Perpetual Outsider is the masterwork of author John Bensalhia, a man who has taken on the enormous task of reviewing the entire back catalogue of classic and Nu Doctor Who. I have been a huge fan for many years and recently his reviews have become available on Amazon Kindle for such a reasonable price that I felt compelled to snap them up and read them through. The reviews are thorough and funny, intelligent and opinionated. At times I found myself arguing out loud with the reviews (and when you are standing on a train in Liege, Belgium surrounded by non English speakers that must be quite a sight) and very often I find myself nodding along with his thoughts and laughing at his witty remarks. They make brilliant bedtime reading because you can read through a critique in about twenty minutes, although if you are passionate about your own opinion of Doctor Who I perhaps would advise against that because these books are not going to send you to sleep. I wholeheartedly endorse his work, as one reviewer to another, he has a formula that is effortlessly readable and he can make an argument that is hard to disagree with...even when you disagree with it! If you liked Running Through Corridors then Perpetual Outsider is going to be right up your street.
But enough about me...let's hear it from the man himself....
Do you have any comfort stories? Ones that you know aren’t very good but you still enjoy watching them? Season 17 hasn't had a great press, but I really enjoy coming back to these episodes. It's the point when I started to watch the show (a great antidote to the horrors of starting school), so stuff like The Creature From The Pit and Nightmare Of Eden takes me back to being that little five-year-old boy who'd just become a fan. They're also imaginative, funny, and more dramatic than you'd think, in places. Plus, there's two Douglas Adams classics in the form of City Of Death and Shada!
What prompted you to start writing reviews about the show? It was actually after completing the Blake's 7 reviews at Den Of Geek (well, 50 out of 52 anyway). The guy that commissioned them was actually starting his own website devoted to cult, sci-fi and fantasy TV, and I offered to write a complete set of Doctor Who reviews. I didn't expect to accomplish the mission, but I thought, what the hell? So I gave it a go and eventually made it as far as In The Forest Of The Night. It's a shame that the website folded, as I really enjoyed writing for it. But as ever, with these things, that's life. Family commitments and paying the rent/bills always take priority.
How long has it taken to cover the entire series? Well, the original reviews have been remixed and updated for my Perpetual Outsider book range. I look back on some of the original reviews that I did and cringe! They're like a bargain basement equivalent of Charlie Brooker. So I ended up rewriting and amending a lot of stuff – in some cases, reflecting the returned missing episodes of The Enemy Of The World and The Web Of Fear, or the newly animated Shada, which still looks amazing. All in all, the ebooks and B&W story blog reviews took about two and a half years to complete.
Were there any eras that were a total joy to review? Any that were a chore? All of the Tom Baker stories, obviously, are a joy to review, although there are so many ways that you can say “Great!” I could watch all of those time and again and still not get bored (although Underworld's pushing it). They stand the test of time really well, and Tom Baker remains my favourite Doctor. I was a bit cautious about approaching the mid to late 1980s volume, but I ended up enjoying a lot of the Sixth and Seventh Doctor stories – I think they're quite underrated. Same goes for the Peter Capaldi stories – I missed quite a lot of them the first time round because I became a daddy, so there wasn't as much time to sit down and watch TV at my leisure. However, I did manage to buy the last two Capaldi seasons on DVD, and was astounded by the overall quality, and also amazed at how Steven Moffat had turned things around from a 'chore' era... ...Which was 2013. I can't believe that you've got this big milestone 50th anniversary of Doctor Who, and yet so many of the stories that year are massively disappointing. At best, Cold War / Crimson Horror are entertaining enough, but hardly classic fare. At worst, you've got stuff like The Rings Of Akhaten, The Time Of The Doctor and Nightmare In Silver (“Put me daaahhhn, I hate yooooooo!!!” reaches a new nadir). Matt Smith's a great Doctor, but he deserved so much more than this last crop of forgettable stories. From a reviewing angle, assessing the missing episodes of Doctor Who was a real challenge. You're playing guessing games with still photos and a soundtrack, so it's hard to get a proper reading on whether a story's good or bad – for all I know, The Space Pirates could be an unsung classic.
What do you hope for the future of Doctor Who? That it continues to run and entertain future generations.
You can find Perpetual Outsider on Kindle on the following links -
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