Doctor Who: The Krynoid PodCast: Recent Episodes
Krynoid PodCast
Three wise time travellers journey in search of the darkest of nativities, meeting some lowly creatures and a highly unstable messiah.
Harry develops a seafood allergy, Sarah's a fallen woman and the Doctor finds that navigating Skaro can be a bit of a minefield.
Why does Sevrin like steamy nightclubs?
Where do Davros and Nyder spend their romantic getaways?
Which part of a Dalek's intestines is the most dangerous?
And would Jim and Martin put Genesis of the Daleks up among the gods or did watching it reveal to them the true meaning of pain?
Listen to find out!
This episode can also be found at iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible and all other podcatchers (as far as we know).
You can also find us on Facebook, Threads, Bluesky and Mastodon.
Thanks for listening!
Barbara's penchant for historical re-enactment gets our intrepid time team into a spot of bother down old Mexico way.
While she cosplays as a dead bloke, the Doctor and Susan try to dodge a double wedding and Ian has to use his thumb for more than hitchhiking.
Will Susan get spiked, Ian skewered and Babs bricked up?
Worse still, will the Doctor get hitched?
Will Tlotoxl change his name by Deed Poll or will Martin have a stroke?
And did Jim and Martin find The Aztecs to be like a comforting cup of cocoa or a goblet of cold poison?
Listen to find out!
This episode can also be found at iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible and all other podcatchers (as far as we know).
You can also find us on Facebook, Threads, Bluesky and Mastodon.
Thanks for listening!
We're used to looking at a screen and seeing dodgy creatures attacking a pair of plucky adventurers.
With Carnival of Monsters, you can watch other folk doing the same thing. It's like Gogglebox with grey aliens.
Can a chota peg really solve any behemoth-based problem?
How easy is it to drug-mule a set of skeleton keys?
How many seconds were spent making the Functionary masks and how much change did they get out of a pound note?
And were Jim and Martin amused by the miniscope or did it leave them colder than an Inter Minor welcome?
Listen to find out!
This episode can also be found at iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible and all other podcatchers (as far as we know).
You can also find us on Facebook, Threads, Bluesky and Mastodon (but we've exited X - far too Musky for our tastes these days).
Thanks for listening!
The Krynoid PodCast boys welcome you back to the Green Cathedral this Yuletide to offer you perhaps the closest thing to a pantomime that '60s Who gets, The Underwater Menace.
What the heck is the Doctor wearing and why?
Is the rest of the Atlanteans' male grooming as lax as their eyebrows?
How will Polly's groovy new gills go down on the swinging King's Road?
And did this soggy saga float Jim and Martin's boats or was it like watching a shipwreck?
Listen to find out!
This episode can also be found at iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible and all other podcatchers (as far as we know).
You can also find us on Facebook, Threads and Bluesky (but we've exited X - far too Musky for our tastes these days).
Thanks for listening and Happy Holidays!
We've completed the migration of the first 30 Krynoid PodCast episodes to Libsyn.
This means all 141 of our published episodes - and all future episodes - will be available here and at iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible, etc.
They say "when in Rome, do as the Romans do".
But Barbara wants no part of what Nero wants to do and Ian has had a belly full of orders from the expansionist Italians. The Doctor and Vicki, meanwhile, have a great time lying about lyres and nearly poisoning a despot but it's no surprise when it all goes up in flames.
This episode can also be found at iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible and all other podcatchers (as far as we know).
The Doctor and Romana find themselves slumming it in a pocket-sized parallel universe.
Worse still, they land on the home world of - loathe him or hate him - that Alzarian irritant, Adric. Chuck in a few indecisive Deciders, some evolving arachnids and a bunch of amphibian Gumbies, and it's another trying jaunt for our two intrepid Time Lords.
This episode can also be found at iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible and all other podcatchers (as far as we know).
The Doctor is still on trial with the Time Lords and this is his dubious evidence for the defence.
Finding himself in a garden centre canteen in space with an unintroduced companion, the Doctor meets an old acquaintance, an elderly Avenger and some arboreal enemies.
Warning: this episode ends with two over-refreshed old farts moaning (at some length).
This episode can also be found at iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible and all other podcatchers (as far as we know).
The Doctor takes Tegan back to see some of her history with the usual unwelcome results.
Is King John quite himself? Why is he so keen on meeting Demons? And, more to the point, why does he employ a barely disguised renegade Time Lord with an outrageous accent?
This episode can also be found at iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible and all other podcatchers (as far as we know).
The Doctor saves Jo Grant from a date with Mike Yates but at what cost?
The intrepid pair find themselves in a medieval mise en scene and encounter several forms of green galactico, including Ice Warriors, Arcturus and phallic fraidy cat, Alpha Centauri. But who is the real villain?
This episode can also be found at iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible and all other podcatchers (as far as we know).
The Krynoid PodCast has been going since 2009 but originally only the episodes from 031 onwards were hosted here on Libsyn.
We've now uploaded episodes 001 to 025 here to make them available on iTunes, Spotify, Audible, Amazon Music, etc. along with all the later episodes and will continue to do so over the next couple of months until all of the first 30 episodes are uploaded.
In the meantime, episodes 026 to 030 can be downloaded here.
The Doctor and K9 have a Time Lady forced upon them and are sent on a quest for some lumps of perspex.
They find the first on a parky planet but, before they can get their hands on it, they have to contend with a couple of conmen, a whack job warlord, a rubbery reptile and a mad old dear with antlers.
This episode can also be found at iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible and all other podcatchers (as far as we know).
The Universe's least favourite motorised dustbins are back and this time they've come to papa.
They're hoping devious daddy, Davros, will cure their lurgy but Ol' One Eye, with the questionable help of Dirty Den, has other plans. It's up to the Doctor and co to bat off Bob Ferris and save the day. But not everyone will make it back to the TARDIS...
This episode can also be found at iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible and all other podcatchers (as far as we know).
The Doctor and Leela's day trip turns into a nightmare when they wind up at a wave-lashed Edwardian lighthouse.
Throw in a selfish toff, an hysterical harridan and a homicidal Brussels sprout and you have the perfect recipe for a sleepless night.
This episode can also be found at iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible and all other podcatchers (as far as we know).
In a future world where men (almost) wear their y-fronts outside their jump suits, T-Mat is the mode of travel du jour.
But when a troop of myopic Martians mince into a moon base, it's time for the Earthmen to polish their rockets and get ready for a foam party that'll put Ibiza to shame.
This episode can also be found at iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible and all other podcatchers (as far as we know).
We're back with another batch of legacy episodes from the dusty depths of the Krynoid PodCast archive.
This time it's all change as Sylvester McCoy with a wig regenerates into Sylvester McCoy without a wig.
The Rani cosplays as Mel Bush while the Doctor plays the spoons (and the fool) and the whole thing can only be described as batfood crazy.
This episode can also be found at iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible and all other podcatchers (as far as we know).
We return to Who with a tale of secret enemies, ostentatious acting and stentorian asides.
Will the Keeper ever escape his shower cubicle?
Will aubergines ever replace Rice Krispies?
Will Tom Baker ever wipe his nose?
And will The Keeper of Traken give Jim and Martin a new lease of life or leave them calcified?
Listen to find out!
00:00 Intro and context
04:56 A walkthrough of the story
1:22:06 A review of the story
2:10:48 Summing up and scores
This episode can also be found at iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible and all other podcatchers (as far as we know).
You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter.
Thanks for listening!
Roving reporter, Sarah Jane Smith, gets more of a scoop than she bargained for when she gatecrashes UNIT's scientist sleepover.
But although she meets a roistering robber baron, a lily-livered lord and a stranded space toad (not to mention Dot Cotton and Boba Fett), she fails to get an interview with any of them.
The First Doctor and chums go for a whistle-stop tour of the wonderful world of Marinus.
Which is a great holiday venue, providing you avoid its cities, mountains, seas and jungles. And the intrepid traveller should also beware of flappy-footed gimps, trouserless tour guides, randy trappers and the Knights Who Say "Ni".
The Doctor and Romana go on their hols for a water and bouillabaisse blowout by the banks of the Seine.
Naturally, things do not run smoothly as an ancient alien, a mad scientist and a pugilistic private dick muddy the waters and they're surrounded by fake, if enigmatic, smiles.
The Third Doctor probably thought things were bad enough - stuck on Earth as he was with a dud TARDIS, a scatty hippy and a bunch of squaddies.
But now he has to contend with CSO in his sink, a bunch of Mr Blobbys on his lawn and a loud-mouthed mentalist with a grudge. Luckily his former selves turn up to make things even worse.
Back to re-uploading our 30 earliest episodes...
Avian headgear ahoy! Yes, the Black and White Guardians are back to oversee a space race in which Turlough goes overboard, Gladys Emmanuel is over the top and Leeee John is overestimated as an actor.
Jim and Martin spring a festive surprise with some new Krynoid PodCast material!
They scan the snowless Snowdonian slopes for monstrous myths and find the Doctor giving an old friend a bell, Victoria repeating herself and Jamie threatening everyone with a bagpipe recital.
But did The Abominable Snowmen thaw their cockles or give them the cold shoulder. Listen to find out!
00:00 Intro and context
07:38 A walkthrough of the story
1:15:15 A review of the story
2:08:18 A discussion of the animation
2:13:46 Summing up and scores
This episode can also be found at iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible and all other podcatchers (as far as we know).
You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter.
Merry Christmas and have a wonderful 2023!
The Sixth Doctor gets a second chance with this tale of hard men, frigid women and a Fat Controller. And marvel as Jim shamelessly steals Fry and Laurie material in the intro.
Time for the story which gave our pod its name. A horticultural tale in which an artistic old bat recovers a debt, a tree-hugger becomes compost and Boycie ends up out of his depth with a gardening problem.
Burn your chess boards and steer clear of the beach... Fenric's in town! Look out for teenage vamps, ancient vampires and the strangest chat-up of all time. And give Nicholas Parsons just a minute of your time before crying "stunt casting!"
Doctor Who is required to suffer a swinging night club, a controlled companion and a Savile comparison, all while trying to defeat a computerised menace with a vendetta against cardboard boxes.
An absolute banger involving our newly dandified hero stealing a banger. Plastic killers, a shiny receptionist and a tea-dribbling basket case thrown in.
Harry fiddles with a knob, Sarah passes out and the Doctor gets in a sweat on The Ark in Space.
Adric trips over nothing and Richard Mace runs off for a squirter. Don't miss the lads' take on The Visitation.
We're back with some more archive "classics" this month, starting with a video nasty which is a searing indictment of video nasties, Vengeance on Varos.
Time to enter the creaky world of black and white Who with a sojourn on the mysterious, blurred planet of Vortis!
Our first dip into the Third Doctor's era sees Jim and Martin discussing The Claws of Axos.
Our second episode, in which Jim and Martin get on to the meat and potatoes of the podcast, discussing the Tom Baker solo outing, The Deadly Assassin.
This is the first of our earliest 30 Krynoid PodCast episodes which we're uploading to Libsyn so that all of our episodes are accessible from the same place.
Herein, a very tentative sounding Jim and Martin discuss their history with Doctor Who and compare NuWho to Classic Who.
Apologies for the sound quality. It does get better in future episodes. And apologies for Jim's over use of samples. They start and stop here.
Welcome to the first episode of Jim and Martin's new podcast on that other great BBC sci-fi series of the 1970s and 80s, Blake's 7.
This is just a sample episode for Krynoid PodCast listeners. Future episodes will be published at https://mutoidpodcast.libsyn.com so, if you like it, please subscribe at your usual podcatcher.
There may be a delay while the first episode reaches all of its destinations so please try again if you can't find The Mutoid Podcast first time.
Over the next few months on this feed, we will be publishing the first 30 episodes of the Krynoid PodCast which are not currently hosted at Libsyn.
When this migration is completed, all of the Krynoid PodCast episodes will be available in the same places (iTunes, Spotify, etc.).
Jim and Martin are returning to podcasting... with a surprising plot twist.
Listen here or on Spotify.
So it’s time to go home for Andy Pandy fangirl, Sarah Jane Smith.
And there’s a hand pulling the strings in this show too, giving tupperware a bad name and Professor Watson a bad day at the power plant.
Handily, crystalline cosmic crook Eldrad can reform herself from her moribund mitt and then she herself suffers from a wandering hand from her leading man.
For a change, we leave a quarry to land on an alien planet where ‘she’ becomes a ‘he’, the decibel level rockets and he – and the serial – fall off a cliff.
But is it OK to fancy Eldrad?
How many (if any) puerile ‘ring’ jokes should be allowed in one podcast episode?
And do Jim and Martin think The Hand of Fear deserves a thumbs up? Or do they give it the finger?
Listen and you might get an answer to some or none of the above.
The lads also review the brand new audiobooks of Dalek and The Crimson Horror!
Also available on Spotify.
Welcome to The Fun Factory: trespassers will be self-prosecuted.
The Valeyard (aka The Flaw Doctor) makes the most of a unique Time Lord feature and gives his own SJW predecessor a right legal leathering on Space Station SFX.
But they still find time for trips to Camber Quicksands and Popplewick’s House of Exploding Quills, where the waiting room is spacious but gives you that sinking feeling.
The Doctor quotes, the Master gloats and Glitz dotes on bank notes, while the Keeper is not averse to the odd slide tackle to protect his Panatropic Net (even though Mel always aims for row Z).
But did Jim and Martin find The Ultimate Foe ultimately forgettable or a worthy way to end an era?
Listen to find out.
The lads also review the audiobooks of The Krotons and The Curse of Fenric.
Also available on Spotify.
You may think life can’t get much worse at the moment but locked-down Brexity Britain looks positively idyllic compared to Blighty under the rubber skirt of Dalek rule.
This septic isle is overrun with motorised dustbins, headphone-wearing dullards who’ve really let themselves go and the most unrealistic pet since K9.
The Doctor falls on his coccyx, Susan falls in love, Ian falls out of a door and Babs falls in with a rough crowd and TWOKs a dustcart. Luckily, a fratricidal fellow rebel lends two hands and Mr Rumbold lends his ears but the perma-grumpy Mrs Briers fails to stop Babs succumbing to crones.
Would you buy a used mattress from a Dalek?
Is the entry exam for the Roboman Academy too difficult?
How many floating corpses would it take to put you off a glass of water?
And did Jim and Martin find The Dalek Invasion of Earth to be a glorious triumph or a misbegotten folly?
Listen to find out!
The lads also review the audiobooks of Fury From The Deep and The Awakening.
Also available on Spotify.
What could be more fun at Christmas than a Punch and Judy show?
Almost anything, of course, but perhaps even puppety domestic violence is preferable to mental subservience to an ancient evil.
This is the lot of tetchy Tegan, who’s red in tooth and eye again, but at least she gets to spread the hate with an embryonic Doc Martin this time around.
Nyssa cosplays a deckchair and the Doctor indulges in some heavy breathing, while Mr Sladen is forced to reflect on the viability of his shoddy little booth. Lon’s special dress is even shorter than his temper but not as skimpy as his mum’s interest in Ambril’s antiques.
But did Jim and Martin find Snakedance becoming or did they conclude that that’s not the way to do it?
Listen to find out!
The lads also review the audiobooks of The Mark of the Rani and The Pyramids of Mars.
Also available on Spotify.
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 Destruction.
Also available on Spotify.
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 just a dusty old relic?
Listen to find out!
The lads also review the audiobooks of The Curse of Peladon and Image of the Fendahl.
You can also find this and many other Krynoid PodCast episodes on Spotify.
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 carnival of monsters.
But did Jim and Martin warm to the wet February clay pit that is the Colony In Space or did it leave them colder than Terry Walsh's wobbly bits?
Listen to find out!
We also review the audiobooks of The Cybermen and Paradise Towers.
Find us on Spotify too.
Listener feedback for this story can be found here.
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?
Listen to find out!
“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 and Martin find the Ice Warriors refreshingly bracing or did it leave them cold?
Listen to find out. Also hear what Jim and Martin think of the BBC audiobooks of The Ice Warriors, The Faceless Ones and Warriors' Gate!
"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.
“My legs! My legs!”
Zero out of a million on the tact front from Ian, crowing about his pins when surrounded by legless Daleks.
Actually, they haven’t touched a drop but they have experimented with some freaky hallucinogens from their peacenik neighbours.
So this is the TARDIS foursome’s first awayday – The Daleks – and where better to visit than a quiet, pollen-free forest with nearby amenities, including free toilet rolls, gratis green grocery and more mercury than you could ever need (especially if you don’t need any).
But have some Thals found their own forbidden fruit?
Has the tripping Dalek come down yet?
How many more legs does Alydon have than Ian?
And where would Jim and Martin place the story on the evolutionary continuum from joke shop fake to perfect paragon?
Listen to find out.
"Weirdos!"
It’s not often that a Doctor Who story reviews Jim and Martin but this is the topsy-turvy world of The Greatest Show in the Galaxy.
It’s all a bit of a circus as the Ringmaster puts the 'c' into 'rap', a foxy artiste blames it on the moonlight and the Chief Clown grins all the way to the emergency dentist. Ace is victim to some violent conducting and the Doctor prances, prestidigitates and experiences a warm burst on his exit.
Peaceful hippy Bellboy makes killer robots, Deadbeat mopes around waiting for Lovejoy to turn up and Mystic Morgana wishes she’d never agreed to a fan meet-and-greet. Captain Cook bores himself to death, a new stand-up dies on stage and Peggy Mount proves to be the Worst Dinner Lady in the Galaxy.
So did Jim and Martin enjoy the roar of the greasepaint and the smell of the non-existent crowd? Or were they reaching for their zero score cards?
Listen to find out and to hear the lads review the Tom Baker and James Goss novel, Scratchman.
“I’ve lost my sonic screwdriver. I feel completely lost without it.”
Lost? Modern Doctors would need resuscitating.
Yes, it’s back to basics with The Sontaran Experiment, wherein hairy rock dwellers set traps, chuck rocks and threaten people with hot sticks.
Undeterred, Sarah channels Margo Leadbetter, Harry tries out some mucus-based medicine and the Doctor whistles the Spitting Image classic “I’ve Never Met A Nice South African.”
Meanwhile Styre suffers from short man syndrome and displays his confusion at having a female boss by torturing men, wearing guyliner and fouling his own living space. It all leaves him a tad deflated.
But at least everyone gets to take a breather and watch two newcomers have a roll in the heather. Not like that.
So did Jim and Martin enjoy the overcast uplands of The Sontaran Experiment or did they fake collarbone fractures to escape watching it?
Find out here.
“He says he’s a frog doctor, sir.”
Let’s have some fanfic where the Troughton and Whittaker Doctors combine forces to heal a lonely amphibian universe. Actually… let’s not.
No, this is The Highlanders, where you could be excused for thinking the Doctor’s bizarre accent was French and that his hat was a Goth’s traffic bollard.
It’s a second outing for the second Doctor but 18th Century Scotland fares poorly on Cosmic Trip Adviser, with its dog biscuits, corked wine and one-star wet room. And you’ll find the locals unwelcoming and the English tourists somewhat invasive.
But the TARDIS team do indulge in recreational pursuits. Ben swims, the Doctor headbangs, Jamie toys with his dirk and Polly manages to avoid fifty shades of Solicitor Grey.
But did Jim and Martin think The Highlanders was pure dead brilliant or did it warrant the Ff-bomb?
Listen to find out.
Merry Christmas!
And let's hope it stays merry after listening to Jim and Martin discussing the Series 11 episodes not yet covered in the Krynoid PodCast, and then the series as a whole.
We play out with John Gonzalez's Christmas-tinged rendition of the Doctor Who theme (find it on YouTube https://youtu.be/6KVhSNS_xU8)
Hearty thanks from the Green Cathedral to everyone who's listened, tweeted, retweeted, followed, liked and provided feedback over 2018.
We'll be back in January 2019.
Until then, Happy New Year!
“There’s your monster maker… Caught in the act.”
And lo… Barry Letts did advance upon him, spitting tacks and brandishing a rubber T-Rex, with insertion on his mind.
Yes, this is yer actual Invasion of the Dinosaurs – a tale of double talk, double-crosses and double denim.
The Doctor drives stuff, Sarah discovers stuff and Yates says “Stuff you!” to his UNIT family (and to everyone outside the central London elite bubble).
Have the cast been selectively aged and rejuvenated by Whitaker’s time experiments?
Is the science as shaky as the Whitehall walls? And is it worth gambling your house on?
Will Lis Sladen ever get the underwear she doesn’t need?
And where will Jim and Martin place the story on a scale of Jurassic Park to The Goodies?
To find out the answers to some or none of these questions, listen here.
"I'm bored."
Well, if you can't stand the ennui, get out of the kitchen.
Yes, we're in the strange and underfunded world of The Celestial Toymaker where the fun barely starts.
The Doctor single-handedly plays the world's worst spectator sport, while Steven and Dodo are forced to tackle 'sighted-man's buff', 'spot the comfy chair' and 'hunt the dramatic tension'. And, if you think Strictly seems to go on forever, try the Toymaker's version, aka They Shoot Time Travellers, Don't They?
Along the way they meet a mute clown, a clown you wish was mute, the 1966 'Mr & Mrs' champions, a cockernee cook, a (low) Quality Street soldier and the copyright-skirting Billy Butner of Greyflyers School.
Dodo reveals that she's all tells and no poker face, Steven tries not to kill everyone in sight (especially Dodo) and the Doctor unleashes his inner Mike Yarwood.
So did Jim and Martin dive into the fun like toddlers on tartrazine or would they have preferred to have joined Hartnell in Bognor?
Find out here.
“Boing! Boing!”
The unmistakable sound of the bells of Seville (and nothing to do with Peri running down a hillside).
So the JN-T holiday charabanc ends up in Spain in 1985 and his latest jaunt promises country yomps, moth collecting and acid sports, with dinner thrown in – several times over.
The Two Doctors manage to keep out of each other’s way for the most part as Sixie angles for centre stage, leaving his former self to a compulsory makeover, while Peri tries a new accent and Jamie just tries it on.
Meanwhile Shockeye wants the special stuff, Chessene wants special treatment and the superfluous Sontarans await their special appearance with He Who Can No Longer Be Named.
But did the story leave Jim and Martin replete and content or suffering from raging heartburn?
Listen to find out.
“Now go on. Ben can catch his ship and become an Admiral and you, Polly, you can look after Ben.”
The Doctor reminds Ben and Polly they’re back in 1966 – a time (and indeed date) menaced by War Machines, alien shape-shifters, Daleks and gender stereotyping.
They also have to contend with dodgy pilots, aliens with zero personality, lethal haberdashery and a cross-dressing Beatles lookalike.
The Doctor gets the cold shoulder, Jamie gets snogged, Polly gets duplicated and Ben gets lost, while our plucky quasi-companion plays amateur sleuth, armed only with a sharp tongue and a crap hat.
So do Jim and Martin think The Faceless Ones soars into the stratosphere or plummets like a zapped fighter pilot?
Listen to find out.
"Is that finger loaded?"
A good question because nothing is as it seems in Devesham-on-Oseidon.
The horse-brasses are plastic, the dartboard has a functional bullseye and the ginger beer may not be The Real Thing (but its supply is inexhaustible).
Then there's Guy Crayford, who has a spacesuit of vacuum-resistant denim, incomplete underpants and an eye-patch which is purely cosmetic.
And, behind the scenes, the horny Kraals are eager to spread their infection and have been using fake UNIT personnel for practice.
But did Jim and Martin find The Android Invasion to be the real McCoy or as phoney as a Devesham publican?
Find out here.
"You've got some of it on your hands and you didn't tell us anything about it. It was very wrong of you, wasn't it?"
The Doctor makes Barbara feel small with a little ticking off. Fair enough though - she had almost died from the stiffest of upper lips (and a dangerously unbathed ankle).
Eco-whistleblower Arnold Farrow fares even worse with a slug in the chest and a ruined holiday, while his murderer - Mr (D?) Forester - escapes with a burnt aerosol and a bloody nose. But the bloody nosey Hilda and PC Bert save the day.
Ian has a knees-up in a matchbox, Susan shins up a drainpipe and the Doctor's spirits sink in a basin as the regular cast prove there are no small roles, just small actors.
So did Jim and Martin find that good things come in small packages or that size really does matter?
Listen to find out.
"What is this horrendous place?"
Well, Nyssa, it's Terminus - a place to which Bor was presumably drawn by nominative determinism.
It's a drab old hospital where the porters are metal, the doctors are Goths and the burglars are New Romantics.
The Doctor wins a fight, Nyssa loses her skirt and Tegan draws the short straw, what with Turlough staring at her posterior and the extras revealing her upper assets.
Did Olvir train at the Wayne Sleep Combat Academy?
Is the Doctor's creepy CCTV standard TARDIS issue?
Do the Vanir have enough dog poop bags to last until their next Ocado delivery?
And did Jim and Martin find Terminus to be a real tonic or some used Hydromel?
Find out here...
"No complications."
That infamous moment when the first Ogron on the left accidentally reveals his MENSA potential to his masters but no-one bats a shiny eyelid.
Yes, this is Day of the Daleks in which our intrepid TARDIS twosome wine, dine and enjoy a ride, while Yates pulls rank, Benton pulls out of a minor skirmish and the Brig pulls his hair out as he defends world peace from humans and aliens alike while, no doubt, also taking in washing and doing a paper round.
Will the Jeep Pronto ever make it to market?
Why do people keep giving the Controller dirty looks? Is it his personal hygiene? Or is it because the only kid he ever charges for his sweets is poverty-stricken Charlie Bucket?
And why are the Daleks wasting resources on their minions' make-up when their vital attack force wouldn't fill a football team?
Jim and Martin ponder these questions and try to decide whether this is a red-letter day or 24 hours of ennui.
Listen in for their verdict.
"The Doctor's almost as clever as I am."
Zoe Heriot may be the Krotons' pet but she must have been expelled from modesty school.
Yes, this is The Krotons, a saga of sub-standard scientists, snaky CCTV spies and shouty fridges from another world.
The Doctor flunks, Jamie fights and Zoe infuriates while the Gonds lack the gonads to take on their reclusive rulers.
Will Beta reveal the secret of transmat to his backward brethren (or is it still at Beta stage)?
From which Brummie enclave of Johannesburg do the Krotons hail?
Will the Doctor's twanged nipple ever recover?
And do Jim and Martin think the story is the work of High Brains or should it be dispersed?
Find out here.
"Never trust a man with dirty fingernails."
...Or a face like a Shar Pei's nether regions.
Especially if he exacerbates London's rodent problem, takes advantage of young scrubbers and test-drives prototype orgasmatrons.
Yes, this is The Talons of Weng-Chiang - a strange (Robert) Holmesian melodrama where people pop poison pills, ventriloquist dummies are hands-free and Birmingham has cornered the Chinese firearms market.
Leela takes some clothes, the Doctor takes a boat trip, Jago takes fright and Litefoot takes delivery of a surprise hamper, while Chang prestidigitates, Mr Sin recidivates and a mad old crone expectorates.
So do Jim and Martin think this is a superlative specimen of Seventies sci-fi or do they smell a rat?
Find out here.
"I hate conducted tours."
Dodo single-handedly sows the seeds of the Doctor Who Experience's eventual demise, way back in 1966.
This month we find ourselves in a land where greedy leaders feather their own nests at the expense of the downtrodden underclass. And it's much the same in Doctor Who's The Savages, screened some 52 years ago (badum tish!)
The Doctor is drained, Steven is ordained and Dodo is reined-in on a world where the big city holds no attraction for our clan of outsiders, a bunch of sapped saps with their very own cheeky girl (but mercifully no Lembit Opik).
Who else gets to use the Doctor's vibrator? Did Jano and his mates manage to video The Daleks' Master Plan? Who's producing destructive vapours and shouldn't their diet be looked at?
And did Jim and Martin find The Savages to be a shot in the arm or an enervating experience?
Tune in to find out.
"Let's make this baby fly!"
Said the uncool and un-Welsh Welsh rock 'n' roller Billy, who refrains (perhaps disappointingly) from drop-kicking the Chimeron child over the Shangri-La camp's Olympic size swimming pool.
Yes, it's time to take a look at the distinctly odd Delta and the Bannermen, a tale of a baffling bee-keeper, unnecessary Americans, a shot-down stand-up and life-size plastic soldiers with lockjaw.
When will Ray realise that she's barking up the wrong tree? When will Billy realise he's sniffing around the wrong species? Will the Bannermen have a whip round to get Gavrok a barbecue? And can the Flying Pickets achieve further chart success now their leader has been reduced to smoking footwear?
Don't expect to find the answers here as Jim and Martin struggle to decide whether to mark the story hi-de-high or hi-de-low.
"You have returned to us, Doctor. Your travels are over."
But thankfully not forever. It was, indeed, a long way from being all over.
So Jim and Martin stagger to their century milestone with their biggest story yet, The War Games.
It's an epic tale of trials, tribulations, heavily corrected (and impaired) vision, and a Very. Stupid. Voice.
The Doctor plays with fridge magnets, Jamie plays the fool, Zoe plays Villa like a violin and the War Lord plays with his real live toy soldiers - and gets a Paddington stare for his trouble.
Romans gawp and mince, wigs wander almost as far as the accents, and the scenery is chewed up, gargled and spat out - even when it's as wobbly as a Quark under enemy fire.
So do Jim and Martin think this is a worthy end for a very worthy Doctor? Or was it ten parts of terrible tedium?
Listen in to find out.
"A delightfully unexpected afternoon."
Well it won't take up much of your afternoon and there's very little that's unexpected here.
For this is Black Orchid - a ripping yarn of bronchial brothers, lippy bookworms, smutty absentees and a child bride who's passed around like a gold ball at a Telosian rugby match.
The Doctor plays the clown, Tegan cuts a rug, Nyssa finds her double and Adric eats double his body weight in finger food.
But who is the tweed-trousered killer who's friends with an Amazonian Indian?
Could he possibly have any connection with Charles "not one of the Worcester Woosters" Cranleigh whose brother disappeared on an Amazonian expedition?
And who is the piratical prat with the badge for mathematical excellence?
Listen to find out...
"I don't work for anybody. I'm just having fun."
Not so much fun for the cold turkeys, the cattle-prodded Mandrels and the eviscerated punters on the good ship Empress though.
Yes, this is Nightmare of Eden and 'nightmare' could be seen as an apposite epithet by the crew and viewer alike. It's a heady cocktail of spiked drinks, unfortunate zips and insurance policy wordings.
K9 needs some obedience classes, the Doctor shrieks about his extremities and Romana gets a nasty love bite (but not as nasty as her dress), while Tryst accentuates the silliness, Fisk makes it uniformly worse and Rigg turns on, tunes in and drops out.
So did Jim and Martin find the story as first class as the toilet facilities or were they glad when the nightmare was over?
Find out here.
"I am usually referred to as the Master."
Or some very slight variation thereof.
Terror of the Autons is a story where a bloomin' cockernee is masquerading as an Italian, a Time Lord as an astral Mr Benn, Autons as an army of Frank Sidebottoms, and the man himself as BT's most sackable employee. Yet the Master can't muster the energy to think up an even vaguely misdirecting pseudonym.
Plenty of imagination elsewhere though with unfriendly neighbourhood Bobbies, dolls that are a bit too clingy, armchairs that give you a hug, a phone you can really get tied up on and gift daffs you really shouldn't look in the mouth.
Can the grumpy Doctor, scatty Jo, and a Maxi full of UNIT defeat the Master and the Nestene Unconvincingness?
And did Jim and Martin find all this plastic fantastic or as flat as Old Ma Farrel's CSO kitchen?
Find out here.
"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 delight in this first ever pseudo-historical or do they disapprove of all this time meddling?
Find out here.
"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.
"It's not exactly dull travelling with the Doctor."
Not normally, Tegan. Not normally...
But this is the season 19 closer, Time-Flight, in which the Doctor seems to be under heavy sedation, OmNyssia knows all the answers, Tegan remains an air hostess (not that she ever hints at this) and Adric is still dead (mercifully).
The Master is at large too, coercing a plane-full of extras into caressing an inner sanctum, wherein lies a battery crammed full of blokes and an orang-utan's family jewels. He also finds time to co-ordinate a platoon of turd men, all while nursing a projectile cold.
But which passenger is Victor Foxtrot? Why is Concorde's progress monitored from a broom cupboard? And why on (prehistoric) Earth is the Master cosplaying as the last Widow Twankey in the job centre, even when he's on his Jack Jones?
Listen in to hear Jim, Martin and special guest Ian Atkins pick through the wreckage.
"Usually I only entertain friends in the TARDIS."
Everyone off to the tinselled Type 40 then for some serious wassailing! Like all the best parties, we'll no doubt end up clustered around the food machine.
Yes, it's our snow-capped Christmas 2015 edition in which Jim and Martin cast their occuloid trackers over the 1975 Tom Baker space epic (Forbidden) Planet of Evil and then appraise - but not unanimously praise - the last four episodes of 2015's Series 9, all under the influence of listener-brewed ale!
Many questions arise...
How much chest-hair should Morestran men of a certain age be revealing? Is a visit to Blackpool really that scary? And did Clara's 479th tear-stained death leave the lads' eyes as red as Sorenson's?
Listen and find out!
"Is this how time normally passes? Really slowly and in the right order?"
No, not a comment from one of our long-suffering listeners but one of the many amusing lines from Vincent and the Doctor, in which the Doctor tilts at wind, Amy is a typical Brit abroad (either shouting at or chatting up the locals) and Alan Van Gogh puts his paintings to a variety of (un)sanitary uses.
Our heroes dodge marauding locals and their bouncing bottoms, skewer a catering-sized invisible chicken and endure both bill stickers and Bill Nighy.
But is the episode high art or low-brow?
Listen to find out what card-carrying philistines Jim and Martin make of it.
"Okay. Not sure but really, really hoping... pants?"
No, not your hosts feeling their presents on Christmas morning but the ludicrously-named Laurence Nightingale in the much-lauded Blink - a tale of kinetic statues, exploding hens, dumbfounding DVD extras and a pro-celebrity wedding.
And it prompts a number of burning questions...
Is it really possible to be unsure of your underwear status?
Is Martin hinting that he lives in a house called Easter Debenhams?
And can people stop saying 'timey-wimey'? Please?
So did the Weeping Angels command Jim and Martin's full attention? Or did our intrepid podcasters struggle to keep their eyes open?
Find out here.
"This is called The Bootstrap Paradox. Google it."
So now we have to do some homework before settling down to our favourite programme?
Maybe not, as we get an explanation of what's going to happen before (and after) we watch it happen in Before the Flood. Oh for the simpler if more claustrophobic pleasures to be found Under The Lake.
And our pre-titles primer also involves the fourth wall of the TARDIS being demolished and the Doctor turning his amp up to 11 (again).
So Jim and Martin marshal together their views on what turned out to be very much a game of two halves - and even manage to do so without uttering the dreaded 't-w' word.
And the lads close with a decision of which Tegan's Aunt Vanessa would have been proud.
Uncover (some of) the mystery here.
"Supreme Dalek... your sewers are revolting!"
B'dum tish! He's here all week, laydeez 'n' gen'lemen... For the next ten weeks, in fact.
Yes, the Doctor's back on our screens and straight into in a touching but mutually mendacious bromance with Ole One-Eye (or is that Three-Eyes now?)
Davros weeps, the Doctor shreds, Missy larks about and Clara has a communication breakdown, albeit in familiar surroundings. And Snake Face has a roller skate and segway race... with himself(s).
But what's in the Doctor's confession dial? Why does Missy want the Doctor to live? And just what is the elephant in the 12th century arena?
Jim and Martin bang on about it all right here...
"That would have created what I believe is called 'consumer resistance'."
True dat, Davros. Much as many people would like to get rid of the occasional relative, eating them rarely presents itself as a viable option.
A Marxist stand-up masquerading as a crap Dee-Jay is also likely to put off customers (even the comatose ones), while melting mutants, hybridised heads and flying Kaled fingers might even prompt punters to look elsewhere than Tranquil Repose for their funerary needs.
Yep, this is Revelation of the Daleks wherein Davros is nought but a head in a tank, Jobel is a spam-head under a rug, Orcini has a tin leg, Tasembeker thinks with her knuckles and good old Lilt communicates with his.
But do Jim and Martin find this story irresistible? Or would they prefer a steaming plateful of The Great Healer's patented (but 'orrible) 'I can't believe it's not Quorn' (TM)?
Find out here!
"Let's hope the piano knows it."
Merely false modesty from virtuoso ivory ticklers Steven "Regret" Taylor and Dodo "Dodo" Chaplet as we soon discover in the horse-flop flecked epic, The Gunfighters.
The Doctor ("Caligari") has a busted tooth extracted but that ain't the only malfunctioning thing coming out of anyone's mouths in this one... no siree! For accents shuttle back and forth across the Atlantic like speeding bullets, often more Tottenham than Tombstone.
But can our Doc and his fellow "thesbians" survive the crossfire between the more whiskery (whiskey-ery?) Doc and the Clantons?
Is Charlie the Barman related to Ghostlight's Nimrod?
And is it possible to have a song entirely bleached from one's mind? And, if so, where does Jim sign?
So stop right there stranger an' take a listen to this here podcast to find out the answers. To some other questions.
NB: Our thanks to Keeper1st on YouTube for the basis of the accompaniment for the song at the top of the episode. No thanks whatsoever to Jim for the "singing" though.
"Dross and baubles!"
A three-word review of The Pirate Planet by the salty cyborg himself?
Perhaps. Not that there's much in the way of baubles, except for a compact and bijou planet made entirely from sweetie wrappers.
But there are some monkish mentalists who need a decent kip, a dangerously incontinent tin budgie and a heaving metropolis of eight souls (or eleven if you include the cosmos's crappiest granddad, his doe-eyed granddaughter and her trigger-happy intended).
Does some semblance of an intellect lie behind the Pirate Captain's relentless ranting? What's his kinky nurse-patient role-play all about? And could his garrison of gimp guards even hit a cow's arse with a banjo?
Listen in as Jim and Martin ponder these questions while also wondering if walking the plank might be preferable to sitting through this again.
"Isobel... where are yoooouuu?"
Come to that, where is Scooby Doo? Shouldn't he be with those crazy kids in the Big Smoke's syewers (sic) trying to take shots of scary Cyberm'n (one of them's sick).
It's all because of The Invasion, masterminded by perma-winking Tobias Vaughn and his woefully inept sidekick (and arse-kick), Packer.
The Doctor has an eye for a photo opportunity, courtesy of our snappy flapper, but Jamie proves not to be as photogenic as Zoe's spangly bottom, despite his family-friendly weighted kilt. And the jury's still out as to whether his dirk is more impressive than Jimmy's chopper.
Does Cyber-Plan B make any sense? Why hasn't Vaughn killed Packer several times by now? And should we petition Philip Morris to recover those missing action sequences?
See if anything "has been agreeed" by Jim and Martin in this mammoth episode.
You'll need the stamina of a Cyberm'n to listen to it all.
"You know, you're a classic example of the inverse ratio between the size of the mouth and the size of the brain."
No, the Doctor isn't addressing your gentle hosts but Martin's favouritest actor ever is on the receiving end.
It's The Robots of Death - a tale of unwelcome bike reflectors, irresistible make-up and ludicrous millinery.
The Doctor and his mousy sidekick, Leela, are in a sand miner and in the frame for the mysterious marigold murders. But who's behind the rubber-gloved death-dealing droids?
The exasperated Uvanov? The bellowing Borg? Surely not tottietastic Toos? Or might the face, voice and trousers of another crew member put him under suspicion? Just maybe?
Listen in to hear if Jim and Martin can get to the sub-stratum of this miner problem.
“The earth is hungry. It waits to eat. I can see them. They are the appetite beneath the ground.”
Mark Strickson now regrets snacking on Daz before shooting his key scenes in the 1984 comedy-woodlice fest, Frontios.
And these unrealistic bugs are not the only threat to our bespectacled cricketer, rabid schoolboy and Australian android from the Ministry of Silly Walks. No, there's a meagre monarch, his gruff 'no man', an oaken Orderly and his whiskery chum from the Village People.
But help is at hand in the form of Mr Raaaaaange (science officer and prophet of doom), his comely daughter and, inadvertently, the chief snot-encrusted Tractator - a creature with a nose for a nonsensical plan.
But how offensive is a chicken vol-au-vent (other fillings are available)? More or less than an exploding hat-stand? And what is the colony leader doing in Joe 90's egg whisk?
Jim and Martin struggle to answer these questions, while trying not to come to blows over the usage of fingers and tools.
Listen here for the whole sorry saga.
"Suffering catfish!"
And they aren't the only ones suffering as Jim and Martin trudge through the lively four-part story The Time Monster, cunningly packaged as a six-part ordeal.
The Doctor dreams of the Master, the Master dreams of universal conquest and Jo dreams of a time when her alien colleague doesn't keep treating her like a particularly backward schoolgirl. Queen Galleia is icy, the Brig is frozen and Benton is a tad chilly in his birthday suit (well that's his excuse anyway).
Windows are left un-cleaned, Yates is doodle-bugged and Future Blackadder is swatted like a fly, while his countrymen flee from the Man-Sized Budgie of Ancient Lore.
All this and more padding than an Abzorbaloff cosplayer.
But does the story keep its head above the rising tide of plot inertia?
Listen in to find out.
"There are three physical gateways and the three are one. The whole of this domain, the ancient arch, the mirrors. All the gateways are one."
You what? Run that by me again...
Don't expect any more sense than this from anyone else, for this is Warriors' Gate - a tale with dialogue so oblique it makes Samuel Beckett sound like Dan Brown.
It's an odd sort of a place too, wherein suits of armour give history lessons, lion men fail to tip waitresses and everywhere could do with a touch of colour to cheer it up a bit.
The Doctor's flipping, Adric's tossing and Romana's turning away from her TARDIS chums. K9's lost his marbles and Rorvik's losing his rag as his bumbling underlings are set to lose the E-Space/N-Space Crew of the Year competition by some margin.
So will Jim and Martin stagger through the choking fog of befuddlement to reach the sunlit uplands of understanding? Or will what remains of their brains melt in the attempt?
Listen in to find out.
“It's all in there somewhere. Caramel, sherbet, toffee, marzipan, gelling agents, it's all in motion.”
No, not a description of Jim and Martin's stomachs on Christmas night but rather the innards of the Kandy Man, part-time lethal confectioner and full-time Bertie Bassett stunt double.
Yes, we're on Terra Alpha, a dystopian colony ruled over by painted Thatchalike, Helen A, and her gun-toting Hen Party, The Happiness Patrol.
The over-athletic Doctor plays the spoons, the occasionally-catatonic Earl plays the harmonica and horrid old Helen A plays with her Fifi - her hermaphrodite wolf-poodle, that is. We don't know what you were thinking...
The unrealistic streets teem with low-speed traffic and shambling work-shy drones while, underneath, pound-shop Yodas bark unintelligibly about Gordon Bennett.
And the TARDIS turns pink, as do Whovian cheeks when the Kandy Man appears while any Not-We are in the room.
So did Jim Y and Martin Z enjoy watching it? Or was the experience as hollow as Sylv and Sophie's laughter?
Listen in to find out.
"This game of hide and seek through time is wearing a little thin now."
We couldn't have put it better ourselves, Chesterfield.
Yes, it's the 1965 Dalek story The Chase we're talking about - a tale of bagpipe creatures, a highly annoying hayseed, living vegetation (gasp!), under-utilised plungers and a space pilot with a panda fetish.
The Doctor encounters a robot look-unlike, Ian 'dad dances', Babs plays cowboys and Indians and Vicki laughs like a loon.
The Daleks are no more impressive, hoisting their skirts and staggering through the six episodes in a quagmire of coughing, nonsensical chanting and painfully slow mental arithmetic.
Jim and Martin search for some meaning to it all but do they find it?
Listen here to find out.
"In my presence, you are an ant, a termite. Abase yourself, you grovelling insect!"
So once again Sutekh's arrogance management classes fail to deliver and he's left in his sub-Saqqaran tomb for a few more centuries, waiting for another gentleman caller.
And he had a lot going for him: a puppet archaeologist, a loyal (if irascible) Egyptian organist, a low-tech PIN-pincher and some busty yummy mummies.
Laurence is wide-eyed, the Doctor is boggle-eyed and Marcus has eyes like piddle-holes in the snow, while Sarah is eyeing an escape route to 1980 (but not the crappy one).
Why is Sutekh's cell so well-appointed? Why doesn't someone push a broom around the priory every now and then? And just who is Eternity's Cushion Plumper?
Listen to find out if the answers lie in the Pyramids of Mars and what score (hint hint) Jim and Martin give the serial.
"I am an idiot with a box and a screwdriver."
So after 12 weeks of soul-searching and self-scrutinisation, this is the conclusion the Doctor comes to.
Not the only disappointment, perhaps, during the two-part Series 8 finale, Dark Water and Death in Heaven.
Clara is not the Doctor, Missy is the Master (though perhaps not one worthy of the name) and Dead Danny becomes a Cyberman who saves the world. So far, so predictable.
But a Time Lord travelling by Mary Poppins' umbrella, an undead metallic Brigadier and skeletons who become Cybermen after a bout of inclement weather are a little less by-the-book.
But did Jim and Martin feel it all amounted to a satisfying end to the excellent Series 8? Or an embarrassing, drunken hurling-up after a feast of great Who?
Listen in to find out.
No, we're not saying Dark Water was a non-episode - just that we're not going to do an individual podcast episode on it.
Instead, we'll wait until the full two-part Series 8 finale is completed - Dark Water and Death in Heaven - before opening our pie-holes and spewing forth.
After 10 weeks straight, we're sure your ears could do with the rest.
See you in a week or so...
Jim & Martin Krynoid
"Farewell to the Ice Age. Welcome to the Tree Age. Possibly."
Chilling words (possibly), even to the most ardent of tree-huggers.
So the world is covered in trees and the TARDIS is swarming with children in the latest series 8 episode, In the Forest of the Night.
The Doctor tries to work out what's going on, Clara tries to remember she's a teacher, Danny tries to dazzle the eye(s) of the tiger and the kids try everyone's patience.
Wolves chase people (slowly), Nelson's Column droops and a missing person is found in a shrubbery.
So Jim and Martin can't help being reminded of the words of the White Guardian: "Nothing will happen. Nothing at all. Ever..."
"As from today... I can put any brain into any body, anywhere."
Maybe there's finally hope for the Krynoid Pod boys then?
Whether or not they're up for a shaved head and a sex change is another matter but that is the fate of Kiv, chief Mentor and mega-capitalist Sil-botherer, at the expense of poor old Perpugilliam Brown.
Is the scenery of Thoros Beta competing with Old Sixie's coat for day-glo garishness? Can the Lukoser shut his mouth? Come to that, can Brian Blessed shut his mouth? Please.
Mindwarp is the second section of The Trial of a Time Lord but did Jim and Martin find watching it to be a mind-warping trial?
Find out here.
Addendum: this podcast was recorded before the sad news of Lynda Bellingham's passing. She was a well-loved actress and a very funny lady and, whatever happened around her in season 23, her performance as the Inquisitor was never less than excellent. Our thoughts are with her friends and family and this podcast episode is dedicated to her memory.
"Why Doctor Oswald, you are hilarious!"
So Clara plays the Doctor, Rigsy plays her companion and the Doctor plays Thing from The Addams Family in the latest series 8 episode, Flatline.
The TARDIS has shrunk and swallowed the Doctor, while rugs are swallowing people and Danny may not be swallowing Clara's tall tales.
Would you sacrifice yourself for the price of a hairband? Would you take a personal call while trying to combat an alien attack in a swinging chair? And can you pull off a TARDIS-backed hermit crab cosplay?
Jim and Martin ponder these three-dimensional problems through the single medium of sound.
Join them.
"Are you my mummy?"
Yes, they couldn't resist it.
No blitz-dodging, gasmark-wearing nippers this time though, just a rancid old vet that even a decent vet couldn't save.
For he is the Mummy on the Orient Express who, despite his state-of-the-art soldiering kit is not really what the passengers had in mind when they were promised "all mod cons".
The Doctor plays Poirot, Clara looks in need of a Charleston and Perkins bears an uncanny resemblance to "that disc jockey" (but thankfully not the white-haired Hartnell-alike).
Jelly babies are shared, old ladies fulfill their job descriptions and the kitchen staff are let outside for a breath of fresh vacuum.
But is it a rattling good locomotive of an episode? Or derailed stock which refuses to roll?
Jim and Martin take rather more than 66 seconds to decide.
"The Moon's an egg."
Does that make The First Men in the Moon "soldiers"?
No? Suit yourselves...
Yes, Kill The Moon is another fandom-splitting episode where science and credibility are cast onto the altar of pure daft entertainment.
The Doctor opts out of a big decision, Clara opts out of the democratic process and Courtney opts out of school, hardly a way to brush up her presidential skills.
Do male astronauts wear red shirts under their space suits? How many conkers does it take to ward off a badger-sized spider? And how painful is it to lay an egg larger than oneself?
Listen in - but don't expect any logical answers.
"I'm the new caretaker. John Smith... most people just call me the Doctor."
Skilled exponent of the deep cover persona, the Doctor wields a broom and a non-sonic screwdriver in his new-found role as The Caretaker.
Naturally, this makes life very difficult for the peripatetic Clara and her new (but already long-suffering) beau, Mr Danny Pink.
A Skovox Blitzer is whizzing around disarming policemen and vandalising school property but the real fireworks happen in the TARDIS when Smith-Oswald-Pink triangle finally comes together and seemingly blows instantly apart.
Danny gives Clara an ultimatum (surely flowers are more romantic?), Courtney defiles the time-space machine with her disruptive effluence, and Space Dad gets proprietorial over his impossible little princess.
But does all this a decent Doctor Who episode make?
Listen in to hear what Jim and Rob make of it all.
"I hate the architect."
Another dose of self-loathing from the Doctor? Or has he just watched 'The Towering Inferno' once too often?
Well it's one of many questions and many twists in the oh-so-tricky Time Heist - a tale of the cloned mega-rich, sunken-headed criminals, a love-lorn mind muncher and a motley crue of amnesiac bank robbers.
One's a top-drawer impressionist, another is wired for data, and a third might end up being late for a much less important date. All are called to heel by some unnaturally assertive eyebrows.
Why are they there? What are they trying to steal? And what exactly did that naughty Sensorite get up to?
Jim and Rob do some detective work and try to crack the incredible case of the Successful Steve Thompson Story.
Listen in to see how they got on.
"I sense the vicious doctrine of egalitarianism."
Not our words, the words of financially-motivated, fish-blooded fungus, The Collector.
One of The Sun Makers, this blob of seaweed with ideas above its station loves a healthy balance sheet and an unhealthy executionee but meets his match when the 4th Doctor, Leela and K9 visit plutocratic Pluto.
It's a miserable world of wooden tables, cardboard control panels, unappetising curries and clown's-pocket-sized credit cards.
The Doctor moos like a cow, Leela fights like a wildcat and K9 acts like a dog - much to Martin's incandescent rage.
But is the story as saleable as a tray of hot cakes or a bucket of cold sick?
Listen and find out.
"Fear is like a companion. A constant companion, always there."
And some may think Clara Oswald is always there, in shot.
But not Jim and his mystery new podcast companion.
They wax lyrical on the rather watchable *Listen* and ponder tricky dates, misunderstood soldiers and canon attacks.
Who wrote on the Doctor's blackboard? Who or what was under the bedclothes? And was there anything outside Orson's spaceship?
For the answer to all of these questions, call Steven Moffat.
And, while you're on hold, give our episode a Listen.
"No damsels in distress. No pretty castles. No such thing as Robin Hood."
Well it just goes to show that even curmudgeonly old Time Lords can get things wrong occasionally, although the TARDIS team do also manage to encounter a Robot of Sherwood or several during their sojourn in Merrie England.
Hair is plucked, sandals are sniffed, targets are incinerated and a baddie is cast into a vat of boiling gold.
All in a day's work for Spoonman and Clara.
But does the episode hit the target or plummet into the moat of obscurity and derision?
Listen in and find out...
"Top layer, if you want to say a few words."
Ooh that 12th / 14th / 271st Doctor is a silver-tongued charmer, isn't he?
Perhaps being poked into a mental Dalek has upset his equilibrium? Or maybe not. Who knows? Who nose? etc. etc.
So Jim and Martin go Into The Dalek and try to discover why the Doctor looks so sheepish, if Clara's was a happy slap, what makes punters qualify for Missy's Heaven and if random words do a character name make.
Listen to their aimless pontifications here.
"And don't look in that mirror. It's absolutely furious!"
Peter Capaldi is the Doctor and Jim and Martin escape their Classic Who bonds to observe him in his inaugural outing, Deep Breath.
It's a Victorian melodrama, featuring a newly-coatless tramp, two attack eyebrows, some amazingly tolerant Londoners and the only restaurant with a negative Michelin star count.
Is age just a number? Does offing a clockwork robot count as homocide? And is Murray Gold really playing a kazoo?
Find out here. Maybe.
"Clever. Clever. Clever."
Well, if the Cybermen are that bloomin' clever, they'd target the more body-conscious members of The Moonbase crew with their veiny virus too.
Never mind, the silver giants have plenty more plans up their practice golfball-studded sleeves and this spells trouble for the internationally-branded Boyz N The Base.
But they reckon without Gollum Doctor, a lead-swinging Jamie, Polly the Barista, and Ben "Know-it-all" Jackson.
Will the Cybermen be able to cope with the gravity of the situation? Just what will fire extinguishers look like in 2070 AD? And is Dr Evans the most active dead man in history?
Find out (maybe) here!
"You may be a doctor but I'm the Doctor – the definite article you might say."
A statement of intent from the fresh and dewy Tom Baker in his first ever story, Robot.
As well as being introduced to the boggle-eyed Bohemian, we continue the Adventures of Sarah Jane Smith, politely clap Benton's latest promotion and discover what the Brig does with his car keys (and more) at the weekends.
If that wasn't exciting enough, we also meet a crazy-haired professor, an unusually silent politician, a camp Neo-Nazi and Dennis Waterman's Hitlerian ex-wife – not to mention the limp-wristed tin man of the title.
So does the first Bakerian era start with a big bang or a wimpy whimper? Listen in to find out what Jim and Martin make of it all.
"This fellow's bright green apparently. And dead."
What's that you say? Green? And, more importantly, dead? This must be the 1973 Jon Pertwee quorn-clogged classic, The Green Death, then.
Wherein the Doctor escapes from Metebelis III and seeks comfort in some cosplay while Jo finds love, the Brig finds a dinner suit at the bottom of his overnight bag and Mike Yates finds the true inner peace that only BOSS's brainwashing can bring.
The miners display the survival instincts of lemmings, Dai and Fell fulfill their nominal destinies and Stevens reveals the new staff perk for Global Chemicals employees – a fully equipped S&M dungeon.
Throw in some horrific maggots and some horrifically bad special effects and you have something of a great big melting pot – of "delicious" fungus soup.
So is this a case of "there's lovely"? Listen in and find out.
"Lord Niiiimon… it is I, Soldeed…"
Words to strike terror into every self-respecting Doctor Who fan.
Yes, Jim and Martin scrape the very bottom of the cavernous Who barrel this time and confront The Horns of Nimon.
The budget is low but the camp is oh-so-very high. Tom Baker and Graham Crowden compete to bite the biggest chunks out of the unimpressive scenery, accompanied by the wrong Romana and the incorrect K9, while Janet Ellis longs desperately for her Blue Peter job offer to come through the post.
Marvel as trained dancers balance enormous bull masks on their heads and themselves on their ludicrous platform shoes. Gasp as the co-pilot flaps his jowls like a demented bloodhound. Consider suicide as Crowden and Baker have the time of their lives, at the expense of the production and its tormented viewers.
But is it so bad it's good? Or is it so bad that it'll split your trousers?
Listen in for Jim and Martin's verdicts on this pseudo-mythical mess.
"You can't mend people!"
Well tell that to a doctor – Who or otherwise.
And the Kinda can mend doolally folk too, turning them from sociopaths to simpletons by simply opening a box. A bit like Deal or No Deal in reverse.
But is Kinda a box of delights or one of Pandora's old cast-offs?
Well, Nyssa's barely in it so that's a promising start but Adric's face freaks Martin out, the presence of both Nerys Hughes and multiple Tegans sends Jim into a priapic frenzy and a moccasin-faced local keeps spouting spiritual riddles.
The Doctor is an idiot, Tegan has narcolepsy and Adric keeps trying to twok the TSS. Couple that with a jester who badly needs his puppet (and more) stamped on, an effete bloke from That's Life roaring like a frightened vole and the Universe's least enticing bouncy castle and you have something of a mixed bag.
But, when it comes to Kinda fans, are Jim and Martin among the We or the Not-We?
Listen and find out.
"The events will happen, just as they are written. I'm afraid so and we can't stem the tide. But at least we can stop being carried away with the flood!"
And there's a veritable flood of unexpected stars in the Season One closer, The Reign of Terror.
Rowan Atkinson captures the younger three-quarters of the TARDIS team, while Jonny Vegas bangs them up. Bill Murray busts them out only for Ian to nearly come a cropper at the hands of Rentaghost's Mr Meaker, who himself has another bust in mind when it comes to Babs.
And an extra gets his moment in the sun too – quite literally – as William Hartnell's Lime Grove-inspired agoraphobia prevents him from indulging in a spot of location filming.
The first Doctor's old body may already be wearing thin after walking all the way to Paris but he looks as robust as Charles Atlas next to his galactically feeble granddaughter Susan, who does more to imperil the time travellers than either First Deputy Robespierre or the last-past-the-post Traitor Party.
But even in 1794 or 1964, nothing is black and white, so who’s right and who’s wrong? Robespierre or Renan? Barbara or Ian? Jim or Martin?
Listen and decide…
"Chap with the wings there… five rounds rapid!"
And lo… animated gargoyle, Bok, was treated to several speedy ales at Ye Olde Cloven Hoofe tavern, a far preferable fate than a dance with Mike Yates.
Yes, it's the 1971 occult classic, The Daemons – a satanic saga of a renegade reverend, a vile verger, tiresome TV chaps and a reticule-swinging spinster.
Yates and Benton are wearing civvies, Jo's wearing a sacrificial robe and the Doctor's just wearing.
Who is the Brig's bedfellow? Just what does Garvin get up to with ferrets? And has there ever been a valid justification for Morris Dancing?
You'll burn up with excitement. You'll freeze in terror. And you'll believe a sprightly yellow roadster can drive itself.
Open up the podcast and bring death and destruction to your mental faculties…
"It's the end… but the moment has been prepared for."
The final words of the boggle-eyed mentalist octogenarian Tom Baker, just prior to being trampled by a crusty ballet dancer and so triggering his metamorphosis into the world's wettest vet.
Jim and Martin start this episode by skewering The Time of the Doctor but then evaluate another regeneration story, 1981's Logopolis.
The fourth Doctor is old and grumpy and the Master is new and campy, while Adric "wunts" to help, Tegan wants to fly and Nyssa just wants to have fun, despite losing her step mother, father and planet in short order.
Can Noel Edmonds keep the fabric of the Universe together? Can the Doctor's plan to literally flush out the Master be any more ludicrous? And can Anthony Ainley make any more of a meal of pressing a button?
Listen here to find out.
"Proof! Proof! Proof! It always comes back to the same thing."
Well that's what we were all saying when rumours were rife about the recovery of missing episodes, and is also the Doctor's mantra in this now-extant artefact.
Recently exhumed six-parter, The Enemy of the World, is the tale of a Hancock-alumnus with rant-management problems, a shouty youth with claustrophobia and a wet girlfriend, and a jug-eared sociopath who has his hair chewed rather than cut.
The Doctor, meanwhile, is wearing his hair in a new way, Jamie is wearing a gimp suit and Victoria is just wearing.
Did the helicopters, hovercrafts and most pointless piece of machinery in Who history blow our minds or just the budget?
Find out here.
"I don't want to go!"
A popular phrase this Doctor Who 50th Anniversary weekend. And maybe Jim didn't fancy the visit to Martin's house and all the danger that entailed.
But there was Who to be celebrated and our intrepid podcasters braved crowds, a clergyman and an under-cooked Dalek cake to pay their respects to the venerable Time Lord.
And here's what they made of the veritable (Verity-able?) smorgasbord of Who delights...
"This doesn’t roll along on wheels, you know!"
So there you have it, time travel technology explained in a nutshell.
Yes, it's An Unearthly Child - the first ever four episodes of a wee programme called Doctor Who. We give it six months, if it's lucky…
It's a grimy old saga that begins with a foggy junkyard, a crafty old weasel and a police box that's ALIVE!
Then we go back to our roots and join a convivial bunch of skull-cracking cave people, including a greasy-wigged leader, a prehistoric Lady Macbeth, a mighty-nosed sex pest and a poor man's King Yrcanos.
Ian gets a shock, Babs gets hysterical, Susan gets her freak on and the Doctor gets on everyone's nerves.
Fagin takes on Greg Sutton in a bone-splitting, pumpkin-smashing fight to the death, while Babs borrows Susan's infamous trip-every-trip footwear for a moonlit dash to TARDIS.
So is the dawn of Mankind a good place to kick off our favourite Adventure in Space and Time? Listen in and find out…
"Like a nine year old trying to rebuild a motorbike." Not a description of Jim and Martin attempting to produce a remotely professional podcast but the words of a very unusual lady...
Sigh with ennui as Jim and Martin try to understand The Doctor's Wife, despite failing ever to have done so with their own. Yes, it's that surreal saga where the TARDIS trio land on a friendly planet and witness the exciting new dance duo 'Patchwork People', who put on a memorable show despite possessing three left feet between them. And where the House Grill speciality is a meaty, sausage-fingered hand in a questionable bap. But what does Jim keep in his sculleries? And, after 50 years of the show, has Martin really developed an allergy to watching people run through corridors? Find out in the podcast which is definitely smaller than it appears from the outside.
"The great god Vulcan must be enraged. It's so volcanic. It's like some sort of volcano."
Marvel as the next Doctor forges new vocabulary before your very eyes…
Yes, it's Peter Capaldi, in a previous life, as a patriarch who escapes a pumice pummelling. But it's David Tennant as the legendary Time Lord who saves his future self from The Fires of Pompeii, with the aid of his trusty Water Pistol of Death.
It's a tale of armless augurs, stony seers and Sybelline Sisters as born-again Welsh folk Mr and Ms Spartacus end up with prime seats for the Monsters of Rock.
Are fixed points in time pointless? Has Amy Pond branched out into Sister-of-Karn-o-grams? And is the only way up for danders?
Listen in as Jim and Martin, neither household names nor household gods, let their thoughts erupt.
"Lots of planets have a north!"
Yes, the grinning, jug-eared bloke from Northern Gallifrey makes his debut in 2005’s seminal legend-resuscitator, Rose.
Everyone’s favourite chav, the eponymous Rose Tyler, has a bronze medal in under-7s gymnastics, a boyfriend who goes from annoying to plastic to basket case in 45 minutes and a Mum who all but twerks at passing strangers.
No wonder she fancies a spot of travel. But first she must deal with plastic non-students, a disembodied arm, an internet weirdo and an angry vat of custard. These things happen when a benevolent alien blows up your job.
So what do Jim and Martin make of their tentative foray into nascent NuWho? Find out here (just don’t mention the belching wheelie bin).
The Krynoid PodCast has been going since 2009 but only our later episodes are hosted here.
Episodes 001 to 030 are available to listen to or download here.
"This cannot be how it ends!"
Well it damn nearly was.
Yes, it's time to reconsider the 1996 Paul McGann TV Movie, with its gun fights, fist fights, car chases, snogging and schmaltz (no way was this an American production!).
The Doctor is now only half-Gallifreyan with a naff syrup and an Addams Family interior design sense, while the Master is now part-snake, part-personal lubricant dispenser, with a penchant for "drezzing" up.
Thank Bod for Amazing Grace with her static tear and innate knowledge of Time Lord temporal mechanics and for Chang Lee's hip high-fiving - keeping us well and truly anchored to the Eighties in this Millennial tale.
So did Jim and Martin enjoy their Whocation in North America? Or did they yearn for Blighty with its breadline budgets, cramped sets and silly CSO? And what do they think of Peter Capaldi's casting as the 12th Doctor?
Listen here to find out, y'all!
“I haven't got no mum and dad. I've never had no mum and dad and I don't want no mum and dad. It's just me, all right?” So who’s this perishin’ apple-cheeked cockernee urchin then? Why, it’s Ace! And she joins the show in 1987’s Dragonfire, which mercifully closes Season 24. It’s a frosty fable involving a wobbly-headed ANT, some woeful ice statuary and a frigid frozen food salesman. A screamer leaves, a street yoof joins, a permed old rascal returns, and the Doctor reveals that he is in fact not half-human, but half-lemming. Who is the little girl (and why)? Does it really take 3,000 years to set up a moderately successful branch of Iceland? And would you buy a fish finger from a homicidal maniac? Jim and Martin ponder these questions and more (e.g. “Isn’t there something better on another channel?”) so join them as they break the ice and chase the dragon…
"Chop Suey, the Galactic Emperor"
The elusive Robin Bland serves up this dubious dish, with a hefty helping of hairy kebab meat, in 1976's The Brain of Morbius.
But it's still a more appetising proposition than the Liquorice Bootlace Surprise at Chez Mehendri, a Bohemian bistro with a red, white and green wine list.
The latest renegade Time Lord may be half man/half Macra with a goldfish bowl bonce but he's not the only patchwork person around. He's joined by a bearded old crone who's a cross between Chuck Heston and one of his Apes, and a home help who's equal parts Richard III, Liam Gallagher and Abu Hamza.
Sarah goes blind and the Doctor gets blind drunk but sobers up in time to blind the Sisterhood with chimney sweep science. Then Morbius broadsides us with a colossal non-canon ball - the bombshell that Tom Baker is, in fact, the mystery 12th Doctor.
It's lively, it's loony and it's lurid so listen in as Jim and Martin bend their minds in an attempt to make sense of it all.
"It's rather a pity, in a way. Now the universe is down to six hundred and ninety nine wonders."
The Doctor reacts badly to the news of Girls Aloud splitting up. Luckily, the Krynoid Podcast is here to take his mind off it.
After giving Cold War, Hide and Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS the once-over, Jim and Martin travel back in time to 1974 for Death to the Daleks - a tale of disarmed Daleks, operatic Exxilons and homicidal hoovers from the City of Dave.
They play 'Spot the Terry Nation Trope' while also wondering just how terrifying a patch of two-toned flooring can be.
With an empty Dalek 'standing' about and a blushing high priest channeling Spike Milligan, they ask 'Who is the real goon?'
And they plead with Carey Blyton to stop using sax as a weapon.
So why not dive in? Come on, the water's effervescent...
"Nobody wants you. Nobody needs you. Nobody cares!"
Well that's the review of Timelash done then.
Nevertheless, Jim and Martin gently tap themselves into the unrealistic Kontron tunnel of the title to see if they can't discover a gem or two.
Baker's baubles get harnessed and Peri unleashes her inner damsel in distress, while Avon dons a Dick 3 wig and channels Henry Irving.
The toga-togged Karfelans are menaced from above by Muppet cobras and from below by overgrown slowworms, little knowing that their dastardly dictator is actually half the man he used to be.
Can the Doctor free them from this terrifying regime, where beekeepers and body-popping androids are a pain in the neck and where 'Tinsel Inside' is considered the highest mark of quality for time technology?
Is Timelash as bad as the fan Hive Mind decrees?
Yes… indeed… it… is…
"Something is coming to our village... something very wonderful and strange."
So is the Davison two-parter The Awakening "wonderful and strange"?
Well the sets are certainly wonderful and there are some rather strange goings on in Little Hodcombe.
There's a bad-wigged nutter with a tinclavic stress ball, a one-eyed beggar with a penchant for ladies' handbags and Ben Wolsey's infamous Reproduction Room, for starters.
Where does old Big Face keep his body? Would an incredulous guppy make a good companion? And just who is the old fella with the wizened chesticles?
Listen as Jim and Martin awaken their feeble brain cells and try to answer these questions, while distinguishing set from location, real person from projection and, rather more easily, stroppy air hostess from straw May Queen.
“The age of man is over, Doctor. The age of the virus has begun.”
Oh dear. Time to run this file through McAfee then?
No. Fret Not. These words are spoken by a giant prawn to a Time Lord, just after exiting his body through his tear duct. Yes, this can only be Tom Baker’s bonkers brain-centric epic, The Invisible Enemy.
Wherein the Doctor and Leela, in reduced circumstances, wander about inside the Gallifreyan’s brain, hotly pursued by a hairy-eyed Hitler. Signs are spelt orl rong, a certain metal dog makes his debut as a violent virologist and a behemoth of a bottom-feeder gets pushed around on a skateboard, presumably in search of a suitably large barbeque upon which to end his days.
Now where did I put that Thousand Island dressing…?
"I have my own methods... I keep my my eyes open and my mouth shut."
Sadly Jim and Martin don't, and consequently bang on at some length here about 1967's chilling Troughton tale, The Tomb of the Cybermen.
It's a four-episode epic involving awful accents, anxious archaeologists and cute and convenient handbag-size hit-mice.
Gasp as Victoria falls asleep, Jamie falls into a trance and the Doctor nearly falls from grace as he plays impromptu puppet master - handy really as there's a Toberman on strings and an under-stuffed, self-decapitating metal manikin to contend with.
Our doughty podcasters also find time to reveal the bowel-churning origin of the Cybermats, for whom a damn good flushing is too good.
But don't worry - just sit back, tune in and let Jim and Martin eliminate fear from your brain...
"He's not the Great One. He's the Insignificant One. If you're going to have someone imitate Kroll, it ought to be more convincing."
Yes, it's everyone's worst Christmas nightmare – an enormous Brussels Sprout with its accompanying surfeit of methane. Only this time it's a giant squid god who menaces a model, gives a Time Lord a tentacular tourniquet and reminds some Swampies that it really isn't easy being green.
Romana goes off seafood, the Doctor loves the sound of breaking glass and Thawn hates just about anyone who isn't Thawn.
Green crevices, bushy gates and the imminent threat of dangly-bit exposure must have kept Mary Whitehouse on full alert but did The Power of Kroll float Jim and Martin's canoes?
Find out here.
“I had to do what I did. It was my moral duty. You do understand, don't you?”
Naughty General Carrington tries to justify his nefarious programme of kidnap, murder and the pursuit of pregnant women in the 1970 astronaut caper, The Ambassadors of Death.
Jim and Martin discuss displaced Frenchie faces, play spot the unborn head and debate the nutritional value of an isotope breakfast.
Who is the coolest guest character? Can UNIT sentries really come back from the dead? And which dried-fruit-in-a-prophylactic does Jon Pertwee resemble most?
The answers to all these questions can only be found here (well, the last one at least... maybe).
Jim's brother, Rob, trails the forthcoming Ambassadors of Death episode of the Krynoid Podcast. Creating the trailer before Jim and Martin even had their discussion, he makes some rather uncanny predictions...
"Take them to the Security Kitchen!"
Perhaps the Universe's only combined containment and mass catering facility can be found on The Ark, the location of the 1966 Hartnell space opera of the same name.
Jim and Martin walk its corridors to find humans in their underwear and the Fab Four (along with the Groovy One, the Trendy Two and the Gear Three), all suffering horrendously bad hair days.
The Doctor gets an invisible friend, Steven fails to notice a potential girlfriend and Dodo is unlikely to make any new friends, bearing as she does a vile infection and a variable accent.
Is the future of Mankind in safe hands or should the weirdly affable Boris Karloff and the Richard III wannabe keep one eye on the Monoids? Find out here...
"Do you think bullets could stop me now? You stinking offal Morgus! Look at me!!"
So says a man in a gimp suit deep in the blowholes of Androzani Minor. Yes, Jim and Martin take a look at Peter Davison's last hurrah and finest hour as he goes through hell to save Peri in the 1984 classic The Caves of Androzani.
There's soldiers, gunrunners, androids, a rubbish monster, a revenge-seeking hairy-handed, Peri-infatuated madman and an evil and ruthless bag of slime. Can the Doctor weave his way through them all and save Peri? Only just...
Is it as good as its reputation suggests? Listen in and find out.
"Harry Sullivan is an imbecile!"
Harsh words perhaps but the salty surgeon did nearly kill the Doctor… twice.
Yes, it's the 1975 space opera, Revenge of the Cybermen, in which our intrepid TARDIS team battle a slimy U-Boat commander, an emotional silver giant and a horde of mad blinged-up old women.
The Doctor's narcoleptic, Harry's apoplectic and Sarah may well go septic so take the slow train with Jim and Martin and see whether all that glitters is gold.
"Oh shame!"
Just Brigadier Winifred Bambera's catchphrase or also a two-word review of the 1989 Sylvester McCoy story, Battlefield?
You decide as Jim and Martin sit huddled in No Man's Land while iffy dialogue, dodgy acting and poor special effects zing past their tortured eyes and ears, only finding solace in their most puerile running gag yet.
They ponder weighty issues such as the merits of film over video, the mysteries of chemistry, McCoy's anger mismanagement and the messier side of the Brig's descent into senility.
They say all is fair in love and war but is the KP review fair? Listen and decide...
"I always find that violent exercise makes me hungry. Don't you agree?"
Yes, Gallifrey's very own silver-haired and rather wrinkly James Bond is at it again in 1972's salty six-part saga, The Sea Devils.
Jim and Martin marvel as the Doctor frolics above, on and below the sea, Jo fights, frets and flies a hovercraft and the Master shows off most of his wardrobe (string vests strangely absent).
Mr Creosote rolls in from Whitehall and eats everything in his path, Trenchard bores the hind legs off a donkey and Cap'n Hart offs an alarming amount of amphibians.
All that with copious sandwiches thrown in. Who could ask for more from Who?
"Fail me and you will breakfast on burning coals!"
Count Federico introduces Renaissance Italy's hot new diet sensation in the 1976 pseudo-historical epic, The Masque of Mandragora.
The fourth Doctor and Sarah wander round The Village watching look-unlikes fighting and mounting horses, while avoiding executioner's swords, sacrificial knives and cockernee pikemen's pikes.
Gert and Daisy get chained up, the Doctor and Sarah get dressed up and Pat Gorman and Stuart Fell get messed up by the Mandragoran Helix while the light shines out of Hieronymous's eye-holes.
And Dr Phill drops by to give us his expert opinion on the music - made and found - for this one.
Get Jim and Martin's verdict on this 15th Century sword and sorcery spectacular now!
Next up: The Sea Devils