Robot

Tom Baker

The very first story with a new Doctor I presume is cause for celebration, and Tom Baker is revealed in ‘Robot’ – a somewhat stock-standard story with the old ‘mad scientist’ premise built on the King Kong legend. Terrance Dicks put his pen to this one, perhaps the first story he has written outright in the many years he’d been involved in the show (since Patrick Troughton’s time).

When you look at the story it is full of wacky ideas, nutjobs and not-particularly convincing robot. It’s far from the best Doctor Who story, it’s not particularly special and perhaps somewhat predictable. But what do you want from a story with the main goal to introduce your new leading man? It succeeds in showing Tom Baker in several lights and pique your interest in this new Doctor, with a keen eye to see what he will do.

Jon Pertwee was stoic and reliable, but Tom Baker immediately presents as unpredictable. He has a charm melded with a comic turn but an ability to be serious when required and even angry. He presents us with a full gamut of emotions in his first story. He throws himself into the role with great gusto!

Winters shows the robot to Sarah

A new addition to the cast – Ian Marter as Harry Sullivan. An excellent character, fantastically played. Almost seemed to be there to be the straight man to the Doctor! There is a great sequence where Tom and Ian are skipping and it gets faster and faster. It must have taken a lot of practice to get right! Sarah Jane Smith is also well written, and the robot, played by resident big man Michael Kilgarriff, becomes attached to Sarah much as King Kong did to.... well I don’t know the lady’s name, but it’s a great instance of borrowing from a classic.

The centre of it all is Think-Tank, a government-funded scientific research core who seem to have gone a bit off the rails thanks to Miss Winters and Mr Jellicoe who are in charge. The plan to gain control of the Earth’s nuclear weapons to take

control though is just a little simple in my mind, although generally I found ‘Robot’ a fun story. Nice twist for the Brigadier’s character when he thinks he has everything sewn up by firing the ‘disintegrator gun’ at the robot, only to make it ten times the size it originally was!

I did enjoy Sarah Jane’s attempts to interview the people at the SRS – Scientific Reform society. People dressed as Nazis believing they are in the best position to tell people how to live their lives, when in fact they were just a bunch of nerds. Was this the show’s first parody of its fans?

Last but not least I want to mention the rather wonderful performance of Edward Burnham as Professor Kettlewell. He played a similar character in ‘The Invasion’, but took ‘crazy old scientist’ to a new level in ‘Robot’, especially teasing out all his hair at right angles. Wonderful stuff. Fun story.

6.5/10

Planet of the Spiders

Jon Pertwee’s swansong is a strange six part tale involving the good, bad and questionable aspects that have become the trademarks of his era. Originally planned as the final story with the Master, Roger Delgado had sadly died and this was then a completely new story written by Barry Letts and Robert Sloman.

'The Great One'

It’s not their best work, nor their work. Jon Pertwee is again a tower of strength as the Doctor, Elizabeth Sladen wonderful as Sarah. Great performances throughout from John Dearth as Lupton and John Kane wonderfully playing Tommy, the man who starts off simple but his learning disability disappears thanks to the Doctor’s Metabelis crystal.

It ties in and up a lot of stuff, finally we get some time on Metebelis Three, a planet the third Doctor often talked about (and went, briefly, in episode one of ‘The Green Death’.) Roger Delgado’s widow, Kismet Delgado, gets to voice the ‘Great One’, the all powerful spider. Cyril Shaps is back for another story, this time he dies in the first episode! And there are a host of players from the Pertwee era with guest parts and Jo gets a mention too.

The Brig and Benton take Bessie on the chase!

There’s a chase sequence, a very pointless and long one, in episode two. But it’s all a bit of fun as the Doctor and Lupton go from craft to craft. It takes half the episode only to end with Lupton being transported away. Some dodgy CSO when the Whomobile flies, and then for the village on Metebelis Three – one trait common with the Pertwee era which was less successful.

We have the three main UNIT regulars, the Brigadier, Benton and Richard Franklin in his final story as Mike Yates, redeeming himself for past foibles in ‘Invasion of the Dinosaurs’ which is nice. Generally the acting is fantastic, however, the exception is the villagers, and I hate to single someone out for bad acting, so I will single out both the mother and daughter of the villagers – Neska and Rega (I won’t write the actors names down) as possibly the two worst performances in Doctor Who history. The mother over acts terribly, the daughter underacts. Maybe it’s courtesy of bad dialogue, but they are genuine shockers!

The spiders are, on the whole, realised pretty well and are pretty creepy. They’re a little bit megalomaniac standard for me, and the sets in the spiders city are poor. Mostly light blue or cream corridors and the spider council sits on plastic benches. I understand they needed to be raised to facilitate dialogue with the human characters, but it’s not just the lighting that’s bad here. The whole thing should have been very dark and cobwebs, probably didn't need to build anything. Cobwebs in front of a black backdrop would have worked much better.

George Cormack as Kanpo.

The at the end we have some wonderful moments. The process of regeneration explained far more than previously. Great lines and moments, the idea to have Kanpo regenerate first was a great piece of writing to clue the audience in to what was going to happen to the Doctor. Kanpo is played by Geroge Cormack, who played Dalios in 'The Time Monster', and couldn't have been more suited to the role. Also, he is now the Monk which the Doctor talked about with Jo in 'The Time Monster'. 

Wonderfully played final episode by Jon Pertwee, showing fear brilliantly when faced with the great one. The use of Tommy is also very good. So much to love mixed in with a bit of the dubious too. Farewell Jon Pertwee, another great Doctor. An actor worthy and perfect for the role. That’s 3/3 so far!

7.5/10

Invasion of the Dinosaurs

Director Paddy Russel’s first Doctor Who story was ‘Invasion of the Dinosaurs’, a strange story that I really enjoyed except for, well, any Doctor Who fan will know what’s wrong with this story. If you’re going to call a story ‘Invasion of the Dinosaurs’, then simply your first priority once the script is written is to have decent looking dinosaurs. And this story scores a massive fail in that area.

The Drashings were quite dinosaur-like in ‘Carnival of Monsters’, so it’s disappointing that something of the same quality couldn't be done for this story. The dinosaurs don’t work on any level sadly, and there are three key reasons why. 

Jon Pertwee CSOed onto a model. Not the best. The Stegosaurus isn't great, but the backdrop is dreadful.

1/ They lack detail, movable limbs and don’t look realistic at all. In fact, they look like something out of a carton of cereal. They appear to be held by their tails. It’s shocking.

2/ The backdrops they are put in front of don’t match the filming. They look like models sadly and it was a very strange decision to do it this way. As the dinosaurs only, for the most part, appear outside, the corresponding shots are all on film. So the Doctor looks up to see a T-Rex, cut to a T-Rex in front of a set that looks like it’s from ‘Thomas the Tank Engine’. They should have, in this case, shot the angles they needed on film and CSOed the monsters in. Instead the Doctor gets CSOed onto unrealistic backgrounds, shot on video, facing giant plastic toys. Fail on every level.

3. They linger sooooooo long on the dinosaurs. The key to building suspense is limit the time you see the monster. Give glimpses. But the shots just go on and on and on. The longer you look at the dinosaurs, the more you see their faults.

A T-Rex in chains.

Perhaps a different director would have come up with a different way to do the shots. But sadly it’s embarrassing for Paddy Russel. Michael Ferguson would have been perfect for this story – he is the most inventive and clever director of this era in my opinion, and that’s the sort of thinking ‘Invasion of the Dinosaurs’ needed to work.

But enough of the criticism, because actually I like this story save the dinosaurs, which I understand is a fairly common stance amongst Doctor Who fans. The plot, although quite non-sensical when examined closely, is very interesting. I rather like most of the sets even if many of the corridors wobble a bit too much. It’s well cast, seeing the return of Peter Miles as Whitaker, played almost exactly as he played his character in ‘The Silurians’. But mad-Professor – he’s your man! Martin Jarvis as his sidekick was perhaps under-utilised. We have Mike Yates back and Richard Franklin gets to explore the more gullible side of his nature as he changes sides, believing this Earth is in trouble.

Whitaker (left) Sarah, Finch and Grover.

Whitaker plans to turn the Earth back to the Jurassic era, keeping London intact. Really though – isn’t he just taking London back in time? Why would you bother reversing time for all the Earth when you already had equipment that pulls dinosaurs out of time and brings them to the future – ie. he has already achieved time travel!

But don’t look too hard, and you won’t notice the absurdity of the script. We have a group of people who believe they are on a space ship heading to ‘New Earth’, but in fact are still stuck in central London whilst they turn time back. It’s interesting that Hulke has written them all as quite dim, but believing that the world has become ultra-polluted and society has degenerated. He writes them as fools, in stark contrast to characters in ‘The Green Death’. That’s what is really interesting about ‘Invasion of the Dinosaurs’ – what happens when environmentalists go too far? Hulke and Letts, it must be said, were on different sides of the fence politically.

Sarah aboard the fake space ship.

The acting is very solid, this aspect Paddy Russel excels at when it comes to directing. It moves pretty well. There’s a strange instance when the Doctor has been framed, and then he escapes, and he starts running away to the middle of nowhere for some reason though, and that seems to simply be filler as there’s a long chase sequence. Benton has a wonderful moment when he punches General Finch, played by John Bennet. As they fight he is told he will be court-martialled and he says ‘yes sir, very good sir’ as the fight goes on. He then smiles about it in the final scene, and is wonderfully reminded by the Brigadier he’d better not make a habit of it. As for Mike Yates, it seems the end of the line for him...

Classic moment - Benton grapples with Finch!

I still like this story despite a seemingly very critical review. The plot’s bonkers and the dinosaurs are embarrassingly woeful, but still I like this one. It’s a pity the colour-recovery didn’t work out for episode one, the results are ok at points but pretty bad at others. It’s possibly the best episode of the six too, very foreboding. I love the idea of the Doctor and Sarah returning to London to find no-one around, martial-law enforced and wondering what’s happened. It’s very eerie, and we only see a dinosaur at the very end. Oh, hate to end on a negative note but three episodes end with the Doctor being faced with a (dodgy obviously) T-Rex. Oh, if only....

6.5/10

The Green Death

Jo and Professor Jones.

We say a fond farewell to Katy Manning and Jo Grant in this story. We return to a far more familiar style of tale for the Pertwee era in an Earth-based story that could have been penned by Malcolm Hulke for its political message, but was in fact written by Barry Letts and Robert Sloman. It has a strong environmental message, before the green movement had really started to make waves. In fact we see the environmentalists shown as basically a bunch of fringe-dwellers led by the charismatic Professor Cliff Jones (Stewart Bevan).

Stevens and the 'BOSS'.

The plot is an interesting mix of styles I feel. It’s quite different in many ways from the previous two season-finales in ‘The Daemons’ and ‘The Time Monster’. There’s a blend of comedy in this one and I think it’s just about Jon Pertwee’s best performance as the Doctor. It’s little wonder – he gets to pretend to be a milkman and the cleaning lady in a wonderful comic-turn which had previously been denied the actor, who entered Doctor Who with a career primarily as a comedian.

The main protagonist is the ‘BOSS’, a megalomaniac computer voiced by John Dearth. It’s a lovely performance from a man who didn’t actually get to appear on screen, full of colour and clear enjoyment. His chief puppet is ‘Stevens’, the chief of Global Chemicals, played by Jerome Willis. There’s just one thing – where has this computer come from? Who built it? In some ways it’s a copy of WOTAN from the first Doctor Who story ‘The War Machines’, albeit done much better. The BOSS plans to take over the world when the other main computers are all linked to him. However, again, it is never explained where the computer came from and why it became so crazy and power mad.

Yates and Stevens.

The direction is solid, especially for the actors’ performances. I wonder though if they ran out of time on the location shoot, because there are a number of shots that should have been shot outdoors that have instead been done on CSO. It doesn’t work at all well unfortunately, and that’s disappointing because much of the story is really good and really well done. The glowing green marks on people infected by the ooze or maggots for instance. The maggots themselves are pretty well done in most cases. But, like ‘Carnival of Monsters’, CSO is relied on just a little too much. Also some of the model shots of the maggots on the hill don’t match the exterior shooting at all. At the end of the day, they had time and money constraints, but it holds back the story from being as good as it could have been.

Jon Pertwee the cleaning lady!

The characters are great, and the Brigadier, Benton and Yates all have good parts. Poor Richard Franklin, doesn't appear until episode three or four, and this was his only story in season 10! But he gets to look funky in a suit and wear his hair unlike a military type. Katy Manning gets a great send off, perhaps this is the one time I can believe in the ‘falling in love and getting married’ reason for leaving the show. With Letts and Sloman, Katy had a writing duo who know her character very very well, so the issues of ‘Planet of the Daleks’ do not resurface here. It does however make the whole situation with Jo and Latep in the previous story seem even more out of place.

Set in a wonderful little Welsh mining town, the characters and lilting accents colour the story very well, with some wonderful performances from the supporting cast. The Nut-Hutch, the home of Professor Jones and the whole-wheat community is also well done. Very sad to see Jo go, it’s definitely the end of an era. The final scene where the Doctor drives off, teary-eyed, is one of the most touching moments in the show’s history to this point, and I suspect, to this day it remains so.

7.5/10

The Time Monster

The Doctor prepares to track the Master.

‘The Time Monster’ was an interesting story. A lot of fun, a bit crazy and definitely non-sensical,  but an interesting idea that may or may not have worked. I’m still not sure. On the one hand as an audience member I had to suspend disbelief when looking at a man in a white bird suit apparently being the monster, and groaning at the name ‘Chronivore – eater of time’, and yet for much of it I enjoyed the absurdity.

Barry Letts the Producer often said he wanted science rooted in fact. Let’s be honest there was little to none of that in ‘The Time Monster’, which he co-penned with Robert Sloman who was credited with this story. I think it’s great that

Man in a white suit = monster???

Doctor Who had a story which had a little to do with time – such as the season opener in ‘Day of the Daleks’, but not a lot was made of it over these six episodes save for some things being brought forward in time to attack UNIT troops and the like. The plot again reads as the Master trying to control a being he could ultimately have no chance of controlling to give him the ultimate in power – which admittedly changes from story to story. Here it’s presumably power of all of time. He also tried to harness the Nestene, the doomsday weapon, the power of Azal and so forth.

The TARDIS full of salad bowls!

That aside, if you allow yourself into the world of this story it’s quite light-hearted despite the destruction of Atlantis and a couple of deaths. It moves at a decent pace, with the last two episodes set in Atlantis and features a lot of the TARDIS – both the Doctor’s and the Master’s, which we've seen precious little of since Doctor Who went into colour. Apparently no-one likes the salad bowl sets, except for me. I think they looked smashing and might yet decorate my TARDIS in such a design.

Delgado and George Cormack.

Moving on the cast is superb. Roger Delgado holds nothing back in this quintessential performance, whilst Jon Pertwee, Nicholas Courtney, John Levene and Katy Manning are clearly having a ball. The Doctor builds a device to interfere with the Master’s TARDIS out of forks, a wine bottle and tea leaves, whilst the Master drops a doodle-bug on Mike Yates. Benton outwits the Master ever so cunningly only to have the Master fool him even more simply. THEN Benton ends up a baby!

Ingrid Pitt.

Ingrid Pitt guest stars as Galeia, Queen of Atlantis, a city with a lot of topless men who are very very white. The guest cast is full of brilliant performances from George Cormack as Dalios to Wanda Moore as Doctor Ruth Ingram. We even have another character in the style of a useless bureaucrat in Doctor Percival, played by John Wyse.

A wonderful array of sets for Atlantis, essentially only appearing in the final two episodes, were contructed too and kudos to the team for that because they can’t have had much money for them. Unless they borrowed them from ‘I, Claudius’ ???

Look, it’s no classic, some could even say it’s so bad it’s good, but I think it’s a pretty enjoyable 6 part story.

7/10

Day of the Daleks

Style's house, the Doctor arrives!

Guerillas hold the Doctor hostage.

The Daleks are back to kick off the ninth season after a long absence! I watched the special edition for this one, and I thought it was pretty awesome, although I hear the Daleks sound funny in the original version? Nevertheless it’s a very intelligent, clever script by Louis Marks, writing his first story since ‘Planet of Giants’. It’s fair to say the two stories are not similar in any way! Which is a good thing for this tale!

We’ve seen space and time played with a little since Jon Pertwee started as the Doctor, most notably in ‘Inferno’ with the idea of an alternative reality. ‘Day of the Daleks’, originally written without the Daleks, explores the ideas of trying to change the past to change the future, and the circular logic which locks you in when you try.

Guerrillas from the future come back to murder a man they believe started World War Three by blowing up a house with a host of delegates inside. Turns out it was the guerrillas that blew it up in the first place! Oh the irony!  But it’s also the real strength of this story, it’s use of time and the inability for people to see what was their own fault.

Aubrey Woods

The script isn’t perfect. The Daleks have invaded earth (in the 22^nd century) to exploit it for its minerals – seems a bit dubious and low-key for the Daleks. The previous time they invaded the Earth they wanted to take out the core and use the planet as a giant space ship.

There’s a good balance of film shooting and studio stuff. However the Doctor’s laboratory, where again we have the TARDIS console outside of the TARDIS, has a door way that leads out to a passageway which is just bright yellow! I’m not sure why, the Doctor and Jo had to be inlayed in the doorway which explains it production-wise but not within the world of the story.

The chief guest star of the story was Aubrey Woods, who sang the ‘Candy man’ song in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory all those years ago and has a certain eeriness about him – and also is a little like Liberace. The performance given as the Controller seems to be one of conjecture – it is very theatrical in nature and certainly not naturalistic. In some way it just adds to the weirdness of the future Earth.

Again Sergeant Benton has a case of the unbelievable happening before his eyes, when a guerrilla disappears before him in the ambulance. In ‘The Mind if Evil’ especially he  has a series of things go wrong when he loses Captain Chin (after she knocks him out), in ‘The Daemons’ he steps into a force field which lashes him about. Interestingly, there is a rare example of Captain Mike Yates (Richard Franklin) pulling rank on Benton, when he tells him to do his round and then nicks the cheese and biscuits.

Strange scene with yellow corridor.

Jon Pertwee’s Doctor  is not the anti-authoritarian figure we have seen in stories such as ‘The Silurians’ and ‘The Claws of Axos’, in this one. Instead he is impressed by Sir Reginald Style’s wine collection and sticks up for Styles when the guerrilla’s accuse him. Styles is very much an establishment figure of British Government and the person the guerrilla’s have returned to kill. Interestingly also, the exact date isn’t given in this story – nor in any other Pertwee story. Of the day and the month is, but not the year, so as to keep it ambiguous exactly when the Pertwee adventures are taking place. The brief was, apparently, the near future.

I understand the biggest change bar Dalek voices for the Special Edition is the Dalek battle at the end, which

Daleks and Ogrons, their helpers, approach the house.

has been beefed up considerably from the original which only featured 3 Daleks – all they had at the time! So that was done rather well. All in all, ‘Day of the Daleks’ is a cracking good story though. Does it need the Daleks? Hmmm I would probably say it doesn't, but they certainly don’t detract from the story in any way.

9/10

The Daemons

Burn him, he's a witch!

I know in principle I shouldn't like ‘The Daemons’. Quite frankly the whole story is pure nonsense with a scientific explanation thrown in to try and make it all palatable. The fact is though, I loved ‘The Daemons’, a story drawing on witchcraft, sorcery and the devil to entertain its audience. And entertain it did. This is the first, and I believe only, deliberate five part Doctor Who story. The two Troughton stories were altered to make five parts as one was too slow. It’s interesting that they never did a lot of five part stories. With 25 episodes in the first two Jon Pertwee seasons, it seems the logical thing to do, and four parters sometimes end a bit abruptly and six parters often drag out too long.

Is this romance for Benton and Miss Hawthorne?

Anyways, to this story with a wonderful amount of location filming in the town doubling for ‘Devil’s End’. It really adds to the feel of this story. The colour restoration on ‘The Daemons’ is excellent as well, the best of any story I’d have to say. The Master changes his name to Mr Magister and becomes the resident Vicar of Devil’s End, so that he can start a sort of demon worship to bring forth an ancient demon – really an alien naturally with super-powers, in the hope that the demon will let the Master rule Earth.

I the Master am in command of the CSO!

See – it’s very flimsy at best! There are ceremonies and robes and a bit of over acting here and there, and yet ‘The Daemons’ turned out to be one of the most enjoyable stories of all. It has a wonderful ‘family’ feel – the UNIT family. Jon Pertwee as the Doctor backed by Nicholas Courtney, Richard Franklin, Katy Manning and John Levene, again pitted against Roger Delgado’s Master. And essentially they are the principles of the story, with Stephen Thorne chiming in as Azal the demon and a very notable guest appearance by Damaris Hayman  as Miss Hawthorne, a crystal-ball wielding white witch!

Nothing says 'fun' like morris dancing!

They all clearly enjoy working together, and bring life to a story that done badly could be very bad indeed. Production-wise there are a few rough edges, mostly concerning CSO and the not-as-

Breaker Breaker where's the Brig when you need him???

tight-as-they-should-be tights of Azal and Bok, the gargoyle who comes to life. But those things are easily over looked. It has a wonderful dark-feel mixed with comedy and comradery. The Doctor’s car Bessie is almost a character in itself, and the town’s folk, although not playing a huge roll, are suitably eccentric and amusing to capture the feel of a town like Devil’s End.

All in all, it’s one of the most enjoyable Doctor Who stories I have watched thus far.

9/10

The Claws of Axos

I think the best way to describe ‘The Claws of Axos’ is an experiment. Is it one that succeeded? Some would say yes, some would say no. Personally, I would call it a success.  It’s far from perfect, for sure, but it is an interesting, entertaining and different four episode tale.

An Axos

We have the idea of an organic space ship to start with, and with the concept of Axos – which is in fact the ship, the Axons on board and a substance called Axonite as well that Axos tries to use to suck Earth dry so it can keep on moving and surviving. It’s a tale about greed, double crossings and at times sheer stupidity.

Written by first timers Bob Baker and Dave Martin, ‘The Claws of Axos’ is not only innovative in ideas and writing, but also in direction. Michael Ferguson deserves a lot of credit for this story, the way it looks, the way he has presented the writers’ vision with remarkable originality and at times genius. His use of multi-camera here is fantastic,

A soldier fights an Axon.

the location shooting wonderful, it’s a triumph of imagination and a great example of a director taking a bizarre script that many would have given up on and letting it inspire and turn into something visually quite brilliant. For the time, I should hasten to add.

Every aspect of the production needed clever thinking – from the different weather conditions thrown at the team each day they shot. The interiors of Axos are a combination of strange material-based walls coupled with overlays to disguise the rough edges, the Axos have at least two forms, the more human form where they wear tights and the monster version featuring tentacles which do look rather good. The tight-version has zippers clearly showing which is a shame, and they attempted so much in this story we couldn’t expect everything to be perfect.

The Doctor and Chin.

Our regular cast, including the Master, is back for the story. The Doctor seems to be at the centre of a little controversy in this tale, people have argued that he isn't very likable. I would argue that the third Doctor is on the whole a bit anti-authoritarian – definitely anti-civil servant, although occasionally he presents the opposite way in some stories. The presence of the character ‘Chinn’ begins the story wanting to find out exactly who the Doctor is. He is precisely the sort of pen-pushing annoying ignorant and greedy man that the third Doctor can’t abide. So we start with an outraged Doctor.

The Master at the controls of the Doctor's TARDIS.

This leads into his offer to the Master to escape before Axos destroys Earth in his TARDIS – the interior being seen the first time since the Troughton era. Of course, this is all part of a trick to trap Axos in a time loop – a rather clever and original idea at the time! But then he is quite happy to try and escape Earth on his own. Of course, the limitations set by the Time Lords on his TARDIS won’t allow that.

But the Doctor wants to be free – should the viewer feel bad that he wants to leave the Brigadier and Jo? No, it’s seems a natural want to me, although by now they have become somewhat close. It’s an interesting thought. Does it spoil the story? Well it didn’t for me.

8/10

Terror of the Autons

The Autons return in another four-part Robert Holmes story. It’s fair to say that so far his two Jon Pertwee

Roger Delgado as the Master.

stories have been much better than his Patrick Troughton stories – although that wouldn’t be hard! This time we are treated to a brand new character, and arch-villain, ‘The Master’, deftly played and perfectly cast, Roger Delgado has a wonderful stillness and arrests the viewer’s attention straight away. I too have an arch-foe, perhaps you know of him? His name is Peter O’Feild, and he is always up to some mischief. He even stole my body print and for a time was walking around looking just like my first incarnation! The cheek of him! In fact, I believe a visualised retelling of the adventure will soon be available to watch on Youtube... but I digress!

Harry Towb about to pull a chair over himself!

‘Terror of the Autons’ has some wonderful characters, fast becoming Robert Holmes’ forte. Michael Wisher, who appeared as a TV presenter in ‘Ambassadors of Death’, plays Rex Farrel with aplomb. Slowly being hypnotised by the Master, but regaining a sense of self by the end of the story. There are several notable smaller parts well played too such as Harry Towb as McDermott, partner to Farrel who has a wonderful scene pulling a black plastic chair over himself in one of the strangest death scenes in Doctor Who thus far. Interesting cameos also from David Garth as a Time Lord with a bowler-hat, and Stephen Jack as Farrel Snr.

UNIT gets a new Captain, Mike Yates, portrayed by Richard Franklin. Andrew has met Richard apparently and says he is a splendid chap! Not only that, but we have a new companion in Jo Grant – played by Katy Manning. I’m not sure what to make of her – she is the very opposite of Liz Shaw, who I really liked. Jo Grant is rather ditzy, a young woman recently out of High School it seems. Quite headstrong, but not the smartest cookie in the jar. She starts by ruing the Doctor’s work on his dematerialisation circuit, then getting hypnotised by the Master and trying to set off a bomb to destroy the Doctor’s lab, the Doctor and Yates and Benton. All in Episode One – not the perfect start!

The Master arrives at Rossini’s Circus, his TARDIS disguised as a horse float. I have to confess to thinking this is all a bit of a red herring, as the plastics factory is again where the Master’s operations are based. I like the circus as a setting, but it seemed to be irrelevant to the actual plot. I would love to see a story fully set in the circus – a great location for a Doctor Who story. I’m it will happen in the next few seasons or so.

Autons dressed to sell flowers.

The Autons are used less than in ‘Spearhead from Space’, but when they are used they are quite effective and scary. Particularly distributing the lethal plastic daffodils, central to the Master’s plans. The story cleverly uses plastic as a weapon by animating it. The use of the telephone wire to strangle the Doctor is well done, less well done is the use of the black plastic blow-up chair to suffocate McDermott. It is so obviously the actor pulling the chair down on himself sadly that no-one could be convinced.

Mike Yates (Richard Franklin) wonders if the 'dafs are dangerous'.

Then there is the abrupt and frankly strange ending, the weakest element of the story in my opinion. Stuck with the story needing to end pretty quickly, Holmes decided the Master would suddenly change his mind about the Autons and send the Nestene back into the farthest reaches of space. The only impetuous for this change of heart is the Doctor suggesting the Nestene wouldn’t be up for sharing the power with the Master. He is opening up the gateway via satellite dish, and just changes his mind. Personally I would have been more convinced by a fight sequence involving the Brigadier and the Doctor turning everything around. But this is what Holmes and presumably Dicks went with. It was an odd choice.

Katy Manning is the new assistant, Jo Grant.

But we can’t complain too much, it’s an exciting adventure, like the previous two it has a offering of action and stunts. Wonderful shot of an Auton falling down a cliff, getting up and continuing on at the bottom, perhaps my favourite moment in the story. A very enjoyable story.

8/10

Inferno

I quite simply loved this story. This is the first Doctor Who story to use parallel dimensions, a concept that often appears in many science fiction stories, so it’s interesting that it took nearly seven years for the production team to go down this route. This story also brings to a close Jon Pertwee’s first season as the Doctor, seasons now reduced to 25 episode, and with all the long stories in season 7 of seven episodes, Jon Pertwee only has four stories to his name after a full year as the Doctor.

Olaf Pooley and Sheila Dunn

But a fine start it has been, with four very solid stories, two of them excellent in fact. I started this marathon back in February and ‘Inferno’ definitely rates as my favourite story to date. It’s a piece full of atmosphere, sometimes apocalyptic, great characterisations by the actors, thoughtful and gripping story-telling by the writer Don Houghton, great stunts, fantastic location shooting, and one that simply doesn’t let up for the full seven episodes.

Benton the Primord. All good... except those teeth!

So I will start with the negatives. The Primords – I like them, mostly because they are not a unified group with a goal trying to conquer anyone, rather simply the effects of touching the ooze from deep inside the Earth. However, the teeth are a bit silly really, especially one shot of Seargeant Benton in Episode Six I think, when he looks right at the camera. The teeth don’t seem to fit the mouth, and are bright white. The audio of them snarling is also rather out of place, doesn’t seem properly mixed. There are a few other tiny details but all in all this story holds up to pretty tight screening.

Nick Courtney

They couldn’t have picked a more perfect location. The HAVOC stunt team did a brilliant job of falling off silos but the most amazing thing is the stuff shot on top of the silos, a good fifty feet or more above the ground. Not only did Douglas Camfield get his cameramen up there, but Jon Pertwee and Nicholas Courtney as the Brigadier went up there too, with only a rudimentary handrail between them and the quick way down! In making a TV programme today, I doubt whether they would be allowed to film in a location like that!

It makes for an exciting story, following on from ‘The Ambassadors of Death’ in using a lot of stunt work and action sequences far becoming the hallmark of this era of Doctor Who. One thing quite unique to this story though is the use of the parallel dimension, and I think it’s one of the best examples of a parallel dimension story there is. With the UNIT team now regulars in the series, it was great that only the Doctor visited the parallel dimension, allowing us an alternative Brigadier (Brigade Leader), Liz Shaw and Sergeant Benton. Interestingly enough, other characters in the story, not regulars but guest cast, didn’t have a very different character to the one on normal Earth.

The guest cast is fantastic with Sheila Dunn as Petra Williams, Christopher Benjamin as Sir Keith Gold and Olaf Pooley as Professor Stahlman. The alternative Earth provides a reality where the royals were executed and perhaps England is living under some sort of fascist or communist regime. It’s unclear which one exactly, but this world seems to suit Stahlman more than the normal Earth. We also have the character Greg Sutton, played by Derek Newark, who appeared in ‘An Unearthly Child’ as the leader of the cavemen. This character is similar in both dimensions.

Courtney and Caroline John in the alternate Universe.

Howere Nicholas Courtney, Caroline John and John Levene get to play sadistic and brutal versions of themselves in the parallel dimension. They do a brilliant job, only Liz Shaw’s character has any sort of change in thinking. We see the whole world destroyed as well just as the Doctor escapes. With the end of the world nigh, and our group of characters desperately fleeing the Primords but trying to get to the TARDIS console, episodes five and six are like nothing ever seen in Doctor Who. The atmosphere created is apocalyptic in the extreme. It’s simply brilliantly-pitched television.

Oh, and Jon Pertwee of course!

Jon Pertwee has his best outing yet. He has a charm that is coupled with a self-righteous indignation, and those factors seem to be the hallmark of his Doctor. Caroline John is fantastic as both Lizes in this story. I’ve learnt by starting the next story that it’s her final story. They could have at least let her go out with a goodbye scene, if not another story especially for the character. She’s worked very well with Pertwee’s Doctor, and shown that the Doctor’s companions do not need to be stupid. ‘The Ambassadors of Death’ is another where she is clever, resourceful and more than the usual companion. Sad to see her go so quickly.

So for the first time, I am rating a story

10/10