Kroagnon Awards 2016: Day Four - Doctor Who

Welcome to the Kroagnon Awards 2016! All this week, we're announcing all our favourite things of 2015, ranging from the broad to the niche. As well as being voted on by editors Dave, Matt and Tom, several categories have been decided by you, our readers, and industry experts.

The third episode of 2015's Doctor Who series was our favourite. Under the Lake was written by Toby Whithouse, directed by Daniel O'Hara and saw the Doctor and Clara arrive in a base haunted by ghosts at the bottom of a lake. This was a perfect synergy of the talents of contributors in front and behind the camera, creating an atmospheric and involving tale. Next on our list was Heaven Sent. Read our review of Under the Lake here.

It's hard to believe 2015 was only Peter Capaldi's second year leading the series, such is the assured professionalism he brings to the role. This last year saw his Doctor mellow from the more antisocial incarnation of 2014 to a much more amiable figure. It's without a second thought that he is named our Best Actor of 2015, and we hope he remains in the role for many years yet.

Starring in Toby Whithouse's Under the Lake and Before the Flood, Sophie Stone's portrayal of Cass was extraordinary. Even leaving aside the fact that this was (somehow) the first time a deaf actor had played a deaf character in Doctor Who, Stone's performance was memorable and engaging and as such, Cass emerged as one of the most popular guest characters of 2015. 

Doctor Who in 2015 brought with it a host of exciting new and familiar villains but our favourite was the head of the Zygon revolution, Bonnie, as featured in The Zygon Invasion and The Zygon Inversion. Jenna Coleman gave a markedly different performance to her usual portrayal of Clara, showing the range of her abilities, getting to be much colder and steely than normal. It was an extremely strong performance that just managed to edge out Julian Bleach's return as Davros at the top of the season.

Toby Whithouse has been a regular contributor to Doctor Who in the Steven Moffat era, having written his first episode for the 2006 series. His two 2015 episodes - Under the Lake and Before the Flood - were another show of his innovative and exciting writing style, and it's for this two-parter that he is named our Best Writer of last year. We hope Whithouse continues to contribute to the series as he is one of its most reliably entertaining writers.

As in 2014, Rachel Talalay helmed the two closing episodes of Doctor Who's main run last year. Once again she did so in great style, bringing us the series' first single-hander and the return of Gallifrey in two feature-length episodes - Heaven Sent and Hell Bent. These were among the most cinematically-staged stories of 2015, and were even more popular than her début. Also nominated in this category was Hettie Macdonald, director of The Magician's Apprentice and The Witch's Familiar. 

As well as being a highly accomplished camera operator (including on productions such as Peter Harness' Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell) Richard Stoddard is a rising star in the world of cinematography. This year he served as Director of Photography on four episodes of Doctor Who - Under the Lake, Before the Flood, The Girl Who Died and The Woman Who Lived. His work here speaks for itself and it's a credit to Stoddard that he win this award against the stiff competition of Suzie Lavelle and Mark Waters. More please.

Serving as Executive Producer on the 2015 episodes of Doctor Who, Brian Minchin is perhaps the least celebrated of the core production team, but deserves equal credit for what many are calling the best era the programme has ever enjoyed. It's certainly true that the series would be poorer without his influence and one of the most interesting things that hasn't been discussed in the wake of Chris Chibnall's appointment as Doctor Who's showrunner from 2018 is whether Minchin will be there alongside him. We can but hope.

You probably don't know Will Oswald's name but he has edited more episodes of Doctor Who since 2005 than anyone else. In fact, his closest rival, Mike Jones, has under half the number of episodes to his name that Oswald does. It's thanks to him that episodes such as last year's Under the Lake, Before the Flood, Zygon story and two-part series finale emerge so polished, exciting and professional. Being an editor is a thankless task to the wider viewing public, so we felt it only right that the accolade for Unsung Hero this year went to Will Oswald.

2015 was not short of Doctor Who merchandise, but our favourite was The Scientific Secrets of Doctor Who, written by Dr Marek Kukula and Simon Guerrier. This blended fact and fiction to create an interesting look at how the science of Doctor Who compares to what we know as fact. There's a few highly entertaining short stories in here from respected authors such as Una McCormack, David Llewellyn and Jonathan Morris. Read our original review here.

Our final category for today is the one you voted on. Heaven Sent was an instant hit with viewers, and so it's no surprise to reveal that you voted it your favourite episode of 2015. It was a tour de force for Peter Capaldi, who spend most of this dramatic hour alone, and showcased what the current production team is capable of.

Join us tomorrow for our final round of awards, this time focusing on

the productions of audio company Big Finish!

The Scientific Secrets of Doctor Who

The Scientific Secrets of Doctor Who is a great book. That much is certain in my mind, and I would wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone with at least a passing interest in Doctor Who or science and its history. What Simon Guerrier and Dr Marek Kukula have come up with here is a guide that works as in a variety of ways. For starters, it's a nice anthology of some original Doctor Who fiction. It also serves well as a collection of essays on the relationship between our beloved show and real science and thirdly, it makes a good quick reference guide with its occasional box-outs. It works most successfully when you consider the book as a whole though. With its variance of tone and topic it helps keep the reader engaged even in the more complicated places.

I probably ought to explain what this book actually is. The title is a little ambiguous but the format for each chapter is basically a short story set within the show's fifty-one year history followed by a non-fiction section explaining an area of science covered by the story. These are pleasingly broad and are grouped into three sections: Space, Time and Humanity. If you were approaching this book with the hope of finding out how a Sonic Screwdriver is built or learning the life cycle of a Skarosian giant clam, you won't get what you might be expecting. This takes a completely detached look at how the science included in the fictional side of the show marries up with what we actually know and predict. But, as the authors note on the first page, this equally isn't a guide to which bits Doctor Who got right and wrong. The end product is of course far superior.

Of the fifteen stories included, a third of them star the Twelfth Doctor. By far the strongest of these is David Llewellyn's The Mercy Seats, which is told from the perspective of fourteenth century poet Geoffrey Chaucer. This is an intelligent and witty tale with a perfect balance of character and plot. Consequently it's one of my favourite short stories of all time. Some of the other TARDIS line-ups chosen by the remaining contributors aren't entirely surprising - for example, Marc Platt delivers a pre-An Unearthly Child First Doctor and Susan tale and Andrew Cartmel a Seventh Doctor, Ace and Raine story - but there are also some pleasant billings. 

Rounding out my top three would have to be Una McCormack's In Search of Lost Time, featuring the Eleventh Doctor, and Jonathan Morris' The Hungry Night, starring the Christopher Eccleston incarnation. Both of these are really great little stories, with McCormack's being especially humorous and flawlessly nailing Matt Smith's portrayal. Jacqueline Rayner's Potential Energy narrowly misses out of this grouping, but her story is still excellent and massively humorous and clever. Other things of note for me were a War Doctor story (from Justin Richards) and an entry from James Goss, another of my favourite writers. The only Doctor who doesn't get a story is Paul McGann, which feels like a bit of a shame given the expanse of his era. It's also slightly disappointing that Guerrier himself didn't write a story for this given how good he is at that side of things.

But now to cross to the other half of the book. The subjects discussed by Kukula and Guerrier are extremely broad, ranging from artificial intelligence to the human memory to astronomy and astrology to the Second World War. It's a credit to the author that they make each section just as interpretable and interesting as the next. Speaking personally, I'm much more interested in the science of humans and the world around us than space and what's often referred to as 'hard' science fiction. However, Scientific Secrets makes even the subject matter I'm naturally less inclined towards intriguing. The authors have a writing style perfect for this type of publication; they write with refreshing permeability whilst still including a wealth of facts and figures. It never feels like a burden but this level of education and information is hardly surprising from the man who brought you the mind-bogglingly comprehensive Bernice Summerfield: The Inside Story.

This isn't an especially cheap book at £16.99 for the hardback, but I'd say it's worth every penny. Not all of the stories are top-drawer but overall this is a comprehensive book like Doctor Who fans have never had before. It's also laid out very appealingly inside, which helps sell the potentially opaque content (never a danger in Kukula and Guerrier's hands) even further. This is a unique publication and certainly one of which all contributors ought to be proud. If you're not especially science-minded (bearing in mind a lot of this was at least passingly familiar to me from physics and computing A Levels) you needn't worry as Guerrier himself comes from an arts background. This is written in perfectly approachable - but never patronising - language, making it a good choice for beginners and veterans alike.

It's no surprise that there's an lengthy launch tour lined up for the next few months, including a high profile event at the Royal Greenwich Observatory soon. If you only buy one Doctor Who book this year, make it this one.

Thanks to Sophie Goodfellow and Simon Guerrier.