Pull To Open: A Random Doctor Who Podcast

The Myth Fakers (Burying “Underworld”)

There are Doctor Who stories that look cheap, and then there’s Underworld: the story so broke it couldn’t afford a cave. Its vast underground world was instead conjured w

Eye Rule (Preserving “The Ark”)

Achoo! Humanity may have survived millions of years into the future, but apparently the common cold is still an extinction-level threat. The Ark sends the First Doctor, S

Warrior's Fate (De-escalating "Cold War")

Doctor Who’s ⁠Cold War⁠ has the perfect pitch: an Ice Warrior wakes up aboard a Soviet nuclear submarine in 1983, with Matt Smith, Jenna Coleman, Liam Cunningham, Tobias

Tactical Magic (Banishing “The Dæmons”)

Doctor Who meets the Devil! No, wait—sorry, the Doctor insists it’s actually science. The Dæmons brings the UNIT era to full folk-horror boil, complete with white witches

Extreme Delays (Tunneling “The Web of Fear”)

Mind the gap—and the homicidal fungus. The Web of Fear takes Doctor Who underground for a six-part siege featuring eerily convincing Tube tunnels, bulletproof Yeti and, h

Unchained Melody (Assassinating “Let’s Kill Hitler”)

Let’s Kill Hitler promises history’s biggest time-travel trolley problem, then stuffs Hitler in a cupboard and turns into River Song: The Origin Story at hyperspeed. Stev

Christmas Is Canceled (Mourning the Special That Never Was)

Christmas is canceled. Doctor Who isn’t. But as RTD exits under a cloud of Winternox, we’re all a bit Bafflers about what comes next. Pull To Open pours one out, and thra

Snakes on an Astral Plane (Manifesting "Kinda")

Open the box, Pull To Open listeners—but be sure your mind is ready. Kinda is the kinda… er kind of Doctor Who story where the themes are so rich you don’t care what it l

Drawn Apart (Illustrating "Fear Her")

Doctor Who fans have long feared Fear Her—and not necessarily for the reasons the episode intended. A lonely child, a suburban street, a cupboard-dad, a doodle monster, a

Time’s New Romans (Rebooting "The Pandorica Opens” and “The Big Bang")

It’s the end of the universe as Moffat knows it, and somehow we feel fine. The Pandorica Opens and The Big Bang two-parter throws every monster in the closet at Stoneheng

Tachyons We Meet on Vacation (Touring "The Leisure Hive")

The Leisure Hive should be a relaxing holiday: a beachside opening, fabulous costumes, and Lalla Ward dressed like she just won regatta season. Instead, we find a story w

Circus Breaker (Performing "The Greatest Show in the Galaxy")

Come one, come all to the Psychic Circus — where the audience kills, the clowns are robots, and the Doctor may be only one striped scarf away from becoming one himself. T

The Halftime Show (Marking the Midpoint)

Five years, 160 stories, one increasingly suspicious Randomizer. Pull To Open has reached the exact midpoint of its mad dash through all of Doctor Who, so Pete and Chris

It’s a Tetrap! (Disguising "Time and the Rani")

September 7, 1987: a date that lives in Doctor Who infamy—at least for Chris, who rage-quit the show the moment Time and the Rani introduced the Seventh Doctor in the mos

Water War (Submerging "The Sea Devils")

The Sea Devils should be an all-timer: the Master returns, the Navy shows up, the Doctor tries to broker peace, and the monsters have one of the most iconic “emerging fro

3 Days in the Gally (Scenes from Gallifrey One 2026)

Pull To Open goes on location! Pete and Chris hit Gallifrey One in Los Angeles as total Gally virgins, gawping at “chemicals on fire” sunsets, accidentally learning how e

Parallel Metal (Initializing “Rise of the Cybermen” and “The Age of Steel”)

Some stories upgrade the villains. This one upgrades everything. We venture to Pete’s World to face the stompiest reintroduction of a classic foe in rRise of the Cybermen

Bonnie Dangerously (Quartering “The Highlanders”)

It’s the Second Doctor’s second story, and he’s already cross-dressing, bashing heads, and doing the worst German accent this side of Oktoberfest. The Highlanders is a st

Clash of the Eras (Mediating “Doctor Who and the Silurians”)

Season seven of Pull To Open begins where all great potholing expeditions do: deep underground, with claw marks from the Randomizer and a moral crisis waiting at the exit

Dawn of the AIpocalypse (Deprogramming “The War Machines”)

Long before Skynet, the British Post Office built its own murderbot. In The War Machines, a supercomputer called WOTAN tries to conquer the world by... hypnotizing secret