The latest issue of The Tides of Time, number 50, is now available to download. Within its 132 pages find… Just what were the Doctor and the Ranis up to in Oxford? Just which Doctor is in the book Doctor Who and the Cybermen? What worked and what didn’t in the character of the Fifteenth Doctor? Why was there a plaque to Nicholas Courtney in the Eagle and Child, a pub famous for its connection to C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien? Why is Night Terrors pivotal in the development of the Eleventh Doctor? Why do we neglect Doctor Who and the Pescatons at our peril? Why is The Lonely Assassins a neglected classic game? Enough questions to be going on with.

Other articles include looks at the careers of two Oxford-educated Doctor Who contributors, William Russell, who played Ian Chesterton from 1963 to 1965, and Barbara Clegg, who wrote Fifth Doctor tale Enlightenment broadcast in 1983 – both were at Oxford in the 1940s and enmeshed in student theatre and in Russell’s case in journalism. Both articles are revised and extended from the versions first published as blog posts on this site. There’s also poetry, a meeting with Planet of the Ood writer Keith Temple, book reviews of recent(ish) Target output and Kate Fox’s Doctor Who-influenced verse Bigger on the Inside, convention reports from Bedford, and the Oxford Doctor Who Society’s opinions on the 2023 specials and the 2024 series. (Thoughts on the 2025 series will appear on this website in due course.)

The print edition is still available – ordering details can be found via our previous post, or an alternative ordering route can be found via eBay.

This is the fiftieth issue of The Tides of Time, keeping the Doctor Who fanzine flame alive in this somewhat overmythologized academic corner since 1990. We didn’t have a retrospective in the issue, but would like to take the opportunity here to thank everyone who has edited, written for or illustrated Tides over the past thirty-five years. Regular blog posting will resume shortly, and there will be an issue 51!