RIP Walter Koenig

News has sadly broken of the passing of actor and writer Walter Koenig, veteran of the science fiction small screen where he played key roles on both the original Star Trek (and associated movies) and Babylon 5.

Koenig was born in Chicago in 1936 to Russian parents. He decided to become an actor relatively late, after receiving a psychology degree and a professor suggested he try acting. Koenig's first notable television role was on The Lieutenant, produced by Gene Roddenberry.

Koenig was then cast in 1967 in Roddenberry's Star Trek, playing Ensign Pavel Chekov, debuting in the second season. Roddenberry had mused that the international nature of the Enterprise crewed merited having a Russian character on board. Falsely, a publicity story was issued claiming that the Soviet periodical Pravda had complained there were no Russian characters on the show supposedly set in a peaceful future where mankind had united. Koenig was cast due to his resemblance to Davy Jones of the Monkees, and only later did the writers and crew discover that he had actual Russian ancestry. Koenig was also cast to add more youth appeal to the series, despite Koenig turning 31 around the time he debuted on the show.

The role of Chekov was originally intended to be minor and recurring rather than regular, but the absence of George Takei whilst he shot the film The Green Berets at the start of Season 2 of Trek meant that Chekov's role was beefed up to compensate, with Koenig getting a good reception from the audience and being promoted to a regular. Takei was initially unhappy about this upon his return, but after sharing a dressing room with Koenig for the season, they became fast friends. Koenig would serve as Takei's best man in 2008. Koenig went on to appear through the second and third seasons of the show.

When the show returned as Star Trek: The Animated Series, the studio decided there wasn't enough money to hire the entire original cast, so Chekov was left out of the scripts, to his frustration. An apologetic Gene Roddenberry instead hired Koenig as a writer, contributing the script The Infinite Vulcan, giving Koenig the minor historical distinction of being the first Star Trek castmember to contribute to an episode in a creative capacity as well as acting. Koenig returned to the role of Chekov for the first seven Star Trek movies, and was given an especially large role in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), which he was grateful for. The film also gave him his first iconic scene, where his character is taken over by mind-controlling parasites given to him by the tyrannical Khan. Later in the film he gets payback by blasting Khan's ship with photon torpedoes.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) gave Koenig arguably an even more iconic moment when his character is trying to find his way to a US Naval Shipyard in 1986 San Francisco, constantly asking passers-by to the "nuclear wessels."

Like many of his co-starts, Koenig felt typecast by his role and found other work somewhat hard to come by, especially in the 1970s. However, he did pick up guest star roles in shows including Columbo and Bring 'Em Back Alive. He was interested in writing and producing, and impressed Gene Roddenberry and the famously irascible writer Harlan Ellison with his enthusiasm, becoming friends with both. This led to his casting in Roddenberry's short-lived 1974 science fiction series The Questor Tapes and also encouraged him to write a behind-the-scenes book about the strained making of Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), published as Chekov's Enterprise.

In the 1980s he was introduced by Ellison to his friend J. Michael Straczynski, who was producing a radio talk show about science fiction. This friendship led Koenig to being given a guest role on the animated series The Real Ghostbusters, which Straczynski was working on. Straczynski created the role of a "Knight" on the his live-action science fiction show Babylon 5, in the episode A Sky Full of Stars. However, shortly before filming Koenig had to undergo a major operation on his heart and could not play the role, which was taken over by Christopher Neame. Koenig later pointed out this could be a blessing in disguise, as that was a one-shot role which ended with that episode. Straczynski instead created the character of Psi Cop Alfred Bester instead, a recurring nemesis for the crew of the titular space station who went on to appear in 12 episodes across five seasons. Bester even got his own special episode in the final season with him as the star, with even a specially-modified credit sequence reflecting that.

Koenig continued to make return appearances to Star Trek after his final appearance alongside William Shatner and James Doohan in the film Star Trek: Generations (1994). He went on to appear in numerous video games and several Star Trek fan series. He also technically reappeared in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine in the episode Trials and Tribble-ations, though only through archive footage from the original series. Koenig's final appearance was in the final episode of Star Trek: Picard in 2023, providing the voice of Federation President Anton Chekov, a presumed descendant of Pavel Chekov's.

Koenig wrote two volumes of autobiography, the first published as Warped Factors: A Neurotic's Guide to the Universe (1998), which was later revised and expanded as Beaming Up and Getting Off: Life Before and After Star Trek (2020). Koenig also had a variety of hobbies, including collecting "big little books" and buttons of various pop culture characters.

Walter Koenig was married to actress Judy Levitt (who briefly starred alongside him in Babylon 5). They had two children, Andrew (who sadly passed away in 2010) and Danielle.

Walter Koenig was a fine actor who perhaps didn't always get the roles he deserved, but excelled when given the opportunity. Whilst he will be best-remembered for Star Trek, it was his outstanding, chilling performance in Babylon 5 which was more impressive and gave him far more meat to chew on as an actor. He will be extremely missed.

Doctor Who: Season 18

The Doctor and Romana are recalled to Gallifrey, to Romana's distress as her journey with the Doctor is coming to an end, but the TARDIS is accidentally transported to another universe. As the Doctor tries to get them home, they recruit a new companion and then learn that the fate of the entire universe is hanging in the balance...and an old enemy has returned.

Season 18 of Doctor Who, airing from 1980 to 1981, was, once again, a time of great change. Douglas Adams had left after just one season as script editor, due to overwork caused by his Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy project blowing up big time. Graham Williams had also chosen to leave as head producer (the then-equivalent of a modern showrunner) after three seasons, finding the job had been more stressful than expected due to budgetary issues. John Nathan-Turner, who'd worked on the show since 1968, was promoted to showrunner and quickly hired Christopher Bidmead as script editor and lead writer. Bidmead was noted as having more knowledge of "proper" science fiction and was tasked with moving the show away from the silliness that had grown unchecked over the preceding few seasons.

Nathan-Turner also decided that the show was in need of a revamp, arguably the most significant since the series had moved into colour production with Season 7 back in 1970. More sophisticated visual effects were employed, thanks to the advent of computer technology and better model shots and prosthetics. It was hardly competing with Star Wars but at least it looked a bit better than what had come before. The title sequence was changed for the first time since Season 12 and the theme music given a somewhat funkier, electronic makeover. The cumulative result was to announce that Doctor Who had moved, very firmly, into the 1980s.

Bidmead and Nathan-Turner were also both keen to refresh the show creatively and in its casting. Lalla Ward had already announced her intention to leave the role of Romana, and Tom Baker had, as usual, played hardball in early-season negotiations and was quite surprised when the production team accepted his departure instead of arguing for him to stay by offering more money. They were also keen to remove K9, feeling his presence made the Doctor too powerful, not to mention making a mockery of the Doctor's strict no weapons policy: he doesn't like carrying guns but having a mobile laser tank trundling around is fine, apparently. These changes also required the introduction of new companions, with the 18-year-old Matthew Waterhouse cast as Adric mid-season and Janet Fielding joining as Tegan in the series finale. There was also an unexpected decision to promote guest star Sarah Sutton to a companion as Nyssa in the finale, resulting in a complete change of TARDIS crew and the most crowded TARDIS since way back in Season 4 (and the TARDIS wouldn't be this crowded for so long again until Series 11 of the new era...though that's a different story), although the full impact of that would not be felt until the following season.

The season launches with The Leisure Hive. The new music and new title sequence immediately impress, but the bemusingly long tracking shot of Brighton Beach that follows feels like the director is trying a bit too hard to make it feel like a different show. The story moves to the planet Argolis, where the survivors of a devastating war have funded reconstruction by turning the planet into a resort. Unfortunately, the odd appeal is now seen as old-hat and the planet teeters on the edge of bankruptcy. A spate of deaths and tensions with the Foamasi, the alien species who won the war with Argolis, intrigue the Doctor into getting involved. It's an odd story - and the first of several through the decade to dwell on capitalist themes - but at least feels fresh and original compared to what has come before, with a couple of refreshing plot twists and some interesting new effects (such as better locking-off technology that means the TARDIS can now materialise whilst the camera is moving). It's also the first story of the season to put Tom Baker in prosthetics, with him having to spend an episode or so aged into a very old man.

This continues in Meglos, where the Doctor's appearance is taken on by a hostile shapechanging cactus alien, and means that Tom Baker has to play both the hero and the villain. Despite complaining about the prosthetics required whenever Meglos changes shape, it's clearly an acting challenge that Baker relishes and he delivers clearly his best performance since at least City of Death here. The story and worldbuilding are quite good with its central story of a planet caught in a battle between reason and superstition, with a splendid array of guest performers. Bill Fraser and Frederick Treves are particularly good and there's a nice returning performance by Jacqueline Hill, here playing the antagonistic Lexa but whom is best-known for playing one of the Doctor's first companions, Barbara, back in Seasons 1 and 2. There are also some very impressive effects shots, at least by contemporary standards.

Full Circle is the first in a trilogy of serials set in E-Space. The TARDIS is sucked through a portal to this other dimension and is unable to escape, leading the Doctor and Romana to try visiting several planets in this new realm. On the first they run afoul of a conflict between the descendants of the crew of a crashed starliner and strange creatures rising from the swamps. This is a somewhat standard Doctor Who story, enlivened by an interesting last-minute plot twist, but its main purpose is to introduce new companion Adric, played by Matthew Waterhouse. Unfortunately Adric comes across as a bit of a wet blanket rather than the roguish "Artful Dodger" the producers had envisaged, but the Marshmen are a visually impressive opponent.

State of Decay, written by Terrance Dicks and held over from prior seasons, is a better story but an incongruous one. It feels like it's straight out of the Hinchcliffe/Holmes era, with a full gothic horror vibe and its premise basically being "the Doctor meets vampires!" Where the serial sings is the tying in of the vampires to the mythology of the Time Lords, and its effective guest cast who get the assignment, which stays just on the right side of camp.

Warriors' Gate is Doctor Who at its flat-out most bananas. Doctor Who always hovers around the edges of being totally surreal, and at rare moments in its history it gives in to the impetus. The last time it went Full Weird was arguably Season 6's The Mind Robber, and it wouldn't even try to match this again until Ghost Light in Season 26. Still, those stories at least had the Doctor and his companions written as normal, dealing with weird events. Warriors' Gate extends its atmosphere of weirdness to the Doctor, Romana and K9, who have poetic turns of dialogue in a story that starts traditional (a ship gets lost in the boundary of E-Space, after losing track of a captive creature who helps guide them) but rapidly takes a turn for the bizarre. Director Paul Joyce imbues the serial with a dreamlike quality, and its minimalism (the serial is mostly shot on greenscreens with only a couple of real sets) contrasts with the extensive and mostly-effective effects work. The bizzarity is not helped by the odd way that Romana and K9 leave the show at the end, with the hint of them going off on their own adventures we never hear about again, at least not on the main show (spinoff media, as usual to the rescue). It's certainly the most unusual-feeling Classic Doctor Who show of them all, and ambitious even if not a full success.

The Keeper of Traken is a refreshing change back towards what appears to be normality: the Doctor and Adric, having escaped E-Space, arrive on the planet Traken at the request of its dying Keeper, who feels evil is afoot. However, the Doctor is then framed as being the source of the evil. The serial has a splendid guest cast, with Anthony Ainley being the standout as Tremas, but Sheila Ruskin providing a splendid two-faced performance as the charming-but-deceitful Kassia. Adric's been a bit underwhelming as a companion so far, but he perks up a lot in a double-act with Sarah Sutton's likeable Nyssa, which I suspect played a key role in the decision to bring her back as a companion. The story itself is very solid, mid-to-upper tier Doctor Who, but what perks it up immensely is the ending. Arguably for the very first time, the "normal" way a Doctor Who story is supposed to end gets thrown out of the window by a series of shocking twists, something that feels more like an episode of Buffy or Babylon 5, and the serial itself ends on a hell of a cliffhanger as the Doctor's greatest enemy stages his most impressive comeback to date.

The series finale, Logopolis, written by Christopher Bidmead himself, is one of Doctor Who's better regeneration stories. There's something of the surreal air of Warriors' Gate here, as the story involves the TARDIS materialising around a real police box (so the Doctor can measure it and unjam the chameleon circuit), but this has been predicted, so a trap has been laid for the Doctor which causes an infinite regression of the TARDIS interior. Janet Fielding's Tegan stumbles into the TARDIS in the middle of all this chaos. Meanwhile, a mysterious figure is trying to help the Doctor and his companions towards a terrifying destiny the Doctor has to face head-on, and there's also a bunch of guys who are muttering equations that are preventing the universe from being destroyed. Obviously someone thinks it would be a brilliant idea to try to silence them.

The result is Doctor Who at its most grandiose and epic. For once the fate of the entire universe is at stake and, this not being a near-weekly occurrence as in Modern Who, the stakes feel pretty convincing for once. There's a ticking clock of doom as the Doctor realises his regeneration is coming but he tries to keep a brave face up for his companions. The story is odd, and dense, but also busy with a constantly-evolving plot, changes of scenery and characters coming and going. John Fraser delivers a superb guest performance as the Monitor, and there's a great turn from British character actor Tom Georgeson as a police inspector out of his depth. Janet Fielding also makes a terrific impression as new companion Tegan, even if she takes what's going on a bit more in her stride then you'd expect. Logopolis closes out the epic, immense Tom Baker era (which lasted longer, in episode count at least, then the next five Doctors combined) in appropriately epic style, and welcomes the arrival of Peter Davison as the younger-seeming Fifth Doctor.

As a bonus, at least on the Blu-Ray release of the season, there's also A Girl's Best Friend. This is a one-off TV movie, planned as a backdoor pilot for a show provisionally called K9 & Company. The 50-minute Christmas special sees the return of Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith, some five years after she parted company with the Doctor. The Doctor has built a third iteration of K9 and sent him to her to help in her investigations. Sarah soon needs his help as she investigates weird goings-on in her aunt's remote village out in the country. It's a pretty standard story, with traces of The Dæmons and The Stones of Blood (and, more amusingly, vague foreshadowings of the movie Hot Fuzz), though shorter and more focused. Elisabeth Sladen effortlessly slips into the role of Sarah Jane, but here as the heroine and star, and rises to the occasion easily. The guest cast is game and the direction effective. The script is solid enough and this being a slightly more upgraded version of K9 sees him have a little bit more of a personality and sense of humour than his two predecessors. How long the legs would have been on a full series of this is unclear (as K9 basically lasers his way to resolving the story fairly effortlessly), but it does feel like the premise could have led to a full series. Well, I suppose it did when The Sarah Jane Adventures finally debuted in 2007, twenty-six years after this episode aired, but that's another story as well. I will caution that K9 & Company might well have the very worst title sequence and musical score of any television show ever made. It's really something.

The eighteenth season of Doctor Who (****) is a hugely transitional one, with the entire cast and most of the crew changing over its considerable length (it being the longest season between Season 6 and Series 4 of the Modern era). If John Nathan-Turner wanted to put his stamp on the show he succeeded: there's a completely different energy working in this series by the end of the season and, for better or worse, the excesses of the Tom Baker era are slowly ironed out. If Baker was unhappy with many of these changes, it at least seems to galvanise him and he delivers some of his best performances since his Imperial Period (Seasons 12-14), with his performances in The Leisure Hive, Meglos, Warriors' Gate and Logopolis being particularly accomplished. Doctor Who has finally reached the 1980s, properly, and nothing will quite be the same again.

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

• 18.1 - 18.4: The Leisure Hive (***)
• 18.5 - 18.8: Meglos (***½)
• 18.9 - 18.12: Full Circle (***)
• 18.13 - 18.16: State of Decay (***½)
• 18.17 - 18.20: Warriors' Gate (***½)
• 18.21 - 18.24: The Keeper of Traken (****)
• 18.25 - 18.28: Logopolis (****½)
• K9 & Company: A Girl's Best Friend (***½)

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: Season 17

The Doctor and his companion Romana are on the run from the evil Black Guardian, using a randomiser to make them impossible to track through space and time. Their journeys will take them both to Earth and new, alien worlds.

Season 17 of Doctor Who was arguably the show's most troubled since its start. The show was near the apex of its success - Season 17 features several of the highest ratings in the show's history - but was also chronically hit by economic woes, with rampant inflation demolishing the show's budget, or at least its buying power. Creatively, the show had a unique problem: new script editor Douglas Adams had just penned a science fiction radio series, The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which had blown up unexpectedly big and seen him commissioned to write a second radio series, a novelisation, a TV show, a possible movie version and, a year or two down the line, even a video game. Adams did his best not to let this distract him from the day job, but it resulted in him shouldering a very heavy workload.

The season also featured continued clashes between star Tom Baker and the creative team. Baker had a low opinion of "boring" scripts and would tend to adlib or even rewrite scripts on the fly. Adams, who was a huge fan of Baker's humour and got on well with him, was inclined to indulge this tendency, to the irritation of other writers and directors (Baker, notably, was more restrained in meddling with Adams's own scripts). The season's production was also afflicted by strikes, and Baker's romantic relationship with his costar Lalla Ward which could be sparky.

Things kick off with Destiny of the Daleks, in which the Doctor and Romana travel to Skaro, homeworld of the Daleks, and get caught up in a war between the Movellans and the Daleks, who are trying to rescue their creator Davros, despite his apparent extermination in Season 12's Genesis of the Daleks. The first episode is pretty good, high in tension and atmosphere, but drops off a cliff quickly. David Gooderson is fairly inert as Davros, a sharp drop-off from the magisterial Michael Wisher in Genesis, and the conflict between the Daleks and Movellans (who look like members of a pop band) is underwhelming in the extreme. The Dalek models, some of which are over sixteen years old by this point, are also looking decidedly ropey. There's some nice location filming and a couple of interesting plot reversals, but it's a rather underwhelming story (if not as bad as its rep) and a disappointing bowing-out moment for Terry Nation, arguably Who's most important writer.

Fortunately, things immediately reverse with City of Death. Co-written by Douglas Adams, Graham Williams and David Fisher, City of Death is sometimes cited as Doctor Who's greatest single story, which is probably pushing it a bit. But it is definitely up there. The script is almost unrelentingly witty, the actual location filming in Paris really gives the show a filmic quality it has never had before (and rarely will again, at least in the Classic era), and Julian Glover gives one of the all-time great Doctor Who villain performances as Scaroth, last of the Jagaroth. Even the model shots are high in quality. Endlessly quotable ("what a delightful butler, he's so violent,"), well-paced and with a cast all on maximum form, City of Death is easily the season highlight, if not the highlight of the last three seasons (and maybe the next three as well).

The Creature from the Pit is an interesting story, mainly for its outstanding cast, particularly Myra Frances as Lady Adrasta who gets the assignment and performs with total conviction (Eileen Way is also excellent). The story has a very nice twist which almost subverts your expectations of what a Doctor Who story is about, whilst also being quintessential Doctor Who, but I feel the twist is really propping up the whole story. Without it, the plot is quite thin, so it doesn't reward rewatches as much. The visual effects, especially of the titular creature, are also a bit weak (and unnecessarily phallic). A solid story but not one you're going to revisit a lot.

Nightmare of Eden has a pretty strong premise, with two ships that ram into one another in a hyperspace accident. The Doctor helps them out, only to discover a whole ton of weird alien lifeforms are on the ship as well. Some interesting ideas in the story (if a bit of influence from Carnival of Monsters) and some strong guest performances - David Daker delivering his second memorable guest turn after his role as Irongron in The Time Warrior - help enliven a story that doesn't quite have the legs for four episodes, along with the Mandrels being the cuddliest and least-threatening Doctor Who monster, possibly of all time.

The Horns of Nimon, for many years, was decried as the worst Classic Doctor Who story of them all, which is debatable. It's definitely not the show at its best, with a plot that borrows more than a bit from Greek mythology and the titular Nimon being rather underwhelming in appearance. The serial is more infamous for Graham Crowden's ludicrous performance as Soldeed, which is 150% pure turbopanto. If you're in the mood for the hammiest performance in Doctor Who history, the story can be very entertaining; if not, it's a bit of a dire slog.

Shada, the final story of the season, has acquired a hushed, legendary reputation in Doctor Who circles by dint of 50% of it not existing. The story was fully written and filming had begun, with extensive location shooting in Cambridge mostly completed and a studio session also finished, when an electrician's strike halted shooting in its tracks. Attempts to remount the story for the following season failed, leaving the story incomplete. After various attempts to remount the story, including an audio version featuring Paul McGann's Eighth Doctor, and a video release with Tom Baker narrating the missing material, the BBC finally paid for animation to fill in the gaps, with the original voice cast returning to complete the script. Although the quality of the animation is...variable, this is the best solution for ensuring the story is completed in accordance with Douglas Adams' original intentions.

Once you get over the jarring shifts from live action to animation and back again, the story ends up being quite interesting. As an Adams script, it's inevitably witty and enjoyable. The guest cast is excellent, particularly Christopher Neame (whom some fans of this parish might recognise from his turn on Babylon 5's And the Sky Full of Stars fourteen years later), Denis Carey, Daniel Hill, Victoria Burgoyne and Gerald Campion. The plotting is a bit questionable in places - the Doctor convincing a computer that he's dead so should ignore orders to kill him is a joke drawn out for too long - and the pacing is definitely sluggish, with Adams not being best-represented in the six-part format. But still, it's a very solid story and a shame it was never finished to the original plan.

Season 17 (***½) is not as poor as its rep suggests. City of Death aside, these aren't the strongest scripts in Doctor Who history, but Tom Baker and Lalla Ward are on good form, and even where the scripts aren't the best, there's still some solid ideas being explored. It could be better, and the season is clearly compromised by budget issues in some places, but it ends up being firmly watchable.

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

• 17.1 - 17.4: Destiny of the Daleks (***)
• 17.5 - 17.8: City of Death (*****)
• 17.9 - 17.12: The Creature from the Pit (***½)
• 17.13 - 17.16: Nightmare of Eden (***)
• 17.17 - 17.20: The Horns of Nimon (**)
• 17.21 - 17.26: Shada (***½)

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

Where to Start: Traveller Buyer's Guide

So, you’ve familiarised yourself (franchisely!) with Traveller. You know your Vargr from your Hivers. You want to delve more deeply into the game. How do you do this? Where do you start? How deep down the rabbit hole do you go? How much money are you willing to part with, from “none at all” to “lots, please?” Here is a potted buyer’s guide to ease you gently into all things Traveller.

As Mongoose Publishing are the new IP-owners for Traveller (though they’ve been producing material in the setting for almost twenty years at this point), it makes sense to focus on their current, 2nd Edition (Updated) of the roleplaying game, as it is the only version currently being developed and expanded on a large scale. However, you can pick up a lot of the earlier editions of the game, especially as PDFs, from Marc Miller’s website and online sellers like DriveThru RPG.

Get Free Stuff! For Free!

Everyone likes free stuff, and Mongoose has you covered here. Last year they released the Traveller Starter Pack via their website which is completely free, and packs in a surprisingly large amount of content.

Traveller Starter Pack

The Starter Pack contains an introductory, streamlined version of the rules, including character creation and combat, and two complete adventures.

The main focus here is the Traveller Explorer’s Edition, which is a 60-page book containing the rules for creating characters, resolving skills and tasks, running combat and encounters, buying basic equipment, crewing spacecraft and even basic world and universe creation. As a concession to this being a free starter set, there’s only two Careers included: Scholar and Scout. However, Traveller’s infamously flexible skill system does allow for characters even of the same Career to be very different to one another.

The two adventures are quite generous. Death Station is a 26-page modern rewrite of a Classic Traveller adventure from back in the day, involving the exploration of a wrecked spacecraft. The rewrite is by Seth Skorkowsky, whose YouTube channel is a rich source of Traveller rules explanations and adventure reviews. Stranded is a 32-page adventure seeing the heroes undertaking a difficult cross-planet journey without their usual resources. Both adventures are well-regarded, and the Starter Pack is worth picking up to just get these adventures even for veteran Traveller players.

This free Starter Pack gives an adventuring group all they need to run a campaign lasting half a dozen sessions or so, or potentially more.

To moderately expand your options, you can add in the PDF of the Traveller Merchant’s Edition for a very reasonable 75p (or $1). This alternate, introductory version of the rules focuses on merchant adventures on a cargo spacecraft. A cut-down version of the trading rules is presented, as well as the Merchant career option. In combination with the Starter Pack, this gives you a moderate version of the Traveller experience for almost no monies. A trip to the Traveller website will also avail free character sheets, spacecraft record sheets, sector and subsector maps, and more.

The ultimate free Traveller resources are also online: Traveller Wiki and the Traveller Map website.

Core Books

The free stuff has given you a taste, but now you want the full, real deal. Where do you go from here?

Your first port of call should be The Traveller Core Rulebook Update 2022. Despite the slightly unwieldy name, this is the 100% full, complete core rulebook for Traveller 2^nd Edition Updated. At 264 pages it’s nicely chunky without being as shelf-destroying as many core rulebooks for other TTRPGs.

The book features no less than 12 Careers (well, 13 with “Prisoner”) and has the full rules for character creation, using skills, resolving tasks, operating vehicles and spacecraft, even building and designing your own spacecraft, as well as rules for using psionics and on living the rich life of a merchant. This is the full rules experience, but has little setting information: the idea is you purchase other books for setting information or create your own (or consult the Traveller Wiki, of course).

With the Core Rulebook and the aforementioned Starter Pack adventures, you already have enough materials to get off to a flying start. But there are several other core books that are worth considering, though still absolutely optional.

Players absolutely love stuff, namely weapons and equipment. What else are they going to spend their mission rewards on? This makes the Central Supply Catalogue Update 2023 an easy early purchase, featuring as it does a vast array (185 pages’ worth!) of new guns, gear and gadgets to enhance and expand any Traveller adventure.

Players also love more options, more ways of playing the game, more stats, skills and character generation ideas. This makes the Traveller Companion Update 2024 an easy recommendation. This book features ideas on how to convert the rules to handle genres such as horror or comedy (the book opens with a Douglas Adams quote), with different (and faster) character generation methods for those who want to get into the action more quickly. There are also rules for much more in-depth combat, including zero-gee vector battles, and more detailed rules for terrain, allies and recurring enemies.

The next step is spacecraft. Traveller is all about blasting into the big black on a trusty stellar cruiser, so having a variety of ships to choose from is fun. High Guard Update 2022 features tons more information on spacecraft operations, combat, ship weapons, designing new ships, crew roles, fleet actions and boarding actions. The book is rounded off by a massive 150 pages featuring numerous spacecraft from the Third Imperium setting, from tiny fighters to massive capital ships.

Other books in the core range are more specialised and you should only consider them if planning a campaign heavily revolving around those concepts. The Robot Handbook is excellent for anyone planning an adventure revolving around robots and cybernetics, but of limited utility to anyone else. The Vehicle Update 2025, due out later this year, expands the repertoire of ground and air vehicles for the setting beyond the basic types in the core book. The World Builder’s Handbook is great for any Referee (the Traveller version of a Dungeon or Gamemaster) more interested in creating their own worlds, whilst Bounty Hunter is useful for adventuring parties filled up with wannabe Boba Fetts.

 

Setting Material

Like Dungeons & Dragons, Traveller was designed as a generic roleplaying system allowing the players and Referees to create their own worlds, star systems and sectors, in their own setting. However, after a while the team found themselves adding names, locations and factions in a consistent manner. The result was Traveller’s official campaign setting: Charted Space, also known as the Third Imperium (earlier editions explored different time periods in the setting, but the current edition has returned to the original time period). Unlike D&D, which eventually developed over two dozen campaign settings joined together by a common multiverse, Traveller developed only a few settings, with the others becoming their own games: 2300AD and various ports of other science fiction universes to the Traveller rules, such as iconic 1990s space opera TV series Babylon 5. 

Getting to grips with the Third Imperium is straightforward. The sourcebook The Third Imperium gives an overview of the entire empire, with a strong focus on the planet Capital, the Sylean core worlds and the surrounding Core Sector. Whilst it’s a good book, the civilised Core Sector is more a setting for adventures revolving around diplomatic overtures, political intrigue and corporate espionage, rather than frontier adventuring. A new Traveller crew might wish to start with the rough-and-ready frontier.

Behind the Claw details the Spinward Marches and Deneb sectors, the original setting for the Classic Traveller adventures and material in the 1970s and 1980s. The Spinward Marches are Traveller’s answer to, say, the Sword Coast or Free City of Greyhawk, a highly-detailed border region between the Third Imperium and Zhodani Consulate where adventure is both frequent and dangerous. Many great Traveller adventures take place in this area, and the sector capital of Regina is the starting home of many a seasoned Traveller crew. The current meta-event campaign The Fifth Frontier War takes place partly in these sectors.

Meanwhile, Solomani Front details Terra (Earth), Sol and the entire Solomani Rim and Alpha Crucis sectors, where the Third Imperium borders the Solomani Confederation, as well as the Vega Autonomous District. This is for adventurers looking for more of a Cold War setting between rival powers, plus those who really wish to visit 57^th Century Basingstoke.

Ah, but what about aliens (even the human kind)? The Aliens of Charted Space has you covered. Volume 1 exposits on the Vargr, Aslan, Zhodani and K’kree. Volume 2 covers the Solomani, Droyne and Hivers.  Volume 3 features the Darrians, Geonee, Dolphins, Orca and Bwaps. Volume 4 explores the Suerrat, Za’tachk, Gurvin and Tezcat. Of the four books, Volumes 1 and 2 covers the iconic seven Traveller species, with 3 and 4 going into more obscure and lesser-known species. All four volumes also have information on equipment and ships developed by those species.

Clans of the Aslan is also worth a look for a deeper dive on the lion-like Aslan, a powerful alien species with mixed relations with the Third Imperium and Humaniti. The book explorers the Aslan social structure and hierarchy, the internal politics of a clan and how Aslan characters might come to be working alongside humans. This is very useful for those players who want to depict Aslan as an alien civilisation with their own motivations and history, rather than just furry humans.

Probably the last thing to look at here, though maybe not for brand-new crews, is the recently-updated Great Rift boxed set, which explores the gigantic Great Rift, a large region of lightly-settled space almost dividing the Spinward Marches from the rest of the Imperium, and dividing the Aslan from much of the Third Imperium. The set explores five entire sectors (Corridor, Reft, Riftspan, Afawahisa and Touchstone) with a large array of maps and details on worlds, alongside ideas for adventures. This is quite a lot of material and probably isn’t for the newcomer, but does provide a huge sandbox for adventures created by Referees.

 

Adventures

Of course, pre-made adventures are something a time-poor Referee may find themselves grateful for. A lot of the work is done for you, and some of these adventures are based on classic material published almost fifty years ago, with a corresponding amount of time of refinement, rewrites and Referee suggestions on how to improve them.

 

The best-place to start here is, again, the Traveller Starter Kit, which includes the Death Station and Stranded adventures for free. Even if your bookshelf is groaning under the weight of bought Traveller material, these two adventures are pretty solid and either could make a reasonable jumping-off point for any campaign.

Mongoose has many adventures for the game, and has started publishing omnibuses including five adventures at a time. These are a great way of getting a bunch of adventure content more cheaply, sometimes with exclusive new adventures added.

The Marches Adventures 1-5 is set in the Spinward Marches and includes two of the all-timer classic Traveller adventures, High & Dry (in which the party is given a starship, but has to first recover it from the crater of an active volcano) and Mission to Mithril (in which the party’s ship is immobilised, forcing them into a hazardous overland journey), along with three other solid adventures.

The Great Rift Adventures 1-5 is set in the Great Rift region and makes a great companion to the Great Rift boxed set, but can be enjoyed by itself. This includes three classic adventures, namely Islands in the Rift, Deepnight Endeavour and Flatlined, along with two other good adventures.

Not available in omnibus yet are the Reach Adventures line. This includes several notable adventures, most famously Marooned on Marduk, another well-regarded starter adventure for a new Traveller campaign.

Similarly well-regarded is Mysteries on Arcturus Station, which combines an updated version of the Classic Traveller adventure Murder on Arcturus Station with a new set-up adventure, The Hunt for Sabre IV.

Of course, these are all adventures designed for short or medium-length play, maybe between 1 and 5 sessions max. Traveller is renowned for its mega-adventures, huge campaigns that will last months or years. Again, I wouldn’t necessarily start with these (unless you are a very experienced GM from other games) but they are very impressive.

The most famous of these – and fortunately the most concisely-presented and cheapest – is Secrets of the Ancients. One of the iconic Traveller adventures, variations of this campaign have appeared for multiple versions of the game, and even inspired the 1992 video game MegaTraveller 2: Quest for the Ancients. This adventure blows open the backstory of the Ancients and explores what happened to them, over a 10-part campaign which moves from being a heist scenario to a combat adventure and even the most elaborate exposition/flashback adventure I’ve ever seen for an RPG. Seth Skorkowsky has a mind-boggling full campaign review exploring what happens in each part of the campaign (spoilers!).

Even bigger in scale, ambition and shiny stuff is The Pirates of Drinax. This is the ultimate sandbox campaign, in which the players arrive in the Trojan Reach Sector and join forces with the King of Drinax, who wants to re-establish the pocket space empire of his forebears, buffered between the Aslan and the Third Imperium. How the players accomplish this is completely up to them, from faking pirate attacks on nearby unaligned worlds (making them amenable to accepting Drinax’s protection) to fancy diplomatic footwork to blackmail to large-scale military campaigns. The boxed set includes a huge map of the Trojan Reach, several tentpole adventures (to take place at different points in the campaign), information on a new, advanced ship for the team to use, and tons of setting information and suggestions for how to guide the players, including what happens if they lose interest in working for Drinax and betray the king, or even trigger a large-scale war with the Aslan. There are also ideas on how to incorporate the Reach Adventures line into this campaign. The boxed set even has its own optional helper book, The Drinaxian Companion, which adds more ideas, adventure seeds and oversight help, and another adventure called Shadows of Sindal which ties into the backstory for Pirates and can be used to either enhance a Pirates campaign or be used as a standalone adventure. Some players play Pirates as a focused linear adventure lasting 10-15 sessions, and others as an absolutely massive campaign lasting five or more years. It may represent the ultimate Traveller experience.

For those who prefer a more Star Trek-ish experience, the Deepnight Revelation boxed set has your crew joining a long-range exploration mission into very deep space. And recently succeeding on Kickstarter is the Singularity campaign, which explores posthuman and transhuman ideas in the Traveller setting.

There is of course a lot more Traveller stuff than this. More specialised books about naval personnel and mercenary companies, books on designing entire sectors, and tons more adventures. But this is more than enough to be getting on with. Something useful to take a look at is the Journal of Uncharted Space series, which is effectively a series of magazines/compendiums of articles, background material new rules, mini-adventures and worldbuilding covering a vast array of subjects. There are now 18 editions of this tome, each adding more than 120 pages of material to the Traveller universe.

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Doctor Who: Season 10

A mysterious power emanating from a black hole threatens to overwhelm our universe, with even the Time Lords powerless to stand against it. In desperation, they recruit the first three incarnations of the Doctor with a special mission: locate the source of the danger and eliminate it.

In 1973, Doctor Who turned ten years old. The BBC was determined to celebrate the show's longevity, and the production team decided to create a story where the three Doctors - William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee - joined forces to face down a mutual threat. Producer/showrunner Barry Letts and script editor Terrance Dicks also decided it was long past time to end the Doctor's exile on Earth. The format had succeeded in freshening up the show, but was also becoming limiting in the kinds of stories that could be told.

Slightly oddly, they decided to lead the season with the anniversary story, although airing in January 1973 made it closer to the ninth anniversary than the tenth (in fact, the first story of Season 11, airing in December 1973, was actually closer to the date). The Three Doctors is the first "multi-Doctor special," a concept that a lot of fans and creatives on the show love, and one that a lot hate (most famously, Russell T. Davies and Peter Capaldi). These stories, although still in canon, are generally an excuse for knockabout fun rather than doing anything too serious, and so it proves here.

That said, the story should really be called The Two-and-a-Bit Doctors, as William Hartnell was rather unwell at the time and found it difficult to stand and remember his lines, so is limited to pre-recorded VT footage on the TARDIS and Gallifrey scanners. This is a shame, but his warmth and irascible wit still comes through nicely in what would turn out to be his swansong (he passed away in 1975). The story itself becomes the Troughton-and-Pertwee Double Act and it is splendid, the two veteran actors sparking off one another with aplomb. The script also gives Jo Grant, Sergeant Benton and the Brigadier a lot to do, so the Doctors don't overwhelm proceedings. There are some superb visuals, with the entirety of UNIT headquarters sucked into a black hole, and some effective location filming in the inevitable quarry location. The monsters for this story - the Gel Guards - are both deeply stupid and highly prescient, acting as early predecessors to British television icon/nightmare from hell, Mr. Blobby.

Stephen Thorne is certainly...enthusiastic as long-missing Time Lord stellar engineer Omega (here not looking quite so much like a giant skeleton demon thing, as he was inexplicably portrayed in New Who's fifteenth series), but doesn't give a lot of nuance to his performance. I get the impression his mask was confining so he has to yell his lines rather than act them. But it does add to the "expensive panto" feeling of proceedings. The script has some great lines, and it's so much fun seeing Troughton and Pertwee joining forces you can forgive the slightness of it all. The story's biggest weakness is that the Brigadier acts like a total military dolt for most of it, an easy mistake to make when writing the character. Still, highly enjoyable, knockabout fun.

Carnival of Monsters starts as a weird one, with two apparently disconnected stories. In one, two new arrivals, entertainers, try to get through customs on the planet Inter Minor only to run afoul of customs. In the other, the Doctor and Jo arrive on a ship that famously disappeared in the Indian Ocean in the 1920s, which is attacked by what appears to be a dinosaur. The Doctor realises the ship is trapped in a time loop. The oddness of the two disconnected storylines is soon resolved: the entertainers are carrying a device called a Miniscope, in which a whole load of miniaturised creatures are being carried to entertain the crowds. A potentially fascinating premise is let down a little by the limited sets and locations available: the Doctor and Jo spend ages stuck in the guts of the machine, making their way across massive circuit boards. The serial hints at the possible return of the Cybermen before annoyingly pivoting to featuring creatures called Drashigs as the main threat, which are a very nice design but don't have a lot of depth to them.

More successful is Robert Holmes's banter-laden script, with a lot of funny lines and some early appearances for future Davros Michael Wisher (as Kalik) and companion Harry, Ian Marter (as Andrews). Leslie Dwyer and Cheryl Hall are also most entertaining as Vorg and Shirna. Potentially a great story is let down by what feels like budget limitations (the makeup for some of the aliens is poor, and some sets are overused) and pacing problems. This is a four-parter that can feel longer than some six-parters. Still, entertaining stuff, especially for the implication that the SS Bernice was a missing ship as famous as the Marie Celeste, but, thanks to the Doctor's actions, its disappearance never happens and the timeline adjusts (hence why we've never heard of it).

Frontier in Space is that rare Doctor Who beast, a full-blown space opera. Arriving in the 26th Century, the Doctor and Jo find the mighty Earth and Draconian Empires on the brink of full-scale war, with both sides accusing the other of attacking their ships. A full-blown Malcolm Hulke Special, packed with convincing, intricate worldbuilding (I would kill for some of this in the modern show), genuine political intrigue and the Doctor in full diplomat-pacifist mode, and with Jo getting some meaty plotlines. The Master showing up is much more tolerable here than normal, especially if you know this is Roger Delgado's last appearance: he tragically died in a car crash just a few weeks after the story was transmitted.

The story is very busy, avoiding the normal problems of duller six-parters, with the story moving from Earth to a penal colony on the Moon, to various spaceships and the Draconian capital. There's a lot of macho posturing, more subtle political overtures and military shenanigans, to the point where this story feels like a dry run for both Blake's 7 and Babylon 5 (Joe Straczynski is a noted Doctor Who fan, and the backstory of the previous Earth-Draconia War feels somewhat familiar). Throw in the Master, Ogrons, the surprise return of an old enemy, and you have what should be a total winner. What lets the story down is the fact that the Doctor and Jo spend most of it in prison. They go from being prisoners of the Earth Empire to incarcerated by the Draconians to prisoners of the Ogrons to prisoners of the Master, sometimes in what feels like the same episode.

Planet of the Daleks starts a rather dim trend for Doctor Who Dalek stories, with the appearance of the Daleks kept a surprise for the end of Part 1 of the story, despite "Daleks" appearing in the title, and in this case the last story pretty much letting us know that the Daleks might be about. This is Terry Nation's first Doctor Who script for almost a decade, and it's clear he hadn't been keeping up with the show in the interim as the script showed up with individual titles for each episode (something that hadn't been done for seven years at this point). The story has promise, as it brings back the Thals from the OG Dalek story and has a very small, focused cast, with each character getting a solid amount of development. There's also a rare moment of continuity as the Doctor talks about some of his former companions. The characters in this serial feel like their stories actually continue when the Doctor isn't around, which is rare at this point in the show.

Again, this is a four-parter masquerading as a six, and the pacing is a bit sluggish. There's a lot of people running around and getting captured and split up and infected with a fungal virus and needing a cure. The vfx are again a bit too ambitious as well, and Nation seems to be fall back too readily on ideas from earlier scripts (the sequences in the Dalek base feel a bit too reminiscent of the very first Dalek story). But there's a solid action-adventure story here, and the ending is a major cliffhanger which eventually gets tied up in a great comic story (Paul Cornell's Emperor of the Daleks).

The Green Death sees shenanigans down a coal mine in Wales, sparking an investigation from both the Brigadier (on the side of the local big energy conglomerate) and Jo Grant (on the side of the local eco-warriors). The Doctor, in something of a huff at everyone getting along without him, goes off to Metebelis III alone and, in one of the funniest sequences in the show's history, gets ten shades of trouble knocked out of him by the local flora and fauna. This sequence put me in mind of playing Dungeons & Dragons and one player has a strop and flaps off on a solo side-quest where the DM kicks the hell out of them until they get with the program and rejoin the rest of the party for the actual main story.

The rest of the serial unfolds as something of a spiritual successor to Season 8's The Dæmons, with the full UNIT team getting lots to do, with the locals pitching in to help or hinder as required. There's a right-on ecological message where the metaphor drives the story without the need for the writers to give a TED Talk on what it all means, a winning guest cast and one of the show's more outrageous villains. The ultimate bad guy is a very overused trope (one Star Trek had rather over-used a few years earlier) but the writers give him a ridiculous sense of humour and whimsy so he becomes a bit of a scene-stealer, and arguably loses because he's too busy trying to impress the Doctor with witty repartee rather than actually enacting his Evil Plan.

The story is also notable for seeing the departure of Katy Manning as Jo Grant after three seasons, making her (at this point) the show's second-longest running companion (after Jamie in Seasons 4-6, back when the seasons had far more episodes). It's probably fair to say that Jo had a mixed run as a companion, especially early on. She was supposed to be a skilled UNIT agent, trained in escapology as well as armed and unarmed combat, but the writers had a tendency to forget about that and have her screaming and getting captured. But when the script allowed it, Manning's superb sense of humour would come through (quoting Beatles lyrics to a confused Second Doctor in The Three Doctors), as well as her ability to unexpectedly take command of threatening situations (shutting down the prison riot in The Mind of Evil; posing as a royal princess in The Curse of Peladon; defeating the Master in a battle of wills in Frontier in Space, earning his grudging respect). Her departure is one of her best stories, especially for the impact it has on the Doctor, who seems more quietly devastated by her leaving than any other companion bar his own granddaughter Susan (at least at this point). Pertwee is particularly superb at this point.

Season 10 (****½) is a very enjoyable season of Doctor Who, with some great scripts, ideas and performances. Even when stories fall short of their potential, the ideas are at least very interesting. You can criticise the season for maybe being a bit too ambitious at the time, with the vfx creaking to realise the writers' vision, but it's all solidly fun stuff.

The season 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.

• 10.1 - 10.4: The Three Doctors (****)
• 10.5 - 10.8: Carnival of Monsters (****)
• 10.9 - 10.14: Frontier in Space (****)
• 10.15 - 10.20: Planet of the Daleks (***½)
• 20.21 - 10.26: The Green Death (*****)

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RIP Peter David

News has sadly broken of the passing of Star Trek, Babylon 5 and comic book writer Peter David, at the age of 68.

Born in Fort Meade, Maryland in 1956, David became interested in comic books at a young age, through comics left in a local barbershop and TV shows like the Adventures of Superman. David's parents did not approve of his interest in superheroes, especially Marvel, forcing him to read them in secret. David stopped reading comics in his teens feeling he'd outgrown them, but was drawn back in by the Chris Claremont run on X-Men in the 1970s. David also developed a fandom of novels and short stories from reading Harlan Ellison, Arthur Conan Doyle, Stephen King and Edgar Rice Burroughs.

David started his writing career by covering the Washington WorldCon in 1974 for The Philadelphia Bulletin, and then started writing shot fiction in the 1980s which appeared in venues such as Asimov's. He switched to working in publishing, making his way into working for Marvel in the sales department. Switching to editorial was unconventional, but David managed to do it and his first Spider-Man story was published in 1985.

Peter David made his name with his 11-year run on The Incredible Hulk, starting in May 1987 and continuing to August 1998. David's run on the title was acclaimed, with him introducing or popularising many concepts, including the Grey Hulk.

David was keen to keep a toe in the book publishing world and published his first novel, Knight Life, in 1987. David wrote both original series under his own name and the pen-name David Peters, and tie-in fiction. He eventually wrote 101 novels in total, a colossal figure.

Outside of his Marvel association, David was best-known for his work on the Star Trek franchise. In 1988 he started writing the DC Comics Star Trek series (meaning he was working for Marvel and DC simultaneously) and also penned his first Star Trek: The Next Generation novel, Strike Zone, for publication the following year. He eventually wrote 41 issues of Star Trek comics and 48 Star Trek novels.

He was particularly acclaimed for his nailing of the voices of the different Star Trek crews, and his sense of action and humour, as well as paying attention to continuity. His most beloved Trek novels were Strike Zone, Q-in-Law, Imzadi and the Borg epic Vendetta, which a lot of fans believed should have been made into a movie. Some of his later novels were more daft, including at one stage having a Borg "supercube" consumed Pluto "ending the debate once and for all." David was also notable for creating the New Frontier series and penning a remarkable 27 books in the series.

In 1994 David was contacted by J. Michael Straczynski, a fan of his comics work, and invited to work on his television series Babylon 5. David penned the episodes Soul Mates and There All the Honour Lies for Season 2, the former notable for introducing Londo's three wives and the latter for mocking Star Trek's focus on merchandising. The latter episode also sparked a friendly war with Straczynski after he pretended to get annoyed by a teddy bear David's wife bought for him and had the bear blasted into space in the final edit. David, who was friends with B5 actor Bill Mumy, collaborated with him on a TV show called Space Cases, in which the bear is recovered from deep space. David later wrote an episode of the ill-fated Babylon 5 spin-off show, Crusade. He later diversified into video games, working on Shadow Complex and Spider-Man: Edge of Time.

David later returned to the franchise to pen the very well-received Legions of. Fire novel trilogy (which tells the story of the fall of the Centauri Republic after the events of the show) and adaptations of the TV movie In the Beginning and Thirdspace.

Through the 1990s, David worked on other comic series including Aquaman, Supergirl and Young Justice, as well as his own original properties Soulsearchers and Company, and Sachs and Violens. In the 2000s he returned to Marvel to pen Captain Marvel, She-Hulk and Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man, as well as working on comics for other franchises including Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as well as Marvel's adaptation of Stephen King's The Dark Tower.

David would eventually win a whole slew of awards for his comics work, including a much-coveted Eisner for his Hulk run.

David started suffering from ill health in 2010 when he suffered a herniated disc. In 2012 he suffered a stroke but made almost a full recovery. He was subsequently diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. In 2022 he suffered an additional series of strokes, a kidney failure and a mild heart attack. These complications contributed to his sad passing away at too young an age.

Peter David was an exceptionally prolific writer, simultaneously juggling multiple comic book series and penning multiple novels a year. What was remarkable was that he combined a prolific output with a strong sense of quality control and sly humour. His Star Trek novels are among the very best ever published for that franchise, his contributions to Babylon 5 may be third only in importance to Straczynski and Larry DiTillio, and he was a noted supported of many charities and good causes. He could be irascible and opinionated, and a lot of his time in the comics field was spent arguing with other writers and creators (including Todd MacFarlane) over various issues.

Peter David's popularity wasn't just down to his work, but also his attitude, constantly giving the impression that he was a massive fan of science fiction, fantasy and superheroes and constantly showing enthusiasm for the field, its writers and its fans. He will be immensely missed.

Doctor Who: Series 12 (Season 38)

The Doctor continues her adventures through time and space with her new companions, Ryan, Graham and Yasmin. But the return of both an old enemy and an old friend sparks new question: who is the Timeless Child, and what is the threat posed by the Lone Cyberman?

The twelfth series of the revitalised Doctor Who aired in 2020, and saw showrunner Chris Chibnall taking stock after his debut season, which could be called the very definition of a mixed bag. On the one hand, Series 11 had shown that a woman playing the role of the Doctor could be successful, and had several solid stories. Unfortunately, it also had several very poor ones, and arguably the lowest consistent quality since the show had returned in 2005. The season was also the first since then not to have any kind of over-arcing story, with Chibnall instead focusing on mysteries and monsters of the week. The fan response to this approach had been muted, so for Series 12, he decided to return to featuring some kind of season-spanning mystery, as well as fully embracing the show's history by bringing back fan-favourite villains including the Master, the Daleks, the Cybermen and the Judoon. The result is a busy season, and a better one that its immediate forebear, but one that is overshadowed by the clunky and decidedly divisive finale which tries to do nothing less than retcon the entire history of the franchise in the most boring way possible.

Before we get there, the season gets off to an epic start with Spyfall, an elaborate two-part story in which the Doctor gets drawn into an alien incursion on Earth that starts off by targeting the planet's intelligence agencies. This is an interesting idea, buoyed by the enjoyable casting of Stephen Fry as the head of MI6 and by Lenny Henry as a corporate billionaire who, obviously, is in league with the bad guys. A promising opening part is subverted by the unexpected return of the Master, played here with charismatic relish by Sacha Dhawan (fresh from The Punisher), and who shifts the second part into a time-travelling thriller where the Doctor has to team up with Ada Lovelace (Sylvie Biggs) and Noor Inayat Khan (Shobna Gulati) to halt the Master's evil plans. To be honest, the main plot is gubbins and a potentially fascinating interdimensional alien threat in the form of the Kasaavins is under-utilised, but the two-parter succeeds thanks to its splendid guest cast. Fans may also bemoan a lack of any explanation for how the Master (last seen only in Series 10, apparently dying for good - twice!) has returned with no trace of the "goodness" the Doctor helped impart to them in that storyline. Still, as a statement of intent, this is a solid start.

Orphan 55 starts off as Doctor Who-by-the-numbers, with our heroes visiting an idyllic holiday resort which - shockingly! - becomes less idyllic as it comes under attack by aliens. Again, a solid supporting cast (including the always-splendid Laura Fraser) prop up a pedestrian script, but the story struggles with pacing (a perennial problem of the Chibnall era) and the ending is decided woeful, with a "twist" that you can spot coming a mile away.

Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror gets bonus points for a great title, and it's mildly surprising that this is the Doctor's first on-screen encounter with both Nikola Tesla (a charismatic and tragic Goran Višnjić) and Thomas Edison (a bumblingly malevolent Robert Glenister). It's a fine slice of sci-fi pulp, though perhaps the alien threat underwhelms. The Skithra feel like a redo of the Racnoss, to the point of pondering why they didn't just bring the Racnoss back. Still, a firmly enjoyable episode.

Things take an upwards turn with arguably the highlight of the entire Chibnall era. Fugitive of the Judoon sets up a straightforward-looking story, with a disguised alien who many not even know their own identity being hunted down by the Judoon whilst hiding in Cheltenham. The Doctor has to work out who the alien is and how to save them. What feels like a breezily solid mid-Russell T. Davies tier episode abruptly shifts tone and direction three-quarters of the way through and executes a mind-boggling twist that elevates the whole episode. The episode hinges on outstanding guest performances by Jo Martin and Ritu Arya, and a doom-laden cameo from Captain Jack (a returning John Barrowman after a near-decade's absence). I think this episode has been downgraded a bit because of how incredibly well it sets up a compelling mystery that the season finale totally fails to deliver on, but in isolation it's an outstanding slice of Doctor Who.

Unfortunately the season can't really sustain that level of interest. Praxeus starts off "big," with the Doctor and her companions splitting into multiple teams to deal with a threat to Earth that simultaneously unfolds in Peru, Hong Kong and Madagascar. The episode's huge scope and fun dialogue (Bradley Walsh is on fine form here) can are let down by a late-episode turn into a lecture on microplastics. A reasonable cause, but it feels like this saps the drama from the resolution of the story.

Can You Hear Me? has huge potential, featuring two ultra-powerful beings inadvertently unleashed from their prisons to rain terror on the universe. The epic scale of the story and compelling performances by Ian Gelder and Clare-Hope Ashitey, as well as Aruhan Galieva as Tahira, is very impressive, as well as featuring an intriguing setting with medieval Aleppo. Unfortunately, the episode feels a bit short-changed. The story is so epic that its resolution after just 50 minutes only feels perfunctory. This at least is the reverse of most Chibnall stories, which often feel like a great 30-minute idea stretched to almost an hour with filler. Unfortunately, the episode also features one of the most reviled scenes in the show's history, as Graham comes clean to the Doctor on his battle with cancer only for the Doctor to really not show much interest or empathy, which was certainly a choice.

The Haunting of Villa Diodati is another good one, with the Doctor and her companions stuck in the famous house where Mary Shelley was inspired to write Frankenstein. A haunted house tale turns into a surprisingly effective horror story as the house is invaded by the foretold Lone Cyberman (a formidable performance by Patrick O'Kane). This episode succeeds thanks to a very fine guest cast (Lili Miller as Mary Shelley, Jacob Collins-Levy as Byron, Nadia Parkes as Claire Clairmont and Maxim Baldry as Dr. Polidori) and a rich atmosphere.

Ascension of the Cyberman is effectively a modern remake of classic Doctor Who episode Earthshock, where the Cybermen, driven to the brink of extinction, recover an army of Cyber-warriors from a spaceship and prepare to conquer the universe. The episode does a lot with not too many resources, achieving a surprisingly epic scale at times, and a foreboding sense of the distant future where all hope is lost, reminiscent of Series 3's Utopia. A subplot in which we follow a young boy growing up in Ireland to become a policeman is well-made, but feels disconnected from the rest of the plot (at least until the following episode). The episode is great right up until the cliffhanger, when you can feel everything is about to go wrong.

That cliffhanger ending takes us into The Timeless Children, easily the most controversial episode since the show's return in 2005. This is also possibly the most awkwardly-structured and paced episode of the entire franchise, with the episode being part standard run-around-and-blow-things-up romp (complete with regenerating Cyber-Time Lords, a brilliant concept here mostly wasted) and part massive TED Talk about the Doctor's backstory. The running-around bit is mostly okay (livened up by a splendid guest turn by Game of Thrones' Ian McElhinney) but the scenes of the Master lecturing the Doctor on her hitherto unknown backstory drag on, as well as being somewhat eyebrow-raising in its connotations.

The Doctor being a super special Time Lord destined for greatness was always a hokey and cliched idea, her just being a rebel who ran away and got into hijinks after being bored was more entertaining (helping the idea that anybody can be a hero in the right circumstances). Not only does the retcon itself feel unconvincing, it's also portrayed in a redundant manner: the Master has - somehow - destroyed Gallifrey and wiped out the Time Lords again, making the entire Time Lord arc in the Steven Moffat period feel like a complete waste of time. The Doctor also already had one secret incarnation she didn't want anyone to know about, so giving her a bunch more here is just the same idea repeated. It also doesn't help that the Doctor here is written in an incredibly passive way, not asking questions or shouting out observations, just staring dumbly as the Master (hardly a trustworthy character) unloads the mother of all infodumps on her. I wouldn't mind so much if this massive backstory revelation actually leads anywhere but, over five years on, it hasn't, making the exercise feel pointless. Babylon 5's second season episode In the Shadow of Z'ha'dum shows how to make a massive backstory revelation story really work in a clever way, which Doctor Who (and Battlestar Galactica's No Exit, for that matter) fails to match here.

Still, watching Barristan Selmy fight Cybermen is undeniably a lot of fun, so it has that going for it.

After that confusing morass, the New Year's special Revolution of the Daleks throws subtlety out of the window and opts to have some laughs. Captain Jack returns (again) and teams up with the Doctor and the gang to fight a Dalek incursion on Earth. The entertaining bit here is that these are actually human-built Dalek drones that aren't too much of a problem until an overeager employee clones some of the surviving Dalek DNA from the previous year's Resolution, which is of course a Very Bad Idea. The episode improves further when the real Daleks show up, disgusted with these Dalek-human-robot hybrids, and set out to annihilate them (which is great) as a prelude to annihilating Earth (not so great). The escalating threat levels are well-handled, there's a lot of explosive action and the episode sets up the possibility of future troubles with amoral American businessman (and possible future President) Robertson. Any plans in that direction were thrown out by subsequent misconduct allegations levelled against actor Chris Noth. Still, the episode is a strong, if inconsequential, action piece with a surprisingly emotional ending.

Series 12 of Doctor Who (***½) is a significant improvement over the previous season in terms of general and individual episode quality. There is more action, more humour, some great guest stars, and some very solid ideas. Some of the hallmark problems of the Chibnall era remain: the TARDIS is too crowded with too many storylines for each episode for any to land extremely well (and by trying to further the characterisation of four regulars at once, it doesn't do a great job of any). It's notable the best episode of the season basically sidelines Yaz, Ryan and Graham for most of its going whilst the Doctor is confronted by a genuinely mind-blowing mystery with a great resolution. Otherwise pacing remains an issue, with Chibnall being given generally more time than either Davies or Moffat had (with several episodes clocking in at 60 minutes and most over 50, compared to the stricter 45-ish minutes of previous eras) and not knowing what to do with it.

The season also highlights what is Chibnall's key weakness: he seems to find it very difficult to write for Jodie Whittaker's Doctor. The Doctor is at her best when she storms into a situation, takes over and uses her natural authority and intelligence to investigate a problem and come up with a solution, overcoming rising complications along the way. When the script allows her to do that here (particularly against the Judoon and Cybermen, known threats she is confident of handling), the episode sings. When the script fails to do that, the episode turns into a leaden mess. This is particularly notable whenever Chibnall pairs Whittaker's Doctor with Dhawan's Master. Chibnall has a great handle on this Master's voice, his viciousness and evil really coming through in a chilling way. But the Doctor can't afford to let the Master run roughshod over her as happens in all four episodes of the season here where they face off. The Doctor standing mutely whilst the Master outlines her revised backstory is deeply bizarre, and leaves the audience losing respect for the character, which the show can never afford to happen.

But still, outside of those moments there is a feeling here that things are, if not back on track, at least sidling in that direction. Fugitive of the Judoon is a great episode, and The Haunting of Villa Diodati is almost as good, whilst Revolution of the Daleks, Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror and Ascension of the Cybermen are all very solid romps. But you'll probably never feel an urge to revisit Orphan 55 or Praxeus ever again. And The Timeless Children remains a deeply odd idea, strangely-executed and, so far, totally unresolved.

• 12.1: Spyfall, Part 1 (***½)
• 12.2: Spyfall, Part 2 (***½)
• 12.3: Orphan 55 (**½)
• 12.4: Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror (****)
• 12.5: Fugitive of the Judoon (*****)
• 12.6: Praxeus (***)
• 12.7: Can You Hear Me? (****)
• 12.8: The Haunting of Villa Diodati (****½)
• 12.9: Ascension of the Cybermen (****)
• 12.10: The Timeless Children (**½)
• 12X: Revolution of the Daleks (****)

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