Doctor Who: "Thin Ice" Review

“Thin Ice” continues with the feeling that showrunner Steven Moffat is returning to the template that served the revived series so well in its early years, following Bill’s first journey to the future with a historical story with a sci-fi element. Whilst the episode has a lot of good in it, it also has a fair few problems… and unfortunately, unlike last week, these are some pretty big problems that I can’t really overlook to say I overall enjoyed the episode.

The Robot Wars Technical Manual

The Robot Wars Technical Manual was published in 1999, during the programme’s second series, and was one of the first pieces of merchandise relating to the show. Of the four tie-in books published during the show’s original run, the Technical Manual is unquestionably the best and the only one really worth writing anything about, so here goes.

Doctor Who: "Smile" Review

Bill Potts’ first trip in the TARDIS proper is chronicled as Series 10 continues with “Smile” by Frank Cottrell-Boyce. Whilst the episode makes one or two missteps, overall there’s definitely much more good than bad, and the story as a whole is a step up from last week.

Broken Gamebooks #2: Fire on the Water

Time to continue the ongoing series about broken adventure gamebooks, and this time we’re looking at the second book in the Lone Wolf series, Fire on the Water, originally published in 1984. Actually, to be more specific, we’re looking at one particular section of the book, which contains a headache that fans have given its own rather catchy nickname: the Tunnel to Hammerdal Chokepoint.

Doctor Who: "The Pilot" Review

Having been off-air for the entirety of 2016, save for the Christmas special, Doctor Who returns for its first full series in a little while with the beginning of Peter Capaldi’s final season in the role, “The Pilot”, the cheeky title of which shows its intention in re-establishing the series. Unfortunately, the episode gets off on the wrong foot and never really recovers.

The Simpsons Chalkboard Gag Companion

At the beginning of most episodes of The Simpsons, Bart writes something on the school chalkboard in the title sequence. Except some episodes have different jokes depending on which version you’re watching, and the alternative isn’t archived on DVDs or streaming versions! The Simpsons Archive was a great resource in writing this list, and includes some other interesting notes in its DVD Companion (I have chosen to miss some occasions where the episode was not originally broadcast with a chalkboard gag, or with a different chalkboard gag, but you can still see the relevant joke somewhere – see the sections on “Saturdays of Thunder” and “Homer the Heretic” in the DVD Companion for the specifics.)

Edit Wars #3

Important update made in July 2021: Since this article was originally written, a large number of the sources used for the claims made in it have been, at the very least, strongly brought into question. Except one of the primary people doing so is a roboteer who appears to have some personal grudge against a member of the Storm team.

Basically: Nobody knows what the truth is any more, and unless unedited rushes of the episodes covered here are released, it is unlikely we ever will. Read on, but be aware this is only one side of the story.

Well, I’ve not got anything else to write about, so it’s time once again to look at an old episode of Robot Wars. This time it’s the final episodes of the seventh and last series of the original run, which was first broadcast on Channel Five in late 2003 and early 2004, and as with last time, it’s been edited to avoid giving us the whole story… and not just one fight, but several. What follows is an account of probably the most controversial moment in the show’s history… except literally nobody was watching the show at this point (it wasn’t making Channel Five’s top 30 for the week) and so nobody really cared.