@TinDogPodcast review of 

Glynn Lewis is just putting up a spice rack when there’s a knock at the door. A knock that will bring a brutal end to his perfect family.

PC Andy is very excited. It’s Corpse Day – the day when the local constabulary get help on dead cases from Torchwood. This year, he’s volunteered to act as liaison, and he knows he’s going to have a brilliant time.

For Dr Owen Harper, today’s just like any other. There’ll be bloodshed, screaming and murder. At the end of it all, he doesn’t care. After all, life’s just for the living, and he’s long dead.

Torchwood contains adult material and may not be suitable for younger listeners

Written By: James Goss
Directed By: Scott Handcock

Cast

Burn Gorman (Owen Harper), Tom Price (Andy Davidson), Hannah Maddox (Angela), Alex Tregear (Jan), Nigel Betts (Glynn), Oliver Mason (Sonny), Rhian Blundell (Marta), Aly Cruickshank (Desk Sergeant), Charlotte O’Leary (Waitress)

Producer James Goss

Script Editor Steve Tribe

Executive Producers Jason Haigh-Ellery and Nicholas Briggs

@TinDogPodcast reviews #DOCTORWHO 2017 - EP06 #Extremis

"Extremis" is the sixth episode of the tenth series of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It is written by Steven Moffat and was broadcast on 20 May 2017 on BBC One. "Extremis" received extremely positive reviews from television critics, with many praising Peter Capaldi's performance and Steven Moffat's script, though some commented on the complicated script.

The Vatican calls upon the Doctor (Peter Capaldi) to investigate the Veritas, a book for which its readers typically kill themselves after reading it. When the Veritas is translated and leaked online, the Doctor must uncover the dark secret that the book holds. It is the first of three loosely connected episodes called "The Monks Trilogy".^[1]

@TinDogPodcast reviews 

Philip Hinchcliffe, acclaimed producer of Doctor Who (1975-77) returns to tell new stories for the Fourth Doctor and Leela.

The TARDIS arrives on the remote Shetland isle of Bothness and the Doctor and Leela find themselves threatened by Vikings! Only all is not as it seems. The locals are celebrating the old Norse fire festival of Up Helly Aa, so there’s nothing to be worried about. Or is there?

For, unknown to the islanders, the TARDIS crew are on the trail of an ancient artefact invested with mysterious powers that has recently been stolen and brought to this remote location.

Somewhere on this island lurks something ancient, and evil, and alien. The Doctor and Leela will have to stop it. Only on this occasion time might not be on their side.

Written By: Philip Hinchcliffe, adapted by Marc Platt
Directed By: Ken Bentley

Cast

Tom Baker (The Doctor), Louise Jameson (Leela), Joanna Vanderham (Joanna Renwick), David Rintoul (Professor Angus Renwick), Jane Slavin (Peggy), Ewan Bailey (Davy McTavit), Kieran Bew (Murdo Jamieson), Chris Porter (Nardos), Fleur Hinchcliffe (Young Angus Renwick)

Producer David Richardson
Script Editor John Dorney

@TinDogPodcast review of 

Longest @TinDogPodcast EVER 90 MINS!

Interview with Author Mark Wright @mwrightwriter 

Mark Wright has written many audiobooks, short stories, comic strips and novels for world-famous characters such as ***Doctor Who, The Sarah Jane Adventures,*** ***Power Rangers*** and ***Blake 7. ***He is the co-author (along with Cavan Scott) of the Sunday Times Top Ten bestselling miscellany, ***Who-ology* and its follow up, ***Wit, Wisdom and Timey-Wimey Stuff*.

Mark is currently co-editor of ***Doctor Who – The Complete History*** part work, and regularly contributes to the pages of the official ***Doctor Who Magazine*** and its sister publication, ***The Essential Doctor Who.* He has recently turned his hand to scripting the on-going comic strip adventures of the Doctor in the pages of ***Doctor Who Magazine*** and is having more fun than is probably allowed writing about his favourite Time Lord.

A full-time writer, Mark lives i near Halifax.

Mark Wright is a writer who frequently collaborates with Cavan Scott. He also served as a production assistant for Doctor Who Magazine beginning with issue 448.

WRITER
AUDIO edit
Big Finish main range
Project: Twilight (with Cavan Scott)
The Church and the Crown (with Cavan Scott)
Project: Lazarus (with Cavan Scott)
Project: Destiny (with Cavan Scott)
Masters of Earth (with Cavan Scott)
The Companion Chronicles
The Prisoner of Peladon (with Cavan Scott)
The Many Deaths of Jo Grant (with Cavan Scott)
Project: Nirvana (with Cavan Scott)
Big Finish Bernice Summerfield
The Kraken's Lament
Counter-Measures
Peshka (with Cavan Scott)
Iris Wildthyme
The Claws of Santa (with Cavan Scott)
Whatever Happened to Iris Wildthyme? (with Cavan Scott)
Iris at the Oche
Destiny of the Doctor
Night of the Whisper (with Cavan Scott)
Fourth Doctor Adventures
The Eternal Battle (with Cavan Scott)
New Series Adventures audiobooks
The Nu-Humans (with Cavan Scott)
SJA audiobooks
Wraith World (with Cavan Scott)
NOVELS
New Worlds
Project: Valhalla (with Cavan Scott)
SHORT STORIES
Short Trips
Light at the End of the Tunnel (in Short Trips: Steel Skies)
Mortlake (in Short Trips: Past Tense)
...Be Forgot (with Cavan Scott, in Short Trips: A Christmas Treasury)
That Which Went Away (in Short Trips: Seven Deadly Sins)
Faithful Friends: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 (with Cavan Scott, in Short Trips: The Ghosts of Christmas)
Twilight's End (with Cavan Scott, in Short Trips: Defining Patterns)
Priceless Junk (with Cavan Scott, in Short Trips: Indefinable Magic)
Big Finish Bernice Summerfield
Christmas Spirit (with Cavan Scott, in The Dead Men Diaries)
The Crystal Flower (with Cavan Scott, in Life During Wartime)
Benny and Louise (with Cavan Scott, in Missing Adventures)
Iris Wildthyme
The Unhappy Medium (with Cavan Scott, in Iris Wildthyme and the Celestial Omnibus)
Iris Wildthyme and the Colonic in Space (with Cavan Scott, in Iris: Abroad)
Project: Wildthyme (with Cavan Scott, in Iris: Fifteen)
BBC website
The Feast of the Stone (with Cavan Scott)
The Scientific Secrets of Doctor Who
Sunset Over Venus
COMICS
Project: Longinus
Project: Longinus (with Cavan Scott)
The Dream (with Cavan Scott)
Bullies (with Cavan Scott)
Doctor Who Magazine
Space Invaders!
The Highgate Horror
The Pestilent Heart
Moving In
Bloodsport
Be Forgot
Doorway to Hell
Doctor Who Adventures
The Purrfect Crime
REFERENCES BOOKS
Who-ology: The Official Miscellany (with Cavan Scott)
The Quotable Doctor Who - Wit, Wisdom and Timey-Wimey Stuff (with Cavan Scott)
ACTOR
BIG FINISH DOCTOR WHO AUDIO STORIES
The Fearmonger - Stephen Keyser
The Eye of the Scorpion - Slave
Project: Twilight - Mr Deeks
The One Doctor - Guard
Real Time - Dean
DOCTOR WHO UNBOUND
Sympathy for the Devil - Marcus
BERNICE SUMMERFIELD
The Kraken's Lament - Shopper

Review by @TinDogPodcast

This title was released in May 2017. It will be exclusively available to buy from the BF website until June 30th 2017, and on general sale after this date.

Every action has consequences. One confrontation, one punch, one bullet – something as simple as a gesture on a train – all can change the course of history.

British diplomat Dr Philip Raven knows the world is on a knife edge. But he is about to see how history might have played out differently. How there could be a better future for those who dare to grasp it.

An emissary from that future has come to show him… The Shape of Things to Come.

Producer David Richardson
Script Editor Matt Fitton
Executive Producers Jason Haigh-Ellery and Nicholas Briggs

Written By: HG Wells, dramatised by Guy Adams
Directed By: Lisa Bowerman

Cast

Nicola Walker (Jane), Sam Troughton (Raven), Ewan Bailey (Arden Essende), Simon Greenall (Hooper Hamilton), Eve Webster (Moira Caruso/ Anna), Duncan Wisbey (Titus Cobbett), Stuart Milligan (Benito Caruso).  Other parts played by members of the cast.

Bill and five students (Shireen, Pavel, Harry, Felicity and Paul), seeking to room together, take an offer by an elderly Landlord for a large mansion at very low cost, as long as they do not enter the tower. Bill gets the Doctor to help with her move. The Doctor insinuates himself among Bill's friends, to Bill's consternation, but is troubled by the numerous noises the house makes, including knocking back when the Doctor knocks on the walls.

As night falls, the knocking noises grow, and Bill's friends start to disappear. All the exits from the house are sealed tight, preventing any of them from leaving and separating the remaining ones. Bill and Shireen see Pavel half-absorbed in the wall, and the Landlord appears, striking a tuning fork which causes Pavel to disappear completely. The Doctor discovers the house's woodwork infested with insect-like creatures he calls Dryads. They are responsible for drawing the others into the woodwork prior to consuming them. The Doctor and Harry soon find evidence that every twenty years, a new set of students have been brought to the house to feed the Dryads. The Landlord arrives and admits that he needs the Dryads to keep his daughter Eliza alive in the tower.

The Doctor and Bill converge on the tower, finding Eliza's body is now made completely of wood. The Doctor determines that the Landlord is actually Eliza's son, a memory long forgotten. As a boy, he had brought his terminally-ill mother some dormant Dryads he found, unaware of their power. When they heard a high-pitched sound from her music box, they awoke and started turning Eliza to wood to stave off her illness. Since then, the Landlord has controlled the Dryads to keep Eliza well while signing on new tenants to become the Dryads' source of nourishment. Eliza is dismayed to find she has been "living" for so long without an actual life outside the house. Being able to control the Dryads, Eliza takes the Landlord into a hug, over his objections, and thanks the Doctor before having the Dryads consume them, while also reconstituting all of Bill's friends. The group escapes the house before it collapses in on itself.

Back at the university, the Doctor offers to take over watch of the vault from Nardole. The sounds of a piano can be heard coming from inside as the Doctor enters to have dinner with the prisoner inside.

Continuity[edit]

When talking about the Time Lords, Bill asks "Do you wear robes and big hats", to which the Doctor replies "No, big collars mostly". This is a reference to the classic series when Time Lords did wear large collars with their robes, which were introduced in The Deadly Assassin.^[1] The Doctor also inadvertently mentions regeneration, but then quickly changes the subject.^[1]

Outside references[edit]

Bill is called out for having a Little Mix playlist by her roommates.^[2] The Little Mix songs "Black Magic" and "Weird People" are played during the episode.

Production[edit]

The read-through for the second production block of the tenth series took place on 18 July 2016, and filming began on 1 August 2016, starting with the third episode of the series, "Thin Ice", and then the fourth episode, "Knock Knock".^[3][4] The episode was originally titled "The Haunted Hub".^[5]

The Fields House in Newport served as the mansion in this story; it had also been used for the Wester Drumlins house in the episode Blink.^[2] David Suchet stated he "completely freaked" when he realized on the third day of filming that his family had rented the exact same house the Christmas before for the holidays. ^[6]

In an earlier version of the script Harry, one of Bill's friends, was to be revealed as the grandson of a previous companion of the Fourth Doctor, Harry Sullivan, but this scene was later dropped from the final script.^[7]

Broadcast and reception[edit]

After the episode was first broadcast, people in the UK could view a binaural version of the episode on BBC iPlayer.^[8] The episode was watched by 4.32 million overnight, up a half-million viewers from the previous episode, "Thin Ice", and the highest-viewed story overnight since the series opener "The Pilot".^[9] It received an Appreciation Index score of 83.^[10]

Critical reception[edit]

Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
Rotten Tomatoes (Tomatometer)	85%[11]
Rotten Tomatoes (Average Score)	7.39[11]
The A.V. Club	B+[12]
Entertainment Weekly	B+[13]
SFX Magazine	[14]
TV Fanatic	[15]
IGN	8.7[16]
New York Magazine	[17]
Radio Times	[18]

"Knock Knock" received mixed reviews from critics, receiving criticism regarding the strength of the writing, but praise on the quality of the performances in the story, particularly Suchet's. "Knock Knock" holds a score of 85% on Rotten Tomatoes, the site's consensus reading "A bit of narrative weakness aside, "Knock Knock" is a wonderful mix of nostalgia, horror, humor, and monsters that culminates into a powerful and emotionally complex episode."^[11]

This title was released in April 2017. It will be exclusively available to buy from the BF website until June 30th 2017, and on general sale after this date.

1970s Los Angeles – the city of angels and broken dreams. Three remarkable women keep the West Coast safe from alien attacks – they are Torchwood Los Angeles.

So many young girls come to this city hoping for something better. For some, luck is just around the corner. For others that golden ticket never arrives and they just fade away.

But it’s not that simple. Everyone has a value to someone, and Torchwood are about to discover Hollywood’s darkest secret.

Torchwood contains adult material and may not be suitable for younger listeners.

Written By: Juno Dawson
Directed By: Lisa Bowerman

Cast

Laila Pyne (Marlow Sweet), Kelly-Anne Lyons (Charley Du Bujeau), Ajjaz Awad (Gabi Martinez), Stuart Milligan (Don Donohue), Eve Webster (Valerie Fox), David Menkin (Brad), Guy Adams (Mr Beamish).  Other parts played by members of the cast.

Producer James Goss

Script Editor Steve Tribe

Executive Producers Jason Haigh-Ellery and Nicholas Briggs

@TinDogPodcast review 

The Doctor and Bill find they have arrived in London in 1814, in the midst of a frost fair on the frozen Thames. After dressing in period garments, they take to explore it, unaware the TARDIS sensors have identified a large life form, a kilometer long, under the ice.

The Doctor's sonic screwdriver is nicked by Spider, one of several orphan pickpockets led by Kitty. The Doctor and Bill chase down Spider and Kitty away from the fair. There, glowing lights under the ice encircle Spider's feet and before the Doctor can save him, Spider is pulled through the ice. Bill is troubled by the Doctor's lack of remorse for Spider's death. They track down Kitty and learn they have been paid to bring more people to the fair, with some having gone missing.

The Doctor and Bill get into diving suits and purposely let the lights take them; the lights belong to strange fish, and they find a giant sea creature ensnared by chains, which has eaten Spider and others. Returning to land, they learn from Kitty that their benefactor is the wealthy Lord Sutcliffe. Sutcliffe affirms his family has used the creature to amass a fortune by feeding it victims then collecting and selling its waste as a super powerful replacement for coal. Fearing the Doctor knows too much, Sutcliffe sends the Doctor and Bill to be eaten, while he rigs a bomb to cause the ice to shatter with maximum possible casualties for fish food.

The Doctor and Bill escape, and while Bill works with Kitty and the other orphans to clear people off the ice, the Doctor takes the bomb and places it on the creature's chains. When Sutcliffe sets off the bomb, the creature is able to swim free and Sutcliffe is lost in the freezing water. The Doctor rewrites the deed to the Sutcliffe mansion and its staff to the orphans, allowing them to live there as long as they want.

They return to the present, where Nardole scolds the Doctor for breaking his oath to stay on Earth. Bill finds from old newspapers that the orphans lived a fulfilling life, though surprised there was no mention of the sea creature. Nardole, while checking the Vault beneath the University, hears something behind it knock repeatedly and says he will only let it out with a proper request from the Doctor.

Continuity
The Doctor mentions that he has attended Frost Fairs before. In "A Good Man Goes to War", River Song says that the Eleventh Doctor took her to the 1814 Fair for her birthday, where they were serenaded by Stevie Wonder. The First Doctor took Vicki and Steven to the 1814 fair in Frostfire, where they encounter Jane Austen. The Twelfth Doctor also took Clara Oswald to the 1814 Fair in the novel Silhouette, after promising to take her in "The Caretaker".

"Doctor Disco" is the same name the Doctor used when leaving Clara a voice message in "The Zygon Invasion".

The Seventh Doctor tells Ace in Remembrance of the Daleks that "your species has the most amazing capacity for self-deception", since there is no record of "the Zygon gambit with the Loch Ness Monster" or "the Yetis in the Underground". In "In the Forest of the Night", the Twelfth Doctor tells Clara that "the human superpower (is) forgetting" extraordinary events.[1]

Outside references

The Frost Fair of 1814, by Luke Clenell
The episode features a visit to the 1814 frost fair, the last one to be held at the Old London Bridge (replaced in 1831), which caused the water flow in the Thames to slow enough to allow it to freeze. As part of a stunt during that fair, replicated in this episode, an elephant was led across the frozen Thames.[4]

During one scene with the orphans, the Doctor reads them "The Story of Little Suck-a-Thumb" from Heinrich Hoffmann's Struwwelpeter, which would not actually be published until 1845.[4]