Fish Fingers and Custard - A Doctor Who Fanzine - FFAC2

What We First Thought: I love this just for the dig at Britain’s Got Talent. Fantastic! You know what? I’d never thought I’ll be using the words ‘ I quite fancy another helping of James Corden’ whilst doing these reviews.  I’m fiercely opposed to watching him in anything else, but the domestic life which has been fit around his character, Craig Owens, is like a nice pair of slippers – comfy to slip into from time-to-time.  I like how Gareth Roberts mirrors The Lodger , what with Craig repeating himself out loud when he opens the door to The Doctor and Sophie forgetting her keys, again! Even The Doctor gets in on the act, resurrecting the ‘baby talk’ gag that was first seen in A Good Man Goes To War .  And I do think it’s a gag on The Doctor’s part, some online fans do seem to get their knickers in a twist over the slightest thing these days!  They’re the exact type of people that would be ssshed by The Doctor’s sssshing!  Sometimes it’s nice to have ...

What We First Thought: Is it next week yet? For some bizarre reason, Series 6 didn’t go down that well with most fans. What they produced, in my opinion, was a decent solid run of episodes that didn’t really contain the same highs and lows as any other new series to date.  I said in the fanzine at the time, that I didn’t think that the break worked as hoped – on paper, it seemed to be a good idea - the dramatic affect after A Good Man Goes To War was achieved as planned, but at times you can only build up something so much that the viewing public will create unrealistic expectations for themselves, so Let’s Kill Hitler and the rest of the series would never come up to scratch. This series is typified by The God Complex – a solid episode, with a spooky story that makes you think about, well, everything that you believe in.  It’s far better written than most of the stuff that the RTD era produced, but yet it doesn’t quite jump out at you, like the Minotaur the stor...

What We First Thought: A MILF Amy. Really? One aspect I wanted to explore whilst watching all these episodes again was ‘ would I like them after enough time has passed' .   I generally watch an episode twice – once live and again later in the week.   If I REALLY enjoy the episode, I might watch it again. But then I leave it, perhaps for a couple of years or so.   I just don’t see the benefit of watching an episode 5 times in a short space of time, because in life you may be in a certain mood at the time or in a certain situation which may affect your enjoyment of a particular episode.   I didn’t really think The Girl Who Waited was brilliant, but now I think it’s easily one of the better episodes of the series. The Amy/Rory relationship actually makes sense in this episode.   It’s such a simple (or perhaps, not so simple) idea to have the dilemma of 'which Amy' to choose, but it works brilliantly as it opens up that window for us, to let us have a che...

What We First Thought: A David Tennant Fangirl is 100,000 times scarier. Especially if they’ve been on the tart fuel. NIGHT TERRORS IS THE SCARIEST EPISODE EVER! screamed the Doctor Who hype machine, which at times can give North Korea a run for its money. I don’t know why people just can’t sit down and watch an episode without any tags attached it.   It’s not the first time this has happened and it certainly won’t be the last.   The overwhelming feeling I’ve gauged from this episode is that ‘it’s Fear Her, done properly’.   True, the budget for this probably wasn’t as vast for other episodes in the series, but it certainly had a lot more pumped into it than Fear Her AND Mark Gatiss didn’t have 20 minutes to write it!   Night Terrors is just another decent watch and an episode that’s great to watch with your kids. Saying that, I firmly believe that there’s a message in this for parents and children alike – the kid being an alien was a nice twist (a nice nod...

What We First Thought: I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m loving it! I don’t really know how to review these episodes.   For a start, is really a two parter? It says it is, but it doesn’t feel like it is. It’s clear some time has passed since the events in the last episode, so it doesn’t really feel like a continuation. But it IS a continuation. Oh my head, I’ve confused myself now! I love A Good Man Goes To War .   I’ve been moaning for years for Doctor Who to have a proper adventure story, instead of the arc-heavy, character development, emotional mush we usually get.   Amazingly though, this episode achieved ALL of that AND a presented a great adventure tale, so it made me happy!   I liked seeing The Doctor recruit some of his ‘friends’ to rescue Amy.   The scenes which saw him pick them up were the highlights of the episode for me, with Strax the Sontaran being the standout in those.   It’s really funny to see how much effort they made to ...

What We First Thought: What a good last 2 minutes! If I feel that The Doctor’s Wife is a tad overrated, then The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People is slightly underrated. But it could have been so much more enjoyable if a few creases were ironed out.  Or obliterated, in some cases. I like Matthew Graham. Together with his writing team, they produced 5 great years of telly in the shape of Life on Mars and Ashes To Ashes .  True, the odd Bonekickers episode (okay, ALL of them) may have spoiled the party, but then there’s also Fear Her on his CV.  I’ll be honest and say that I don’t dislike that episode as much as some people seem to do.  It was by far the ‘cheap episode’ of the series and a late replacement for something else.  Graham probably didn’t have much room to lay down his own ideas and apart from a couple of good humour bits (yes, a couple – The Doctor’s answer to ‘ What’s your game? ’ and the ‘marmalade jar incident’) it was forgettable. So wh...

We're back, with a very limited release (the printers have packed up) however this isn't the last Issue, but just in case, be sure to snap up your copy! (how's that for advertising?) Either way, you won't be able to avoid disappointment In this Issue we have the following Tributes to Caroline John and Mary Tamm The Boy Who Kicked Pigs: LIVE! - a review of Tom Baker's book, performed on stage Meet The Fanziners - we chat to a couple of fanzine editors about the state of fanzines and fandom in general The Krotons - Is it as bad as it looks? Is the TV Movie better than the RTD era? Plus, much, much more If you would like to purchase a copy, please send the payment that applies to you via PayPal (as a 'gift') to fishcustardfanzine@googlemail.com UK: £2 Europe: £3 Rest of the World: £4 Cheers

What We First Thought: The internet is going to explode!!!!  When I first saw the reaction to The Doctor’s Wife , I honestly didn’t see what all the fuss was about.  Written by fantasy author Neil Gaiman, the story sees the TARDIS literally jumping into a human and talking to The Doctor!  On paper it sounds very bizarre, but somehow the episode makes it look as normal as, say Rory being killed, and the fact that it’s easy to understand, is the real strength of this episode.  Is it the best episode EVER though? No, not really. It isn’t even the best episode of series 6… I don’t know what it is with fans and hype.  I can guarantee you that if another writer had written this, it wouldn’t attract such praise from those who are so upstanding about it. I feel sorry for Gaiman in a way – his work will always be so overrated, just because his name attracts people who judge things on name only.  The Doctor’s Wife is actually a decent episode as it goes, bu...

I was amazed that someone wanted to do it on stage. When I wrote the piece it was obvious to me I could not write about a good boy. Who wants to read about a good boy? So I piled on the awfulness and everybody laughed – Tom Baker A s soon as I heard about this adaptation coming to the stage, I snapped up tickets as soon as I could.   Written by Tom Baker (knowing Tom, presumably after many drinks. Then again, knowing Tom, he probably doesn’t need to drink to think this story up!) it tells the tale of a boy, Robert, who ‘likes to kick pigs’ and generally wreak havoc for people. I’m sure we’ve met children like him!   The story is very cartoonish but does show what impact misbehaving can achieve.   The theatre company Kill The Beast seem to revel in bringing this cartoonish violence to life and you can see that, just by watching this performance.   It’s something that’ll be difficult to put together if its cast and crew ‘didn’t get it’ but this one does. Taki...

What We First Thought: That was okay… You know what? I was going to buck the trend once again here by saying that I enjoyed The Curse of The Black Spot , but after watching this again, I can see more holes in it than Mitt Romney’s brain.   I want to like this, I really do, but the many errors are just screaming out and I can’t help but listen.   After a promising start, we have Amy coming over all Pirate. What’s that all about then? I can understand that some leeway was needed in order to inject a bit of fun, but come on!   She handled that sword like she had been taking lessons on a regular basis (which Karen had been doing actually – WHY?) At least insert a bit of nervousness on Amy’s part, with her trying to handle the sword. To be fair though - that scene was almost done to perfection, with the Pirates staying out of her way because a cut would be it for them. That child! Honestly, I reckon he is the most annoying character in Doctor Who history, based...