Viewing order for The Lord of the Rings.

Film  Apart from the odd duff moment (hesaidit!.gif), this past season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power has been a marked improvement on the first.  Although Sauron was a presence and a notional antagonist in the first series, having him being revealed and moving to centre stage helped to focus the story immensely and create connections with the rest of the Tolkien adaptations.

With that in mind, here's a carefully developed timeline of where the series fits in relation to Peter Jackson's films.  New releases will be added as and when Warner Bros realise they're licence is about to run out and they need to release something like The War of the Rohirrim, the proposed Golum prequels or pressgang the hobbit actors into filming some version of The Scouring of the Shire.

The Second Age

ROP 1.1 A Shadow of the Past
ROP 1.2 Adrift
ROP 1.3 Adar
ROP 1.4 The Great Wave
ROP 1.5 Partings
ROP 1.6 Udûn
ROP 1.7 The Eye
ROP 1.8 Alloyed
  
ROP 2.1 Elven Kings Under the Sky
ROP 2.2 Where the Stars are Strange
ROP 2.3 The Eagle and the Sceptre
ROP 2.4 Eldest
ROP 2.5 Halls of Stone
ROP 2.6 Where Is He?
ROP 2.7 Doomed to Die
ROP 2.8 Shadow and Flame

The Third Age

FILM  The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim

FILM  The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

FILM  The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

FILM  The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

FILM  The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

FILM  The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

FILM  The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Loose Ends: 8: The Eighth Doctor: Scenes Unseen

Prose  Loose Ends is the current inhabitant of the parish circular in which, as the title suggests, one of my favourite Doctor Who writers Jonathan Morris (this is his monthly column) tries to tie up moments in the franchise's history which haven't already been addressed, like the bus full of holidaymakers blowing up in Delta and the Bannermen or how the Doctor managed to get Stevie Wonder to play for his wife.  Illustrated in a comic style by artist Roger Langridge, these tiny trips seem to be partly inspired by the old Brief Encounter stories from the earlier days of the magazine and rarely feel like their just lampooning the source.

[Spoilers ahead for the story.  It's DWM's publication day so some of you might not have seen it yet and I don't want to be like that friend who told you all about The Time of the Doctor and everything which happened in it moments after it had been released.  At least I waited a couple of hours before I posted a review here.  Anyway, this is probably enough of a text buffer which I'll also delete in a couple of weeks when everyone has seen it and when the opening of the next paragraph will flow on from the first rather than seem as abrupt as a return from adverts on Freevee.]

That's especially true of this month's instalment, written to accompany the coverage of the recent live Big Finish event in which Paul, India et al performed the new drama The Stuff of Legend (review coming soon).  The Doctor visits Professor Wagg from the TV Movie with the Pertwee logo to return the beryllium chip is the bald synopsis.  But it's a rich little story, which captures the Eighth Doctor's voice perfectly and gives Wagg more dignity than he had on during his brief television time.  There's also nothing in here that the Doctor wouldn't have done.  Even more than some of his successors and predecessors Eighth is a details person and hates to leaves things hanging.  Look at Shada.

[Was the spoiler buffer completely necessary for such a short review, more or less just a couple of brief comments really?  I don't know.  I'm just trying to be sensitive.  To write much more than that would have been to make it longer than the actual story and with these interruptions it probably is a review which is longer than the actual Doctor Who story.  But it felt official enough to add to the timeline.  Oh, which reminds me ...]

Placement:  Early.  Between The Eight Doctors and The Dying Days when the Short Trips establish that he's making amends in general.  Plus the illustration features the fancy dress costume he stole from the locker room in The Enemy Within (or whatever it's called).