URP! was founded in 2010, in advance of the first Steven Moffat/Matt Smith series of Doctor Who, as a place for its writers to post reviews of the show following the closure of Noise to Signal. For its first year or so it also functioned as an all-purpose Who blog, but we weren’t doing a very good job of keeping it up, so as of our 2012 relaunch we’ve closed down and archived that part of the site and will be concentrating on maintaining a reviews archive for the foreseeable future.

The site is largely concerned with newer episodes of the series – however, when we feel like it, we also discuss the classic show. Yes, we do like the Sylvester McCoy era. Deal with it.

NOTE (2018): Although the most recent post on this site is titled “The Final End”, and we haven’t published anything since, this does not necessarily mean we’ve finished posting on the site. It’s honestly just a coincidence, although it does look kind of neat there, doesn’t it? Anyway, no, the point is simply that doing the full sets of Series 8 and 9 reviews took it out of us a bit, and with various other time commitments we weren’t able to get a run of Series 10 reviews done. We’re very excited about the future of Doctor Who and, who knows, we might return later in 2018 with new material. We’ll see how we feel – but until then, remember to laugh hard, run fast, and be kind. 

WHO WE

Seb Patrick once met Paul McGann, who immediately pretended to be Mark McGann. He writes for Den of Geek, BBC America, Film4 and the official Red Dwarf website, among others. He owns over thirty toy Daleks and wishes the Dapol factory tour was still open.

Jonathan Capps‘ name translates in the old Draconian tongue as “The Oncoming Storm”. Curiously enough, when spelled out backwards, it translates in Kaled as “Gobby Northerner Who Likes Sandwiches”.

Julian Hazeldine (aka The Flatmate Of The Site) was slightly surprised to find a battered Type 40 Doctor Who blog in his living room one morning, but has vowed to make the best of the situation by occasionally posting his trademark over-analytical rambling.

Alex Newsome is a a girl! No! No! He’s not a girl! Though his supple breasts would have you believe otherwise. He’s still not ginger, but he does write, podcast and play music so bad that it probably would be improved by a Delaware synth.

Dewi Evans is a part-time university tutor, librarian and PhD student who hopes one day to devlelop into something resembling the bastard hybrid offspring of Russell T Davies, Benny Summerfield and Evelyn Smythe. Despite living in the Brecon Beacons and working in Cardiff, he has never been a) a cannibal or b) a member of Torchwood (to the best of his knowledge anyway).

Karl Eisenhauer is ancient and forever. He burns at the centre of time and can see the turn of the universe. He’s like fire and ice and rage. Well, that’s enough about his hair, anyway. We’re not sure about the rest of him.

Abigail Brady‘s first clear memory of Doctor Who is Colin Baker saying “carrot juice?” Her next is Dimensions in Time; and after that the TV movie. No wonder she never became a fan during the interregnum. The new series ignited a latent fandom, and now she listens to Big Finish and has firm opinions about William Hartnell companions (Dodo is underrated.)

Pete Dillon-Trenchard has been haunted by dreams of pepperpots ever since his mum told him off for watching “Remembrance of the Daleks” as a four-year-old, calling it ‘too scary’. She was right. Nowadays he performs stand-up comedy, writes for Den of Geek and produces a comedy podcast, The Rather Awful Doctor Who Episode Guide. He’s like Jean-Marc Lofficier, but with jokes.

Ian Symes is both a jackanapes and a ham-fisted bun vendor who lives in London and works in TV. He writes a lot about Red Dwarf for Ganymede & Titan, and is currently in the process of watching every episode of Doctor Who in order, whilst blogging about it at Curiosity In A Junkyard. He is sometimes cruel and usually cowardly.

Ben Paddon certainly isn’t here to help a malevolent entity to bring down the website. Ben writes and hosts PortsCenter, a webseries about video game ports that exists solely because someone once asked him if Doom on the PSone was any good. His favourite colour is mope.

John Hoare spends his days skulking around a TV playout centre and wondering when he’ll be asked to leave. He posts a variety of nonsense on his blog Dirty Feed which steadfastly refuses to capture the zeitgeist. When he says run, run. Run.

Christopher Laird was killed by Cybermen in 2005. Various Doctor Who articles have been found among his personal belongings and are being published posthumously. He has no idea whether he was killed by ‘Cybermen’ or ‘Cybusmen’ because it DOESN’T MATTER.