Tag Archives: Doctor Who

2023 marks the 60th anniversary of the BBC’s DOCTOR WHO. What its creators conceived as a kidvid series that would teach lessons about history introduced the Daleks in the second serial and began its transition into a science fiction series that would be one of the Beeb’s most successful brands. To celebrate we got three special the past couple of months to mark the transition from Jodie Whittaker to new Doctor Ncuti Gatwa, followed by the Christmas special. Fair warning, there are spoilers for The Giggle included.

At the end of Whittaker’s run she regenerates into David Tennant, something which baffles the Doctor as he’s never before regenerated into an older self (of course, the Chibnall run established they’ve had hundreds of forgotten regenerations, so who knows?). In the first special, The Star Beast (based on an old Doctor Who Weekly comic strip story), Tennant reunites with Donna Noble (Catherine Tate) who had to forget him completely at the end of their adventures. Now her daughter has taken in a helpless little alien pursued by more belligerent aliens — can the Doctor help?

I wasn’t a fan of Tennant’s Eleventh Doctor — I much preferred Eccleston, and Tennant’s era suffered from being elevated (much like Batman in the comics) into someone of almost godlike power. That said, he’s really good here and Tate as Noble is delightful. There’s the series’ first trans character and UNIT’s current science adviser (apparently the specials are laying the groundwork for a UNIT spinoff) in a wheelchair; on the downside, the big twist is incredibly obvious. “I don’t believe in destiny but if destiny exists, it’s heading for Donna Noble right now.”

The second special, Wild Blue Yonder, is very much in the mode of the Horror In Enclosed Spaces stories Tom Baker did, such as Horror of Fang Rock: the Doctor and Donna end up on an isolated, abandoned spaceship at the edge of the universe with a mysterious robot … and duplicates of themselves very eager to kill and replace them. Extremely effective. “There’s something on this ship so bad the TARDIS ran away — so let’s go kick its ass!”

The Giggle has Neal Patrick Harris return as the Toymaker (from the lost Hartnell serial The Celestial Toymaker); where the original (Michael Gough) dressed in a Chinese Mandarin’s robe, Harris fakes a bad German accent. The point being he cosplays nationalities, which gets us away from the yellowface “sinister oriental” aspect of the original (but doesn’t excuse it). He’s set in motion a plan to fill everyone in 2023 with a blind, absolute confidence in being right about everything (why yes, I do believe this was social commentary). Harris is a hoot and it’s 45 minutes pitting the Doctor against a foe way out of his weight class …

And then the Toymaker kills him so he can play against the regenerated fifteenth Doctor. Only instead of regenerating, the Doctor “bigenerates,” splitting off Ncuti Gatwa without erasing Tennant. At this point Russell T. Davies apparently decided the Toymaker was done so he has him eliminated way too easily, then Gatwa heads off while Tennant retires to live with Donna and her family. It feels very much like when Tennant split in two so he and Rose could have a happy ending, and it didn’t work for me at all — at least Tenant Two settled into another universe rather than hanging around in this one. Plus there’s an awful lot of seeding for the future, like the Toymaker hinting that even he wouldn’t dare play against Someone Not To Be Named. “I gambled with God and made him into a jack-in-the-box.”

Gatwa didn’t have much chance to shine in The Giggle but he proved absolutely amazing in The Church on Ruby Road. Here we meet the new companion, Ruby (Millie Gibson), a nineteen-year-old foundling seeking the family who abandoned her at the eponymous church (from which she gets her name). It turns out a string of bad luck surrounding Ruby relates to goblins who feed off coincidence and bad luck — and plan to eat the foundling baby an adoption agency just fostered with Ruby’s foster mom Carla (Michelle Greenidge).

The goblins were more silly than anything else, though Christmas episodes aren’t usually heavy drama — Davies has been quoted saying they’re designed for people who are feeling comfortable and laid back after Christmas dinner. The Doctor is great, obviously psyched for adventure; Ruby feels like another iteration of Rose, a pretty blonde who’s more than she seems (i.e., I presume it’s significant that given the chance to identify her mother, the Doctor doesn’t do so). I’m looking forward to next season. “Because I’m constantly hanging off things, I invented these.”

#SFWApro. All rights to images remain with current holders.

In the opening moments of Doctor Who‘s 24th season a soldier turns over the unconscious Colin Baker and discovers he’s regenerated into Sylvester McCoy, the seventh and final Doctor of the classic era. “Baker” was really McCoy in a wig — Baker declined to make a cameo appearance which he later said he regretted — but either way, we’re off and running in TIME AND THE RANI.Kate O’Mara’s Rani is back with her usual disdain of scientific ethics (“When you walk, do you worry about stepping on a bug?”) but her current mysterious project requires the Doctor to tackle some of the tech. Fortunately he’s going through the addled post-regeneration stage so by disguising herself as Mel, the Rani gets him working on her scheme. Mel, meanwhile, has her own challenges (and proves herself both smart and capable in combat). Regrettably this was the Rani’s last appearance on screen — I’d sooner see her that the Master’s umpteenth new face. “Regeneration has finally enabled me to regain my sense of haute couture.”

PARADISE TOWERS is at its heart a familiar set-up: an Earth colony has collapsed and broken into assorted odd subcultures waiting for a hero to set things to rights. In this case, though, the colony is a ginormous apartment building divided between brutal security, wild teen-girl gangs, elderly murderers and the sinister architect behind it all. A fun one, though I kept confusing it with next season’s The Happiness Patrol and wondering why the plot was so different. “If you don’t tell me who’s been feeding you behind my back, I won’t send you the great architect to eat!”

DELTA AND THE BANNERMEN has the Doctor and Mel join a time tour to 1959 Disneyland but wind up instead at a British holiday camp in the same era. And wouldn’t you know, the alien princess Delta is holing up in camp (and attracting the interest of a local biker) and the alien Bannermen who conquered her planet are dropping in too …

I didn’t like this one the first time I saw it and it hasn’t improved. The Bannermen are boring and generic, their leader the same and Delta’s romance feels quite unconvincing. The show catches the tinny tone of those old holiday camps well (my family vacationed at one) and the 1950s nostalgia made it a big hit with most of the crew. Sara Griffiths is great in a supporting role as Ray, a tomboyish mechanic who helps out. Original plans were for her to replace Bonnie Langford’s Mel as companion but that didn’t work out as Langford decided to stick around through the end of. The show does boast some unusual casting with Stubby Kaye as an American spy and British comic Ken Dodd in a supporting role. “The language of treason and war can never be forgotten.”

Much as I like Ray, no question we were better off with Sophie Aldred’s Ace as the last companion. In DRAGONFIRE she shows up on the alien world the Doctor and Mel are visiting, having torn open a wormhole with her experimental super-explosive Nitro 9 (nine times the punch of nitroglycerin!). Throw in the ruthless mercenary Kane (very well played by Edward Peel) and the return of Glitz from S23, and we have the ingredients for a great show; while the first episode was very talky, the characters and the interactions are so much fun, I didn’t mind.

Ace is just awesome, a young woman out looking for adventure and with no qualms about using Nitro 9 (“They didn’t understand that blowing up the art building was a creative act.”).  McCoy’s first season also shows him a great Doctor, much in the mode of Patrick Troughton’s scruffy cosmic vagabond, much more likeable than Colin Baker. Mel gets a good send-off, traveling the universe with Glitz (platonically thank goodness). “Why is everyone around here so concerned with metaphysics?”

#SFWApro. All rights to images remain with current holders.

As I said in reviewing S22, Colin Baker grew on me after his dreadful debut, but not enough. Still, he did get a spectacular final season in Trial of a Time Lord,  an epic story taking up the entire season, a la The Key to Time. In this case, though, tied even tighter together: all the episodes are simply titled “Trial of a Time Lord” where the previous season was broken up into several stories. Practically speaking, though, the series does break into several separate arcs and I shall treat it accordingly. Fair warning, this review includes spoilers.In the opening of The Mysterious Planet the bemused Doctor finds himself on Gallifrey and on trial before a jury of Time Lords; the prosecutor, seen above, is the Valeyard (Michael Jayston). He accuses the Doctor of willfully meddling in the affairs of other worlds (a no-no for Time Lords, at least officially) and leaving them worse than he found them. To prove his point he shows the courtroom a recent adventure in which the Doctor and Peri land on a strange world that soon turns out to resemble a ruined Earth. The Doctor realizes it is Earth, somehow yanked millions of miles across the universe. There are barbarian tribes, an underground high-tech installation and conniving Glitz (Tony Selby), a rogue who senses profit in it all. But the serial wraps up leaving the Doctor with more questions than answers. “I believe the ancients used this device to watch the Canadian goose.”

Mindwarp reintroduces the Doctor and Peri to Sil, the conniving alien they met in the previous season’s Vengeance on Varos. His world’s leader needs a new body for a transplant; in the process of testing out the Doctor as a potential host, the treatment apparently turns the Doctor evil. Or is he shamming? Or, as he tells the court, has the Valeyard tampered with the supposedly infallible Matrix from which he’s drawing these images? It turns out the Doctor was abducted to the courtroom from late in the adventure, which also involves Brian Blessed as the rebel leader Yrcanos. To the Doctor’s horror it appears that after he left, Peri became the alien’s host (Bryant’s brief moment of playing evil is better than I expected) which the Valeyard says is all on him.

This one is kind of a mess, partly because creative conflicts backstage meant Baker never could learn whether he was faking being evil or what? And it’s remarkable now how much Sil’s people, the inhabitants of Thoros-Beta, come off like Ferengi. Overall this doesn’t quite work but Peri’s death — even if we’re not sure it’s real — is a shock. “This is a court of law, not a debating society for maladjusted sociopaths.”

Terror of the Vervoids is that old reliable Who-plotline, murder on an enclosed setting. In this case it turns out to involved mad scientist Honor Blackman’s efforts to create/raise (it’s unclear which it is) vervoids, plant-like creatures she sees as perfect docile laborers. The Vervoids, however, have their own ideas on this point; there are multiple other schemes going on and the ship’s commander has met the Doctor before — and isn’t a fan.

For much of the running time this reminds me of one of Tom Baker’s old stories such as Robots of Death. However as Blue Towel Productions says, the Doctor’s offering this story as a defense and it’s hard to see how “look, this person asked me for help” disproves that he’s meddled on other occasions. It’s also murky about whether the Doctor wipes out the Vervoids as a Krynoid-like threat to animal life or if that’s more Matrix manipulation. It appears he did do it — but even faced with the far more dangerous Krynoids, the Doctor didn’t see the need to wipe out every last one. What this story does do is introduce the Doctor’s next companion, Mel (Bonnie Langford), seen above on Colin Baker’s left. Mel’s already traveling with him when the story opens, driving him up the wall by insisting he eat healthier. I like Mel — she’s more comic relief than Peri but she’s more forceful which Baker badly needs. “I’m subject to whims, so I’m told.”

We wrap up with The Ultimate Foe, who turns out to be, as the Doctor told the court earlier, the Valeyard. The story opens with the Master crashing the party from inside the Matrix and revealing what’s been going on. The underground base on Earth was being used to steal Time Lord secrets so the Time Lords hurled it across space as a counter-measure. When the Doctor showed up on Earth it became necessary to cover up that they’d meddled way more than he ever does, hence the decision to put him on trial.

The Valeyard is an alt.Doctor, created by fusing together all of the Doctor’s dark sides from his first twelve regenerations. The Master considers a Doctor turned pure evil to be a deadly rival so he’s determined to put a stop to this; if he can shame the Time Lords in the process, so much better. Now the Doctor and the Valeyard go inside the Matrix to settle things once and for all …

It’s a spectacular finish though as Blue Towel notes it doesn’t make much sense. Why such a clumsy method of dealing with the snoopers on Earth? Why don’t the Time Lords in the court know any of this? If some other faction is responsible, shouldn’t we meet them and see them dealt with? There’s plenty of fun in the goings-on, especially when we get into the Matrix, but the story is a mess. As is Peri’s end: while I’m glad she’s not dead, marrying her off to Yrcanos makes as little sense as Leela’s ending in Invasion of Time.

In any case, Colin Baker’s time as the Doctor ends here; showrunner John Nathan-Turner tried luring him back for the regeneration sequence that opens the next season but Baker passed, annoyed it would be nothing but a brief cameo. “I knew this was a mistake — my grip on reality is weak at the best of times.”

#SFWApro. All rights to images remain with current holders.

Watching the DOCTOR WHO serial Twin Dilemma, I said I didn’t remember finding Sixth Doctor Colin Baker so annoying when I first caught it and wondering if that would change as he grew into the role. Despite the title of this post, he has grown on me — just not enough. He’s Tom Baker’s Fourth Doctor but with the arrogance and impulsiveness turned up to 11 and the charm turned down to 5. And Peri isn’t a strong enough companion to match him — paired with Mary Tamm’s Romana, Leela or Tegan, he might have worked better.

That said, his first season is considerably better than the crappy Twin Dilemma. First up we have Attack of the Cybermen in which the Doctor and Peri arrive on Earth on Earth in the viewers’ present, 1985 — which is one year before the Cybermen arrive on Earth in the First Doctor serial The Tenth Planet (one of the lost stories that’s since been recreated, though I haven’t seen it). That series ended with the eponymous planet Mondas blown to kingdom come; the Cybermen plan to change history by blowing up Earth first.

It’s a solid story told in two 45-minute episodes, the new format for this season. Maurice Collborne returns as Lytton in a solid performance with a twist (I can see why he got a spinoff comics miniseries later). However it’s hard to believe the Cybermen are so puny one blow with a blunt instrument can knock their heads off. “It’s not often I have the opportunity to see a Time Lord squirm.”

VENGEANCE ON VAROS has the TARDIS materialize on the eponymous planet, where the leaders entertain the submissive population by broadcasting the grotesque deaths of revolutionaries such as Jason Connery (as usual showing none of his father’s talent) — and why not the Doctor and Peri too? A good one, reminiscent of Max Headroom in its portrayal of entertainment and those who consume it.  “I think we’re in what they call the ‘end game.’”

Kate O’Mara steals the show as a new renegade Time Lord in THE MARK OF THE RANI, arriving in England’s mining country during the early Industrial Revolution. She needs to extract chemicals from human brains for use on another planet under her control; that the loss of the chemicals will aggravate labor violence against the mineowners doesn’t concern her a whit. But now the Master, having survived his death in last season’s Planet of Fire (he tosses off an observation that nobody can kill him — that’s all the explanation we get), has shown up and so has the Doctor …

The Rani is quite simply a hoot. She sees both the Master and the Doctor as obstacles to her own goals and has no particular interest in them otherwise. She mocks the Master, both for his obsession with revenge and his elaborate plans for getting it ( “It’s something devious and over-complicated — he’d get dizzy if he tried to walk in a straight line.”). I fully expected her to become a major foe but she made one more appearance, in Time and the Rani, then nothing (I’m not the only fan who kept anticipating one of the adversaries in the reboot series would turn out to be her). O’Mari does very well with the role. “That was pure spite on the Lord President’s part, just because they ate his cat.”

THE TWO DOCTORS gets three forty-five minute episodes and deserves it — after all, this brings back Patrick Troughton and Frazer Hines as the Second Doctor and Jamie McCrimmon in an adventure set partly in space, partly in Spain, (obviously) spanning two eras and pitting the Doctors against both Sontarans and the anthropophagous Androgums. This was just pure fun, and not at all padded. Continuity-wise it’s a headscratcher, treating the second Doctor as a reluctant agent of the Time Lords rather than a fugitive from Gallifreyan justice (his role as an agent wouldn’t be until the Pertwee years), but I can forgive that. “No, sir, I’m afraid nouvelle cuisine has yet to penetrate this establishment.”TIMELASH is an unpopular one that I personally enjoyed. The Doctor and Peri arrive on a world he visited in an earlier incarnation, now under the tyrannical rule of the Borad; can the Doctor live up to his reputation and liberate them? And what role will a British writer Herbert play in this story of alien invasions, invisible men and far-future dystopia? This had some dreadful moments — the Doctor and Peri lashing themselves in with seatbelts is as bad an effect as the Mara’s rubber snake — but overall it worked for me. And while the disfigured Borad is a disability cliche, at least his disfigurement is memorable (a lot of similar scarfaced fiends don’t look impressively awful enough). “When time particles implode inside a trans-dimensional corridor, that’s no place to be.”

S22 wrapped up with REVELATION OF THE DALEKS, which reminded me a lot of the previous season’s Caves of Androzani in having multiple agendas, lots of schemers and a lot of plot (but not too much). The TARDIS lands on a cemetery world, Tranquil Repose, which offers cryonic preservation to those hoping science will eventually cure whatever killed them. However there are multiple schemes and agendas and there’s also Daleks and Davros … A satisfactory season ender. “I am so honored, my tongue speaks aloud what I dare not think.”

#SFWApro. All rights to images remain with current holders.

It’s a weird feeling to realize that my Doctor Who rewatch is now closer to the end of the classic run than the beginning. Season 21 has a lot of good stuff going on but we say goodbye to the Fifth Doctor, Turlough and Tegan; the new TARDIS team is disappointing by comparision.The first serial, WARRIORS OF THE DEEP has the TARDIS materialize on an underwater base two centuries from now (well, from when “now” was the 1980s). Earth is divided in a tense cold war between two superpowers, something the Silurians and the Sea Devils — working together onscreen for the first time — plan to exploit to eliminate the hairless apes they resent for stealing “their” planet. Can the Doctor stop a nuclear war? Can he, perhaps, make peace between the Silurians and humans? While the effort to broker peace is a common theme in Sea Devils/Silurians stories, this handles the themes of coexistence and mistrust very well. “Why do humans insist on thinking a futile gesture is a noble one?”

The two-part THE AWAKENING is weaker. This time they land in a small village where Tegan’s uncle lives, only to discover the traditional re-enactment of a local Roundhead/Cavalier battle is getting uncomfortably realistic. It’s reminiscent of countless stories about sinister goings on in small British villages, including the Pertwee serial The Daemons. It doesn’t succeed because the evil entity behind everything, the Malus, fails on every level. “I shouldn’t worry about it — as local magistrate, I shall find myself completely innocent.”

FRONTIOS, by contrast, takes a familiar premise — a beleaguered, struggling space colony — and injects it with life. Mysterious meteor strikes on Frontios, colonists getting sucked into the Earth — what’s behind it? And why is Turlough freaking out about it so much? Familiar stuff but well-executed, even if the alien Tractators look too much like Tenniel’s Mock Turtle in Alice in Wonderland. “If anyone asks whether I made any material difference to this planet’s welfare, tell them I came and went like a summer breeze.”

Like Warriors of the Deep, RESURRECTION OF THE DALEKS is a grim one involving an imprisoned Davros, a struggle for control of the Dalek race and the Doctor deciding not to go soft on destroying them as he did in Genesis of the Daleks. It’s grim enough that Tegan decides she can’t deal any more and walks out; it also introduces Lytton, an alien mercenary working with the Daleks, memorably played by Maurice Collborne (he’ll return in S22). I don’t like the Daleks using brainwashed human infiltrators — it feels off-brand for them — and given the reveal about the Movellans from Destiny of the Daleks here (they beat the Daleks) it’s all the more surprising they never returned, even if I didn’t care for them much. “I am hard to kill, Lytton. You should have realized that.”

Mark Strickson’s Turlough bows out and Nicola Bryant’s Peri Brown debuts in PLANET OF FIRE, a lackluster serial despite the presence of Peter Wyngarde and Barbara Shelley as colonists on the eponymous world, now collapsed into superstition with no knowledge of their origins; one member of the production teram quipped that the serial only existed so they could shoot at the beachfront vacation site Lanzarote.

This brings back the Anthony Ainsley’s Master for his final performance — Ainsley’s contract was expiring — though he would, in fact, return — and writes out Kamelion, returning for the first time since The King’s Demons despite having been on the TARDIS the whole time. Bryant is tremendous eye candy but her American accent as Peri is very inconsistent; worse, after someone as strong-minded as Tegan she’s kind of wimpy. One interesting trivia note, producer John Nathan-Turner insists the Master’s “How can you do this to your—” statement would have ended with “brother” if it hadn’t been cut off. “I deplore such unsophisticated coercion but your cooperation is necessary.”

Peter Davison fortunately gets a much better swan song in THE CAVES OF ANDROZANI. Efforts by a colonizer planet to crush an independence movement on Androzani are complicated by everyone on every side having a hidden agenda and by the scheming android master Sharaz Jek (Christopher Gable). A masked scarface who becomes obsessed with Peri, Jek is a blatant Phantom of the Opera knockoff but Gable plays him with such intensity I don’t care. I’m also amused by the climax in which the Doctor dies and regenerates while obtaining milk from a subterranean queen bat to save Peri’s life; as my friend Ross says, the milking happens off-stage so apparently we can take it for granted Time Lords know how to milk bats. A great farewell for Davison. “You sound like a prattling jackanapes — but your eyes tell a different story.”Colin Baker had a much less successful debut in THE TWIN DILEMMA, a dull story about aliens capturing young genius siblings and exploiting them for some tedious evil scheme (you can see how invested I was). It would be mediocre as Davison but Baker is incredibly unpleasant here; while the new Doctor is usually a little off, they’re not usually arrogant, bullying or selfish as Baker turns out. Peri is too ineffective for a good foil, too — Tegan would have held her own and told him where to get off. Baker’s clearly written to contrast with Davison — not so gentle or nice — but he comes across like Tom Baker’s Fourth Doctor amped up to 11, and it doesn’t work. While he’s probably the least popular of the classic Doctors, I don’t remember him being this awful so hopefully he’ll improve later. We’ll see. “I don’t want gallons of blood to be spilt, especially mine.”

#SFWApro. All rights to images remain with current holder.

The thirteenth Doctor, Jodie Whittaker, wraps things up with the six part Flux serial and three specials. I’m inclined to agree with most of the online commentary that Chris Chibnall’s farewell, like most of his run, didn’t quite work.It doesn’t help that Flux — the season-long story arc, a la The Invasion of Time —  follows on the big reveal of the previous season that the Doctor had dozens of regenerations before the supposed First Doctor, all of which he spent in service to Division, a black ops organization on Gallifrey. The Doctor had the ability to regenerate before the Time Lords — indeed it was her foster mother’s research on the Doctor’s DNA that made it possible for other Gallifreyans to do it. I didn’t like this idea but I didn’t hate it as much as many fans did. However, this season makes it worse.

The Flux is a cosmic force that breaks into the universe, destroying everything. One alien race is trying to protect Earth from the damage; the Sontarans hope to exploit it and conquer whatever survives. A sadistic creature called Swarm wants to destroy the Doctor for imprisoning Swarm back in the Division era.

The Weeping Angels show up hunting the Doctor and Yaz (the other Whittaker companions have gone) but it turns out they’re working for the Doctor’s foster mum, the head of Division. That organization now encompasses multiple races and worlds, and Mom wants the Doctor to come back to them. They’ve relocated outside time-space so whatever damage destroys the universe, they can shift to another. Or the Doctor can stay behind and die.

The series carries over the conceit of the previous season that the Doctor is not only the star of the show but the star of the universe: even the Apocalypse is about destroying the Doctor. Division apparently has no interests other than the Doctor (we’re told they’re Big, Big, Big but we don’t see it). It’s as absurd as The Trouble With Girls but that comic-book series knew it was absurd; Chibnall’s Doctor Who doesn’t. “I approach everything with caution — or abandon, one of the two.”

The follow-up to thwarting Swarm, Division and Flux was three specials, with a fourth to come introducing the new Doctor (though it looks like Whittaker’s gone at the end of the third). Eve of the Daleks has the Doctor, Yaz, some bystandards, and some Daleks trapped in a time loop on New Year’s Eve. While the Doctor and Yaz remember everything from previous loops so do the Daleks, so there’s no advantage; can the Doctor break out of the loop before everyone dies? “The Doctor will not save you. The Doctor will never save you.”

The Legend of the Sea Devils was fun, but stuffed with enough elements it would have worked better as a four part serial in the old days.  In ancient China the Sea Devils are hunting down a priceless McGuffin, opposed by the Doctor and Chinese pirate queen Mrs. Chang. It’s fun, but not well structured. It does acknowledge Yaz and the Doctor have feelings for each other but the Doctor doesn’t want to act on them, knowing no Companion ever lasts. “That’s the trouble with history, it’s never like the books — sort of like Stephen King movies.”

The same can be said of what’s apparently Whittaker’s farewell, The Power of the Doctor. We have the Master posing as Rasputin, classic paintings getting transformed (so the Mona Lisa and The Scream show the Master’s face), mysterious volcanic eruptions, a cyber-planet appearing over pre-Revolutionary Russia and the Master regenerating the Doctor into a clone of himself, enabling him, he hopes, to blacken her reputation.

What makes it work is that along with Yaz and the Doctor we get Ace (Sophie Aldred), the seventh Doctor’s companion, and Tegan (Janet Fielding) from the Peter Davison era. Ace is as amazing as she was in the old show — informed that she needs to climb down inside a live volcano, penetrate a Dalek base and stop them blowing up the world, she grabs up an aluminum baseball bat — “I”ll show you how I smashed Daleks in ’63!” (a reference to Remembrance of the Daleks). And the ending, after Whittaker has an initial, temporary regeneration (into David Tennant — I’d sooner have Matt Smith or Christopher Eccleston), shows a Companions support group including Bonnie (sixth doctor), Jo and the First Doctor’s Ian (William Russell, still alive). And yes, a few of the surviving Doctors put in an appearance too (Ace seeing Seven again was a great touch). The nostalgia factor made me love this one despite its flaws. “I could call this The Master’s Dalek Plan — but I think I’ll just call it the day I finally killed you.”

#SFWApro. All rights to images remain with current holders.

I liked Peter Davison’s first season of DOCTOR WHO but the second season as the Fifth Doctor topped it.

In the opening serial, Arc of Infinity, Adric is dead, Tegan has apparently quit as companion so it’s the Doctor and Nyssa alone in the TARDIS. As she starts to instruct him in all the repairs the ship needs, the Time Lords bring the Doctor whom and put him on trial, part of a scheme by a mystery villain. Meanwhile, Tegan goes looking for her brother who’s encountered something awful while visiting Amsterdam. Why yes, these plot threads do tie together — and behind them is Omega, the villain from The Three Doctors. The story ends, of course, with Omega defeated and Tegan back on board, but it’s fun getting there. Future Doctor Colin Baker has a supporting role as a Gallifreyan guard. “Think of me as a friend … who holds your continued existence in the palm of his hand.”

In Snakedance, the Doctor once again battles the Mara from the previous season’s Kinda. Once again the Mara take possession of Tegan (who gives an excellent Evil Tegan performance) as part of a scheme to obtain a mystical McGuffin that will let them materialize physically. It’s a good episode though the script reduces Nyssa to an exposition excuse. “What matters isn’t what you saw but that you saw anything at all.”

Mawdryn Undead introduces Mark Strickson as Turlough, an apparent schoolboy who’s actually an alien trapped on Earth (we don’t get any explanation how this came about — the Doctor and the women don’t even evince much curiosity). As he and the Brigadier (Nicholas Courtney, making the first of several return appearances) become involved with an alien scientist the Black Guardian (Valentine Dyall) congratulates Turlough on becoming the agent he will use to destroy the Doctor (avenging his defeat in the Key of Time arc) — or else. Turlough is the same kind of unreliable companion the show tried with Adric but Strickson’s a better actor. “In thirty years of soldiering I have never seen as much destructive power as demonstrated here, by the British schoolboy.”

In Terminus the TARDIS lands on a space leper colony, nominally a research station for treating Lazar’s Disease but in practice just a way for futuristic Big Pharma to extract money for isolating the contagious victims while doing as little as possible for them. It’s a weaker story but it has its moments; alas, we also lose Nyssa, as she stays behind on Terminus at the end to help research a curse. It was the last time in the classic series we’d have three Companions, unless you count Kamellion (keep reading). “Charm, the way I use it, is to disagree agreeably.”

Enlightenment forces Turlough to finally pick a side. The TARDIS is caught up in a spaceship race between Eternals, cosmically powerful but bored beings who feed off human emotion. In the chaos of the race, the Black Guardian figures Turlough can finally dispatch the Doctor — but of course, it’s not really that easy. Another good entry, shelving the Black Guardian’s threat for a long time. “You are a Time Lord? Can so small a domain as time have lords?”

The King’s Demons was a two-part wrap-up in which the Doctor arrives at the court of King John of England (the script emphasizes he’s not as black a villain as popular history paints him) to find things going very off from history — which turns out to be because the Master’s out to destabilize it as part of his newest plan. This introduced Kamellion, a shape-shifting robot, as a new Companion, but technical problems in operating him meant he’d be sidelined for the next year (hence his absence from The Five Doctors below). This story isn’t bad but it’s definitely minor. “John — he’s the one who lost things in the Wash?”

And then, between this and the next season, we got The Five Doctors. It’s an event that will never be matched given that Pertwee, Troughton, Courtney and Liz Sladen (Sarah Jane) have all passed on; while the show used Richard Hurdnall to fill in for the late William Hartnell I don’t see much point in replacing that many people.

The story: a mysterious force plucks the five Doctors out of time and brings them to the Death Zone on Gallifrey, though the Fourth Doctor and second Romana end up trapped in a time vortex instead; both declined to appear in the special so we got a brief appearance from what was then the unfinished serial Shada.The Death Zone is the Time Lords’ dark secret: long before they learned to travel in time, they found a way to pull other creatures out of time and drop them in the Death Zone, pitting the universe’s deadliest creatures against each other for sport. Now someone’s dropped the Doctors and assorted companions — Susan, Sarah Jane, the Brigadier, Tegan and Turlough (a couple more companions appear briefly) — into this battlefield; if any of them die, the Doctor gets retroactively wiped out. Horrified, the Time Lords offer the Master a fresh cycle of regenerations if he’ll rescue the Doctor; he agrees, though the Doctors understandably don’t trust him when he appears (it’s Anthony Ainsley’s best performance as the Master to date). Then there’s the question of who’s behind this plot and what, exactly, they’re plotting to achieve.

That was a wonderful one to watch.

#SFWApro. Rights to images remain with current holders.

At the end of Tom Baker’s last Doctor Who season, he regenerated into Peter Davison, an actor best known for a supporting role on All Creatures Great and Small. Watching Davison’s run has been a very different experience from watching Baker’s. PBS — America’s main source for Doctor Who back in the day — reran the Baker episodes repeatedly so I’ve watched them multiple times. I’m not sure I’ve watched anything by Davison more than once.

The first arc, Castrovalva, has the fifth Doctor completely addled by his regeneration. To help him recover, the companions (Adric, Tegan, Nyssa) place him in the TARDIS’ Zero Room, then take him to the eponymous city of Castrovalva. Little do they realize this is all an elaborate plot by the Master to destroy his old nemesis.

Castrovalva, of course, is one of MC Escher’s paintings, and the serial runs with that, culminating in a final episode where reality and perspective become completely unmoored.

It’s a good kickoff, showing the companions, while constantly squabbling, are also competent — even Tegan, a present-day Earthwoman, is more capable than, say Harry Sullivan. Davison comes off more like Baker in this and the followup, Four to Doomsday, than I remembered before shifting into his own interpretation; IIRC, he did the later episodes first to establish his character, then Castrovalva so he could play someone caught in transition. “‘If’ is only a word Tegan — you’ve got to make it a reality.”

The Doctor attempts to take Tegan back to Heathrow Airport in Four to Doomsday but instead they land on a ship captained by the alien Monarch, accompanied by three billion of his people and an assortment of Earth humans Monarch has captured over the centuries. He’s heading back to Earth again, but this time he has a plan … This is competent, but not great, and Adric is once again annoyingly willing to side with the bad guys, plus the Doctor forgives him too easily. However the Tegan/Doctor sparring is fun; while she’s far from the only companion to get PO’d at him, she’s much more likely to say so. Plus her knowledge of Australian Aborigine language shows, again, she’s no dummy. “It’s a fact, Tegan — but not a fact of life.”Kinda is a very strange one. The Doctor lands on an Earth imperial outpost where the occupiers are dismissive of the eponymous aliens and their absurd mysticism — even if some of the outpost staff are disappearing mysteriously. However the Kinda (I doubt this will shock you) know far more than the Terrans think and while there is a threat on this planet, it’s not what anyone is anticipating. This battle against the sinister Mara is eerie and effective, with a great role for Tegan, but the BBC really cut the budget on this one. The set dressing looks cheap from the get-go and the climactic manifestation of the Mara is a very obviously fake big rubber snake (though someone quipped that possibly their physical form is a rubber snake). “Telepathy is a very boring way to communicate.”

Tegan is really ready to get back to Earth after that adventure but instead they land in 1600s England when bubonic plague was sweeping the country. The locals are terrified they might be plague carriers but there’s also an alien Visitation to deal with. Among the pluses in this one are Michael Robbins’ turn as the dignified but conniving actor Richard Mace, Tegan’s tart tongue (“At least a stopped clock is right twice a day — that’s more than you’ve ever been!”) and a solid story. “It wasn’t an argument — it was a statement!”

Black Orchid was a rare anomaly, the first straight historical story — unlike The Visitation it has no SF element beyond the time travelers — since The Highlanders (I’m not sure they’ve had one since).  The TARDIS crew arrive at a country-house costume party in the 1920s, get mistaken for some of the guests and the Doctor gets to play cricket. Nyssa turns out to be an exact double for one of the locals. But inevitably there’s a murderer lurking in the wings …As a mystery it’s familiar stuff and there are some Cinema of Isolation disability cliches, but overall it’s tremendous fun. “He’s from Brazil — you know, where the nuts come from.”

Earthshock is considerably wilder. It starts with the TARDIS arriving on 26th century Earth where someone has planted a devastating doomsday bomb. The Doctor helps defuse it and then traces it back to a space freighter. What we learn before he does is that the Cybermen are out to destroy Earth — and when they recognize their old foe, the Doctor too.

I didn’t like the Cyberman designs here (more like armor than cyborg parts) but the story is a solid, grim one, ending with Adric’s death followed by a complete silence as the credits roll. “Even in captivity, the Doctor has the arrogance of a Time Lord.”

Finally the Doctor brings Tegan back to Heathrow Airport in the present — but almost immediately they’re involved in the mysterious disappearance of a Concorde passenger flight (the Concorde was a supersonic jet and very cool bck in the day). With a quick call to UNIT, the Doctor gets himself and his companions involved and before long they’re following the plane’s Timeflight back to the prehistoric past to battle the mystery figure behind it all (it wasn’t hard to guess who, but I won’t spoil it). A good story that ends with Tegan apparently left behind when the TARDIS travels away and realizing she’s not ready to quit. But don’t worry, she’ll be back next season. “Behind every illusion is a conjurer. I shouldn’t think he went to all this trouble just for our entertainment.”

Overall, a good season and Davison effectively stakes out his own place in Who history.

#SFWApro.

Tom Baker’s last season as the Doctor shook things up in multiple ways. Starting of course, with being Baker’s last season as the Doctor. A total of seven seasons and almost 200 episodes made him the longest-serving Doctor and the definitive one for many people.

Behind the scenes, Jonathan Nathan-Turner took over as showrunner, which led to a vast improvement over s17. Lalla Ward’s Romana, who also departs the TARDIS, comes off a much stronger character and the stories are al superior. We kick off with THE LEISURE HIVE, in which the two Time Lords visit the eponymous alien vacation spot, currently advertising a miracle rejuvenation treatment as an incentive for visitors. But the treatment has some problems and then the murders start … Not spectacular, but a solid start. “They’re doing interesting things with tachyons.”

I have absolutely no memory of seeing MEGLOS, even though I know I must have. It’s not the fault of the story which involves an alien intellect hidden in a cactus duplicating the Doctor’s body to steal a doomsday McGuffin. Can the Doctr save the alien culture that owns it, and is already falling apart over a science/religion dispute? Jacqueline Hill (one of the original companions) plays the religious leader though they don’t make much of that. But Romana battling the killer tulip I could have done without. “Let’s hope many hands make the lights work.”

Then the Doctor finally follows orders and brings Romana back to Gallifrey … except instead they wind up trapped in the vaguely explained Exospace for three serials. in FULL CIRCLE they land on a planet where shipwrecked travelers have been trying for generations to launch their ship and survive the attacks of the monstrous Marshmen. But the leaders have a secret about the colony’s history that they’re not telling…. this introduced Adric (Matthew Waterhouse), a mathematical prodigy, as the first of the new Companions for S19. He’s a little stolid for me, but by the start of the following season he’s improving. “We can’t return to Tramadon … because we’ve never been.”

STATE OF DECAY has the TARDIS land on another planet where the peasantry are under the thumb of hree sinister rulers who emerge in the dark and have sharp fangs — and did I mention there are a lot of bats flying around? A throwback to the horror stories of S15, it’s not at the same level but it is good. “In terms of applied socio-energetics, this society is losing its grip on level two development.”

As I have a soft spot for weird reality-warped TV stories (though I can be critical of them precisely for the same reason), I really enjoyed WARRIOR’S GATE. The TARDIS materializes on a space freighter using alien warriors to navigate the convoluted time-space of the area; outside the ship there’s nothing but white space and the broken-off front of an ancient building. The Doctor and Romana eventually figure out what’s going on and Romana sees her way out of returning to Gallifrey — staying in E-Space with K9 to liberate the warriors from other slavers (surprisingly most expanded universe stories about Romana have her return to Normal Space rather than stick around in E-Space). The Doctor and Adric return to N-Space. “A busted engine and a lost navigator — we have nowhere to to and no way to get there!’

No sooner do they arrive than THE KEEPER OF TRAKEN, leader of a benevolent union of worlds, summons them to his planet for help. Thanks to his power, evil intrusions manifest as statues and eventually shrivel away — but the latest Melkur hasn’t withered. It turns out that all is not well among the leaders of Traken and whoever’s behind the Melkur is taking full advantage of it. Can Adric, The Doctor and Nyssa (Sarah Sutton), daughter of Traken councilor Tremas (Anthony Ainsley), uproot the menace and destroy it?

This is a good one to start with and more memorable because the “who” behind the Melkur is the Master, returning for the first time since The Deadly Assassin. This story has a lot in common with that one — an ineffective bureaucracy facing a succession crisis, the Doctor suspected of murder, the Master lurking — but it stands on its own. At the end it appears the Master’s done for … until he traps Tremas and steals his body, making up for having used up his own regenerations. “Find your TARDIS, Time Lord — much good may it do you now.”

The season and Baker’s tenure close with the excellent LOGOPOLIS. The Doctor realizes that even in England his TARDIS’ outer shell is out of place — police boxes were largely phased out by then — so he turns to Logopolis, where their mental mastery of “block computation” will enable him to remake the TARDIS’ chameleon circuit. The Master is out to destroy him as usual, but when he arrives on Logopolis, where the monastic inhabitants are engaged in strange computations, he decides to shake things up by killing a few of them (this season was when shrinking people to death became his signature move).

Bad mistake. It turns out that the universe has already achieved heat death; Logopolis has been staving off the entropic end of everything by maintaining wormholes into other universes until it can open up a permanent gate. The Master’s killing so many people has shut the wormholes down so now entropy is catching up. Very fast. In the end, the Doctor and the Master have to work together to save the universe, but surprise, the Master pulls a double-cross! Fortunately the end has been prepared for …

Ainsley’s Master is more a malevolent mustache twirler than the restrained, sociopathic intellectual of the Pertwee years but he works as the new archfoe (he worked much better when I hadn’t seen Delgado in years). Nyssa winds up joining the cast — not only is her father dead, the entropic collapse wiped out the Traken Union — and so does Tegan Jovanka (Janet Fielding, above left). An Aussie air hostess who tries using the TARDIS to call the cops, she winds up trapped inside. I’ve read that adding her to the cast — the first Earth companion since Hand of Fear — was so that there’d be a non-tech person who could ask for exposition (something K9 and Romana hardly needed). They didn’t make her dumb, and she’s the most opinionated, short-tempered companion in … forever? All the ingredients are in place for Peter Davison’s first season as the Fifth Doctor, but that’ll have to wait until my next post.  “This was the work of the most brilliant master criminal in the universe!”

#SFWApro. All rights to images remain with current holders.

Doctor Who had a pretty good Season 15 followed by the uneven Key of Time season. Both seasons boasted some great episodes such as Image of the Fendahl —— and two great companions, Leela and Romana (plus introducing K9 in S15). S17 has no great serials, which may reflect Douglas Adams was the story editor.

While Adams did a great job with The Pirate Planet the previous season his quirky sense of humor doesn’t work as well here. Mary Tam’s Romana regenerating into Lalla Ward didn’t help either. Ward would work perfectly well as a cute human companion but as a Time Lady she’s way too ineffective; Tam had considerably more gravitas in her role.

The first serial, Destiny of the Daleks, opens with a comic sequence in which Romana tries several new looks before settling on Lalla Ward. This is the first indication we’ve had that Time Lords have any say in their appearance, but it’s not surprising she’s better at it than the Doctor. Then the TARDIS lands and they’re suddenly caught up in a battle between the Daleks and the Movellans, aliens (multiethnic, which was unusual in those days) who turn out to be androids. It turns out the planet is Skaro and the Daleks are there to resurrect Davros. The two alien races have stalemated each other and the Daleks hope Davros’ genius can see a strategy they’ve missed.

The problems with the serial are that the Movellans are uninteresting adversaries and David Gooderson is a poor substitute for Michael Wisher’s Davros. Nobody has ever matched Wisher’s ability to infuse Davros’ voice with both a mechanical quality and raw, fanatical rage. I’d have sooner left Davros dead, but after this he’d return in several later Dalek stories.

Adams himself wrote City of Death which is this season’s best, though I don’t like it as much as many. Julian Glover plays Scarlioni, a count who’s actually an alien fractured in multiple times. As one of his selves lives in Renaissance Italy, it’s a simple matter to have Leonardo paint multiple copies of the Mona Lisa which present-day Scarlioni can sell covertly (after stealing the one in the Louvre) to raise money for his Big and Evil Plan. It’s a solid story but a buffoonish American investigator makes a really annoying character.

In The Creature of the Pit, the TARDIS lands on a metal poor planet where people who cross the ruling noblewoman get thrown to the eponymous oozing horror. The monster, however, is not what it seems … Again, a lot of comic relief in the clueless freedom fighters here.

Nightmare of Eden has a freak space-warp accident fuse two ships together — more alarming because one of them is involved in a drug-smuggling plot. This was a mess behind the scenes — the director and cinematographer got yanked off midway through — which may explain why it’s so forgettable to watch.

Things pick up with The Horns of Nimon, a reworking of Theseus and the Minotaur The TARDIS materializes on a vessel carrying a group of royal teens as sacrifices to the mighty Skonnosian Empire; on Skonnos, they will be thrown into the labyrinth of the Nimon. The Doctor and Romana are not, of course, down with this. For the first time, Romana II shows some spine and I do like the dilemma of the Theseus analog Seth (“I’m not a prince and I didn’t set out to destroy the Nimon, that’s just a story I made up to give them hope.”). Overall it’s mediocre though, but I do love the line “Have you noticed how people’s intellectual curiosity declines the moment they start waving guns around?”The final serial of the season, Shada, never aired due to a tech strike at the BBC. Audio versions and a novelization followed and now the Beeb has used animation to complete the unfinished scenes. The Doctor and Romana are visiting the retired Time Lord Chronotis at Cambridge, where he works as a professor. The sneering villain Skagra (Andrew Sachs) is there too, seeking to pluck the location of something called “Shada” from the professor’s mind. It turns out Shada is a Time Lord prison that everyone has forgotten exists. Skagra plans to liberate one of the criminals imprisoned there as a necessary component in his plan to impose universal order.

I’m really happy to live in a world where so many lost serials have been reconstructed and this one is above average for the season though no more than that. Romana’s back to being wimpy but the humor doesn’t overpower the story. As a fan, definitely worth seeing.

I’ll be back in a few months with S18, Tom Baker’s swan song as the Time Lord.

#SFWApro. Rights to all images remain with current holders.