Doctor Who: Radio Free Skaro

For one week only, the Three Who Rule are reunited (and it feels sensibly fine) as Warren returns from his adventures as an Associate European only to have Chris soon toodle off for his own Continental Sojourn! But in the meantime we have news of BBC stations going off air, The Satan Pit in theatres, our analysis of Film is Fabulous comments re: missing Doctor Who, an incalculable amount of banter about confusing time zone changes, the Timelash as per usual, and an interview with Richard Marks, the author of The Reality War – 2005-2025: How the Doctor Who Revival Tr...

Christmas is saved! The official Doctor Who YouTube Channel (don't forget to subscribe) and Big Finish have come together to present a new audio Christmas story starring Christopher Eccleston and Carole Ann Ford. We have the details. Other audio goodies are discussed as well in lieu of news of tenders and Cbeebies spinoffs, and the episode culminates in the third and final part of our Classic Series Commentary miniseries of "The Daleks' Master Plan"!

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Three big Doctor Who stories share the spotlight this week! Deadline reports that both Jed Mercurio's Hat Trick Mercurio and STV Studios are two of the interested bidders to make Doctor Who, the first image and details of the new CBeebies Doctor Who show TARDIS Crew were unveiled, and Russell T Davies' new memoir is out for all to dissect for its details and (lack of) juicy dirt. All this, and our second instalment in our Classic Series Commentary for "The Daleks' Master Plan"!

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Doctor Who is dead, long live Doctor Who! Russell T Davies speaks of the end of his time on Doctor Who in an excerpt from his new book, while Bad Wolf's Jane Tranter laments the dismantling of the most recent TARDIS set. All this is happening while BBC Studios may have multiple bids to produce the next era of Doctor Who. All this and more, including the first episode of our Classic Series Commentary of the first quarter of "The Daleks' Master Plan"!

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It's the end, but the Circuit has been prepared for! Big Finish concludes the Fugitive Doctor's multi-month, multi-platform saga with audio play Full Circuit and Short Circuits, a couple of audiobooks. Plus "The Satan Pit" hits movie theatres on November 23, the BFI hosts a Blake's 7 Series 3 event, the usual Timelash nonsense continues apace and the one, the only David J. Howe graces us with an interview about all manner of Telos Publishing goings-on! 

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Big news! The moment has been prepared for by a cabal of BBC pencil pushers as the official Doctor Who Invitation To Tender was released to all and sundry! Steven and Warren pick apart the document with a fine tooth comb, highlighting requirements like "essential Britishness" before spring boarding into the usual speculation, and theorizing and equal parts cynicism and copium. Plus Big Finish and DWM news, The Timelash and a Miniscope featuring all three of the Three Who Rule examining the directing work of Peter Hoar!

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A light week of Doctor Who related banter as we soldier through continued Circuit Breaker fun, speculate wildly about the upcoming Blakes 7 Series 3 Collection that was officially announced this past week, the usual Big Finish cover art overexamination, and a travel back through the years via The Timelash! Forwards to the Past, or something!

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As befits these dog days of Doctor Who, we start this episode delving into both Edmonton infrastructure projects and the 60th anniversary of Star Trek, before summarily slapping ourselves upside the head and reporting on Warren's progress reading Circuit Breaker: Kaleidoscope (pretty good so far!) and the extraordinarily expensive yet mouth-wateringly lovely new Character Options set featuring Liz Shaw and a Primordial Professor Stahlman  Also books, the Timelash and an interview with the Cyberleader himself David Banks about his new book Man and Cyberman! Excellent!

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The War between the Galactic Republic (Canada) and the Trade Federation (America) continues and is finally affecting things that actually matter like Doctor Who as Catherine Tate and other guests have bowed out of Edmonton Expo due to overcomplicated plane shenanigans as available flights plummet between our two nations! In better news, Steven sings the praises of the BBC show Ludwig, which is like Doctor Who if Doctor Who was a crime procedural, and Gallifrey One continues with their second wave of guest announcements! Plus more exciting Circuit Breaker updates, New Paradigm Dalek dollies, more mutant heads aka Funko...

Despite the continuing lull in Doctor Who content we've got a bumper crop of stuff to talk about this week, including a missing episodes saga of sorts from Steven with many twists, turns, and 3/4" U-Matic tapes! the ever-present Circuit Breaker (except in Canada, more on that within), Mark Gatiss predicting the Doctor Who tender "quietly won't happen," the official launch of the Pondcast featuring Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill, and the return of our look back at the week in the history of Doctor Who, namely – The Timelash! 

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It's a landmark episode of Radio Free Skaro as we mark 20 years of blabbing into microphones about the greatest television show ever made, that there Doctor Who, with a touch of reminiscing and reflection on our various accomplishments, hankerings and foibles, and many, many of your Fluid Links answered in an epic-length episode the likes of which we (probably) won't do for another 20 years! In the words of Tom Baker: indomitable!

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It's the end of an era but the moment has been prepared for as the trailblazing Verity! crew release their final episode capping more than a decade of smart talk about Doctor Who from six awesome ladies. Pay tribute to their work and the community they built, as we do in this episode! Plus Gallifrey One announces Mat Irvine and Waris Hussein as guests, more Circuit Breaker and Big Finish fun, various Kickstarters and neat obscurities, and an interview with Stephen James Walker, the editor of the keenly anticipated Doctor Who Production Diary – The Troughton Years! 

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We're breaking circuits once more as we cover both the new Audiobook Doctor Who: The Deadliest Weapon and preview a new Titan comic in the sprawling saga of Circuit Breaker starring Jo Martin as the Fugitive Doctor! Spoilers: we're enjoying Circuit Breaker! Plus books, Big Finish tomfoolery, more Dalek 63-88 goodies, and Part the Fourth of our Classic Series Commentary for the special edition of "Warriors of the Deep"!

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The TARDIS is in Glasgow this week as both the King and Queen of England opened the Commonwealth Games and Sylvester McCoy (in costume and adorned with a traffic cone) calls out all the Scottish Doctors by name, as is his right), and in February of next year both Carole Ann Ford and Anita Dobson will be in Los Angeles for Gallifrey One! Also, we discuss the future of Doctor Who alongside a new DWM article, Dugga Doo action dolly madness, a strange digression into the work of Giorgio Moroder, and is The War Between The Land and the...

Do you want to hear about MRAHHH BUSINESS regarding BBC Studios and the BBC's annual report for the better part of an hour? Well, you're going to, along with keen insights into the NHK man prowling Tokyo looking for license fee avoiders, James Bond musings, the continued myth of Christopher Nolan films having minimal CGI and more! Plus exciting Jo Martin sonic screwdriver news, more Big Finish analysis, and the exciting second part of our "Warriors of the Deep" Special Edition Classic Series Commentary with a new, pizazz-filled Myrka!

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The UK is awash in televisual Mrrahhh Business this week as Sky is set to purchase ITV for $2.13 billion and what better "experts" to weigh in on the subject than three Canadians with a passing familiarity with the industry? Plus a surfeit of Troughton-era goodness in the form of a massive production diary of the era by author David Brunt and a Doctor Who: Legends special featuring Ol' Two himself. We also have blatant foreign election interference as we endorse Count Binface and poorly explain what Ceefax is to the younger generations who do not in any way care...

We're Breaking Circuits over here at Radio Free Skaro Towers, with a web-based UNIT story setting up the whole shebang and a new Titan Comics adventure (which we have read in preview form) soon to come! While TWBLATS has yet to grace North American bandwidth via Disney+, the BBC Writers Room site has provided scripts for you to peruse! Plus Steven Moffat continues his unofficial Doctor Who appreciation tour with a guest appearance on Peter Purves' podcast, Blake's 7 Series C Blu-Ray available for preorder in the US, and the conclusion of our Classic Series Commentary for part four of...

It's a bumper crop of news this week despite a complete lack of Doctor Who…except for Circuit Breaker, which begins by way of an online game where you join UNIT! Plus a fine interview with Steven Moffat on the Whoniverse Show, some fine Big Finish Zaprudering, and some truly insane talk about both a possible (but thankfully never followed up on) Doctor Who-Star Trek crossover and a deep investigation into the Happy Days animated universe! Don a leather jacket and say "Wonzie" with us!

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If you thought a complete vacuum of Doctor Who news would stop the Three Who Rule from prognostication based on the vapours and some recent UK media podcast analysis about the BBC tendering process, boy howdy you would be wrong! Thrill to our educated guesses as to where we go from here in a fractured media landscape! Puzzle over the tender process! Draw no real conclusions! Plus part the third of our Spearhead from Space Classic Series Commentary!

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It's (not) the end, but the moment has been prepared for! Well, not as such but a press release from the BBC confirms what we long suspected: there will not be a Christmas special nor were plans for one ever seriously pursued. Sad news to be sure, but we've cobbled together industry and wider fan reaction along with our own lengthy takes tinged with what we'd like to think is both optimism and realism. More importantly, we have former Doctor Who Magazine editor Tom Spilsbury to give us his rather more informed take on the whole situation. Brave Heart...

The rumours and nonsense continue to bubble up from the internet swamps this week with claims of the Christmas Special shot in a minimal style, a fake news release to irritate us all, and actual footage of RTD saying there will be a BBC press release in a week or two. The Three Who Rule dig deep and are quite skeptical of all this torpor (other than RTD's almost certainly correct claim) as well the usual Big Finish and Dalek 63-88 updates and Part the Second of our Classic Series Commentary for Spearhead from Space!

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Jingle bells are probably silent this Christmas as, if RTD's hinting in the UK media has led the Three Who Rule to conclude, after Mr. Davies stating he won't be filming anything this year, so…whither Doctor Who Christmas Special? We get after it! We also look into the spectacular looking 4K release of the 1996 TV Movie, our thoughts on the Mandolorian and Grogu, the usual Big Finish Zaprudering, and an interview with Sophie Aldred, Paul Cornell and author Adrian Tchaikovsky and their involvement in the Salvation's Child graphic novel! Space Comics!

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Doctor Who is back! At least in the United States, by way of AMC+ which will be the exclusive streaming home of Doctor Who (2005-2022). No word if it'll show up on AMC+ Canada, which does in fact exist, but we're used to being the forgotten child of media. Plus we have more BFI and Big Finish news, a nice little BF tribute to Gareth David-Lloyd, and we travel back to the Jodie Whittaker era with a Miniscope examining the directing work of Lee Haven Jones on Spyfall Part Two, Orphan 55, and Revolution of the Daleks! 

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If you're looking for a deep dive into the glorious 4K (in the UK at least) return of Doctor Who: The Movie (1996) you've come to the right place! We have an epic interview with film restoration expert Paul Vanezis all about the painstaking process of sprucing up the 35mm print of said TV movie to modern video standards. If you're looking for granular details about frame rates you already knew we're the place to be, but now even more so than usual. Plus we have news of Jodie Whittaker at Chicago TARDIS, Film Is Fabulous! discovering a 1964 BBC directors...

The worlds of Doctor Who collide once more as the BBC launches into new Fugitive Doctor adventures via Circuit Breaker, a multi-platform saga in the tradition of Time Lord Victorious and Doom's Day,.The Three Who Rule are somewhat skeptical about the whole business, despite the welcome addition of a new and quite snazzy hat for Jo Martin's Fugitive Doctor! There's also an Entertainment Weekly list of the top 50 Doctor Who stories of the modern era which is just as non-controversial as you'd think, articles about missing episodes in general and the The Daleks' Master Plan in particular, multicam...

More exciting coverage of missing episodes….but this time not Doctor Who! Yes, a cutting copy of a 1968 episode of Morecambe & Wise has been discovered. But while a missing episode has been born anew, the past must fall as the Ianto shrine is finally disassembled with many a Ianto-ist in attendance along with Ianto himself, Gareth David Lloyd. Plus the usual Big Finish Zapruder-ing, Peter Capaldi and Cush Jumbo on Canadian TV, and our feature interview with Blake's 7 Production Diary Series C with creators Jonathan Helm and Grahame Robertson! Maximum Power!

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Are you tired of old men ranting about the current state of both Doctor Who and Star Trek? Well, brace yourself for more as Screen Rant of all places has a well-thought out piece about the future of both franchises and we may have cogitated more than is strictly necessary about the topic! Plus we look into a new set of action dollies from Character Options, Big Finish reveals, Tubi bringing back on-demand Doctor Who (in the US) and we're Making It Political as we interview writer Lizbeth Myles about her new book, Where We Stand, Where We Fall – Th...

In the wake of not only the glorious return of both missing episodes of The Daleks' Master Plan to the Doctor Who archive but also four brave astronauts (one of them Canadian!) to the Earth, we're back to our usual cogitating about the BFI screening of the TV Movie on its 30th anniversary, Big Finish covers and a lovely trailer by the Brothers Kibble-White, the Radiophonic Workshop getting a well deserved award, AND the return in the form of Part the Third of our Classic Series Commentary on "The Mysterious Planet"!

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The time has come and the two previously missing but now gloriously present episodes of The Daleks' Master Plan, namely The Nightmare Begins (Episode 1) and Devil's Planet (Episode 3), are here to be viewed and reviewed! They appeared not only on the BBC iPlayer but also in full on the US (but not Canadian, feh) Classic Doctor Who Youtube channel, and we have viewed said episodes and have thoughts. But that's not all we also have an interview with Toby Hadoke, who hosted a screening at Riverside Studios and reflects with Steven on the screening, the episodes, and the overall w...

Our deepest of dives into the wilds of missing episodes continues as our feature interview this week is with John Franklin of Film is Fabulous!, who chats all about the organization's mission, the complicated saga of tracking down not just Doctor Who but other film artifacts from collectors across the UK, and of course a deep dive into the technical nitty-gritty of film restoration, as is the remit of this here podcast. Plus a greeting from Chairman of the Board Tom Baker on the 45th anniversary of the Fourth Doctor's swan song in "Logopolis", Gallifrey One's hotelmaggedon looms in...

It's been a week since missing episodes of The Daleks' Master Plan revealed themselves to the public to great excitement and joy and indeed a Film of Fabulous! screening of said episodes on April 4 sold out near-instantly upon its announcement. We also have news of an ex-Google chief possibly taking the helm at the BBC, The War Between still being MIA from Disney+, the usual Big Finish over-examining, and our feature interview with The Long Game and Pull to Open author Paul Hayes, here to discuss the production of 1956 CBC production Flight Into Danger, starring one James Doohan and...

It is indeed an amazing week in the world of Doctor Who as two (!) episodes of The Daleks' Master Plan, specifically episodes 1 and 3, have been resurrected into the daylight through the good work of Film Is Fabulous! Revel with the Three Who Rule as they mull over how this came to be, what it means future Who media releases, the relative calm of this announcement as compared to 2013's ominrumour, and more! Plus we have an interview with Tim Burrows of the Missing Episodes Podcast to give you more of those granular details of technical cut film reels that...

BREAKING NEWS! Two previously missing episodes of Doctor Who have been returned to the BBC Archives! Episodes One and Three of The Daleks' Master Plan were found in a film collection obtained by Film is Fabulous, and will be streamed on BBC iPlayer at Easter. 

Full coverage of the recovery will be on the next episode of Radio Free Skaro!

Happy Magna Carta Day, everyone! One of them, anyway. Now that that's out of the way, there's heated debate on The Billie Piper Matter in both The Sun and The Telegraph, and the Three Who Rule add their shopworn takes to this interminable discussion that will be an absolute delight until Xmas 2026. Plus we have a set report from 2004, the iPlayer possibly re-re-re-inventing cable and hosting rival broadcasters, the Ianto Shrine nearing its end and the feelings around that, and most importantly, Part the Second of our "The Mysterious Planet" Classic Series Commentary!

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As world events trend ever downwards, you can always count on the Three Who Rule to not only give you the latest exciting news from the world of Doctor Who, such as Murray Gold reporting there are numerous versions of the upcoming Xmas Special written, a BBC executive saying quite sensibly that Doctor Who will come back when it's good and ready and more, but also our usual basting in the warm glow of the past as we go back to the halcyon days of 1986 with a Classic Series Commentary on the greatest model shot in the history of...

It's a banner day for Wilderness Years junior campers as the 35mm prints of the TV Movie have been lovingly scanned and become a 4K release on Blu-Ray, at least in the UK (for now). Plus there's a new documentary on The War Between on Youtube for North Americans pining to see…well, anything about them there Homo Aquas, a new Rachel Talalay video revealing "The Star Beast" directorial trickery, and most excitingly, an interview with journalist Paul Kirkley about the current state of the UK industry. Hint…it ain't great! Set your VCR to channel 3 to find out more...

The Three Who Rule are reunited as Steven reports back from his sojourn into the depths of Los Angeles and Gallifrey One and Chris and Warren regale him with tales of The Android Invasion and Warriors of the Deep viewings in Vancouver! Burying the lede here though, it's a banner day for Whovians as that most holy of 1970s brands, Fisher-Price has finally released Little People in the form of Doctors 9-15, excluding 14. Plus we have a surfeit of Big Finish covers to wildly speculate about, BBC executive Zai Bennett adds to the pile of vague confirmations about the...

It's Gallifrey One time! While the Canadian contingent in Los Angeles this year was low (including both Warren and Chris, who like many Canadians chose not to frequent the environs of our troubled neighbours), Steven represented both the Embassy of Radio Free Skaro, and the nation of Canada (the latter unofficially). Erika from Verity! and Chip from 2MTL join Steven in recapping this weekend's convention, including talks of panels, and going inside with the many main stage interviews that Steven performed.

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It's that time of year again, the annual Gallifrey One preview show, and even though only one of our august number is braving the geopolitical winds of Canada-U.S. kerfuffles (Steven, if you're keeping track) that won't stop us from overanalyzing the schedule and pointing out all the highlights! Plus a surfeit of Big Finish releases, a destroyed Dalek dolly along with 1980s Tegan, some musical deep dives, and more! 

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