The Basics - Issue 169, 23 January 1991. The front cover has a photo of Sylvester McCoy from the recent BSB DW Weekend.

News And Views -If Doctor Who is to return as a live action programme, it will not be until 1992, with confirmation that a final decision will be made in 1991. BSB merged with Sky Television on November 2nd to form BSkyB, and will have five channels. Special videos are planned for summer 1991 release, covering the First and Third Doctors, including material or full episodes from missing stories. 1980s stories are under consideration for release in 1992. Pre-production on the new film, with a £20 million budget, is scheduled for Autumn 1991, leading to a 1992 release. A letter writer imagines the series will return in fifty minute episodes as part of Def II, and there is a letter from one David Taylor of London.

New Fiction - The Brief Encounters by David Bishop features the Seventh Doctor, Ian and Barbara. Following the two recent preludes, the four part comic strip The Mark of Mandragora begins this issue.

Notables - Andrew Pixley replaces David Howe on Matrix Data Bank after some four years. In the feature That Was The Year... Gary Russell looks back at the DW events of 1990.

Boxpops - Top of the pop charts in January 91 were Bring Your Daughter To The Slaughter by Iron Maiden, Sadness Part One by Enigma and Innuendo by Queen.

Skaro Says - Andrew Curnow remembers being very excited about the forthcoming 80s video releases, as they were stories he could remember, but from a time before he had a VCR. Sidesk thinks this issue seems rather thin, with a poor cover and a glum overview of 1990, but he liked the article about Steven, the comic strip cliffhanger and the newspaper cartoon about democratic Daleks.

Critique - Not a bad issue to round off 1990 with (it was released just before Christmas), the highlights for me include Those Radio Times with coverage of the Troughton era, the review of the year and the start proper of The Mark of Mandragora, one of the better McCoy comic strips which included a nice continuity reference going right back to the first Marvel strip, The Iron Legion. It's nice to see that Ian and Barbara got together once they returned to London, as seen in the Brief Encounters, and the artwork accompanying it was cleverly done in the style of the original novelisation of The Daleks. Until researching these issues, I'd completely forgotten that Andrew Pixley had had a stint on Matrix Data Bank! He wisely set his stall out by stating that he wouldn't be making up answers to fit discrepancies and continuity queries, but would stick to accurate factual answers. It is amusing now to look back on the birth of satellite television with a mere 5 channels!