B is for... Blor

The Queen's Champion on the planet Peladon, encountered by the Doctor on his return to that planet. He protected Queen Thalira. He wore a helmet made from the fur, tusks and horns of one of the Aggedor creatures. When the Doctor agreed to investigate the mines where the spirit of Aggedor was said to be killing the Pel miners, the Queen sent Blor with him. Both became trapped by a rockfall engineered by the militant miner Ettis. An apparition of Aggedor - really a hologram with a heat ray weapon - materialised, and Blor was killed.

Played by: Michael Crane. Appearances: The Monster of Peladon (1974).

• Blor appears only in the first episode, plus the reprise at the beginning of the second, and yet he was immortalised by featuring in the second set of character cards to be collected from boxes of Weetabix in 1977, along with the even shorter-lived Vega Nexos.

B is for... Bloodaxe

Deputy to the medieval warlord Irongron. Bloodaxe believed that his chief had a towering intelligence. When a shooting star fell to earth near the castle they had taken over, Bloodaxe refused to go and look until the sun had come up. He mistook the Sontaran Linx for a Saracen. He was later shocked to see the alien without his helmet. It is to be presumed that Bloodaxe had a number of siblings. All the smart genes must have gone somewhere in his family. Only his sword and axe were sharp. Sir Edward of Wessex's archer, Hal, roused Bloodaxe and his men from a drugged sleep so that they could flee from the castle before it was destroyed by Linx's exploding starship. He would have probably taken over from the now dead Irongron.

Played by John J Carney. Appearances: The Time Warrior (1973 / 4).

• Carney mostly played policemen or villains throughout his career. He features in the Richard Chamberlain TV mini-series Shogun. Genre appearances include an episode of Blake's 7 - the one with Colin Baker - and the movie Hawk The Slayer. He died in 1995.

B is for... Bliss

One of the members of LINDA - the London Investigation 'N' Detective Agency. This was a small group of people who were obsessed about the Doctor. Bliss was an artistic soul, who at one point created a sculpture which she felt represented the Doctor's essence. She fell victim to Victor Kennedy - really the alien Abzorbaloff. When she vanished from the group, Kennedy claimed she had gone off to get married. Unfortunately, her face had ended up on his backside. With her other absorbed friends, she helped destroy the Abzorbaloff and save Elton Pope.

Played by: Kathryn Drysdale. Appearances: Love & Monsters (2006).

B is for... Blessing, The

The name given to a pole of the Earth which ran from Buenos Aires in Brazil, to Shanghai in China. It was discovered by a mysterious group known as The Three Families. They noticed that the life expectancy of the population of Shanghai exactly matched that of the global average. The Blessing generated a morphic field matrix which affected all of the human race. By introducing some of Captain Jack Harkness' immortal blood at both ends of the Blessing simultaneously, it caused the entire world to become immortal. One day, no-one could die. The Three Families had secured Jack's blood when he had visited New York in the 1930's, and it was found that he couldn't be killed.
The phenomenon had caused Jack to become the only mortal person on the planet. When his now mortal blood was fed into the Blessing, the matrix was reversed and so people could die again.
Neither The Three Families nor Jack had any idea what the true nature of the Blessing was. Jack speculated that it may have resulted from huon particles interacting with the buried Racnoss spaceship at the core of the planet, and he claimed that it featured in Silurian mythology.

Appearances: Torchwood: Miracle Day (2011).

Moffat's Radio Times Synopses

The new Radio Times was published today, covering the launch of Series 10. Steven Moffat gives his usual brief synopsis for each episode, and the final story titles are revealed. This year, all of the titles that were already attached to episodes 1 - 10 have been confirmed, with no changes.
Episode 11 is to be called World Enough And Time, whilst the finale is called The Doctor Falls.
That first one comes from a poem by Andrew Marvell - To His Coy Mistress. Apt, as it involves Missy. There's no mention of the return of John Simm's Master, so presumably this went to the publishers before the BBC were forced to announce his reappearance.
A few snippets of info about the episodes are included in the piece, though nothing really new for the first three (The Pilot, Smile and Thin Ice) which have already been previewed by the latest DWM.
The house in 10.4 - Knock Knock - is one which Bill and some friends are thinking of renting, and there is mention of a strange tower in the middle of the building which no-one can find a way into.
The space station in 10.5 - Oxygen - is called Chasm Forge, and all but four of the crew are dead. Problem is, the dead ones are still up and about.
10.6 - Extremis - sees the Doctor employed by the Vatican and involves a book in the Haereticum (one of the secret archives) called The Veritas, which leads people to kill themselves after reading it. Problem is, it has just been published on-line. Missy has been confirmed as appearing in this one.
Extremis leads into The Pyramid at the End of the World. A 5000 year old pyramid is found in the middle of a conflict zone (between America, Russia and China). Problem is, it wasn't there the day before. There's something about aliens who can't invade unless they get the consent of the human race.
The third of the interconnected episodes - The Lie of the Land - is about everyone in the world believing a deception, except for Bill, and even the Doctor has been fooled.
10.9 - Empress of Mars - features a human invasion of the Red Planet. Whose side should the Doctor take? One of the Ice Warriors - probably the Empress herself - is called Iraxxa. The invading humans hail from the Victorian era.
10.10 - The Eaters of Light - involves the disappearance of a Roman legion in the north of Scotland. A cairn on a hillside has a portal leading to the end of the world.
World Enough And Time sees the Doctor trapped on a huge spaceship on the edge of a black hole. Mention of the death of someone whom the Doctor was pledged to protect, which drives him to some rash actions. The quote for this episode is "My name's Doctor Who." As mentioned, Missy is back for this one and the finale.
The Doctor Falls simply states: "The Mondasian Cybermen are on the rise. It's time for the Doctor's final battle...".

Inspirations - The Reign of Terror

AKA "The French Revolution", which was its working title.
Like the Doctor, this is one of my favourite periods in History. Not that I would ever want to have been caught up in it, of course, but studying why the Revolution took place and how it unfolded is something I have always found fascinating. There was no one Revolution. Rather, it was a series of upheavals over ten years, as one political faction rose to prominence only to be cut down by the next. The Reign of Terror was just one such episode - albeit the bloodiest.
How do we know that this is a favourite period for the Doctor? Well, Susan says so, to the two school teachers. It is implied that she and the Doctor may have already visited France during this period, as she immediately spots a mistake in a book Barbara lends her, back at Coal Hill School.
There is no one single cause for the Revolution. Its seeds lie in the religious wars that had blighted Europe for centuries. France had embarked on a couple of unsuccessful conflicts which had drained the economy. The country then faced a period of poor harvests, and the people were starving. Substantial amounts of tax were going to the rich and powerful Church. Most French peasants were little more than serfs.
A number of bread riots broke out in Paris in 1789, culminating in a march to the royal palace at Versailles to demand assistance from King Louis XVI. He was generally liked by the populace, though they hated his Austrian wife Marie Antoinette, and his predecessor Louis XV had been very unpopular.
The old prison fortress of the Bastille was stormed. Believed to be holding many political prisoners, it was actually almost empty, and some of those that were incarcerated there died in the assault.
King Louis agreed to the setting up of a parliament or assembly, made up of the three great sections of French society - the nobility, the Church, and the people, who were represented by a number of political radicals who had learned a great deal from the recent American Revolution.
The assembly failed to reach any kind of consensus, as the nobility and the Church refused to concede anything of note.
Things continued to break down. By 1792, the royal family were being held virtual hostages in Paris. A republic was announced, and the King branded a traitor. First Louis, and then his Queen went to the guillotine. The Revolution was supported by the army, which was also fighting abroad at this time in other parts of the continent.
Various republican parties came to the fore, but all were superceded by political rivals. In 1793, the Jacobin faction came to power under Maximilien de Robespierre, who set up what was basically a dictatorship. The old calendar was thrown out and the Committee for Public Safety began the wholesale slaughter of anyone perceived to be its rivals.
And this is where the TARDIS crew come in.

Writer Dennis Spooner sets his story at this particularly dangerous moment during the revolutionary period. Hundreds of enemies of the state are going to the guillotine on a daily basis. We're coming towards the end of Robespierre's time, when his political rivals are starting to question his tyranny. He was an incredibly vain man, with little or no social skills. Some of his schemes were scoffed at. He had ideas about a great divine being, which smacked of replacing one god with another.
Spooner is inspired not only by historical events, but by two great pieces of literature, set during the Reign of Terror. One of these most of the viewers at the time will have read, whilst the other would have been better known from a popular movie.
The one that people would have read is Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities. Anyone not having read it would probably have seen the film starring Dirk Bogarde in the Sidney Carton role, or the earlier one with Ronald Coleman. The other story is The Scarlet Pimpernel. The book was written by Baroness Orczy in 1905. It had been made into a movie in 1934, starring Leslie Howard. In a couple of year's time, it will inspire a Carry On film, with Sid James as The Black Fingernail.
The Scarlet Pimpernel deals with an Englishman, Sir Percy Blakeney, who appears to all the world as a decadent fop. However, he has an alter-ego - the Pimpernel - who sneaks back and forth to France and helps members of the aristocracy to escape from the guillotine, smuggling them back to safety in England. A pimpernel, before you ask, is a small flower of the primrose family.
The character of Le Maitre (the Master) proves to be an English spy - James Stirling - who is secretly assisting the escape network, whilst at the same time getting close to Robespierre to discover his plans.

Ian, Barbara, and Susan get locked up in the Conciergerie Prison when they are captured and taken to Paris. This still exists - on the Ile de la Cite opposite the Louvre. It was built as a medieval palace for the Merovingian kings and was turned into a revolutionary prison. You can still see the cell where Marie Antoinette was held. Barbara and Susan are taken from here in a tumbril to be executed, but Jules Renan - senior member of the escape network - intercepts them in an ambush and frees them.
Tumbrils were two wheeled agricultural carts, which were emptied by tipping them backwards - mainly used for hauling grain and manure. Executions in Paris were held in the Place de la Revolution - formerly Place Louis XV, and now Place de la Concorde. The guillotine was regarded as a socially leveling means of execution, as befitted revolutionary ideals. Previously, under the Ancien Regime, the nobility had been executed by alternative means to members of the ordinary populace.
In Dickens' novel, Sidney Carton, a rather dissolute young man, takes the place of a prisoner to allow him to escape, and goes to the guillotine in his place. The Doctor's companion Mel references this when the Sixth Doctor travels by tumbril to his supposed execution towards the conclusion of The Trial of a Time Lord.
Executions were major spectacles for the masses, who thronged the square. Programmes of a sort were sold - detailing the names of those to be killed that day. The tailor from whom the Doctor purchases an Official's costume, remarks on his regret at having to miss that day's executions. Attendance would have been seen as loyalty to the cause, and those who refused to attend would have been regarded as potential traitors. The Doctor puts himself at risk by challenging Robespierre's methods. He claims to be representing a region where the execution figures are not very high. A region's loyalty would be judged by the number of enemies of the people whom it eliminated. Whilst the guillotine was the favoured means of despatch, in one city a whole load of prisoners were held in an old ship which was then deliberately sunk in the middle of the river.
The Paris prisons were so full at this time that trials were brief affairs that could only have one allowable sentence - execution. This was a special law brought in to tackle overcrowding just at the time when the time travellers have arrived - hence Barbara and Susan being whisked off in a tumbril within hours of their incarceration.

The bulk of the material featuring Robespierre is missing from the archives, but the final episode introduces two more historical personages. We first see Paul Barras - Paul Francois Jean Nicolas, Vicomte de Barras, to give him his full name. Ian and Barbara witness him trying to recruit the Corsican army officer Napoleon Bonaparte to help shore up his planned coup against Robespierre.
Spooner gets things wrong by having Robespierre quote a date that doesn't match the Jacobin calendar - though it does let the viewers in the know realise that he is about to fall.
The jury is out as to how Robespierre came to be shot in the jaw. One theory is that he tried to commit suicide, whilst another has it that he was deliberately shot in the mouth to shut him up. Whatever, he went to the guillotine within hours of his arrest, and it is said that when the executioner removed the bandage around his face, the shattered jaw came away with it.
The Reign of Terror was supplanted by the Directory. There was one further attempt by the Jacobins to retake power in 1795, but this was crushed. The Directory spent most of its time fighting foreign wars and being generally corrupt and self-serving at home. So much so that Napoleon staged a popular military coup that put the Directory out of power, and led France on the path to the Empire.

It is to the French Revolution that every subsequent revolutionary movement has looked, with its ideals of Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite. France itself was not done with Revolution - as any fan of Les Miserables will know. Revolutionary ideals were still alive in Paris in 1968.
Last time, I promised you a Woody Allen joke. Writing about the causes of popular revolutionary movements, he claims that the Russian Revolution was provoked when the people realised that the Czar and the Tsar were really the same person...
A few final points. The distance to Paris is quoted in kilometres. This is an anachronism. The kilometre did indeed originate out of the French Revolution, but not until a year or so after the Reign of Terror.
The Fourth Doctor mentions Marie Antoinette on two occasions. He claims in Pyramids of Mars that his picklock belonged to her. Does this mean that she might have escaped execution if it hadn't been for the Doctor? It certainly suggests a visit to France just before the events of this story. He then compares the crew of the Sandminer to her, in The Robots of Death, unable or unwilling to countenance a revolution taking place under their noses.
The story's composer - Stanley Myers (his only work on the show) - frequently riffs La Marseillaise. This was composed in 1792, and was adopted as the anthem for the Republic.
Next time, Dixon of Dock Green saves the Environment...

Series 10 - The Story So Far... (Updated)

Episode One - The Pilot - was premiered in London on Tuesday evening, so expect spoilers from this point on around the interweb.
We've just learned that new companion Bill is gay - the first openly gay companion at last, though the omnisexual Captain Jack has certainly helped pave the way. Clara has also had this thing about Jane Austin.
Rumour has it that this will be Bill's only season, with Chris Chibnall getting a clean slate for his first series. The New Doctor rumour mill has gone from a female Doctor to younger male one.
The second of the two trailers has shown a clip of the Doctor appearing to begin the regeneration process. We've seen two false regenerations before, but there is no reason why the Doctor can't start his regeneration at the end of the series, considering he makes the change in the following episode, which will be the 2017 Christmas Special. The Tenth Doctor went on a lengthy series of voyages between the start of his regeneration and its culmination - visiting all of his old companions.
As for the episodes themselves, The Pilot obviously introduces Bill, who works in the canteen whilst the Doctor is lecturing at a university. The brief plot synopsis only states that the Doctor and Nardole are on some kind of a mission.
Seems this is where they are going to insert the Dalek scene that introduced Bill last Spring. Also includes the girl made of water. There is a brief glimpse of Movellans, so the Dalek sequence takes place during their war.

The second episode has a tentative title of "Smile", was filmed in Spain, and is the one that features the Emojibots. They look nice, but kill you when they hug you, apparently. Set on a human colony, but there's no sign of the colonists. Includes small bird-like creatures called Vardies.

Getting a bit of a Handbots vibe from this lot. This is the Frank Cottrell-Boyce episode.
Episode 3 is by Sarah Dollard, and is the Frost Fair one - set in the Regency Period. A big serpent in the Thames under the ice, apparently. Possibly called "Thin Ice".

The fourth episode is the one with David Suchet as "The Landlord". The creepy wooden woman, and giant woodlouse creatures - the real reason why your floorboards creak at night... Might be called "Knock Knock".

Episode five is by Jamie Mathieson, and is set in space. It has been referred to as "Oxygen" and is the one with all the spacesuits and the blue-faced people.

Six, seven and eight are three linked episodes, featuring the Monk characters, and see the return of Missy. I say linked, as each part has its own writer - Moffat, then Peter Harness, then Toby Whithouse. An early title for the first part is "Extremis". The second part is called "The Pyramid at the end of the World", with the third part named "The Lie of the Land".

No. 9, appropriately enough, comes from one-time League of Gentlemen star Mark Gatiss, and is the Ice Warrior one - with the new female Ice Lady. "The Empress of Mars" - and it features lots of Ice Warriors.

Episode 10 marks the return of Rona Munro, and is the one with the Iron Age characters, and possibly some Romans. It has been referred to as "The Eaters of Light". The above image comes from this one, set in Pictish Scotland.

Then we get to 11 and 12, written by Moffat. The return of the Cybermen. Missy is also supposed to feature, and there was an image doing the rounds on Wales-Online of the Mondasian Cybermen with the new ones in the same scenes. The latest issue of DWM mentions three different types of Cyberman. We also know that there will be two versions of the Master - as John Simm is returning. One scene features the Doctor and Missy on a rooftop observing an apocalyptic cityscape, of fire and furnaces. Might this be Mondas?
This might be where the apparent regeneration scene also fits - but as mentioned above it may well be a bit of hoodwinkery...

Just five and a bit days to wait... Tuesday 11th sees the release of the new Radio Times, which will have Moffat's episode synopses, and confirmation of story titles. The BBC always release the main tranche of publicity photos on a Tuesday during a season's run.