Kasterborous 500 -- It's happening!
We don't know quite when it lands, but we're celebrating anyway...
“500ish” said (Dr) James McLean earlier, via WhatsApp, to my suggestion that we celebrate Kasterborous’ 500th episode with something a bit bigger than initially considered.
We have, you may have heard, lost count over the years. But roughly speaking, we’re in the 500 zone; we may have passed it, it may be imminent, but it is definitely happening. Or has happened. It’s our own UNIT Dating Mystery.
(And, of course, is almost certainly not the actual 500, which will happen this week.)
So, I have been playing around with ideas. I’ve already recorded with Brian Terranova, looking back at some of the things we did beyond the podKast with a K — the comic strip, the book, the magazines, and SPLINK.
That was on Sunday, and I’m already making a list of the people we could invite on for our anniversary — in fact, I think we’re looking at multiple episodes.
Tied into all of this is the growing Kasterborous Archive. It has become increasingly apparent that so much material from the old Kasterborous and its forum are gone forever. That is a big shame, and I want to bring it all back. So, over on the Kasterborous Patreon, things are going to be stepping up a gear as I add more lost and overlooked material.
I can also tell you that Brian has shared a ton of never before heard interviews, which includes chats with Sylvester McCoy, Paul McGann, and Matt Smith. That’s just a taste of the sort of thing you will be able to find in the Kasterborous Archive (more on that below).
500 vs. 20
Rolling the 500ish into a big celebration makes sense. Next year is our 20th year of podcasting, with the first episode released in March 2007.
By my reckoning, this makes Kasterborous the longest-running Doctor Who podcast in the UK!
But 500 seems more impressive to me, which is why our 20th anniversary will be relatively muted. The big deal is 500ish, which I think is vague enough for us to do quite a lot with.
What can you do to celebrate?
For each one of you reading, I am offering a 90% discount on our two premium paid tiers on the Kasterborous Patreon.
You need to enter this Discount code at the checkout: 43418
That unlocks everything on Patreon: the full-length podcasts, the videos, and the Kasterborous Archive.
Some more thoughts on the Kasterborous Archive
The history of Kasterborous is complicated. Between 2005 and 2015, it operated on www.kasterborous.com, and as a relatively new father with fast-growing children, it seemed the right time to step away and do something else, but keep the podcast going.
So, the site was sold… only within a few months, it was sold again, its content removed, and replaced with gambling content in Turkish language (?!). This event resulted in the birth of www.thedoctorwhocompanion.com, so it wasn’t all bad.
But the missing content? Yeah, that was bad.
Over the years, I’ve considered restarting the site in order to keep that old material online, but this is easier said than done. Using Patreon to host the best of the non-written articles, while sharing the written material in articles like this, seems like a better option. I don’t need to rebuild the website from scratch — that’s a time-consuming proposition!
The Patreon is the Archive
So, that’s the plan. Rescuing a lost site, restoring its content, and maybe even rebuilding that community in some way, reuniting the people who left comments on articles and posted in our forum (we had a forum?!)
That’s what our Patreon is all about as we enter 500ish and move off into our 20th year. If you have any memories of the old site, or screenshots, or were part of the forum, we want to hear from you.
James and I spoke about this in a podcast in 2025. The old internet is almost completely gone. Websites have been ditched and deleted, or bought and replaced (see above). Personal home pages (Geocities, etc.) are gone. Cultural moments, group experiences, all lost to time. At its peak in 2013-2015, Kasterborous was attracting over 3000 readers a day. That is a huge group of people with affection for Doctor Who reading our scribblings!
So, yes, podcasts come early on Patreon, with extra material and ad-free. But the real heart moving forward is the archive — rescued pages, forgotten posts, and a community history that would otherwise be gone.
This is going to be a big job.