September 14: "Revolution of the Daleks" / "The Genuine Article"

And now we're back to Doctor Who's primary ongoing storyline, with the New Year's 2021 special "Revolution of the Daleks".  There was initially some question as to whether this episode would go out on time or whether it would be another production delayed by COVID, but they had in fact filmed most of it as part of series 12, which meant it could be finished up and released as planned.

It starts by explicitly pitching itself as a sequel to the last New Year's special, "Resolution", by asking one basic-but-potentially overlooked question that we were left with last time: what happened to the Dalek shell that was left behind in GCHQ?  Here we see that was due to be sent into storage but was intercepted on the way by nefarious forces determined to exploit its potential.  Well, I say "nefarious", but in fact it's Jack Robertson, the American businessman from "Arachnids in the UK", who's decided to repurpose the shell (with some clandestine assistance from members of the government) and mass-produce it for use as security drones, complete with a presentation of a role-play protest that looks (presumably unintentionally, given the filming timeline) an awful lot like a 2020 Black Lives Matter protest, with people wearing masks and squaring up against a line of riot police.  It's actually a touch jarring, not so much because it's Doctor Who reflecting the times but because that doesn't happen in later scenes the way you might expect (no one at customs is masked up, for instance).  It lends the protest scene a certain frisson that the rest of the episode is lacking.

And while Robertson is building his security drones, Ryan, Graham, and Yaz are still waiting for the Doctor to turn up, after the events of "The Timeless Children".  It's been ten months since they've returned to Earth in a TARDIS from Gallifrey, and while it seems as though Ryan and Graham have started to face up to the possibility that the Doctor isn't coming back ("The Doc, you know, she went to do something she knew might kill her," Ryan tells Yaz; "we've just got to assume she didn't make it"), Yaz is still determined to try to help the Doctor, spending lots of time inside their TARDIS trying to figure out to how use it to rescue her.  But there's a more immediate issue: footage of Robertson with his Dalek copies have leaked out online, and so Ryan and Graham are determined to do what the Doctor would do and stop Robertson.  The publicity material leading up to the premiere of "Revolution of the Daleks" made it seem as if a large part of it would involve the Doctor's friends stepping up to stop the Daleks without her help, so it's honestly a bit of shame that they don't really follow through on that promise.  I would have liked a lot more of the TARDIS fam trying to stop Robertson before the Doctor shows up, but that's not what we get: the three companions confront Robertson, who has no idea what the word "Dalek" means, and while they're planning what to do next the Doctor arrives.  It's a bit disappointing, in part because there's something more interesting about the companions having to step up and try to do what the Doctor would do, instead of just having the Doctor appear to do Doctor-y things.

The Doctor and Jack learn that the Daleks are on Earth. ("Revolution of
the Daleks") ©BBC

And where has the Doctor been all this time?  Stuck in that prison the Judoon put her in at the end of "The Timeless Children", where she's apparently been for literal decades.  We don't get any evidence of her trying to escape (other than a throwaway joke to a P'ting that you can't eat the cell, she's tried), but that's probably because we're seeing the tail end of her imprisonment, where she seems to be resigned to her fate until something else comes along -- with that something being one Captain Jack Harkness, who finally gets to be in a story proper after his extended cameo in "Fugitive of the Judoon".  It's wonderful to see John Barrowman back for a full story, and you can tell he loves it just as much: he's clearly having a ball.  Jack's managed to get himself locked up in the same prison as the Doctor ("I heard a rumour you were in here, so I committed a few crimes.  Well, maybe a lot of crimes.  Maybe more than I should have") and, after nineteen years, maneuvered his way to the adjoining cell so that he could break her out, thanks to a break-out ball and a secretly stashed vortex manipulator.  It's a fun and exciting sequence, although it does leave you wondering a bit why Chibnall decided to go this route, if he wasn't going to do anything specific with the Doctor in prison.  But this sequence does lead to the Doctor's return to both her TARDIS and then to her fam -- only she got the timing wrong by ten months.  But after a quick angry shove by Yaz it's off to the races to deal with Daleks -- this is Doctor Who, after all.

Well, no, that's not fair; to his credit, Chibnall does take a couple moments to discuss the fallout of this, both in a conversation between Yaz and Jack and one between Ryan and the Doctor.  The one between Yaz and Jack is probably the more successful of the two, because Jack can relate to Yaz's pain and sadness: "When I was with the Doctor, I saw more than I could have ever dreamed.  And then... we lost each other.  I didn't know what happened to him.  If he was alive or if I was ever going to see him again.  Hard way to live.  Being with the Doctor, you don't get to choose when it stops.  Whether you leave her or... she leaves you."  It's a good conversation, and John Barrowman and Mandip Gill both take full advantage of the opportunity.  The conversation between Ryan and the Doctor in the TARDIS, however, isn't quite as satisfying -- not because of Tosin Cole or Jodie Whittaker, but because the Doctor's focus feels a touch off.  It seems she's still hung up on the Master's revelations in "The Timeless Children" that there are whole parts of her life that she doesn't remember, but for her it's been decades, so it seems slightly surprising that she's still mulling over this.  I think part of the tension here is that it had seemed she had made some peace with that at the end of "The Timeless Children", yet here it feels like she's back to square one.  Which is reasonable, I suppose, but not quite in keeping with how we think of the Doctor, someone who always seems to look forward, not back.  It's a bit more introspective than we've seen before, and it also seems inconsistent with the Doctor's attitude during the rest of the episode.  (It also doesn't help that the Doctor's declaration that she knows now who she is -- "I'm the one who stops the Daleks" -- is similar to the one to the Master in "The Timeless Children" about how "You've given me a gift.  Of myself.  You think that could destroy me?  You think that makes me lesser?  It makes me more.  I contain multitudes more than I ever thought or knew.")

The Death Squad Daleks confront the last of Robertson's Daleks.
("Revolution of the Daleks") ©BBC

I'm spending a bit of time on these conversations because the main storyline, honestly, is relatively straightforward.  There's some fun interplay between Captain Jack and the others, and Robertson spends a decent amount of time being entertainingly devious and self-serving, but in some ways the Dalek part of the storyline isn't very surprising.  The idea of humans creating Daleks without understanding what that actually entails is a good one, but it occasionally feels like the plot is too interested in moving to turning the security drones into actual Daleks to properly explore what that might mean.  The idea of a Dalek using computers and the machinery of capitalism to create a facility to grow more Daleks is cool, but it also feels like we're just trying to get to the point where we can put Dalek mutants into Dalek shells so that we can have an old-fashioned Dalek extermination sequence.  Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course, and it all looks great, with scores of Robertson's version of Daleks flying around exterminating people, but it does feel a touch unambitious.  That said, putting these Daleks up against "real" Daleks, in those bronze shells, is a great moment and helps underline the racial dimension that's always been the case for the Daleks (as the Doctor puts it, "For a race born out of mutation, they're pretty obsessed with purity").  Also, the act of calling in the Death Squad Daleks to come take care of the Robertson Daleks is an interesting one, as it means unleashing another enemy in order to defeat the first enemy -- and there's definitely something exciting about watching Jack realize what the Doctor's nuclear option entails and the Doctor trying to work out on the fly how to put the Death Squad Dalek genie back in the bottle.  And there's also a lot of fun to be had watching Robertson switch sides back and forth as he tries to gain the upper hand at any given time -- although it's a bit surprising that the Doctor apparently believes his claim at the end that he was only working with the bronze Daleks as a decoy.  Still, it's all reasonably entertaining, and it helps when you know what to expect, honestly; I found myself enjoying this episode a bit more the second time around, once any potential disappointment had been set aside.

And as we come to the end of the episode, we get a bit of a chance to breathe as we say a couple goodbyes.  Ryan has decided he wants to stay on Earth: "Me mates need me.  And I know this sounds stupid, but... I feel like my planet needs me," he says.  It's honestly nice to see a companion making the decision to leave the Doctor behind, since it's something we haven't seen for a while (not since Martha Jones back in 2007, in fact), and it's touching how Graham wants to keep travelling with the Doctor but wants to see his grandson grow up even more: "I don't want to miss out on you, you know, and being here without you ain't going to be the same."  It feels right for the two of them to leave on their own terms (and it means they don't get an unhappy ending), and the suggestion that they're going to carry on the fight without the Doctor ("Some weird stuff going on in a village in Finland," Ryan says.  "Troll invasion, so the locals are saying."  "And you know there's a quarry in Korea that's shut down because the workers are reporting they saw gravel creatures come to life," Graham replies) is perfect.  It's bittersweet to see them go, because Tosin Cole has been great, particularly in showing us how Ryan has developed and changed for the better as a result of his time with the Doctor, while Bradley Walsh has been undeniably one of the best things about the thirteenth Doctor's era to date, but at least their characters got to leave on their own terms.

So ultimately there's not really anything wrong with "Revolution of the Daleks".  In some ways this is designed more for a general audience than the usual Doctor Who audience, and so it's setting out to do Doctor Who-style things in a way that the public wants: the Doctor fighting loads of Daleks.  I just wish they'd been a bit more daring or ambitious with this, either by keeping the companions separated from the Doctor for longer or by causing the new strain of Daleks to be something of a force for good, perhaps (thus leading to an actual revolution of the Daleks: as it is it's not clear what the title's actually referring to).  In essence, "Revolution of the Daleks" boils down to Doctor Who-by-numbers: it's well made Who-by-numbers, but it's still a show that's currently playing things a bit safe.  This is a solid episode, but I wish it had been a bit less risk-averse.

And that wraps it up for this year's Doctor Who: I hope to see you in 2022, when I'll cover Jodie Whittaker's final series as the thirteenth Doctor...

Oh, but before we go, we do have one final Lockdown webcast to discuss: the 14 February sketch "The Genuine Article", produced during the UK's third COVID lockdown.  This one ties in with "Love & Monsters" and features the tenth Doctor confronted by the Abzorbaloff's father.  This one is actually animated and directed by William Grantham, the person who designed the Abzorbaloff for "Love & Monsters" back in 2006, when he was nine.  This one also features a "design a monster" winner in the form of the Krakanord, an insect in a specially-designed suit with buzzsaw blades and an acid gun that is enlisted by the Abzorbaloff's father to gain revenge on the Doctor but which ends up killing the dad because it's ticked off at being stuck in an alcove for three months, living on nothing but Earth food which it detests.  This is a fun, silly little skit, with an incredibly impressive performance by Elliott Crossley as the tenth Doctor (seriously, I genuinely thought I was listening to David Tennant), and a nice way to close out the Lockdown videos.

September 13: "The Archive of Islos" / "The Sentinel of the Fifth Galaxy" / "Planet of the Mechanoids" / "The Deadly Ally" / "Day of Reckoning" (Daleks!) / "U.N.I.T. On Call"

The pandemic threw a lot of things into disarray and confusion, with lockdowns and strict safety procedures and complicated requirements regarding work and life and such.  One thing, however, that didn't get subsequently delayed was a cross-platform project that BBC producer James Goss had been quietly working on: an ambitious multi-Doctor story called Time Lord Victorious, taking its overarching title from the tenth Doctor's declaration at the end of "The Waters of Mars".  This involved the tenth Doctor taking on the mantle of Time Lord Victorious (y'know, the thing that they sidestepped when they got to The End of Time), while an enemy from the Dark Times of ancient Gallifrey appeared.  There were a lot of tie-ins to this story (including comics, audios, books, and even little toy figurines), but for our purposes there was also a five-part webseries released on YouTube called Daleks!

I admittedly haven't followed the Time Lord Victorious storyline too closely (since it's very complicated; Goss was at one point suggesting that one way to experience it was to simply pick a character you were interested in and just check out those stories), so I don't really know how much this ties into the larger plot.  But from what I can gather, Daleks! is a pretty early part of the arc, which means that there's not much foreknowledge required to appreciate this (probably by design, since this is just about the most easily accessible part of Time Lord Victorious).  And so instead what we get is a fully CG animation, featuring the Daleks fighting a mysterious entity.

The most immediate thing you notice when watching this is that it's been rendered at 60 fps -- over twice as fast as standard Doctor Who.  The other thing you notice is that, although they do a good job with what they've got, this isn't a prestige project but rather something they've put together with the resources they have available.  Generally this doesn't matter too much, since the majority of what we see are Daleks and Mechanoids and other robots which don't need lots of fine-grained curves and such, but the times when such things are called for (such as the various explosions that happen, most of which resemble large overlayed geometric shapes of varying degrees of transparency), it does pull you out ever so slightly.  In fact, the overall effect of this, combined with the smoothness of the motion and various camera moves, is one of watching an Xbox 360-era video game cutscene being rendered in real time by the game's engine.  It's sometimes hard to shake this feeling, in fact.

The Mechanoid Queen and the Dalek Emperor in the Queen's Star
Chamber. ("Planet of the Mechanoids") ©BBC

But in terms of the actual storyline, Daleks! feels like it's something of an homage to the classic '60s Dalek comic strip.  The most obvious tell is the Dalek Emperor, who looks not like the Emperor from either The Evil of the Daleks or Remembrance of the Daleks but instead like a Time War version of the TV Century 21 Emperor, complete with golden spherical dome.  It's even got the same number of rows of Dalek bumps on its skirt.  We also get a Dalek Strategist, resembling a Dalek from the very first story (no panels along the mid-section), and some other Dalek variants.  The storyline also feels like it's paying tribute to the classic strip, with conniving Daleks that you're meant to sort of root for fighting strange new aliens, invading planets, and having battles with Mechanoids (the robots from The Chase that also were seen in the TV Century 21 strip).  In theory this should be the best thing ever, with loads of Daleks and Mechanoids filling the screen while the Dalek Strategist gets to be devious while dealing with this mysterious Entity that comes from a different dimension and is determined to wipe out the Daleks.  But at times it feels a bit unengaging.  Now perhaps that's because there aren't really any humanoid faces throughout this (even the strip regularly gave us people to relate to while the Daleks carried out their plans), and so we're stuck looking at various robots and robot-esque Daleks for over 65 minutes, with little in the way of emotion to engage with.

But it also sometimes feels as if Daleks! is playing things slightly safe.  We don't get crazy huge machines or much in the way of counterplots from, say, a small band of people trying to defeat the Daleks, and so in that respect it doesn't quite feel like the comic.  What we get is interesting in terms of watching the Daleks try to outmaneuver both the Mechanoids and the Entity, but it's lacking a certain flair.  Watching the Dalek Strategist put its plan into motion to, say, trap the Mechanoids in a position where they have to aid the Daleks is interesting, but when it only involves a small handful of Mechanoids actually doing anything beyond flying and spinning in the background, it feels a bit like a missed opportunity.  And the fact that this mysterious Entity pursuing the Daleks is never explained satisfactorily also leads to a vague sense of dissatisfaction.  And occasionally the dialogue is silly ("The damage is incalculable," one of the Islos Archivian robots states.  "Calculate it!" the Chief Archivian commands), but Daleks! doesn't lean into this purple prose the way you might hope, so it sometimes devolves into Daleks and Mechanoids stating dry facts at each other.

So I dunno.  Perhaps this works better in the context of Time Lord Victorious, with the Dalek Emperor and Strategist both getting more to do there, but on its own Daleks! never quite reaches the heights it's aiming for.  I can appreciate the craft that went into making it -- this could have easily been excruciating to watch, and it's never that -- but the overall storyline is brought down by its lack of ambition; it's true that their reach doesn't exceed their grasp, but you kind of wish it had.  There's nothing particularly wrong with Daleks!, and indeed some might find it extremely enjoyable (and, judging by the YouTube comments, there's more than a few such people).  But for me, it's just a touch uninvolving.

But before we go, we've got a Lockdown video to mention: "U.N.I.T. On Call", which was actually released between the first and second parts of Daleks! in response to the second UK Lockdown in November 2020.²⁹⁷  This one's a little more openly heartfelt than the previous Lockdown videos, concerned less with expanding our knowledge of Doctor Who and more with chatting with the third Doctor, the Brigadier (both admirably played by Jon Culshaw), and Jo Grant (hooray! Katy Manning's back!), as they reassure us that things won't be like this forever here in 2020 and to keep focusing on the positive and not to lose hope.  It's a worthwhile message.







²⁹⁷ Actually, there were a couple more Lockdown videos released around this time, but one's a fanciful rendition of Doctor Who's 57th Anniversary credits (which at one point features every credited actor to appear on the show) and the other is a Lockdown Choir version of Abigail's song from "A Christmas Carol" -- so as before, although they're well done, neither is a new narrative.

September 12: "Pompadour" / "The Zygon Isolation" / "The Descendants of Pompeii" / "Listen" / "Fear is a Superpower" / "Doctors Assemble!" / "The Secret of Novice Hame" / "The Best of Days"

So last time we got through April 2020; now we enter May, and as the COVID-19 lockdown continues so does the Lockdown Season.  First up today is "Pompadour", a short Steven Moffat-penned story following on from "The Girl in the Fireplace", with Sophia Myles reprising her role as Reinette, aka Madame de Pompadour.  Sort of.  We get a sense of her isolation, as she waits for the Doctor to return, but then we learn that this isn't the real Madame de Pompadour but instead the computer aboard the ship SS Madame de Pompadour, which (having stored the scans of the real Reinette inside its banks) has come to believe it's the real Madame de Pompadour.  It's a bittersweet tale, not only because we get a sense of Reinette's loneliness, but also because the Doctor isn't likely to visit the ship again, which means that the ship's loneliness will also continue.  It's not maudlin or overwrought but instead a bit understated, which fits this little story well.

"The Zygon Isolation" gives us the two Osgoods chatting over video, both stuck in their homes without much to do.  It feels a bit like the Michael Sheen/David Tennant²⁹⁵ comedy Staged -- except this actually got there first, as Staged didn't premiere until the following month.  This is also the first of the Lockdown Season videos to actually be set during lockdown, which makes it more immediately relatable.  That said, it feels a touch unfinished; the Osgoods make a couple jokes while the Doctor is apparently listening in, and then it suddenly stops with the two of them deciding to watch Doctor Who on iPlayer -- specifically, "The Zygon Invasion".  You kind of wish they'd pushed things a bit further -- but, on the other hand, as this is meant to be an advertisement for the Tweetalong for "The Zygon Invasion"/"The Zygon Inversion", it does what it set out to do.

Similarly to the last video, the next one, "The Descendants of Pompeii", features two more people experiencing the lockdown -- except this time it features a mother and daughter wondering if there's a "guardian angel" looking out for their family.  As the mother and daughter are played by the same actresses who played the mother and daughter in "The Fires of Pompeii", the clear implication (along with, um, the title) is that these are the descendants of the family the Doctor saved, and that he/she is still watching out for them.  It's a nice idea, but again, they don't do much with it other than broach the idea.  But that's fine, not everything has to be a thought-provoking drama.

Next up are two related videos, both spinning off from "Listen".  The first, also called "Listen" and also written by Steven Moffat, expands the poem the Doctor recites in that episode, revealing that the Doctor himself showed up to talk to the poet, asking him not to write the poem.  It's a touch meta, but it's still good fun -- and Jacob Dudman, who's reading the poem, does a reasonably good Capaldi impression.  The other short, "Fear is a Superpower", is simply a look at Danny Pink's life through the lens of "Listen", of how that changed his life but how he forgot that fear is a superpower -- until he was converted into a Cyberman and was able to use that fear to overcome his conditioning.  It's a nice perspective of Danny Pink that we didn't quite get during his time on the show, aided by some great visuals from frequent Doctor Who Magazine comic strip artist Mike Collins.  Short but sweet.

The sixth Doctor sends a picture of a cat to the group chat. ("Doctors
Assemble!")

After that is "Doctors Assemble!", ostensibly celebrating Doctor Who's 56th half-anniversary on 23 May, which features a group chat among all the Doctors.  The fourth Doctor is stuck in a shrinking TARDIS, see, and he needs the help of his other selves to both free him and to stop an invasion of Earth.  As might be expected from sometime BBC producer and long time Doctor Who fan James Goss, it's full of in-jokes as all the Doctors (all, with the exception of real Doctor David Bradley, being played by skilled vocal imitators) bicker amongst themselves while they try to work together.  All the actors do a great job, but particular plaudits must go to Jon Culshaw's near-perfect renditions of Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker, Angus Villers-Stuart's Colin Baker impression, Elliott Crossley's fabulous David Tennant imitation, and Jonathon Carley's outstanding John Hurt.  I know Carley's been playing the War Doctor for Big Finish, but I've always been a bit leery of imitations instead of the original actor -- but his performance here is making me seriously reconsider that position.  It's a fun story, and I love how it's the sixth Doctor and the War Doctor who are the ones who actually save the day while the others spend their time bickering.  This is a great sketch.

After "Doctors Assemble!" we get "The Secret of Novice Hame"²⁹⁶, a short story from Russell T Davies describing the final days of Novice Hame, the cat nun we saw in "New Earth" and "Gridlock", and how she's waiting for the Doctor while resting in a white pavilion on New Earth, being guarded by hippos while others visit.  It's a slightly melancholy but touching story, with Novice Hame ready to disclose a secret about New Earth to the Doctor, who finally arrives (as part of his farewell tour from The End of Time) to say goodbye.  It's beautiful and well done, performed well by Novice Hame's actress, Anna Hope, and David Tennant.  Really quite lovely.

The final story of this initial Lockdown Season is "The Best of Days", which (kind of) reunites Nardole with Bill Potts.  Set after "The Doctor Falls", it gives us Nardole (still defending the Mondasian colonists from the Cybermen) sending Bill Potts a "daily positivity outbreak", discussing how good it is that the Cybermen won't be invading the floor they're currently on for an extra day and how nice it felt to almost not break his left leg after falling down a thirty-foot hole.  Nardole's message is silly fun, but Bill's is a bit more serious.  On a break from Heather ("How can you have an honest difference of opinion with your girlfriend when one of you can alter the fundamental nature of reality just so she's always right?" Bill asks), she's decided to study at St. Luke's again (the university where the Doctor taught in series 10, if you've forgotten) but finds all the masks and social distancing a bit tricky.  She's also participating in a Black Lives Matter protest ("Turns out not all Cybermen have handles on their heads, let's put it that way"), and she thinks maybe this time will turn out better than the other times people have gathered to march and protest and make their voices heard.  It's a good way of bringing the events of summer 2020 into Doctor Who without trivializing them, and by presenting it as a "good news" message -- trying to see the positive in things -- it helps us do that as well, even if only a little.

That's basically the end of the Lockdown Season -- there are a couple other short videos still to discuss that were released later on as one-offs, but as a continuing thing that's the end of it.  Given the limited resources, people really did something special with this, providing all sorts of fun and touching moments with these videos, and ultimately reminding us that even when we're isolated, we're not alone.  That's the spirit of Doctor Who at its best, giving us joy and hope when we might otherwise forget about such things.  In that sense at the very least (along with several other senses), the Lockdown Season is a tremendous success.







²⁹⁵ David Tennant/Michael Sheen
²⁹⁶ Doctor Who Magazine includes "The Long Song (Lockdown Cover)" in between these two shorts, but as it's not actually any sort of narrative I won't cover it here, other than to note that they did a great job with it.

September 11, 2021: "Strax Saves the Day" / "Revenge of the Nestene" / "The Raggedy Doctor by Amelia Pond" / "Rory's Story" / "Farewell, Sarah Jane" / "Shadow of a Doubt" / "The Shadow in the Mirror" / "Sven and the Scarf"

By the time "The Timeless Children" aired, at the start of March 2020, it was becoming clear that COVID-19 was going to be more than just an abstract disease happening to other people and instead something that was going to affect all of us.  As the disease swept across the globe (with the World Health Organization officially declaring COVID-19 to be a pandemic on 11 March), countries began to take the disease much more seriously than they had been, and a consensus emerged that a way to try to slow down the spread of the virus (so as not to overwhelm hospitals and other medical facilities) was to limit all non-essential services and movement.  While here in the United States these measures became quickly politicized, with a lack of federal leadership leading to an inconsistent patchwork of measures from state and local government, the United Kingdom took things more seriously, announcing shutdowns of schools and, on 20 March, public venues -- with a stay-at-home order quickly following, going into effect on 26 March.

In response to all this, Doctor Who Magazine's editorial assistant, Emily Cook, devised the idea for Doctor Who: Lockdown, a series of planned simultaneous viewings of particular episodes, where people could respond to each other via Twitter as they watched it (what's known as a Tweetalong).  And while this was the initial motivation for Lockdown, they quickly realized they could do more with this.

And so we got a bunch of short stories to enjoy, and, relevant to our purposes, a series of special videos, posted to YouTube, that flesh out some of the details and provide follow-ups to the original episodes -- in many cases written by writers of the episodes in question (Steven Moffat, for instance, wrote five of these, while Russell T Davies wrote three).  And so the Lockdown Season, as Doctor Who Magazine #554 called it, was born.

The first of these, "Strax Saves the Day", is basically just an excuse for Steven Moffat to write a bunch of Strax jokes for Dan Starkey to perform as he introduces the Tweetalong for "The Day of the Doctor". It's quick, it's appropriately silly, and it gets the job done.

The next video, on the other hand, is a bit more ambitious.  "Revenge of the Nestene" is an immediate sequel to "Rose", written by Russell T Davies and read by Jacob Dudman, providing us with a look at a surviving remnant of the Nestene Consciousness in the aftermath of the destruction of the Nestene's Thames base.  It's the sort of short story that would feel right at home in 2019's The Target Storybook, a short story collection which also expands various Doctor Who episodes.  Jacob Dudman (someone, I have to confess, who, although I was aware of who they were, I hadn't actually seen any of their work before this -- but I now understand why people were praising him) does a great job reading Davies's prose, while Davies himself seems to have quite a bit of fun fleshing out some of the backstory of the Nestene.  Thus we're told how the Nestene had ended their planet-invading ways and were in fact quite peaceful and content until the Time War arrived and basically destroyed everything -- in a single second.  It's nice to be reminded of how good Davies is at this world-building, and at providing off-hand remarks about aliens and events, with mentions of the Crownworld and the Maternity Reefs that were part of the Plastic Conjunction.  And it ends with a sly suggestion that current UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson may in fact be an Auton.  It's good, cheeky fun, wonderfully read by Dudman.

After that we get a quick little insight into Amy's childhood in "The Raggedy Doctor by Amelia Pond", where Amelia writes a little story about how the raggedy Doctor is her friend, and that she's only told her best friend Mels (and Rory) about him, and that she hopes she doesn't have to wait too long before she sees him again.  It's not the most substantive piece ever, but it is rather sweet, and that's sufficient.

Rory records a video diary for his son. ("Rory's Story")

Next is "Rory's Story", written by Neil Gaiman as a lead-in to his episode "The Doctor's Wife".  It features Arthur Darvill back as Rory, leaving a video diary in 1946 ("on the only working smartphone in the world") to his son Anthony, describing the various adventures Rory had been on (and the many, many, many times he'd died) before he and Amy were sent back in time by the Weeping Angels.  It's wonderful to see how effortlessly Darvill slips back into the role, with a nice understated demeanor, and Gaiman slips in a couple lines designed to resonate with people during the pandemic, as Rory reflects on World War II: "I'm mostly impressed by people.  Yeah, they can get through so much by being brave and optimistic and resilient."  And we even get a little vocal cameo from Karen Gillan, who calls Rory away from his preparing to discuss the story he calls "I'm the Pretty One" in order to help her paint the baby's room.  I also love the implication that the Amy/Rory run on Doctor Who might be an adaptation of Rory's stories.  It's a really great, quick little story; I would say it's my favorite of the ones I'm watching today, except that the next one is even better.

"Farewell, Sarah Jane" is a beautiful coda to The Sarah Jane Adventures.  While the show ended on an optimistic, hopeful note, Russell T Davies noted that it also froze things slightly, and he wanted to move the characters on, to give them the opportunity to continue to grow and develop.  So, released on the ninth anniversary of Elisabeth Sladen's death, Davies gives us a gorgeous little tag to the show, as the friends and family of Sarah Jane meet at her funeral to remember her.  Once again this is narrated by Jacob Dudman, but the difference here is that all the dialogue is by the actors who played those parts -- and so we get Katy Manning as Jo Jones, scatterbrained but remembering her friend; Mina Anwar as Rani's mum Gita, reminiscing about how much they all loved Sarah Jane; Sophie Aldred as Dorothy McShane, recalling how the Doctor had once mentioned how he missed Sarah, and how when Dorothy met Sarah Jane during a run-in with the Diamond Wolf Clan (again, Davies is great at throwaway references), she understood why the Doctor had missed her; and, most wonderfully of all, Daniel Anthony as Clyde, Tommy Knight at Luke, and Anjli Mohindra as Rani, all remembering the positive impact Sarah Jane had on their lives.  It's really lovely and sweet and a beautiful epilogue, with Rani wondering if the reason the Doctor wasn't at Sarah Jane's funeral was because he whisked away before she died to have more adventures with him.  "Farewell, Sarah Jane" is a very heartfelt, touching story.

Next we get two quick little episodes from Paul Cornell, following up on "Human Nature".  "Shadow of a Doubt" brings Benny Summerfield (played by her long-time Big Finish voice actress Lisa Bowerman) to an archaeological dig where a mirror shows a girl with a red balloon seemingly trapped in it.  When I covered the "Human Nature"/"The Family of Blood" two-parter, I mentioned that the Doctor's punishments for the Family of Blood seemed a bit harsh and out of keeping with how we usually think of him, and it seems that Paul Cornell ultimately agrees.  This first one describes Benny having a conversation with the girl, about how the Doctor visits the girl once a month to see if she's sorry for all the people she killed.  We also get some sly references to multiple versions of events (Benny, who was present for the novel version of Human Nature, notes that "I'd been hunted by a girl like that; but, this wasn't quite her") and various other versions of the Doctor, including a red-haired version who "thought he was the last".  Benny ultimately leaves the mirror where she found it, and then the second half of the story, "The Shadow in the Mirror", continues later on, with the thirteenth Doctor having crossed her own timelines to set Daughter of Mine free, having decided that mercy is more important than fairness or vengeance.  These two stories serve as a nice little coda to "Human Nature"/"The Family of Blood", softening the Doctor's punishment and bringing her actions more in line with how we like to think the Doctor behaves.  It may not be the most important Who story ever, but if you're going to retcon your own works, there are definitely less satisfying ways to do so than this.

The final video for today is 30 April 2020's "Sven and the Scarf", which is a quick, silly little skit about one of Henry van Statten ("Dalek")'s researchers discovering a strange multi-colored scarf and examining the bits attached to it, including the wires from Genesis of the Daleks and a piece of Eldrad from The Hand of Fear.  It's quick and it's silly, but it also doesn't outstay its welcome.

So far the Lockdown Season, despite the inherent limitations involved, is a lovely delight, full of ingenuity and feeling.  We'll have to see if the second half maintains this sense of optimism and charm.