Fish Fingers and Custard - A Doctor Who Fanzine - FFAC2

To celebrate 50 years of Doctor Who stories, we decided to do something that is perhaps a tad ambitious for our lazy selves – watching and reviewing two Doctor Who stories a day (one per Doctor) up until the 23 rd November.  Somehow, we hope these quick observations and thoughts will make a little bit of sense and get you (and us!) in the mood in time for the big day! We’ve used our hi-tec ‘randomiser’ (a lid of a Quality Street tub and pieces of paper, with numbers corresponding to episodes, written on them) and drew one out for each Doctor. So we have our 11 random stories to watch in 5 days (yes, we know that on one day, we’ll need to watch 3!) question is, what are they? Well here are our first two: The Aztecs Piece of paper No6 meant that I drew out ‘ The Aztecs ’. A story which saw The Doctor hitting on women, long before the modern day series, Barbara becoming a god, Ian having (what seemed like) drunken fights and Susan just shouting at people. It’s gre...

Here at Fish Fingers and Custard, we're always dreaming up ways to flog as many paper copies as we can. Despite unsold copies clogging up wardrobes and causing ankle injuries, we're more than happy to keep producing them.  For many, there's nothing like holding something in your hand and it not having the potential to explode in your face.  So with this in mind, we're offering UK residents the chance to pre-order Issue 12 (out in October) for just ONE POUND (and that includes P+P!).  So if you're a regular reader, or someone who just reads the download or online, please consider taking up this great offer.  We're no great salesmen, we're not some big company who wants your money (we actually lose money on every issue!) but we do it for the love of it. For the love of Doctor Who! So please support us and get a great bargain at the same time! If you would like to order a copy (which has the potential to be our biggest yet, due to the many reviews of the new...

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...

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...

It was with mixed emotions when I heard that The Scarifyers would return, following the death of Nicholas Courtney. Delighted that the series would continue of course, but equally sad that Nick wouldn’t be a part of it. How on earth could they make the story work? I wondered. Well I needn’t have worried, as The Magic Circle has, quite easily, become my favourite Scarifyers adventure! David Warner (who is no stranger to working on audio with various Doctor Who spin-offs) stars as new character, Ex-Police Sergeant Harry Crow, who is enlisted by Dunning (Terry Molloy) to help him search out Lionheart (Courtney), who seems to have gone missing whilst looking at an old police case. But as the pair are trying to get to the bottom of it all, someone (or something!) is attacking certain magicians… The story, as always, mixes comedy and drama superbly, but with this being more of a poignant story, I thought it was taken to another level. The performances are all top notch, but Terry Molloy is...

Paradise Towers has just been recently released on DVD and with our review of the story appearing in a previous issue of Fish Fingers and Custard , we've decided to unearth it and present it in it's original form. It’s too easy to dismiss the majority of the late-80’s stories as ‘the point where Doctor Who went wrong’. I’ve read and listened to some very unfair comments about the latter stories that don’t take into account the restrictions of which the production team had to work with. I honestly believe that Paradise Towers was one of these stories that would have been a great, if it wasn’t for the budget (or lack of) afforded to Doctor Who by a BBC, who where then determined to let the show die a slow and painful death. But that doesn’t mean mistakes weren’t made by the production team… Ever since I first watched Paradise Towers, I was intrigued by the storyline: A luxurious tower block that had plunged into anarchy, amongst the folk that lived there. Many people aren’t a...

We're busy putting plans in place for the next few Issues of Fish Fingers and Custard , so if you would like to contribute , the deadline for Issue 6 is the  8th July , although if you can get your contribution to me at the earliest possible time, then it stands more of a chance of appearing in the Issue! For Issue 6 we're looking for the usual things - opinion pieces, reviews, reports, art, spoofs etc BUT with Series 6 now at Half-Time, we want reviews of the series as an whole.  Please make your reviews no more than 700 words and no less than 1! You can send them to fishcustardfanzine@googlemail.com Cheers!

Hello!  I hope you all have had a good Christmas?  Issue 4 of Fish Fingers and Custard is now well into production and I hope to have it out sometime next month!  If you fancy sending anything in (and I mean ANYTHING!) don't be shy, just send it to fishcustardfanzine@googlemail.com If you're unsure about what to write, you can always send in your reviews of 'A Christmas Carol' (the Doctor Who episode, not the Muppets or the Dickens version!)  Please keep your reviews to (what we call) a sensible length (about 500ish words) and send them in to the address above.  I will publish every review sent in, but depending on how many I receive - some may be published on this website.  (But it's unlikely that I'll get a deluge of reviews, so they should all appear in the issue!) The deadline is 4th February . Finally, can I just direct you to our new YouTube account .  We'll be updating it on a regular basis with some silly Doctor Who stuff, in...