Andrew Orton

Here's some of the #DoctorWho studio sets I've recreated down the years! Hope you like them. Some of you might think I've got dozens more of these in the bag which I've not yet put online - but I'm saying nothing. Check out my #CGSets tag to see more! Thanks for all the support lads and lasses.

Aw :)

#TargetBookDay has just kicked off

The illustration portrays the first Andrew Orton, whose physical appearance was later transformed by a talk about regeneration in Target books. #TargetBookDay

Target Book Day!

London, I am in you - ready for this tomorrow!

Watching Fenric. Captain Sorin, in full Soviet uniform and Russian accent: ‘in English, from now on, everything English!’ #DoctorWho

I’ve done another guest post for the long running twinpeaksblog, looking at the neglected topic of the series’ UK viewing figures back in 1990 / 91. twinpeaksblog.com/2026/10/11/h... Free to read. Lots of other great stuff on that site too. Check it all out.

Our lass grew these squash, and I have a massive, innate revulsion to their colour. It might be that there’s something corpse-like about that grey-green, but it makes me weirdly bilious. Some primal bit of me. Reasoning overrides it, but they don’t half make me shiver. What strange beasts we are.

““in public broadcasting money is never the be-all and end-all, and I would bet #Trump has never come up against a force [the #BBC] so stubborn, so irrational, so inexplicable to the American corporate or political mindset as his opponents…”1/

Because there aren't enough of them in the world, I've just launched a film podcast. Square Eyed Cinema dives into the somewhat neglected world of TV Movies & our first episode is out now – with more to come each Tuesday. You can find it wherever you'd usually look for podcasts.

What I tell my mate Duncan what I’d like for pudding.

TV criminologist David Wilson, because he waves his hands about too much when he’s talking.

Our trilogy of books is heaving with essays about the dark pop culture of the 70s and 80s! Get 10% off with the case-sensitive code NOVEL10 till midnight, Friday October 16. Also available as colour eBooks! Store: linktr.ee/scarredforlife

Watching the new series of Mock the Week, and for some reason, I just felt a little twinge of happiness noticing that Mykola Pawluk is still working. One of those names that seems to have been around forever.

The Brigadier spends all of Season 7 calling Liz 'Miss Shaw', but she reveals in Inferno 7 that she has a doctorate and so she's more-properly 'Dr Shaw'. Is the Brig just being a completely misogynistic bellend throughout S7? #DoctorWho

This popped up on my Facebook feed and it's an ABSOLUTE JOY. Please enjoy all nearly seven minutes of it youtu.be/KjIQtFwB0U4?...

GROND GROND

Evening

Did they only have Richard E Grant under contract for two days or something?

I’m currently deep into Shakespeare and Hathaway, and it’s absolutely glorious. Fairly run-of-the-mill cosy detective drama, but Jo Joyner and Mark Benton are fantastic together: they’re always adding little bits of business and doing gags with each other. You can tell they’re loving every second.

Last of the Summer Wine. Absolutely serious: in 1973, it’s one of the most well-observed, philosophical and funny series on telly. Brilliantly written. Men as bairns. Then after Foggy leaves and Uncle of the Bride it turns into formulaic ‘going downhill in a bath/sidecar/piano-on-wheels’ territory.

I am absolutely ready to watch the first episode of this, think it is exciting fantastic and exactly the sort of thing the series needs, then never watch any more of it and put The Aztecs on instead. #DoctorWho

A red sentient toaster is a great idea

It's #dayofdredd today. I didn't read Dredd as a bairn and only got into it in my 40s, when @scarredforlife.bsky.social told me I should read them. I fell in love instantly: the Democracy stuff, Dead Man et al, and the America storyline, are some of the most important things ever. Fascism laid bare.

Here's a list of talks for #DoctorWho #TargetBookClub on Saturday October 24th. Tickets bit.ly/smallbluebox

Delighted to announce I’m giving a talk at the #TargetBookClub - be there or overdose on lindos, the regeneration hormone! #DoctorWho

Presumably both having significantly differing views on crosses

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage...

Presumably both having significantly differing views on crosses

I’d have said Terror of the Vervoids

I have seen a lot of films from the 1940s - I think the medium's most impressive even-numbered decade - and A Canterbury Tale might be my favourite. Saw it on the big screen at Newcastle's Tyneside Cinema a couple of years back. A religiose experience.

Recently listened to the audiobook of Jon Ronson’s The Castle. Remarkable book, and the chapter on Linehan was fascinating. I think there’s a full book to be written on the subject of well-regarded people poisoned by radical ideas to the extent their legacy or life is ruined.

HOW THE HELL DID I NOT KNOW THERE WAS A LIVE-ACTION COMPUTER GAME WITH DARROW IN IT

Quite a few obvious gaps: Pac-man, Red Dead, Mass Effect, Arkham, Witcher 3, Portal, the entire PS2 era, but not a bad selection. God, I’ve been playing computer games since the 1980s.

@worldsofdrwho.bsky.social Dr Who' song theme by Sing Sound System on Facebook Link: www.facebook.com/share/r/14jS...

Wednesday

As a little bit of context of the passage of time in #70Up / #UpSeries, here's an overview of some of the television programmes that were around the time each one was broadcast. Seven Up! (5/5/64) was shown in the week of the penultimate ep of #DoctorWho's Keys of Marinus: Sentence of Death.