the first season not to have any missing/destroyed episodes (earlier seasons have gaps that have been bridged by animated reconstructions or audio tracks). It's also, uniquely in Classic Who's 26-year run, the only time we get a new Doctor and a new companion at the same time. The season also acts as a reboot of the premise, with the Doctor now exiled on Earth and working with UNIT to face down a series of hostile threats as he tries to either escape or earn his freedom by doing good deeds for the Time Lords. Finally, it's very good, and sometimes even said to be the single finest season of Doctor Who, although I think that's a bit more of a stretch.

The decision was also made to make the show more action-packed, taking inspiration from James Bond and the much higher-budgeted, glossy shows made by ITC (The Prisoner, The Saint, UFO, Thunderbirds and so forth). The Third Doctor is as likely to disarm an enemy (non-lethally!) by using Venusian Karate then to talk them down, and his favoured way of resolving a situation is to build a fancy machine and "reverse the polarity of the neutron flow." Unable to use the TARDIS, the Doctor instead gets around with a car, Bessie, a vintage roadster he updates with a huge number of space age gadgets. The scripts also have a little more humour, and take advantage of their larger casts with numerous recurring UNIT characters on hand, as well as the Doctor and his various companions in this era. Compared to the six seasons that came before, it was dynamic, fast-moving and pacy.

Compared to 2025, the pacing feels considerably less dynamic. Season 7 consists of just four stories rather than the normal five, meaning that the stories had to be significantly longer than was normal. Only the opening serial, Spearhead from Space, is the standard four episodes in length (equal to two modern episodes). The other three all clock in at seven episodes apiece, which is on the longer side even for Classic Who (only three stories in the whole run of the series are longer, all earlier on). Subsequent seasons have more four-parters and their longest stories never rise above six episodes, with even those being phased out before the end of the 1970s.

Spearhead from Space gets things off to a strong start. We meet the Third Doctor, played by Jon Pertwee, suffering from post-regenerative disorder/stress. It's fortunate that he is quickly found by UNIT and the Brigadier (played splendidly, as always, by Nicholas Courtney). UNIT's own new scientific advisor, Liz Shaw (Caroline John), is quickly sidelined by the Doctor's superior knowledge, but holds her own intellectually and has a sardonic sense of humour that is quite entertaining. The serial introduces the recurring menace of the Nestene Consciousness, a powerful alien intelligence that can animate plastic to serve its needs, resulting in the onslaught of murderous shop dummies, the Autons. There's a reason why Russell T. Davies borrowed heavily from this story when he relaunched Doctor Who in 2005 with the episode Rose (even down to re-staging the shots of shop dummies coming to life and bursting through windows). This story also looks superb, as a result of being the only Classic story to be entirely shot on film and hence to get a full, native HD upgrade. The guest stars are pretty good and the four-episode run keeps things ticking over nicely.

The Silurians - more technically Doctor Who and the Silurians due to a titling error - also introduces a new, recurring element in the mythology with the titular Silurians, intelligent, humanoid dinosaurs who went into suspended animation when the Moon was captured into Earth's orbit, causing global disturbances. Awoken tens of millions of years later, the Silurians are understandably annoyed to find the planet overrun by apes, but are divided on how to handle the problem, with one leader willing to try diplomacy, another violence and another caught between. The Doctor and UNIT are drawn into the crisis when the Silurians tap a nearby power plant to aid in their revivification.

Although its seven-episode, three-hour runtime feels a little steep, it actually makes some interesting shifts in the story to avoid feeling too dull. Early episodes deal with a manhunt for a single Silurian after it is cut off from its fellows, the middle episodes revolve around the Doctor trying to broker a deal, and the conclusion revolves around a genetically-engineered plague the militant Silurians unleash upon humanity. The story has a strong moral core as the Silurians are shown to be a complex society of individuals who do not always agree with one another, and the Doctor has to try to talk UNIT down from blowing up the Silurian base. Some bad production values aside (a dinosaur stalking the cave network is definitely writing cheques the BBC's vfx department can't even hope to cash at this point), this is a complex and rich story with a lot of thorny questions and no easy answers. It is let down a little bit by the plague being resolved off-screen with some blink-and-you-miss-it dialogue.

The Ambassadors of Death sees a manned mission to Mars returning to Earth and almost immediately being hijacked by unknown forces for their own ends. The Doctor and UNIT find themselves in a battle of jurisdictions and wills with the British government and also the unknown assailants, all the while trying to negotiate a possible alien first contact situation. To be honest the main story is a bit bobbins and the serial has the worst pacing of the season, but this is made up for by the show's first employment of Havoc, a specialist stunt team. Previously, stunts on the show were handled by the show's own personnel, who were not well-versed in this area. This story goes berserk with frankly unnecessary but hugely entertaining fight sequences, hijacks, explosions and a use of helicopters that boards on the gratuitous. This story not only went overbudget but vapourised it, possibly explaining why the subsequent serial is so claustrophobic and doubles up most of the cast to save money. Everyone looks like they are having a lot of fun, so it's hard to criticise it too much for the number of times UNIT is tactically defeated by a bunch of East End thugs for hire, or why the aliens put up with a ludicrous amount of manipulation from small-minded criminals.

Inferno has sometimes been cited as the best story of the Pertwee era, and one of the best serials in Doctor Who's history. I wouldn't go quite that far, but it's the highlight of the season. The Doctor is drafted in to help assess a huge drilling project that is tunnelling deep into the Earth's crust to generate cheap energy. Intriguingly, the Doctor has another and more personal agenda, which is to use the energy that's being released to help repair the TARDIS. The initial episodes set up possible sabotage at the project, and the complex political intrigue between the project's leader, drilling advisor, the government oversight official and UNIT, who are handling security. Just as that is threatening to get boring (pun unintended), the Doctor is blasted into a parallel universe where Britain is a fascist state. Scenes of the Brigadier, now the evil Brigade Leader (without his moustache, in an amusing inversion of Star Trek's approach), and military commander Liz Shaw subjecting the Doctor to Nineteen Eighty-Four style interrogation, remain fairly disturbing. This is also one of Pertwee's finest hours, as the Doctor has to remember his compassion for saving lives even extends to these darker versions of his friends. Nicholas Courtney in particular gives an absolutely chilling performance as the Brigade Leader, and Caroline John is outstanding as both versions of Liz in what turns out to be her swansong from the show. The ending is one of Doctor Who's most powerfully bleak moments, and is terrifically-written and acted.

Season 7 of Doctor Who comes with all the caveats of watching a season of television produced by the BBC on a very tight budget in 1970: production values rarely rise above adequate (overuse of cool-looking helicopters aside), some of the guest stars are sublime and some others are hamming it up like panto dames, effects shots are mostly risible, and the shooting on video results in some iffy lighting set-ups. But, overlooking the production weaknesses, the ideas are often very strong, the scripts are often quite smart and the performances by the regulars are excellent. Pertwee's Third Doctor is a little pompous and arrogant, but he is also moral, a firm believer in science and diplomacy, and if you're up against an alien invader, there's nobody else you'd rather have at your side.

The seventh season of Doctor Who (****½) can be seen right now on the BBC iPlayer in the UK, BritBox in much of the rest of the world, and is also available on DVD and Blu-Ray.

• 7.1 - 7.4: Spearhead from Space (****½)
• 7.5 - 7.11: The Silurians (****½)
• 7.12 - 7.18: Ambassadors of Death (***½)
• 7.19 - 7.25: Inferno (*****)

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

CYBERPUNK: EDGERUNNERS II confirmed to be in production

CD Projekt Red, anime studio Trigger and Netflix have all confirmed they are working on a project called Cyberpunk Edgerunners II. This will be a sequel to their hit 2022 anime set in the same world as the video game Cyberpunk 2077 (2020) and the Cyberpunk tabletop roleplaying game franchise created by Mike Pondsmith in 1988.

The sequel series will again be 10 episodes in length. It will be directed by Kai Ikarashi, who worked on the first series, with writer/producer Bartosz Sztybor also returning. The creative team have confirmed this will be a new story in Night City, and there will be no retconning of the original series' ending, with the characters who died in that story staying dead in this new series. There was no confirmation if any of the surviving characters will be returning (some of them have already reappeared courtesy of a special mission added to Cyberpunk 2077 in later updates).

The new series is still early in production, with no confirmed release date as yet.

CD Projekt Red are also working on a sequel to the video game, with the working title Cyberpunk II. R. Talsorian Games are continuing to release new material for the tabletop roleplaying game, with The Edgerunner's Guide to Night City slated for release later this year.

RIP Jim Shooter

Legendary - or perhaps infamous - comics writer and editor Jim Shooter has sadly passed away at the age of 73. Shooter was best-known for his divisive stewardship of Marvel Comic as editor-in-chief from the late 1970s through the mid-1980s, and his involvement in the creation of the Transformers franchise.

Born in Pittsburgh in 1951, Shooter started reading comics at age eight, but fell off quickly, feeling the stories were uninteresting. Whilst recovering from surgery at the age of twelve, he started reading Marvel Comics and became a huge fan. He realised that DC Comics were looking boring in comparison, and resolved to "help." Shooter started writing stories for DC characters and teams and sent them in sight unseen. To his surprise, DC replied positively and hired him as a freelance writer at the mind-boggling age of fourteen. Shooter created a variety of minor characters (including the Superman villain Parasite) and set up the idea of Superman and the Flash having occasional races to see who was faster. Shooter briefly worked for Marvel in 1969 but found the renumeration did not cover the cost of living in New York and returned to Pittsburgh. A brief second stint at DC led to an editorial job at Marvel in 1975, this time on a more reasonable salary.

High turnover in Marvel's top ranks saw Shooter rise rapidly through the ranks, becoming Marvel's new editor-in-chief in 1978. He oversaw such projects as Chris Claremont's run on X-Men (though that was already underway), Frank Miller's take on Daredevil and John Byrne's work on Fantastic Four.

Shooter developed a mixed reputation. On the one hand, he stringently imposed deadlines and made writers and artists work to them, sometimes ruthlessly pruning those unable to do so. Marvel's reputation for missing deadlines and sometimes skipping entire months had become quite acute in the mid-1970s, but this ended under Shooter's reign and predictability returned. Shooter initially won over artists and readers by insisting that artists be treated with more respect, paying for them to travel in better conditions to conventions, and giving them a wide leash of creativity. However, after a few years Shooter developed a more restrictive attitude, insisting that comics be written and draw according to his design. Some of the biggest-selling books were left alone, but middling ones saw greater editorial oversight or intervention.

Many writers and artists at Marvel claimed that Shooter's downfall was caused by the runaway success of his Secret Wars storyline in 1985, which he ascribed to his own writing and planning rather than the massive commercial appeal of seeing almost every Marvel character combined into one mega-saga. Shooter became less tolerant of other writers' ideas after this point. With grumbling about Shooter's policies reaching fever pitch, despite his commercial success (Marvel's market share grew to an estimated 80% under his watch)w, he was fired in 1987. He subsequently founded Valiant Comics in 1989, Defiant Comics in 1993 and Broadway Comics in 1995. He returned to work for DC in 2007, and then Dark Horse Comics in 2009.

Shooter also played a key role in the development of Transformers. Hasbro struck a deal with Takara Toys in mid-1983 to bring their Diaclone and Microchange lines of transforming robots to the international market, but found that the Japanese toy lines had little or no expository fiction about what these robots were or what they doing. Some of the toys appeared to be mecha (complete with little pilots), but others did not. Hasbro themselves came up with the names "Transformers" (after some minor controversy worrying about if kids would confuse the name with real-life electrical transformers and somehow fry themselves), "Autobots" and "Decepticons," but realised they didn't have time or storytelling expertise to develop more ideas. They contacted Marvel, noting their successful toy-comic-cartoon collaboration on GI Joe several years earlier.

Shooter looked for a Marvel writer to work on the project, but an early collaboration with Denny O'Neill resulted in little more than the name of the Autobot leader, "Optimus Prime." Shooter himself then briefly took over, developing a design document that contains the first mention of the name "Cybertron" (Shooter himself is often credited with creating the name). Shooter also developed the basic idea of the Autobots and Decepticons fighting a war over resources, particularly energy, and coming to Earth to find more energy, only to crash into Mount St. Hillary (originally Mount St. Helens, until he realised the real-life recent eruption might make that in poor taste) and lie dormant for four million years. Shooter's treatment also features the first appearances of the name "the Ark" for the Autobot ship, and "Aunty" for its computer (Aunty was originally the name of the ship itself but moved to the computer when Shooter decided it was too whimsical). Shooter himself didn't claim to have created all of these ideas, noting some came from conversations he'd been having with O'Neill, and maybe some early conversations with Bob Budiansky. Budiansky then took over the day-to-day work on the franchise, coming with the names of almost all the other Transformers from Shockwave, Megatron and Mirage, right through the 1989 line of Micromasters and Pretenders. Budiansky also became the main writer on the Transformers Marvel comic, which began publication in May 1984, with Shooter editing.

Shooter was something of a divisive figure, respected for his practical trouble-solving skills, his recognition of talent, and fighting for better recognition of Marvel Comics within the wider industry (noting a screaming match with one of the people involved in the Transformers animated series who was trying to pass off Shooter's original design document as his own, since he thought nobody would care about the comics people) but derided for his top-down and sometimes micro-management approach to editing. Secret Wars was enormously popular - and is serving as the primary inspiration for the upcoming next two Avengers films - and may have firmly cemented the idea of the "big crossover mega-event" which would go on to dominate the comics industry (for good and ill).

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)

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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.