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For me there were only a few things wrong with it: the actress playing Cass could have been better; the mention that the Doctor could choose to change sex; and, that the Doctor name checked all of the audio companions only, which I thought was a shame for fans of the novels.

I agree about the animation on Dreamland. I liked The Infinite Quest a lot more.

I think Emma Campbell-Jones did a good job with what she had but to be fair to her, whilst Night of the Doctor was extremely well-written there wasn't really a lot to Cass.

As for the Doctor being able to choose sex, it didn't really bother me because personally I'm in the 'I wouldn't mind a female Doctor' camp. I think if done well it has the potential of being a workable concept. The problem would be if the Doctor is written as a stereotype of a female Doctor. And yeah, it is a real shame they chose to make Big Finish canonical and not the comics also.

I thought it was a shame they didn't use the animation style of The Infinite Quest because I thought it worked extremely well. It was done by Cosgrove Hall (who also made Danger Mouse) whereas Dreamland was made pretty much on the cheap with an unknown animation company.

Cosgrove Hall have always been great. I liked what they did with The Invasion, and Scream of the Shalka was good too.

My thinking was as follows: he's been given the choice of what to be in order to best fight a war – would changing sex be high on his list? Not only that, if they're saying it doesn't matter whether he's male or female, why mention it at all!?

When Tilda Swinton is mentioned I tend to think that aside from her striking appearance she has played androgynous characters in the past: Orlando; Gabriel in Constantine. I think it's best to avoid that association.

Yeah, the animation for The Invasion was great. I wish they hadn't gone bust because it's interesting to think what we could have had if they'd been able to produce more of the animated missing episodes. I imagine their version of The Reign of Terror would look a lot different.

I think a better female Doctor would be somebody more like Miranda Hart. Not from a comic relief side but more in terms of a conventionally unattractive appearance with a certain 'odd' look similar to Matt Smith or Tom Baker.

Oh my God, I didn't realize they'd gone bust. How awful.

Yeah I know what you mean. Vicky McClure has that look. If they'd cast a woman when it came back in 2005 Tamsin Greig would have been my choice.

Unfortunately, a lot of great companies seem to go bust. I miss Woolworths.

Although I have a feeling they'd probably try to cast a really big name actor for the first female Doctor to ease people into the change.

Wreck-It Ralph review

If there's never a movie based on Mario Kart, then this will be the closest we'll come to one. It was a surprise when watching this today to find so much of the screen time devoted to the fictional kart-racing game Candy Rush (I expected from what I'd read about the film that it would be mainly set in Hero's Duty) but the Candy Rush part of the film captures the essence and feel of a Mario Kart film better than any other racing spectacle in a movie. Even better than Speed Racer does.

And what about the rest of the film?

Well, the game world of Wreck It Ralph is so unfair before the end of the film that you actually find yourself feeling sorry for the arcade game's villain Ralph. I never thought I'd find a film where I'm rooting for someone portrayed as a stereotypical villain to win but here you really root for Ralph given that pretty much everyone is an absolute dick to him. Usually you'd expect that to be a criticism for a film but of course here it's not given that Ralph is also our protagonist of the film.

Hero's Duty is interesting in the small amount of screen time it takes up. It's fun to see how the hectic world of a HD first-person shooter compares to the more Donkey Kong-esque rinse and repeat routine of Fix It Felix Jr. The great thing is that there's so many little touches in this film that there's an immediate difference in the way Sergeant Calhoun moves in comparison to a Fix It Felix Jnr or Candy Rush character. The characters in Hero's Duty move more slick, whereas in Fix It Felix the characters have more stop-motion movements similar to those in The LEGO Movie and Candy Rush characters all skipping around as you would expect from child-friendly games.

The film is like an amazing hybrid of Toy Story, Monsters' Inc and Mario Kart. It has Toy Story's intriguing question of 'What happens once you've stopped playing?' applied to videogame characters, the quirky monster society of Monsters' Inc only with Q*Bert and co instead and the craziness of Mario Kart. None of this makes the film feel unoriginal but instead it helps create the kind of masterpiece you expect to find in a brilliant animated film. You really care and feel for the characters in the film, you really feel a sense of peril when something goes wrong, you really laugh when something funny happens (I loved Fix It Felix's 'I'm hopless, it's hopeless!"). It's like all the best animated masterpieces and that's because it draws inspiration from them. From Ralph going through a similar life lesson to Buzz Lightyear to villain King Candy being like an evil version of Woody due to his jealousy towards a more successful kart-racing game than the one he stars in, Wreck It Ralph is a brilliant animated film that learns from the very best of animated movies and kart games.

Wreck It Ralph is awesome. It looks great, and is a really nice heart felt movie. My little boy loves it.

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It's funny though, when Christopher Eccleston was chosen it was more for his TV roles I think. Certainly I would say he was a household name because of Our Friends in the North and Cracker, amongst other things.

I like unknowns, I really do. That was the big draw with Matt Smith. Never seen him, never heard of him. Instantly liked him.

Your little boy has good taste. Hopefully the sequel will manage to maintain the quality.

The Three Doctors review

This being the multi-Doctor adventure which started the tradition, it's hard not to see why multi-Doctor stories became as popular as they are today. Whilst it's a shame William Hartnell couldn't have a bigger role due to illness, Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee are hilarious together and form a entertaining double act.

The plot also adds some interesting details to Time Lord mythos; here, we meet the stellar engineer of time travel technology Omega (who was trapped in a anti-matter universe by the Time Lords). Omega is one of the best villains ever to be introduced in the show; he has a certain presence that makes you instantly fear him whenever he appears in shot. It's also a rare instance where the classic series look almost rivals the look of the monsters and villains in the new series; Omega's costume would not look out of place in the 2005 reboot of the show.

If you love Doctor Who and haven't seen The Three Doctors, then I urge you to watch it. For it showcases exactly what makes the traditional multi-Doctor adventure so great.

The Two Doctors is my favourite multi-Doctor story, I think because the scenario is almost secondary to the characters.

Yeah it's great. Completely different acting styles as well – Troughton would give the gist of the dialogue whereas Pertwee was word-perfect and needed the right cues (creating a little tension). I always wonder what it would have been like if William Hartnell had been able to interact with them fully.

He has a lot of potential as a villain I think, and the original mask here is good because it's like those from Greek theatre.

My thinking is that the best ever monsters appeared in the Sixties, if not always in terms of realisation but in terms of ideas.

I was a little disappointed with The Two Doctors. Patrick Troughton deserved more screen time alongside Colin Baker than he got.

I could imagine him being like the angry father trying to get his two sons to behave. You can see shades of that in the little screen appearances he did have on the scanner in the TARDIS.


Thankfully, we will also get to see him make his long overdue return soon also - in K9: Timequake, due for release sometime next year.



Of course, it's how we got the Daleks and the Cybermen. Who knows what would have happened to the series without the Daleks?

That would have been good but they tried something a bit different – i.e. just having the two incarnations run into each other – and I think that was better than it being over some massive crisis.

That's right and I loved the fact that that was done with John Hurt in Day of the Doctor as well. In fact if you look at the audio The Sirens of Time, Peter Davison's Doctor pretty much takes on the same role while the Sixth and Seventh Doctors squabble.

Have you read the script of The Masters of Luxor? It's brilliant. Big Finish turned it into an audio story but I haven't listened to it as yet.