Half Human (Doctor Who Magazine Special Edition #73).

Magazines  After deciding to boycott the movies this week because almost every local screen is filled with the Jackson sub-hagiography, I decided to make a special trip to the TG Jones on Allerton Road and buy this week's special edition of the parish circular dedicated to the Eighth Doctor and particularly the TV Movie with the Pertwee logo, on the occasion of its forthcoming 4K release. Sitting on the back balcony this afternoon, I read it cover to cover, captivated by the new information running right through its pages, including the enthralling interview with Dee Jay Jackson, who has had a busy life both before and after playing the security guard that bars the Doctor and Grace's early entry into the New Year's Eve Party. 

The cover also promises a new short trip from Matthew Jacobs, although if you're expecting a short sequel to the TVM he wrote, or some other piece of soggy nostalgia, you're going to be surprised to find instead a writer seeking an explanation for the controversial moment when the Doctor says he's half human "on his mother's side". With some prodding, he soon realises that... it doesn't matter. The various ideas he's been having about who the Doctor's human mother might be are probably a bit much for this assignment, and that, like everything else in this mad franchise, it's always worked best when it doesn't explain anything. Much as I like The Timeless Children (which he references), all it does is give the Doctor a different mysterious origin.

Placement: The Eighth Doctor does appear briefly, but it's mostly in a similar capacity to the Bogart ghost in Play It Again, Sam or Elvis in True Romance, setting the protagonist right on some things. So, into the Alternative Eighth Doctor section it goes.