Doctor Who: The Krynoid Podcast

When is a talkative chair not a talkative chair? When it’s an alien shower curtain. Or a stumpy git in a pith helmet. But, underwhelming as they are, the Vardans still plan an Invasion of Time by conquering pound-shop Gallifrey – a land of medicinal jelly beans, powerful ping pong balls and walnut-chomping dropouts. Its denizens include Chancellor Borusa who’s more put-upon than Tom Baker’s beer mat and Castellan Kelner who’s slimier than a newly-painted Myrka. And, of course, a prototype Romana who’s qualified to wield a screwdriver but can’t hack it in the university of life, even with a bumper pack of Giant Smarties at her side. The Doctor shouts, K9 snarks and Leela shacks up with an innocent bystander, while the surprise Sontarans stomp about, searching in vain for a jellied eels stall. But did Jim and Martin find the story an all-conquering triumph or was it just an unwelcome invasion of their time? Listen to find out. The lads also review the audiobooks of The Doomsday Weapon and The Edge of Destructi

Scream if you want to leave faster! That seems to be Victoria’s tactic as she sobs, whimpers and shrieks her way out of the show in Fury From The Deep. Indeed, old Leather Lungs’ prodigious output is harnessed to harass some killer kelp and make its human puppets less weedy – even beating the expert man-mismanager John Robson for decibels in the process. Jamie opts out of a foam party and, for a change, it’s the Doctor who can’t control his chopper. Meanwhile, Mr Wint and Mr Kidd need to rethink their dental hygiene regimes and Perkins would be better off seeking his raison d’etre than searching for a spouse. Has Maggie Harris been at the Mother’s Ruin? Does the new animation place the story deeper within the long arms of the lore? And did Fury From The Deep sweep Jim and Martin along or leave them beached on the shores of ennui? Listen to find out. The lads also review the audiobooks of The Dominators and Dragonfire. Also available on Spotify.

A museum? On a planet, you say? Amazingly, that’s just where TARDIS brings Doctor Who and chums in The Space Museum. But the problems here are worse than an expensive gift shop, a blocked urinal or a coach party of feral school kids. For the planet Xeros is occupied by the moaning Morocks, a race only slightly less pathetic than the indigenous teenage beatniks, among whom subjugation raises barely/only an eyebrow. And our plucky travellers have problems of their own, chiefly their future starring roles in the most boring tourist attraction since the financially disastrous Sensorites’ Sexy Sashes exhibition. Our heroes deal with the trauma in their own individual ways though, with the Doctor kipping for an episode, Vicki stirring up the students, Babs having a smoke break and Ian chewing her cardigan. Will the time travellers evade their fate? Would you buy a used glass from Vicki? What day is Nude Day on the TARDIS? And did Jim and Martin find themselves informed and entertained by The Space Museum or is it

A bit of holiday advice from the Green Cathedral: better a staycation in Blighty than a sojourn on Uxarieus, a planet more miserable than Raymond Cusick at a Dalek memorabilia auction. But this monochrome blob of clay is surprisingly sought after, with hairy hippies and corporate breadheads alike fighting to the death over it. And perhaps the indigenous residents might even feel they have a claim to the land. Not that anyone cares about that, of course. As well as providing mud, rain and a single flower, Uxarieus offers a mother lode of the very mineral that the twelvty squillion residents of 25th Century Earth desperately need and the very eff-off WMD the Master evilly craves. So, to this end, the future Rev Magister pretends to be an Adjudicator while the wiggy Cap'n Dent tries to put the willies up the colonists with rubbish robots and home videos of his pet gecko. Throw in a crap puppet, prune-faced priests, over-Botoxed primitives and a prescient nod to a taboo TV host and we have something of a carniva

As travel restrictions relax, maybe it’s time to give Cully’s Adventures Unlimited a whirl? His ship’s a bit of a squeeze but the elderly Lothario can secretly sail you to the enticing Island of Death with its distinctive countryside, prestigious museum and friendly fellow tourists, The Dominators. Their Quarks are as cheesy as they sound – and they sound ridiculous. Nevertheless they’re more than capable of duffing up the docile Dulkians, who are wetter than a Sea Devil’s shower cap. TV’s Brian Cant offers some resistance for a while but then departs for a smoke so it’s up to Jamie, Zoe, the Doctor and some other bloke dressed as the Doctor to save the day. But what the heck is a rob’t? Will Rago and Toba ever seek marriage guidance? What did Cully witness when Jamie climbed that ladder? And did The Dominators recharge Jim and Martin’s batteries or leave them as demoralised as a person pretending to be a dummy of a person? Listen to find out! Also available on Spotify.

Many of you may still be locked up with your family but, with any luck, your house-mates don’t include a glowing alien skull, a gun-toting Teuton and a creepy occultist. Even Benylin Bandersnatch’s mum would be of little comfort, haunted as she is by a noisy, slimy creature (named Adam Colby). The TARDIS team come to the rescue but K9’s lost his voice, Leela’s lost some of her hair and the Doctor’s lost his ability to distinguish Jelly Babies from Liquorice Allsorts. Luckily, the Tylers (not those Tylers!) are on hand to dispense cake, rock salt and Mummerset premonitions. But did Image of the Fendahl give Jim and Martin a burst of primal power or suck out their collective life-force? Listen to find out! We also review the audiobooks of The Five Doctors and The Daemons. Also available on Spotify.

Feeling trapped in your home with limited entertainment and an uncertain world outside? Well maybe you can sympathise with the residents of Paradise Towers – a horrible high-rise housing low-rent war machines, an apparently tin Hitler, omnivorous OAPs and TV’s most amateur and least dramatic junior AmDram group. The Doctor wants answers, Mel wants a dip and Kroagnon wants a mass eviction order. Familiarly, it’s reds versus blues with the yellows invisible (robot crabs included). So did Paradise Towers build Jim and Martin’s happiness high or did they feel unalive by the end of it all? Listen to find out! Also available on Spotify

As our next episode (Paradise Towers) will be later than usual and as many of you will have more time than usual to kill, we’ve dredged up something from our past as a piece of additional Lockdown content. Back in March 2017, the Blue Box Podcast kindly invited us and others to contribute to their 250th episode. We weighed in with a 20 minute review of the 1993 Children in Need charity special, Dimensions in Time. You can watch Dimensions in Time here. If you didn’t catch our review first time around, or would like to here it again, here it is. Also available on Spotify. All the Blue Box Podcasts can be found on iTunes, etc. but, as you may know, the team have since regenerated into the Strangers in Space podcast – well worth subscribing to and also available on iTunes. Stay safe.

With all of us seeing rather too much of our immediate locales at the moment, what better time to come with us on a voyage through old Cathay? That said, our TARDIS team may have preferred to self-isolate from their travelling companions – a thieving Venetian and a Machiavellian Mongol. On this trip of a lifetime, our magic caravanners must face frostbite, poisoning, thirst, a surfeit of sand and some interpretive dance. The Doctor gets hysterical, Susan gets a friend, Ian gets a go at cherchez la femme and it all gets a bit dicey for Babs. Will the Doctor ever get back the keys to his caravan? Does the TARDIS carry a dehumidifier? Will the great Kublai Khan resort to Cathayan viagra to escape his wife? And did the trip broaden the minds of Jim and Martin or leave them saddle sore? Listen to find out!

In need of a holiday in these trying times? Where better than Space Fawlty Towers on the nuke-shagged planet of Argolis? Answer: almost anywhere. For The Leisure Hive is a place where reptiles skin up, guests are dismembered and squash players lose their balls. Romana gets a new lab partner, the Doctor gets an old face and K9 regrets his attempt to become a salty sea dog. The First Lady doesn’t bat a green eyelid when her husband spills his seed and dies. Instead she hooks up with her fancy (hu)man, spends a lot of time sprawled on a table and ends up with a baby. Is Pangol Prentis’s apprentice? What girdles do the Foamasi use and where can we get some? And did The Leisure Hive give Jim and Martin a new lease of life or make them feel older than Santa Tom? Listen to find out! Also available on Spotify.

So you want to continue your successful show but need to recast your leading man. What do you do? Why you make it as difficult as possible for your bemused audience to accept him, of course! The Power of the Daleks sees impish impostor Pat Troughton cackling evilly, talking about himself in the third person and doing his very best to disingratiate himself with the good cop / bad cop companions, Polly and Ben. Luckily there are some seemingly servile Daleks to distract their attention, along with some crafty colonists, an increasingly mad professor and Vulcan’s worst ever spy. Polly wears shorts, the Doctor wears a silly hat, and Ben wears down everyone’s nerves with his unmanaged anger. Does Valmar desire dominatrices? Who would win in a fight between Hartnell and Troughton? Will the Doctor’s recorder soon be in need of a rinse? And did Jim and Martin find the new bloke a refreshing change or more like a fart in the face from a mercury swamp? Listen to find out! Also available on Spotify.

We start 2020 with an ending. Loathe him or hate him, Adric has been a big part (prat?) of 80s Who but all things must pass, however indigestible. Yes, this is Earthshock, which packed a couple of major bombshells back in the day (not counting Beryl Reid). It’s a tale of pointless deaths, some equally pointless characters and gender fluid troopers (many of them genuinely fluid by the time the murderous mime act has finished with them). The Doctor promotes fine dining, Tegan packs heat, Nyssa plays house and Adric ploughs into the Diplodocidae. Meanwhile, it’s all bonuses and bollockings from Beryl and her long-suffering lackey can’t even sell out his own planet properly. Luckily Scott musters more machismo in his moustache than in Ringway’s whole body but cringing Kyle goes from gung-ho to agoraphobic at the drop of a boiler suit. So were Jim and Martin wildly cheering or weeping inconsolably by the end of it all? Listen to find out. Also available on Spotify.

In our December episode, Jim and Martin ease themselves into Whuletide by settling down to watch The Black and White Guardian Show. It’s something of a festive feast, featuring as it does Rudolph the Two-Nosed Shadow, a space Trotter on hols from ver Big Smoke and some props which look suspiciously like they’ve come out of a Christmas cracker (along with some of the jokes). The wicked Marshal gets advice from his mirror while our fairy tale princess is prepared to be part of a crystal to get the part of Romana. She’s pursued by a man who’s wetter than a Sea Devil’s vest and he’s feebly assisted by another, whose life seems to be redirected halfway through by a visit from three ghosts – presumably Norman Wisdom, Mr Pastry and a Chuckle Brother. Meanwhile, the Doctor rants, Romana vamps and K9 switches masters as rapidly as TV channels on a bloated Boxing Day. But did the lads think The Armageddon Factor was a missing piece in their lives or was it the last orange cream in the Quality Street tin of Television?

“No, I shan’t… you shan’t take him!” Jenny Laird crashes out of the running for her own award in the arachnophobe’s nightmare that is Planet of the Spiders. It’s a tale of a tweedy traitor, yogic flying, mind-altering jewellery and more creepy crawlies than you can shake a rolled-up newspaper at. The Brig blushes, Sarah rushes (between two stories) and Mike Yates saves face while the Doctor loses his. Would you buy a used watch from the Brigadier? Was Mike Yates already doing exotic dancer exercises? Can anyone free Lupton’s mandala? And do Jim and Martin think this story is a Great One or in need of regeneration? Listen to find out!

"Mightiest of warriors, greatest in battle, humblest of your servants." Well they do say learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all, Achilles, but this is tendon towards arrogance. Yes, this month it's the swords and sandals epic, The Myth Makers, in which Steven gets a new outfit, Vicki gets a new name and the Doctor gets out of a breezy solo flight into the big city. They meet a jolly Jack Tar, a sotto voce soldier, a shrieking soothsayer and a king who chucks his Troys out of the Priam (yes, we know that doesn't make any sense but Donald Cotton's puns are getting to us). So is there really a Doctor in the horse? Will Vicki find true love with the time-weathered teen, Troilus? And will Jim and Martin award The Myth Makers legendary status or did it ring as hollow as a Trojan Horse? Listen to find the answer to some of these questions and less.

"Then die. That is the purpose of guards." It seems that the life of a vampire's chief henchman is no better than that of an Alzarian milkmaid. No wonder he turned to drink. This is 1980's State of Decay, eliciting the cheesiest ever episode of this podcast from The Two Who Fool (About). In a land where rubber bats wheel in an unrealistic green sky, the Doctor stops a door with his nose while Romana prefers to play undead rather than talk to Adric (who walks like he has a second badge for Mathematical Excellence secreted up his fundament). For a feudal society, there's no shortage of fashion statements. The bloodthirsty local gentry model a nice line in goth cosmetics while their agricultural underlings wear miniskirts, string toupees and beards cannibalised from a busted sofa. Underneath it all, an enormous Nosferatu makes a breakthrough and gets a big hand. So do Jim and Martin think this story is a Great One or a big Wasting of time? Listen to find out.

"I've had enough of experts!" Now there's a phrase with a familiar ring. And Britannicus Base's self-imposed brain drain and dislike of the unlike is sending the UK into chaos. You couldn't make it up.   But Brian Hayles did, in 1967's snowy saga The Ice Warriors - a tale of unripe tomatoes, dial-up food machines and a vibro-chair with a shake that brings all the boys to the Medi-Care Centre. The beards are shaggy, the outfits are short and the science is decidedly dodgy. But worse is to come when a bunch of full-bladdered Martians turn up with their own brand of whispering death, provoking a hissy fit of its own from the sacred Computer.   The Doctor's opining, Victoria's whining and Jamie's reclining at the hideout of hairy hippies, Wallace and Isa. But can Cleggy save the world without the aid of a motorised bathtub? Will Varga and Zondal end up tying the knot? Can they tie anything with hands like that? And did Jim a

"If the rest of his presentation is as riveting as the first little epic, wake me when it’s finished." The Trial of a Time Lord goes all meta with one of the riskiest lines in Doctor Who history. The "first little epic" is The Mysterious Planet, in which the Doctor is on remand, Peri (from Marble Arch, USA) is in demand and Joan Sims commands her ragged warriors to carry on dying. Two cockernee New Romantics go on the rob, two Adric-a-likes get on your nerves and the verbose Valyard swallows a Thesaurus. Meanwhile, the jury’s out (of Voltarol) and the Inquisitor looks like she’d rather be at home making a casserole. Who on Ravalox is the Doctor impersonating? How smug can a dead face be? Where can you get some saucy but artistic robot photos? And did Jim and Martin give The Mysterious Planet a pardon or did they throw the Three Books of Knowledge at it? Listen to find out.

"Nicholas only knows the most boring places." He's obviously not acquainted with the Doctor's wardrobe then, which contains... Who knows what? And there's plenty going on in the rest of 16th Century Paris, with a familiar-looking priestly weirdo, a companion's possible ancestor and man-hungry sectarian rats. The Doctor may or may not be in the house but Steven finds that Preslin, the King of germinology, has definitely left the building. What's the Doctor hiding about his mysterious continental city break? Does what happens in Paris stay in Paris? Should Chaplet or Chaplet get a ride in the TARDIS? Did Jim and Martin find The Massacre a mind-broadening trip or a four-part death sentence? And what did Peter Purves think of The Massacre and his time on the show? Listen to find out.

“There should’ve been another way.” Yup. But when you only have a couple of days, £37.50 and a two-man human centipede, you will inevitably end up with 1984’s Warriors of the Deep. But the Doctor still manages to trade his cricket beiges for a daring new beige outfit and some temporal footwear, though Turlough misses out on an early airing of his budgie smugglers. Tegan’s troubles are more practical than sartorial, however, when she feels the gossamer weight of a sea base door on her lovely legs. They also encounter the future’s unluckiest intern, a commander who’s a long way from his native 1970s and the leading lights of the power-bloc-which-cannot-be-named’s premier pantomime troop. Throw in some sweat, smells, sloth-like Silurians and skew-whiff sea devils and it all starts to feel like the end of the world. So did Jim and Martin take to the story like a Myrka to water or did it leave them drowning in dreck? Listen to find out.