Defending 'Love & Monsters'

James Wynne presented his ten worst twenty-first

century episodes on the Doctor Who TV website in

2011. To my dismay, Love & Monsters topped the

list, with Wynne commenting that the "Blue Peter

contest winner was poor in every way and felt more

like a soap with an alien thrown in just for comedy

purposes. Not Doctor Who." I posted at the time

that the adventure was marmite fare, fans either

love it or hate it.

In January 2012, Jonathan Morris' review of Love &

Monsters for issue 443 of DWM countered comments

made by Peter Kay in the Daily Mail the previous November. Britain's most successful stand-up

comedian made a guest appearance in the story after praising the programme's reboot in a letter to show-

runner Russell T Davies, but said that his episode was "regarded by fans as the worst ever." Then in

June 2016, the Radio Times published Huw Fullerton's blog, The 13 Most

Divisive Doctor Who Episodes, and Love & Monsters again led the survey.

Originally shown twenty years ago today, this much maligned story

remains one of my favourites, and is actually far superior to the one

that followed it, Fear Her. Written by Davies and directed by Dan Zeff

 (his only outing on the show), it featured a stellar cast in Kay, Marc

Warren, Shirley Henderson, Simon Greenall, Moya Brady, Kathryn

Drysdale, and Camille Coduri. And the music is perfect!

• the working title of Love & Monsters (the only story with an amper- sand in the title) was I Love the Doctor - it's French broadcast was retitled LINDA 
• the episode is notable as the programme's first 'doctor-lite' script, and was produced in the same block as The Satan Pit two-parter
• Elton Pope (Warren) witnesses alien incursions from earlier stories: an Auton attack, and the Slitheen and Sycorax ships over London
• Elton is a fan of Jeff Lynne and his Electric Light Orchestra, and three ELO songs are heard here
• the fan group LINDA (London Investigation 'N' Detective Agency) is later mentioned in Time Crash, but the acronym was first used on BBC1's Why Don't You? (1973-1995)
• Victor Kennedy (Kay) is in fact an 'Abzorbaloff' creature from the Slitheen twin planet of Clom
• uniquely, the episode referenced all four of Davies' series arcs - Bad Wolf [virus], Torchwood [files], [Mr] Saxon, and the lost planets
• the Hoix monster is also seen in Torchwood: Exit Wounds, and The Pandorica Opens
• Bella Emberg (Mrs. Croot) first made (uncredited) appearances in The  Silurians and The Time Warrior
• Elton paraphrases Stephen King: "salvation and damnation are the same thing" (from The Green Mile)
• this is the only Doctor Who adventure ever to allude to oral sex
• the DWM Mighty 200 Poll (September 2009) placed Love & Monsters at 153rd, whilst Fear Her proved to be the most unloved Tennant story and ranked just 192nd
• To date, the serial has been repeated fifteen times on BBC3