doctor

09 Sep

Doctor Who: Ranking the Master Stories – Which is the Best?

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Roger Delgado looms large over the character of the Master, being simultaneously influential and something of an anomaly: Delgado played the role with a debonair front, but since his death, the character has been less urbane and more desperate, manic and violent. In fact the actor who’s come closest to Delgado’s approach is Eric Roberts, who plays an American version of Delgado’s Master until his performance goes big towards the end of 1996’ ‘The TV Movie’. Each actor brings different facets to the fore, but after the character’s successful launch in Season 8 we get the tricky balancing act of…

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02 Sep

Suranne Jones’ Best Roles From New Drama Vigil to Doctor Who, Gentleman Jack & More

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We’ve seen her sew knickers, spew out Artron Energy, run a coal mine, solve and commit murders, and now thanks to BBC One thriller Vigil, we’re seeing her gumshoe her way around a nuclear submarine sniffing out a naval conspiracy. There’s very little Suranne Jones can’t do. To celebrate the breadth of her on-screen work, here’s a selection of Jones’ finest performances so far. Karen Macdonald in Coronation Street The Street’s where it all started for Jones, playing the mouthy, ambitious Karen McDonald (née Philips) to audiences of almost 20 million four nights a week. Jones won two ‘Most Popular…

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02 Sep

Doctor Who: What Do We Actually Know About the TARDIS?

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We all know the TARDIS. Blue box. Travels in space and time. Bigger on the inside. May contain a hat stand. For the Doctor and her friends it is home, it is a safe port of call from monsters and cracks in time and the combined hordes of Genghis Khan. But how well do we really know the TARDIS? In many ways it is the most mysterious part of Doctor Who lore. After all, every other mystery in the universe is one the Doctor quickly sets about trying to solve- even those about herself. The TARDIS, however, is just how…

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02 Sep

Marvel’s What If…? Episode 4 Ending Explored: The Ramifications of Doctor Strange’s Choice

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With the last couple episodes of Marvel’s What If…?, I was able to speculate on the tangent realities. What would a reformed Thanos mean for Earth? Where do the loyalties lie in the war against Loki’s rule over Midgard? The show asks, “What if?” and I asked, “What’s next?” Well…episode 4 makes that a little difficult. There is no world to expand upon. There is no future. Dr. Strange, driven by an obsession to save Christine Palmer’s life, goes way overboard and abuses time travel and magic to the point that reality collapses upon itself and all that remains is…

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01 Sep

What If…? Episode 4 Review: Doctor Strange Loses His Heart

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This Marvel’s What If? review contains spoilers. Marvel’s What If? Episode 4 What If…? episode four is here. While many fans were likely expecting to see Captain Carter show up as soon as they realized it was a Doctor Strange story, that is not the case. Instead, we get a romantic tragedy which pits two versions of Stephen against each other in order to save the woman that they love.  It’s a cosmic ride through Strange’s own arrogance that has absolutely world ending consequences. It’s also, interestingly, the second episode where we see a hero turn to the dark side.…

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30 Aug

Doctor Who’s Weeping Angels Are Perfect Horror Monsters But Are They Returning Villains?

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Have you heard? If not, let Steven Moffat be the first to tell you: Whittaker’s Doctor is “going to fight THE WEEPING ANGELS!!”  Moffat, who invented the Weeping Angels, has every right to be proud of his creation. Few would dispute that the Weeping Angels are NuWho’s break-out monster. In a 2020 poll of scariest Who monsters of all time, the angels ran away with the vote. Modern viewers might not retreat behind the sofa anymore when the Daleks roll in, but “Blink” had people giving cemetery statues a nervous second look. There’s a delicious fright to the idea that an innocent…

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29 Aug

TV’s Most Confusing Episodes From Doctor Who to Westworld

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There has to be some confusion in a TV drama, a procession of things not-yet-understood. That’s the deal: accept temporary bafflement in the expectation that at some point, all will be revealed. Or even if it won’t be, at least there’s a reason it’s been left unsolved, like a Sudoku you’ve got jam on.  Read more TV Enough, Scrappy-Doo! The TV Dogs Who Need to Chill the F Out By Alec Bojalad and 3 others TV TV’s Most Stressful Episodes From Battlestar Galactica to The Handmaid’s Tale By Alec Bojalad and 2 others What doesn’t work is when a TV…

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03 Jun

Doctor Who: the Historical Places the Show Has Never Visited (But Should)

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All of time, all of space, at your fingertips. That’s the promise of the TARDIS.  And despite a strong predilection for London, Earth, in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the Doctor has certainly gotten about a bit. But the thing about the universe is, there’s a lot of it, and there are still key historical events, massive epochs of history and places in the universe that the Doctor has never been to on screen. Some of these have made appearances in the books, comics, of Big Finish audios, but as ‘The Haunting of Villa Diodati‘ shows, Doctor Who…

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27 May

Doctor Who: Ranking the Cybermen Stories – Which is the Best?

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The Cybermen are really camp. They’re meant to be cold, logical, emotionless cyborg vampires, but mostly they’re just silly. They do slow fist-clenches and macho posturing. They wail and flap their arms around. They get killed by glitter. They make insanely convoluted plans and pretend they’re very clever. They are ridiculous and this is as entertaining as it is frustrating. They are also a terrifying spectre of death. As a child, you know when you see them that death is near, so their mere appearance induces tension. Nearly every Cyberman story combines these elements of death and camp (two of…

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22 May

Christopher Eccleston’s Ninth Doctor Has Always Been Doctor Who’s Secret Weapon

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Sometimes, impossible things just happen, and we call them miracles. Though that line may have been spoken by Eleventh Doctor Matt Smith in the Season 5 episode “The Pandorica Opens,” it has perhaps special relevance for Doctor Who fans right now, who are living through a moment most of us had given up hope on ever seeing. No, it’s not the fact that the Doctor is a woman now. (I’d like to believe we all knew that would eventually happen at some point, no matter how many folks resisted or complained about it.) It’s that Christopher Eccleston, the man who…

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20 May

How Shang-Chi Could Make Up for Doctor Strange’s Ancient One Whitewash

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Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is clearly being positioned as the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s next premiere tent-pole, as a walk through the action-figure-teeming toy aisles of mass retail stores now proves. Notwithstanding what that means for the next immediate MCU movie event, the July premium streaming premiere of Black Widow, the fact that Marvel and its Disney-powered marketing machine is supporting Shang-Chi to this extent is a sign of the film’s importance to the overall MCU. It’s a notion that Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige affirms with a key contrition about a pertinent past controversy. September’s Shang-Chi…

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18 May

Doctor Who: Which Monsters Will Return in Series 13?

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Spoilers: contains reference to unofficial series 13 filming photography Doctor Who began life as a time-travelling sci-fi show with a historical bias and an educational bent. One thing – or, rather, one race – changed all of that: The Daleks. Those oppressive pepper pots gave the public a taste for the fearsome, the far-off and the fantastic, and the following five decades would be stacked with all sorts of aliens and monsters, from the sub-slime to the Drashig-ulous, and everything in between. A new showrunner always wants to put their stamp on the series, but if novelty is vital to…

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04 May

WandaVision Originally Featured Doctor Strange

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This article contains WandaVision spoilers. Remember early on in the promotional process for Marvel’s WandaVision we were promised that it would set up elements of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness? We knew that Elizabeth Olsen would also appear in that film, and it seemed logical that Benedict Cumberbatch would return the favor and appear as Stephen Strange in WandaVision. And then remember how we were promised mind-bending cameos that ultimately ended up being cool but not exactly Sorcerer Supreme level? And then remember how everyone was desperately trying to decode that the meanings of those mysterious commercials were,…

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25 Apr

Shadow and Bone’s Inej is In One of the Best Episodes of Doctor Who Ever

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To call any one of the Shadow and Bone cast members a “breakout” is difficult, given that this young cast of relative newcomers is so freaking talented across the ensemble. That being said, Amita Suman, the Nepali-born British actress who plays Inej Ghafa, absolutely kills it in her performance as the knives-wielding assassin who believes in the Sun Summoner, her friends, and the sanctity of life. I’m not surprised, given that Suman has appeared on one of Den of Geek’s other favorite genre shows, Doctor Who, back in 2018, playing an integral role in one of NuWho’s best episodes ever:…

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21 Apr

Doctor Strange 2: Elizabeth Olsen Teases Wanda’s “Bonkers” MCU Return

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Elizabeth Olsen didn’t get much of a break between her most recent Marvel Cinematic Universe gigs. The Scarlet Witch actress went straight from WandaVision reshoots in Burbank to the set of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness in the U.K. With shooting on the Doctor Strange sequel set to end this week, Glamour caught up with Olsen for their April cover story, giving us one of our best glimpse into what Doctor Strange 2 will be yet. There hasn’t been much official news about the MCU sequel. Back in January, an unofficial synopsis emerged for Doctor Strange 2, to…

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06 Apr

Doctor Who: Ranking the Dalek Stories – Which is the Best?

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“… hideous, machine-like creatures. They are legless, moving on a round base. They have no human features. A lens on a flexible shaft acts as an eye, arms with mechanical grips for hands.” Terry Nation’s script for ‘The Survivors’ (aka ‘The Daleks’ Part Two) The Daleks, along with Judge Dredd, are fictional fascists beloved by a wide audience. At their heart is a combination of terrifying concept – Nazis who always return (imagine) – with a triumph of design. The greatest Dalek stories tap into this uneasy alliance. A quick summary of the thinking behind this article: A. We thought…

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02 Apr

Christopher Eccleston on Why Doctor Who Canon Needs Exploding

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Without the acerbic wit of the Ninth Doctor in 2005, the 21st-century geek landscape would look a whole lot different. If we were to borrow the TARDIS from Doctor Who, and pop back to the debut of “Rose” on March 26, 2005, we’d know we were standing on the edge of a moment when everything changed. Before Doctor Who, Christopher Eccleston had been known for hard-edged, gritty roles like the game-changing horror flick 28 Days Later or Danny Boyle’s Shallow Grave. After Doctor Who, Eccleston was known for…well…even more hard-edged roles; from the baddie Malekith in Thor: The Dark World…

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11 Mar

How WandaVision’s Doctor Strange 2 Connection Evolved

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This article contains WANDAVISION spoilers. WandaVision withdrawal is widespread as we reach the first Friday without a new episode of the acclaimed Disney+ series to ravenously consume and pick apart. True to any broadly celebrated television event, the series complemented an action-packed climax with an array of unanswered questions, especially regarding where it left Elizabeth Olsen’s Wanda Maximoff—now uber-powerful and fully-realized as the Scarlet Witch—for her imminent big screen return in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Interestingly, while it did tout teased connections, they came about quite late into the show’s production. The expectation that WandaVision would provide…

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05 Mar

Does the WandaVision Finale Set Up Doctor Strange 2?

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This article contains spoilers for the WandaVision finale. Marvel told us pretty early on that its Scarlet Witch spinoff series WandaVision would set up the events of Doctor Strange 2, but during the final episode some fans were a little disappointed by the lack of a Benedict Cumberbatch appearance that might have explained just how closely these two projects might be connected. However, there was quite a big Doctor Strange 2 connection for movie geeks who were paying close enough attention during WandaVision’s final post credits scene – it was just a little more subtle than most people were expecting.…

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25 Feb

Doctor Who: What Makes a Great One-Off Character?

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Some Doctor Who characters are intended for greatness; some are intended to be killed off at the end of their first episode. Writers have a lot more control over the second than the first. What remains true for all characters, is the tension that exists between their function in the story and their potential to affect it. Even a guard who simply runs into a room to get shot could have dragged the story in another direction, should they be allowed (this stock background character was the inspiration for Terry Pratchett’s City Watch novels). Successful one-off characters aren’t necessarily those…

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