We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

When fans of Doctor Who have gathered in their collective wisdom to choose which stories are best, or at least most popular, “Pyramids Of Mars” routinely ranks very, very high. In the well-known Mighty 200 poll that Doctor Who Magazine did in 2009, for instance, it’s the fourth-highest Classic-era story out of more…

Now that we’re all the way to the end of the Key To Time saga, it’s obvious that this experiment in telling a single story that spanned all 26 episodes and 10-plus hours of the 1978-1979 season was far less ambitious than it might have seemed back during “The Ribos Operation.” Although the season has its moments, in…

The Third Doctor era began with grand ambitions to raise the stakes of what Doctor Who was about. Season seven, Jon Pertwee’s debut as No. 3, brought such sweeping changes to the show that it was practically a reboot. It jumped out of black-and-white and into color, and put a greater emphasis on elaborate stunts and…

The title monster in “The Power Of Kroll” is an awe-inspiring giant that spends most of its time mired deep in the muck of a moon-sized swamp. That’s kind of how I feel about the story itself, too.

Doctor Who can sometimes be a little mired in its own stock formula, which is to pit the Doctor against some relatively narrow set of science-fictional menaces—a megalomaniacal mad scientist, an army of alien monsters, or some combination thereof. 1977’s “The Robots Of Death” has both. Since the mid-1960s and up to…

The middle part of a long connected series of stories is often where it spins its wheels, since the most important links in the chain are usually at the beginning and end, first to set the stage with a strong establishing hook, then for the grand finale. The middle part can coast, confident that barring some…

One of the best things about Doctor Who’s format, all across the decades but especially in the early years of William Hartnell’s First Doctor, is that it’s free to do almost anything. If the Doctor can travel anywhere in the universe and any point in history, the show is limited, in theory, only by the imagination.…

Most of what Doctor Who was doing right in 1978 is on display in “The Stones Of Blood,” the third story in the six-part, season-long Key To Time arc and close to the exact midpoint of producer Graham Williams’ three years running the show. It’s the Williams aesthetic in a nutshell—a fun story with a quip-laden script…

When Doctor Who returns to television later this month, it will have a new face in more ways than one. The incoming Twelfth Doctor, played by Peter Capaldi, will get a revamped opening-title sequence that was originally designed by a fan of the show for his own amusement.

“Paradise Towers” (Season 24, episodes 5-8. Originally broadcast Oct. 5-26, 1987.)

“The Pirate Planet” (Season 16, episodes 5-8. Originally broadcast Sept. 30-Oct. 21, 1978.)

“The Trial Of A Time Lord, Part 4: The Ultimate Foe” (Season 23, episodes 13-14. Originally broadcast Nov. 29-Dec. 6, 1986.)

“The Moonbase” (Season 4, episodes 23-26. Originally broadcast Feb. 11-March 4, 1967.)

“Terror Of The Vervoids” (Season 23, episodes 9-12. Originally broadcast Nov. 1-22, 1986.)

Kate O’Mara, the British actress known for playing a series of scheming villains—most notably Joan Collins’ sister on 1980s primetime soap opera Dynasty, but also similar roles in U.K. shows including Doctor Who, Absolutely Fabulous, and Howards’ Way—died Sunday at age 74 after a short illness.

“The Edge Of Destruction” (Season 1, episodes 12-13. Originally broadcast Feb. 8-15, 1964.)

The brutal world of George R.R. Martin’s A Song Of Ice And Fire books may not have much obvious connection to Terry Pratchett’s more lighthearted Discworld series. But both of these sprawling fantasies are intimately concerned with exploring the ideas of civilization and progress in their broadest sense and over an…

“The Trial Of A Time Lord, part 2: Mindwarp” (Season 23, episodes 5-8. Originally broadcast Oct. 4-25, 1986.)

“Carnival Of Monsters” (Season 10, episodes 5-8. Originally broadcast Jan. 27-Feb. 17, 1973.)