Explore every episode of the podcast The Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire

And we’re back — just in time to see a young English nurse named Belinda Chandra kidnapped from her backyard and taken to a planet named almost exactly the same thing — a planet where, it happens, a whole new season of Doctor Who is kicking off. Let’s see how she gets on.

Hope might be in short supply this Christmas, and so Steven Moffat is back for his ninth Christmas Special, with a message of hope — or possibly just a message of nuclear fusion. Also back are all his favourite heartwarming and exasperating tropes, along with just a soupçon of righteous anger. Merry Christmas, everyone.

In the last of the Sixtieth Anniversary specials, an old Doctor and a new UNIT are no match for an old villain, and it’s up to a new Doctor to save the day and to join forces with Donna to save the old Doctor as well. Next stop: everywhere.

This week, we’re all wandering around a spaceship trying to have meaningful conversations about our friendships while simultaneously being horrified by how big and old we all are. Here’s the behind-the-scenes Xwitter thread about the making of this episode by the director of Wild Blue Yonder, Tom Kingsley.

This week, Nathan, Richard, Todd, James, Peter and Simon get on the phone just hours after watching The Star Beast, to talk about how great Sylvia Noble is, basically. And somehow, they fail to mention Nerys even once. And here’s a link to Simon’s recent interview with Katy Manning.

This week, there’s a lot of hoovering to be done but nobody left alive to do it. So instead, let’s talk about how we felt about the final episode of Season 1 — a very happy ending or absolute terror?

This week, Bonnie Langford is back. Sure, a terrifying and omnipotent doglike entity returns from the distant past (oh, okay 1975), but we’re all still mostly here for Bonnie, right?

This week, we join the largest off-world chapter of the Bridgerton Appreciation Society as they head off to Bath for a convention that features preening, squawking and murder, culminating (as is traditional) in an arranged marriage which looks set to be the highlight of the season. Meanwhile, the Doctor meets a handsome stranger, falls in love and loses him forever.

This week, a number of affluent white people in pastel clothes get eaten by giant slugs, in a way that it’s hard to object to too strenuously. But does this episode have things to say about us as well?

This week, Brendan, Todd and Nathan found ourselves completely unable to connect and terrified of being abandoned by everyone we’ve ever cared about. Fortunately there was an excellent episode of Doctor Who to cheer us up.

This week, we’re all trying to stand very still and to remain completely calm, distracting ourselves from our predicament by reminiscing about that episode of Press Gang with the Zectron 2000 high security briefcases. And waiting for it all to go boom.

Five episodes in and it’s the start (again) of a new season and a new era of Doctor Who. So how will these five grizzled veterans of the Time Wars cope with a space station full of babies and the concept of music itself in a lavish new non-binary form?

It’s Christmas, and it’s time for a simple swashbuckling adventure in which the new Doctor and his new friend Ruby rescue a baby from being eaten by goblins through the power of song. Also featuring appropriate festive serving suggestions. Ncuti Gatwa introduces us to his BBC press-on moustache in this official Doctor Who video released a couple of days before Christmas.

Everyone’s breaking the fourth wall this week, with Alan Cumming escaping through the cinema screen to terrorise some white Floridians, and the Doctor smashing through our 55-inch OLED to admire our massive collection of Dapol figurines. And we all learn a valuable lesson about how much we love the Doctor, including Belinda.

This week, Johnny Spandrell joins us as we stand around gazing into this deep hole in the ground, long enough for it to also start gazing back at us and complaining about the thing lurking behind our backs — a thing that’s unknowable, unreasonable and vile.

The Doctor and Belinda are back in 2007 this week, after missing Voyage of the Damned by only a few days, so we decide to to pop forward in time to early May 2025 to see how Ruby is getting on after her year of travelling with the Doctor. Turns out, not well. But fortunately she’s got a pretty and supportive new boyfriend. Men, eh?

This week, in a barbershop in Lagos, we find a web of myths and stories — and a whole world — that we (at least) never knew existed. Here’s a link to Inua Ellam’s story What I Did On My Holidays By Omo Esosa on the BBC website.

This week, the 803rd Interstellar Song Contest is disrupted by a violent act of terrorism and then reinstated by an act of camp fabulosity, complete with comedy montage and everything. And then, to top it off, the [redacted] shows up. Here’s the link to Simon’s interview with Eurovision runner-up Michael Ball on his weekly podcast In Conversation.

This week, we find ourselves living in an unconvincing parallel reality where gender norms are rigidly enforced and disabled people are openly despised. Maybe this week’s Doctor Who episode will help take our minds off all that.

And that’s exactly the word. This has been an absolute joy. It’s time to say goodbye to another Doctor, and to another era, with no real idea of what’s coming next. Just like life, really. Here’s the link to the BBC press release about this episode.