Is there a better episode to introduce new viewers to Doctor Who than Blink ? Sure, it’s a little unrepresentative of the show considering the Doctor is barely in it, but the essential elements are there: a fantastical world, a normal person pulled slowly into it, and a monster for the ages. Blink had both hardcore Whovians and casual fans buzzing when it debuted in 2007, but has it been long enough that cracks are starting to show in the stone facade? We dare to climb the pedestal where Blink s...
Dec 10, 2022•1 hr 55 min•Season 3Ep. 39
What is so fascinating about the micro world that almost every sci-fi franchise has been inspired to include an episode where the characters shrink to the size of insects? The Doctor’s first foray into diminished circumstances came pretty early: William Hartnell’s second-season opener, Planet of Giants , sees the original TARDIS crew taking on giant bugs, deadly water faucets, and a ruthless killer indifferent to a looming environmental catastrophe. Seen through a magnifying glass, Doctor Who fe...
Dec 03, 2022•1 hr 14 min•Season 3Ep. 38
Jodie Whittaker’s regeneration wasn’t just unusual for — spoiler alert — marking the first “repeat” Doctor when she morphed into David Tennant at the end of “The Power of the Doctor.” It was also one of the only regenerations to also regenerate the Doctor’s clothes. The in-show reason for this will likely be revealed in next year’s 60th anniversary special, but incoming showrunner Russell T. Davies discussed in the latest issue of Doctor Who Magazine why he was “absolutely certain” the clothes w...
Nov 26, 2022•45 min•Season 3Ep. 37
Why did it take Doctor Who so long to do the “star whale” concept? If the show was waiting for a particularly strong script, it probably should have sailed right on by The Beast Below , which doesn’t exactly bestow the idea with a lot of dignity: it could be the only time Doctor Who has introduced a creature by showing it barfing. Even though the show is mostly using this cosmic cetacean as a metaphor for an ancient semi-god who just wants to be nice to children and help out when they’re crying,...
Nov 19, 2022•1 hr 36 min•Season 3Ep. 36
Regeneration. It's been a pivotal part of Doctor Who for almost 60 years, but let's face it: Some regenerations have been better than others. When a new Doctor takes over, it's always dramatic, but there are several more boxes to tick to make the episode a classic. The story should be epic in impact if not in stakes, the incumbent Doctor should have apt and memorable final lines, and the regeneration itself should tickle both the eyes and the mind. So where does The Power of the Doctor — the ser...
Nov 12, 2022•43 min•Season 3Ep. 35
The simple, straightforward title of Dalek belies so much: This story doesn’t just re-introduce the Daleks for a new generation of Doctor Who viewers — it makes them interesting, upgraded, and scary in ways they always deserved to be but never quite achieved in the classic series. Stellar performances from the cast — including an arguably best-of-his-run showstopper from Christopher Eccleston as the Doctor overcome by his hatred for these machine-creatures — certainly hep to make Dalek both an u...
Nov 05, 2022•2 hr 13 min•Season 3Ep. 34
When companions go, sometimes it’s sad (brave heart, Tegan), sometimes it’s bittersweet (London, 1965!), and sometimes it’s a nonevent (Dodo who?). But the heartbreaking departure of Rose in Doomsday is on another level altogether, and it simply requires repercussions. Those shockwaves are front and center in The Runaway Bride , yet somehow the story ends up being one of the most fun in the entire series. That’s thanks in no small part to the brilliant comedic banter between David Tennant and Ca...
Oct 29, 2022•1 hr 52 min•Season 3Ep. 33
When you hear “a Doctor Who story set in the Jurassic period,” the picture you conjure in your head probably looks quite a bit different from Time-Flight . That’s not necessarily a strike against it: The finale of Season 19 is notorious for being light on budget, so it’s probably a blessing that they didn’t even try to show a single allosaurus stomping around the barren plains of prehistoric London. Instead we get the Xeraphin, a telepathic race of morally conflicted humanoids that are almost in...
Oct 22, 2022•2 hr 12 min•Season 3Ep. 32
Is there any Doctor Who format as reliable as the base under siege? You can see why: All you need is one set, an excuse to keep the TARDIS out of reach, and one illogically obstinate person in charge, and you’re about 90% there. The key ingredient, of course, is a convincing and creepy monster, and though mutant seaweed might not be your first choice to fill that role, it’s what Fury From the Deep has to work with. Nonetheless, even in animation, “the weed” produces more scares than any hostile ...
Oct 08, 2022•1 hr 53 min•Season 3Ep. 31
Jodie Whittaker’s first season as the Doctor took the show in a new direction, but The Witchfinders is almost a return to a very old format: the pure historical. True, this outing to the witch-obsessed England of the 17th century doesn’t quite qualify — what with alien mud creatures reanimating left and right in the final act — but the most interesting thing about this story is certainly the dramatization of the horrific witch trials of the era. An excellent guest cast helps, made all the more e...
Oct 01, 2022•1 hr 44 min•Season 3Ep. 30
Often Doctor Who travels to the past to showcase historical events, but it rarely shows what life in those eras was like for the less privileged. Rosa is a jarring exception to the rule, with its lens pointed directly at the racist past of the American South. While there is an antagonist from the future present, the real evil force here is state-sanctioned segregation. And the hero who must confront it isn’t the title character we tune in to see from week to week, but Rosa Parks, the black woman...
Sep 24, 2022•1 hr 58 min•Season 3Ep. 29
If you lack emotions, can you seek revenge? It’s the burden of Doctor Who fans to ponder questions like this, since Revenge of the Cybermen attributes emotion to the show’s notoriously unfeeling monsters right there in the title. More likely, we suspect some future historian did their best to characterize the Cybermen’s incursion on Nerva Beacon in the 29th century with some fanciful language to give the whole episode some gravitas. Heaven knows the story could use it — unless you’re talking abo...
Sep 17, 2022•2 hr 7 min•Season 3Ep. 28
When more than one Doctor is present, you know something’s gone disastrously wrong. While that usually applies to something within the show, in the case of The Two Doctors , you might be talking about the show itself. In some ways, it’s not the story’s fault — the production was famously plagued with problems behind the scenes — but a misfired location shoot can’t explain away the script’s icky obsession with carnivorism or those utterly extraneous Sontarans. At least we can all agree that we’d ...
Sep 03, 2022•1 hr 38 min•Season 3Ep. 27
Summer is peak season for action romps, we’re told, so that must be why the Randomzier plopped us in the middle of Battlefield , the opening story of Classic Doctor Who’s final year, and one that seems to continuously feature guns shooting, swords clashing, and all manner of things blowing up. I mean, you’d expect nothing less from the last official appearance of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, but is it all just smokescreen to keep us from realizing the story — ostensibly about transdimensional A...
Aug 27, 2022•1 hr 44 min•Season 3Ep. 26
Rebooting Doctor Who is a feature of the show, not a bug, but it was still uncertain territory when Jon Pertwee took over in 1970. Sure, Patrick Troughton had taken over from William Hartnell a few years before, but it was very much the same show, following the adventures of a mysterious traveler and his human companions throughout all of time and space. Spearhead From Space boldly tosses out that formula, centers the show on contemporary Earth, and recasts the Doctor as a flamboyant action hero...
Aug 20, 2022•1 hr 39 min•Season 3Ep. 25
Doctor Who can be dramatic, captivating, and even epic, but some of the most memorable episodes are just plain fun ! Carnival of Monsters definitely qualifies as one of the fun ones, made all the more interesting with an intriguing first-episode mystery and some subversive messaging in Robert Holmes’s almost-too-clever script. Come for the fearsome drashigs, stay for the brilliant political satire on Inter Minor. And, as ever, don’t blink, lest you miss the surprising backstory about the Doctor’...
Jul 23, 2022•1 hr 44 min•Season 3Ep. 24
If a regeneration story means the end of an era in Doctor Who, Logopolis is an extinction-level event. It bears the extra weight of being the final story in the epic run of Tom Baker, who, to many, was the definitive actor to play the Doctor. Christopher H. Bidmead’s script doesn’t shy away from this impossible task, with the premise, the villain, and the stakes all appropriately elevated. You’d be forgiven for thinking this might not have been the best time to stuff the TARDIS full of new compa...
Jul 16, 2022•1 hr 46 min•Season 3Ep. 23
Time Lords come and Time Lords go, but what about Time Ladies? The Rani is a peculiar case among Gallifrey’s ruling class: an amoral cosmic elitist who just wants to be left alone and occasionally perform horrible experiments on various folks — and isn’t the slightest bit interested in the Doctor. That’s a refreshing change, made even more memorable by holding it right up against the status-quo opposite: the Master himself. Before Missy, before Time Lord gender-flops, and before the Master stopp...
Jul 09, 2022•1 hr 42 min•Season 3Ep. 22
Longtime Pull To Open listeners have heard his name again and again, but exactly who is this mysterious “Jack?” It’s time for a surprise reveal: Pete’s son Jack takes a little time off from being a kid to visit the podcast and share his thoughts on Doctor Who, including what he thinks of the classic series after growing up on NuWho, how the show is sometimes too scary, and of course who his favorite Doctor is. We might be biased, but the future of fandom is in good hands. Please leave a review o...
Jul 02, 2022•21 min•Season 3Ep. 21
Some say Doctor Who’s The Romans is just a romp, a bit of silliness, and not that consequential. Don’t you believe it. It’s arguably the story where the Doctor has the most sweeping and destructive effect on history as we know it. We might all be living in the “bad” timeline right now — one where Rome burned and Nero’s expensive reconstruction hastened the weakening of the empire. Consider the outcome if a certain Time Lord’s spectacles didn’t incinerate the emperor’s plans: a stronger Rome, one...
Jun 04, 2022•1 hr 22 min•Season 3Ep. 20
Invading the Earth used to be so simple: Either land or crash your spaceship in Britain, wait for the local Time Lord to show up, then coerce them into helping you by threatening the people they care about. But it gets a little complicated when two Time Lords show up, which was oddly the norm back in the UNIT days, what with the Master constantly trying to both one-up the Doctor and do some invading/conquering/destroying of his own. It’s enough to confuse even the most determined alien menace, b...
May 28, 2022•1 hr 37 min•Season 3Ep. 19
It’s official: Ncuti Gatwa is the Doctor. Sometime soon, Jodie Whittaker will bid farewell to the role and a handsome actor of Netflix’s Sex Education fame will take over — or so we think. All we know now is Gatwa will play the Doctor in Russell T. Davies’ renewed run as showrunner, but is he the 14th incarnation (which is incorrect numbering anyway) or something else? What is the deal with David Tennant returning — in a different coat — with Catherine Tate in tow, even though Donna had her memo...
May 21, 2022•30 min•Season 3Ep. 18
When Doctor Who takes us to the far future, it’s often with a dystopian view. That’s certainly the case with Frontios , which isn’t content to simply plunge a scrappy group of refugees from a doomed Earth into a harrowing fight for survival. It also adds to the mix the twin horrors of giant insects bent on recreating the ugliest parts of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and some of the worst spiked hair the universe has ever seen. (One of those things was powerful enough to destroy the TARDIS, but th...
May 14, 2022•1 hr 43 min•Season 3Ep. 17
Quick, what’s the best way to mount an insurrection in your remote Earth colony? Right, exactly — befriend the mechanical creatures you’ve just revived from hibernation within a long-dormant capsule that crashed centuries ago and enlist them to be your muscle. Really, if you’re a marooned Dalek attack force, it’s good work if you can get it, especially if the annoying humans who think they’re in charge are hopelessly factionalized like they usually are. Feels like there’s some kind of lesson to ...
May 07, 2022•1 hr 34 min•Season 3Ep. 16
Ever been to Scotland? Doctor Who sure has, and if you’re ever looking for the ultimate proof of that look no further than The Eaters of Light , an episode that seems designed entirely to showcase bad weather, Pict history, and very cross people. Of course, it doesn’t get much more cross than the 12th Doctor, but just how effective will a pair of epic eyebrows be against a squad of Roman centurions, a pack of star-eating transdimensional creatures, and Nardole’s constant scolding? More than you’...
Apr 30, 2022•1 hr 32 min•Season 3Ep. 15
Doctor Who explains the Big Bang! That’s an ambitious idea, and not one you’d expect to be shoehorned into an episode about space lepers journeying to a vast space station that promises not just a cure for their disease but also the opportunity to play with the biggest dog you’ve ever seen. Still, Terminus goes for it, soldiering on through plot holes the size of a supercluster to explain how all of creation came into existence, plus how Tegan and Turlough can somehow command tons of screen time...
Apr 23, 2022•1 hr 31 min•Season 3Ep. 14
We’re worried. In the two-and-a-bit years since we started Pull To Open, we’ve done commentaries on 42(!) individual Doctor Who stories. That constitutes only 14% of the entire onscreen canon, but we appear to have exhausted a much greater portion of the series’ most revered episodes: The Girl in the Fireplace, Inferno, The Day of the Doctor, and even Genesis of the Daleks. In this special podcast, Chris and Pete look back at PTO’ run so far, cracking open the official Pull To Open Codex to dete...
Apr 16, 2022•17 min•Season 3Ep. 13
In the entire run of Doctor Who, there has never been a villain quite like Davros. Half-Dalek, half-somewhat crispy person, the character of Davros set a new bar for the "evil genius" archetype in his debut story, Genesis of the Daleks . His many speeches in that story produced some of the show's best scenes, creating so much great drama that no one minds that the story completely retcons huge swaths of Dalek history. There's so much reverence for Genesis, it's hard to watch it with a critical e...
Apr 09, 2022•1 hr 57 min•Season 3Ep. 12
When you're looking to literally change history to save your race, it's smart to stay focused. This really isn't the time for convoluted plans, extraneous plot threads that go nowhere, and long conversations with captured prisoners. But the Cybermen can't help themselves, it seems, and neither can Attack of the Cybermen , which seems utterly confused about which previous story it's a sequel to. It's almost inevitable that things get messy pretty quickly in Colin Baker's second adventure, but the...
Apr 02, 2022•2 hr 17 min•Season 3Ep. 11
If you’re a powerful vampire running from the Time Lords, it’s easy to see why you’d pick E-space for your hideout. It’s small, it's full of delicious humanoids, it's hidden behind a CVE — not to mention bat-populated planets are seemingly a dime a dozen in this green-hued pocket universe. It's really just bad luck that the Doctor wandered in, but all the better for us since we get to see a traditional vampire horror story done through the lens of Doctor Who. The result is State of Decay , and i...
Mar 26, 2022•1 hr 39 min•Season 3Ep. 10
