Doctor Who: The Krynoid Podcast

"I'm not a mountain goat and I prefer walking to any day. And I hate climbing." If you think Steven Moffat era Doctor Who taxes the mind, imagine being part of the 1965 audience and having to decode anagrams of the scripted lines on the fly. And the mind is boggled in many other ways by The Time Meddler. How can an 11th Century  monk have a wristwatch, electric stove and gramophone? Has the BBC lost the plot? Has Dennis Spooner been hot-spooning? Or perhaps the pee-drenched padre is to blame and thus a legitimate target of the (extremely) long arm of Doctor Tickle. Our eponymous hero and visiting Vikings alike get merry on mead from Hur indoors, while Vicki suffers sexism from Steven, the new companion who likes to attack first and ask (too many) questions later. And then not believe any of the answers. Will the groat ever drop for Steven? Will he find the bovine astronaut he seeks? What do you do if your TARDIS is smaller on the inside? Whose beard is camping out on Eldred's face? And did Jim and Martin del

"It's getting rather exciting, isn't it?" Well mileage may vary and opinions certainly differ a wee bit between your intrepid hosts on this one. For it is The Stones of Blood, a tale of vampiric slabs, a reclusive mistress-villain with a morbid fear of lemon sherbets and the latest mismatched cop duo - Android and Wirrn. The Doctor wears a barrister's wig, Romana sports a chav cap and Vivien Fay shows off her deep silver tan. Professor Rumford forgets her words (and her bra) but remembers her truncheon, and K9 spills his guts while being goosed by a jack plug. The local druids summon a wrinkly comedy star, a camping couple suffer post-coital depression, and two clouds of bling argue the toss while the Doctor doesn't appear to give one. So did the story stir the blood of Jim and Martin or leave them stony faced? Listen to find out. NB: You'll notice that Jim gets a story title wrong - twice. Rest assured that he has been taken away and destroyed in a controlled explosion.

"I am the Doctor... whether you like it or not." Ahem... awkward! Yes, this is Colin Baker's debut debacle as the Doctor, The Twin Dilemma. A tale of a Hurndall understudy in a dress, two bratty bowl-cut brain-boxes, pestilent parrot people and a hairy slug with an inter-species libido. And, at its centre, we have our 'hero' who tries to bluster, cower, whine and strangle his way into our hearts, and his poor sidekick, who has probably never felt quite so sidelined - or quite so kicked. Blood bubbles, slugs slime, sartorial atrocities are committed with impunity and a thieving magpie is fed to the starving masses (tastes like chicken, apparently). Loathe it or hate it, it's perennially at the bottom of the sort of polls its lead actor despises. But do Jim and Martin think it lives down to its reputation? Listen in to find out.

"No-one on the Colony believes in Macra! There is no such thing as Macra! Macra do not exist! There are no Macra!!" Well maybe stop going on about them so much then? He's right though. This colony is lovely - except for the brainwashing, harrowing jingles, cheerless cheerleading, occupational hazards and the ministrations of hit security group, Ola and the Bootboys, that is. Oh and the Macra, of course. Not that there are any Macra. Or are there...? Well, yes there are, as the name of the story implies, and they're a crabby (and shouty) bunch of crustaceans, with their grubby pincers on the reins of power within the colony. Meanwhile, Ben goes over to the dark side, Polly gets a haircut, Jamie has a fling and the Doctor has a problem with excess gas. But did Jim and Martin give The Macra Terror 11 out of 10? Or did it just wash over their brains? Find out here.

"You're liable to wake up Old Nick going that deep!" And imagine old Nick's horror when he woke up after a BBC stag do and found that someone had given him a comedy eye-patch and a joke shop scar. But it's not just the Brig who's had an unsympathetic makeover in Inferno's alt-right universe. Cuddly Sergeant Benton is now brutal bastard Benton and lovely Liz has adopted a nasty wig and an equally nasty attitude. Professor Stahlman, of course, is equally gittish wherever you find him, but Greg Sutton's sexist tendencies have been crushed under the fascist jackboot - and he seems even less likely to achieve penetration with this particular Petra. Throw in some technicians in wolf's clothing (and Christmas cracker teeth), a soldier shooting himself off a gasometer and lashings of automatic door porn, and we have something of a great big melting pot. But do Jim and Martin think Inferno burns brightly or does it feel like the end of the world? Find out here.

"What are you concealing from me, boy?" Not enough, some might say, for this is Castrovalva - where Master Waterhouse introduces the innocent and unsuspecting viewer to "Little Matthew" . But that's not the only harrowing element of the Fifth Doctor's first outing. The Time Lord himself is made incompetent (and incontinent?) by his regeneration but still gets to go on a self-propelling wheelchair and pulls off decent impressions of his former selves - and Basil Fawlty (the War Hotelier). Tegan gets hot and bothered, Nyssa gets moist and, of course, Adric has a semi on, before they all meet Chardonnay Shardovan and his sheep-in-wolf's-clothing chums. There's a fly in the ointment, of course, and this one has a risible, raisable platform, a double-decker perspex top hat and a penchant for looking at boys on the dark web. But does the new Doctor bowl Jim and Martin over? Or is he out first ball? Find out here.

"Whatever blows can be sucked." Not The Creature From The Pit this time but a story which could be said, in American vernacular, both to 'blow' and to 'suck'. It's Underworld - a production so maligned that even most of the sets refused to participate. A CSO mother lode in which Minyans are led by Minions, the proletariat dine on the very rock they mine and gravity does precisely whatever the hell it likes. Meanwhile, Gwyneth Paltrow gets a drastic makeover, Mr Dors takes it lying down and Leela takes a fancy to a bit-part with a Rohypnol ray. Chuck in some deaf-blind guards, hordes of bored extras and some rather louche lift music and it really does feel like we're descending to rock bottom. So 'the quest is the quest' but will Jim and Martin see Underworld as a golden moment in Who mythology or will they end up feeling fleeced? Listen in to find out.

"If anything happens, let me know." What do you get if you have two episodes to fill with no guest actors and no new sets? Well in the weird world of Lime Grove 1964, you get The Edge of Destruction - a veritable cryptic crossword with clues from another, different cryptic crossword. This is, of course, the one where Susan turns sinister scissor sister, Ian seems to have been at the TARDIS brown ale, the Doctor - even with a head wound - still wins Gallifrey's Fastest Butler, and poor old Babs has to hold it all together, despite her pathological fear of Salvador Dali. Even the Fornicator can't help them as they try to discover what the heck is going on (and what the writer has been smoking) until, finally, the solution springs to mind. So can Jim and Martin make sense of the sentient ship's clues or will the story leave them on the edge of nervous destruction? Find out here.

"It was terrible... and then I got rescued by this bowl." No, not a symptom of BBC budget cuts - although its economically-priced, invisible owner may have been. It's the Planet of the Daleks - or, more accurately, the planet of the plants which either spy or spray, the molten ice which somehow isn't just water and the locals who are definitely more than meets the eye. Chuck into this great big ice-melting pot a poorly Time Lord, a lady with an embarrassing fungal infection, some flaxen-haired, squabbling space-squaddies and the most evil wheelie bins in the ninth system, and you have all the makings of an epic six-parter. But does it deliver like Santa or disappoint like... erm... Satan...?  Listen in to find out.

"I'll turn the world we know into your enemy!" Confusingly, this isn't The Enemy of the World but in fact The Crusade - a swords and Saracens saga of identity theft, cross-dressing and honey traps. The Doctor is courting intrigue, Ian is caught in a sticky situation and Vicki is caught out cosplaying. Meanwhile Barbara and Princess Joanna are treated like sacks of flour and El Akir should surely be sacked for abusing his Emir's position - not to mention his long-suffering staff. There's also room for the sage Saladin, the smitten Saphadin and the Unscrupulous Hulk, not to mention some stereotyped light-fingered locals. So do Jim and Martin see The Crusade as a glorious victory or as successful as one of King Richard's hunting trips? Find out here.

"She tipped the ambassador into a pit and threw astrologers at him." Public Notice: Beware of low-flying Russell Grants. What else could this be but 1979's The Creature From The Pit? It's a somewhat green-tinged tale about an enormous slug who, despite being chucked down a pit and starved, still seems very pleased to see us. He shares the dank depths with Catweazle's charlatan cousin but they're soon joined by a somewhat over-stretched stuntman, a sweaty Doctor, a haughty Romana and a tin dog in the middle of an identity crisis. Bad enough you might think but they also have to contend with a matriarch with magpie tendencies, Poundshop Fagin and his cronies and a conniving old crone. The addition of the whip-cracking Captain Camp and his homicidal sprouts just makes things even worse. But did Jim and Martin fall for the Pit and its attendant charms or were they left green about the gills? Listen here to find out.

"I shouldn't be down here at all, really. Driver, I am. See?" Yes, perhaps it would be better if you were absent, Evans. You certainly drive everyone up the wall. But the Welsh wimp is not the only peril in the London Underground in 1968's The Web of Fear. The slimmer-line Yeti now sling more web than Spidey, Professor Travers is now an old duffer cum Yeti whisperer, Harold Chorley is the obsequious and unacceptable face of the gutter press and somewhere a filthy traitor is at work... Luckily, Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart is at hand, with his ever-shrinking batallion, while Ann Travers proves adept at rebuffing both amorous advances and unwelcome interviews and, somehow, finds time to smile at a rampaging Yeti. Meanwhile, the Doctor is delighted by one of his balls, Jamie hides in a bin and Victoria drops an unidentified lanyarded object. So is the return of this once-lost story a cause for celebration or should it have been left in the cobwebs? Listen here to find out what Jim and Martin think.

"Rondel - intergalactic region devoid of all stellar activity" So how come it feels like we've gone on location to Rondel, rather than Amsterdam? There's certainly a lack of activity in Arc of Infinity - and a less than stellar cast, if it comes to that. But at least we have a trigger-happy Nyssa, a new look (but, alas, same personality) Tegan and a Doctor who seems to be staining his whites with more than grass. And they're up against a naughty, helium-powered Time Lord, a swarfega-spewing 'mystery' renegade and something which appears to have crawled out of Colonel Sanders' bin. Couple that with a pair of berks who give backpackers (and indeed bipeds) a bad name and a strangely familiar guard captain, who is the bottom of everybody's favourites list, and you have an uneven start to an anniversary season.  So do Jim and Martin see this story a delicious Edam or a Dutch oven? Listen here to find out.

"Oh, how very embarrassing!" That's what the unsuspecting viewer probably said in 1973 when the so-called "large and savage reptile" hoved into view at the top of the Ogron quarry. If only there'd been enough budget to show more than its dangly bits... But close your eyes for those couple of seconds and Frontier in Space will reward you with many riches. For where else can you find the third Doctor in hoisty judo slacks, Jo in platform baseball boots and Delgado's Master in a Dracula-collared PVC number with Dalek logo? And where else could you observe, in one story, twitchy Earth folk, noble Draconians, monumentally thick Ogrons and a stir crazy TARDIS team, who are in and out of prison more often than Mr Mackay? But does Frontier in Space go where no Drashig has gone before? Or does it outstay its welcome like a Draconian at a UKIP rally? Listen here to find out what Jim and Martin made of it all.

"Well now, it seems I have been here before." You have: Planet of Evil. Well... only up to a point. Sure the red-outlined empty creatures from the id are here again but this time they have Tom Baker's distinctive fizzog. As does the local equivalent of Mount Rushmore (although the DVD cover features someone else entirely, for some reason...). And cheap terrifying invisible monsters are causing a rumble in the jungle again, but this time they're accompanied by sultry space savage turned stowaway, a shape-throwing shaman whose hat fits like a glove, a chieftain who's just been Tango'd, and the campest IT support team ever seen. Throw in a computer with more voices than Rob Culshaw and you have one of the most bonkers bouillabaisses of the Baker era. Martin reveals he's a Horda hoarder and Jim displays a positively Luddite awareness of current technological thinking, but do they like The Face of Evil? Or do they turn their own, even more reviled countenances away in disgust? Listen to find out...

"I rather fancy that's settled that little bit of solution." OK, that's Billy going way off piste again but six-part saga The Sensorites is all about solutions. A remarkably serene Susan is the solution to an impasse on a spaceship, the devious Doctor finds the solution to a municipal malaise and the unlucky Ian drinks a solution which may well have previously passed through half a dozen Sensorites. These frisbee-footed, central-hearted denizens of the Sense-Sphere are a strange bunch. Even without eyelids, they seem blinkered to everything that's going on. And, ill-equipped as they are for darkness, noise and identity parades, they're hardly the stuff of nightmares, so the late arrival of some subterranean soap-dodgers brings some welcome menace to proceedings. So is this story as soporific as fan wisdom would have you believe? Well pack some fruit and (clean) water, strap yourselves in and prepare for the long haul and as Jim and Martin slowly sense the solution to that question.

"Professor... what's going on?!" Good question, Ace. The last ever classic Who story to be recorded, Ghost Light, is something of a period-piece puzzle - with a few pieces missing. But it does include dinner-suited monsters, gun-toting maids, an insane explorer, a simian sermoniser and a Neanderthal butler (doesn't every home have one?). This madhouse is presided over by a dusty but upwardly mobile photophobe, with high treason on his ever-evolving mind. But he doesn't bargain on the devious Doctor and the arsonous Ace, ably abetted by a racist rozzer and an uncontrolled control experiment. Enter the angelic, anally retentive Light and the Earth is in imminent danger of being purged in a fit of OCD pique. But can Jim and Martin shed any light on proceedings? Listen in and decide for yourself.

"Haven't I seen you somewhere before?" Dunno. Have you watched The Golden Voyage of Sinbad? Hurrah! It's double helpings of Tom Baker in 1980's Meglos, one bristlier and greener around the gills than the other. It's a saga of succulents, savants and power supplies wherein Romana is fondled by a bunch of flowers, K9 is assaulted by a bunch of light opera extras and the Doctor is plagued by a bunch of pricks. Debate rages between the Wigs and the lunatic fringe and the poor man's John Le Mesurier is caught dithering in the middle. Will Meglos succeed? Is Brotadac's anagram apposite? Will anyone remember any of this in the morning? Listen in as Jim and Martin discuss ... sorry... what were we talking about again...?

"There are soldiers all over my house and I'm in my pants." Not what happened during the recording of this podcast episode but a mildly diverting moment from The Power of Three - something of an oasis, some might say. Yes, this is the story of the boring slow invasion. The Doctor's bored, Rory's out of washing powder, Amy sniffs some milk and Brian spends hours sitting around watching the box. Never fear - maybe Kate Stewart's drone (voice, not military hardware) and a half-baked, blink-and-you'll-miss-him hologram will liven things up? And maybe they won't. But who (and why) are the grill-faced nurses? Does the little girl who lives full-time in Rory's waiting room now have squatters' rights? And does having carked it for half an hour count as a near death experience? Listen in to hear Jim and Martin tackle all these questions - and a serious attack of ennui.

"Well thank you, Brigadier! But do you think that for once in your life you could manage to arrive before the nick of time?" I'd leave it another half hour next time if I was you, Brig. Yes, the third Doctor is being as pleasant as a fart in a spacesuit again, this time in The Mind of Evil - a six-part saga of surprised screws, conniving cons, a bucket of evil and 1971's Cigar Smoker of the Year. The Doctor crosses his eyes, the Master mesmerises with his eyes and Jo chucks hot tea into an inmate's eyes - all part of a day's work for UNIT, a small organisation tasked with running peace conferences, escorting missiles, protecting the Earth and, no doubt, taking in washing. But is Chin Lee really the only 'dolly' Chinese girl in Europe? Why is the Master menaced by a coke float? And is any swarfega tagliatelle ever really complete without a sun-dried glass eye? Listen in to hear the answers to none of these questions.