BBC Four, 1 November 2023

David Tennant time-travels back through the BBC archives to tell the story of the Doctor’s classic era.

A fun, but fairly disposable look at news coverage about the first eight Doctors, presented by Doctor 10/14 in a minimalistic set. Most of the time, Tennant is delivering directly to camera, but it’s far more interesting when he’s being interviewed as a fan, particularly the behind the scenes footage of Tom Baker’s regeneration.

Most of the footage is about introducing the next Doctor or catching them on location, and on the evidence of what we see here, most regional reporters ask the same old inane questions, whether on Points West, South Today or Look East.

There’s an Alan Whicker interview with Terry Nation and a noisy Dalek, multiple clips from Blue Peter and Nationwide, and moments from Saturday Superstore and Breakfast Time. In truth, if you’ve been collecting the  Doctor Who range on DVD or Blu-ray you’ll probably have already seen 90% of this material.

Verdict: A solid overview of media coverage of the Doctor, just nothing special. 6/10

Nick Joy