The BBC have released the trailer for The Power Of The Doctor - Jodie Whittaker's final outing as the Thirteenth Doctor!

In the trailer we see The Master, Daleks, Cybermen, and appearances from previous companions Ace & Tegan.

The Power Of The Doctor airs on Sunday 23rd October at 7:30pm.

[Source: BBC]

And so it came to pass that the players took their final places, making ready the events that were to come...

We want to start off by saying just how hard this episode was to preview without spoiling anything; and as you will all know by now, this is the episode that John Simm's Master makes his return. It is this fact that the BBC wanted us all to know about, that we feel is the only real let-down in the whole story. If this could have been kept secret, the reveal would be right up there with Series Three's YANA!

The episode kicks off with one of the most jaw-dropping pre-titles sequences the show has ever had, and a scene which we will no doubt be revisiting thanks to some more timey-wimey magic from Steven Moffat. Yep - that's about all we can say about that!

The main episode itself is the Cyberman story that most fans have been waiting for. We get to see the original Mondasian Cybermen from The Tenth Planet, here, and crikey do they work well! Barely anything has changed - even their voices are exactly the same. These are hands-down the scariest, creepiest version of the Cybermen to have ever hit our screens, and we're so glad they are back!

The Doctor, Missy, Bill and Nardole land on a 400-mile long spaceship, perched at the edge of a black hole. The unique setting is a brilliant concept that means that the front of the ship is at a different point in time to the rear - something that is a key device throughout the story.

There is something quite shocking that happens quite early on, and the consequences of what happens lead to even more shocks that will likely make this episode of Doctor Who one of the most horrific in its entire history. The show quite possibly dips its toe over the line of what it can get away with, but we think it just about works. Yep - that's about all we can say about that!

Once again, Bill (Pearl Mackie) takes up a good chunk of the episode, which dips back and forth to The Doctor, Missy & Nardole. Pearl has been truly amazing in Series 10, so far, and this episode gets her digging deep and delivering everything that's thrown at her. Likewise, Missy (Michelle Gomez) further explores her nicer side, and it seems that The Doctor may have just brought her back to the light. It's so exciting to see this new facet of her character, and the obvious mercurial conflict she is facing within.

Peter Capaldi's Doctor continues to break our heart with the realisation we are just a couple of hours away from his final moments. This man was born to play The Doctor, and he has wiped the floor with all of the naysayers who thought an older actor couldn't carry the role in this modern era of Doctor Who. He actually doesn't have a great deal to do in this episode, but his presence in the scenes he is in adds important grounding and gravitas, which will carry through to The Doctor Falls.

But what about John Simm, you all ask? Well, despite some rumours online, The Master is very much back - not a dream, not a 'Moment-esque' type appearance - he is back, and at his evilest. There were flashes of redemption when he faced The 10th Doctor, and near the conclusion of The End Of Time, it seemed he had made a noble choice. We are still unsure of whereabouts in Simm's Master's timeline this episode sits, but it seems to be set after the events of The End Of Time (we may be wrong, though).

Rachel Talalay delivers another belter on the direction front; full of atmosphere and weight and everything that has always made her episodes stand out. Can we please bring her back for every finale?

As for the musical score, Murray Gold has given us something bigger and bolder, with hints of Series Three (his finest soundtrack in our opinion), and a chilling undertone that haunts throughout the episode. 

World Enough And Time gives us match point for Series 10 of Doctor Who, and it's all eyes on The Doctor Falls as to whether Moffat can cap off one of the strongest and most well-written series in its modern history.

5 Things To Look Out For:

1)  The Doctor emerges from the TARDIS...
2)  "Is your real name Doctor Who?"
3)  Venusian Aikido
4)  "Pain."
5)  "I'm very worried about my future."

+  10.11: World Enough And Time airs This Saturday at 6:45pm on BBC One.

[Source: DWO]

Our friends Cheesy Christmas Jumpers are now stocking a range of Official Licensed TV, Film and Gaming Christmas Jumpers alongside their popular Light-up and Knitted Jumpers.

The knitted Doctor Who Cyberman Christmas Jumper is just one of the jumpers on offer and with limited numbers available you’ll need to be quick to secure your size in time for Christmas.

Cheesy Christmas Jumpers are a UK based brand and supplier of festive wear since 2009. They are specialists in light up jumpers, bright coloured knits and Christmas jumpers which stretch the boundaries of what is normally publically acceptable to wear. 

Doctor Who Online visitors can also get 10% off their order with discount code: DRCHEESY

[Source: Cheesy Christmas Jumpers]

DWO are issuing a warning to any Doctor Who fans in the USA considering bidding on a Cyberman helmet, claiming to be from the 1968 episode 'The Wheel In Space', in today's 'Profiles In History, Hollywood 83' auction.

The auction catalogue is claiming the helmet was screen used in the serial, but having researched the item, and sought expert advice from prop making guru's JBReplicas, DWO understand this to not be the case. If you look closely at the helmet being sold at the auction (image to the right), you will see the chin of the cyberman is pointy, as well as various discrepancies for the eye and mouth holes. Below this we have included an image from the cyberman used in the actual episode, and, as you can see, it is completely different.

We have included the official description for the lot (via Invaluable), below:

"968. Doctor Who screen used “Cyberman” helmet from the 1968 episode “Wheel in Space.” (BBC-TV, 1963-1989) One of the earliest versions of the Cybermen, the fearsome cyborgs in the Doctor Who universe. Constructed of fiberglass and painted silver to appear like metallic alloy. Following its use in the 1968 episode “Wheel in Space,” the BBC repurposed this helmet for personal appearance exhibitions in the early 1970s by adding metal mesh behind the eyes and mouth to hide and protect the actor in the suit. The clear acrylic “handlebars” were repurposed and replaced with plastic replacements. The back plate (held in place with putty during the production) is missing. Otherwise, in vintage fine condition. This helmet was donated by the BBC to The Doctor Who Experience in Llangollen, Wales where it was exhibited for several years; after which is was sold at Christie’s South Kensington 9 December 1999, lot 49. $15,000 - $20,000" 

The head, if sold, could fetch between $15,000-$20,000, but if this turns out (as we strongly believe) to not be a screen-used helmet, the actual figure which it is worth is between £150-£200!

DWO have contacted Profiles In History for comment... 

UPDATE - Friday 1st July 2016 
The auction has now ended and the cyberman helmet has sold for $22,500! DWO have still not heard back from the auctioneers...

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[Sources: DWO; Julian Vince; JBReplicas; Invaluable]

 

Manufacturer: Big Finish Productions

Writer: Nicholas Briggs

RRP: £10.99 (CD) / £8.99 (Download)

Release Date: August 2015

Reviewed by: Nick Mellish for Doctor Who Online

“The Doctor reveals to Leela that they’re heading for the planet Telos. And K9 has new masters...

On Telos, in the past, the Second Doctor and Jamie are exploring the ‘tomb of the Cybermen’.

Meanwhile, the Cyber-Controller and Cyber-Planner consolidate their plans. Spare parts from Krelos are being used to construct a mighty Cyber army. The Doctor must be captured.

Out of control, the TARDIS tumbles down a chasm and the Doctor and Leela find themselves caught up in full-scale planetary invasion.”

There is a school of thought that says that big is better, and you can see that in work here: an adventure with the Cybermen! Ah, but let’s go one further: bring in an old companion! But we can do more: make it a sequel to a past adventure! Brilliant. But: no, let’s go further: we can set it during the past adventure! And let’s not just do any old story, no! Let’s set it during a much-loved classic: The Tomb of the Cybermen!

On paper, it probably sells: the Fourth Doctor and Leela meeting Jamie on Telos is a scenario which is going to get a certain type of fan tingling with anticipation, and it’s no great leap to put both Nicholas Briggs and David Richardson in that category seeing as they’ve gone ahead and made this tale.

It’s not the first time that this approach has been taken. We had The Five Companions by Eddie Robson taking place within another story, and it worked really well: it was a neat fit that took advantage of a period within the existing story when it could logically have taken place without too great a pinch of salt.  So, we have previous, and a successful example at that.  You can see why they felt confident enough to go down that road again.  Indeed, we’ve had mixed-up Doctor/Companion tales very recently, too, and sequels to popular stories in the past time and again.  How does it fare here, though?

First things first: the ‘fit’ between new tale and old tale is pretty sloppy, and I’m being generous here.  We get Frazer Hines doing his Troughton impression to try and help gel things, but… well, it sounds good in small doses, but often it just sounds like Frazer Hines pretending to be Patrick Troughton, so the effect is not as seamless as everyone seems to think it is if the Extras to this play are anything to go by.  The fit in with the plot of Tomb itself can conceivably work I suppose, but only at a push and certainly not as smoothly as Robson managed before.  This feels far more like someone desperately trying to squeeze something in than something that clicks; like someone pushing the incorrect part of the jigsaw into the wrong hole. You can make it fit, but it’s a clumsy mess.

Second up: Jamie in a Fourth Doctor story. Now, Jamie seems to continually bump into the ‘wrong’ Doctor whilst facing the Cybermen, so this feels less novel and more old and worn than it should do.  Sadly, again it’s a clumsy fit.  Quite simply, there is no need whatsoever for this tale to take place during Tomb beyond it being set on Telos, which it could be at any time.  It’s been done purely to try and shift CDs and with no regard to the story itself.  We’re looking at quantity over quality with regards to elements here.

Thirdly, the story. Again, it’s pretty poor. Cybermen are nasty to K-9, things happen, technobabble, reset, the end.  It’s dull at best, predictable at worst, and sadly as jaded and boring as the inclusion of Jamie and the notion of setting it within another story.  I understand that Big Finish tend to keep things as they are and the risks are normally minimal and then repeated– the four-by-four format was successful once and so we have it once a year now; a Northern companion worked well, so they’ve been aping Lucie Miller ever since; the false-departure for Charley worked well, so let’s do it again (and again and again…) with Hex! Heck, even the covers tend to stick to a type nowadays and take few risks– but this is about as boring an execution of old tricks that we’ve seen.

We need more, especially after a story in which nothing much happens whatsoever, but what we get here, though it has more incident than Krelos, shows less flair or innovation.  Not a good sign.

More than anything else, this feels like a huge disappointment after how strong this series of The Fourth Doctor Adventures has been.  We’ve had sparks and new things, and then… this.  A story so keen on continuity, it forgets to do anything interesting whatsoever. I really wish Big Finish would stop doing this; it’s utterly without point, and I can’t see who it appeals to.  Certainly not this listener.  I’m only giving it two out of ten because the Cybermen voices are at least pretty good. That’s overly kind of me, though.

 “You will be like us,” say the Cybermen. If that entails being anything like this play, then that is a threat indeed.

Manufacturer: Big Finish Productions

Writer: Nicholas Briggs

RRP: £10.99 (CD) / £8.99 (Download)

Release Date: July 2015

Reviewed by: Nick Mellish for Doctor Who Online

“There are dark skies on Krelos… and something gigantic is descending.

Meanwhile, the Doctor and Leela set off for some fishing in the mountain pools of Krelos. K9 has interfaced with the TARDIS and has reactivated the architectural configuration from the days of the Doctor’s second incarnation. In passing, the Doctor notes it could do with a good clean. And there’s a familiar piece of material snagged on the console.

Far up the mountain, an aged explorer is in trouble. Will the Doctor and Leela be able to save him and his planet? And what is it that K9 has discovered in the TARDIS?”

The Doctor gets up to an awful lot of things when we’re not looking.  We know this from various sources: the Doctor himself, glimpses of downtime in stories such as Midnight, The Romans, Army of Ghosts and Turn Left (it all goes to pot there, but to start with at least, Donna and the Doctor are just having fun exploring an alien market), companions reciting stories not seen on screen (Rose in Boom Town, for example), and the nagging sense that it can’t all be continual peril for the Doctor and his friends, or you wouldn’t go travelling, would you? There are definitely times when the Doctor and his entourage take a break and simply have a good time.

Why, then, have we not seen this in full before? The argument will no doubt be that if nothing much happens, then it’s not going to be the most exciting of tales, but as if that were a gauntlet thrown on the table, Big Finish have decided to try and prove us wrong and The Fate of Krelos is the result.

What happens in this story, then? Well, Leela and the Doctor wander around the TARDIS for a bit and decide to go fishing whilst K-9 is on the blink. They meet the locals and have a jolly.  And that’s it.

It’s a strange tale in that the format actively fights against the story being told.  We need a cliffhanger midway through the tale, one at the end, and a healthy dose of leading-into-the-final-play-this-series-style plot for Return to Telos to work properly. Because Nicholas Briggs, the story’s author, wants to tell a tale where the Doctor and Leela just relax instead of rush around, there is an inherent wrestle between these necessities and Briggs’s desires. So, K-9 is not how he should be but everyone ignores it uncharacteristically because that would kickstart a story.  Likewise, we get a truly horrendous and cringeworthy bit of info-dumping early on where Leela learns about Jamie purely so that she will know who he is come the final play this series. It’s a scene that exists purely to push things forward and stands out all the more than it usually would, such is the lax pace and absence of event surrounding it all.

Things suddenly whirl into action right at the end, again because it is needed by the demands of both Doctor Who as a series and The Fate of Krelos’s position in the running order of this season of adventures. Maybe placed somewhere else other than the penultimate adventure, a tale like this one could have worked, but as it is, we have what would struggle to fit a standard twenty-three-minute-long episode stretched beyond breaking point.

In spite of all this though,I cannot help but admire Briggs for giving this a shot in the first place. Does it work? Not really, but as a one-off experiment, it is at least worthy of merit. The use of Michael Cochrane in the guest cast is a nice touch, too, giving The Fourth Doctor Adventures a sense of continuity with its past (he was brilliant as Colonel Spindleton in the first series) in much the same way that repeated appearances of Bernard Horsfall and his ilk used to do on screen.

Telos beckons now, so hopefully this is but a blip in what has been the best series of adventures for the Fourth Doctor from Big Finish so far. At least Leela knows who Jamie is now… 

DWO’s Spoiler-free preview of episode 8.12: Death in Heaven:

It barely seems possible that we can already be at the end of Peter Capaldi’s first season as the Doctor - and what a ride its been! Death in Heaven is certainly the perfect capstone for the entire series, tying together threats that have been running since Deep Breath at the start of the run, and even a few that stretch back further, in to the eras of earlier Doctors.

Doctor Who Online went to get a preview of the episode at a screening in Cardiff on Tuesday evening, alongside a number of fans of the show. The atmosphere at the event sums up, we think, the general reaction to the whole of Series Eight this year. There was laughter (sometimes raucous, always in the right places), gasps of shock, and even a few teary eyes in places. If killing off regular character Danny Pink in the prattles to the last episode set this story up as one where anything could happen, and no one is safe… well, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

The next statement is probably quite predictable - that series regulars Peter Capaldi, Jenna Coleman, and Samuel Anderson are on fine form, and - as they’ve done almost every week of the run - continue to raise the bar to a whole new level. There are times when Peter’s Doctor will absolutely break your heart, and he plays it beautifully. On equally fine form is Michelle Gomez, now revealed to be the latest incarnation of the Doctor’s arch enemy the Master. Any quibbles people had about making such a drastic change to the character will surely melt away when you see her squaring up to our Twelfth Doctor - the pair are electrifying, and it’s safe to say that the Gomez incarnation will be topping several people’s lists as ‘favourite Master’. Oh, and did we mention - she’s absolutely bananas.

Director Rachel Talalay - who’s helmed both episodes of this finale - provides us with some stunning visuals, and some of the best action sequences that the programme has ever given us. There’s moments here where you genuinely could believe that you’re watching a multi-million dollar hollywood blockbuster, and yet it’s all been realised on a modest TV budget. We’ve heard it said time and time again over the years that the Doctor Who team are some of the hardest working and most skilled people in the industry, and it’s never been more in evidence than at times during this episode. You can really sense the labour of love that’s gone in to making it, and it’s worth every little bit of effort.

You may have noticed that we’re trying to give away as little as possible, and that’s because the full impact of this episode comes best when you sit down not knowing what to expect. We could wax lyrical about the reference to [X], or a cameo from [Y], or reveal that the Doctor… well, anyway. Death in Heaven is Doctor Who at its finest. Action packed, emotional, funny, and a little bit silly. What more could you want?

Five things to look out for:

1) “There is no Clara Oswald. I invented her. I made her up.”

2) “Something for your bucket list…”

3) “He’s on the payroll…”

4) A new title sequence.

5) “Didn’t you think to look?”

[Source: DWO, Will Brooks]

DWO’s Spoiler-free preview of Episode 8.11: Dark Water:

It’s (almost) the end, but the moment has been prepared for…

It doesn’t seem possible that we’re already starting out on the finale to Peter Capaldi’s incredible first season as the Doctor, having been from the banks of the River Thames, via Sherwood Forest, the Bank of Karabraxos, Coal Hill School, The Orient Express (in space no less), and now onto our final destination: the Underworld.

For the first time since 2011’s The Rebel Flesh / The Almost People, we’ve got a Doctor Who story told in two parts. In some ways, it feels as though they’ve slightly lost the knack for telling such stories, and you occasionally get the impression that this is really all one big prequel for next week’s episode proper. Here, we’re simply watching as all of the pieces are moved into the right positions, and we’re brought up to speed with everything we’ll need to know to fully appreciate the events of the final episode proper. To that end, don’t be surprised when several clips from the ‘Next Time’ trailer last week don’t surface here, because it’s not their time yet.

That’s not to say that Dark Water isn’t a good episode in itself, but it very much does feel like only half the story, and it’s difficult to truly judge it without seeing the second half. There’s plenty to keep your attention glued to the screen here, though, and you’ll need to be paying attention to really make sure you’ve got everything you’ll need going forward. By the time the opening credits have started, you already know that this is an episode that won’t be playing it safe, and that it really could go anywhere from this point - there’s no guarantee that everyone will be making it out alive.

It’s also very much a finale designed to perfectly cap off the adventures that we’ve been seeing across this year’s stories - and it wouldn’t have anywhere near the impact it does without them. We welcome back Samuel Anderson as Danny Pink once more, and get to see the next stage of his relationship with Clara, and it’s this which is central to the plot. Every scene they’ve shared together so far has been building towards this, and it’s the type of story that needed an unbroken run of episodes to really evolve. Even people who aren’t huge fans of the couple will surely feel a few pangs of emotion at their situation.

But with these 45 minutes, the stage is set, most of the players are in place, and we’re in a good position to really see the series out with a bang next week. Probably best not to go in to this one expecting all the high energy and excitement of the trailers so far, though, because we’re not quite there, yet…

Five things to look out for:

1) “I don’t deserve a friend like you…”

2) Seven Hiding Places.

3) The Twelfth Doctor finally gets a chance to do some Tenth and Eleventh Doctor-style kissing…

4) It’s not a fish tank.

5)“The time line disintegrates. Your time line.”

[Sources: DWO, Will Brooks]

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 607: Time-Flight, Episode Four

Dear diary,

When you’ve been a fan of Doctor Who for long enough, there are several ‘facts’ about the show that you just sort of ‘accumulate’. You know that Adric dies in Earthshock. You know that the final story of the original run is called Survival. One of the things that you just somehow end up knowing - wether you’ve seen the story or not - is that Tegan leaves in this final episode of Time-Flight… only to return in the very sext story, after the gap between seasons. I’ve never been sure how keen I am on the idea, but watching through now, I think I rather like it.

I certainly love the idea that the Doctor simply leaves her behind at Heathrow, not realising that she’s chosen to stick around on the TARDIS, and the whole sequence is played far better here than I remembered it being - I’d forgotten that Tegan actually wanders off to have a think about where she wants to be, for instance. The only thing that’s niggling in the back of my mind now is the fact that there needs to be at least one story without her before she returns, I think, but I’ll wait and see how it feels over the next few days.

That final scene is by far the best part of this episode, it has to be said, and everything else has left me cold. Something that bothers me more than anything is the fact that the master is only there because they wanted him to be there - not because there’s a good plot that absolutely requires him to be. You could play this story in a similar manner with any old villain who’s been stranded on prehistoric Earth and needs to lure someone there so they can steal working components to escape. Saving the reveal of the Master until half way through the story and then separating him from the Doctor until it’s time for the traditional negotiations for help just makes it feel hollow - and that he’s then defeated with a swift ‘oh, there we go, I’ve gotten rid of him’ feels like a terribly low-key final battle for the season.

I think more than anything, though, I’m disappointed that Season Nineteen has gone out with such a whimper. It’s been a run of stories that I’ve really enjoyed watching, with a few true stand-out tales in there. I think this season - even more so than Season Eighteen - is the one that I would have enjoyed the most as a kid, and it’s easy to see why so many children of the early 1980s look back on this period with such fond memories. It’s been the strongest run of stories in a long, long, time. But now we’re moving on to Season Twenty, which is more divisive among people’s opinions. Some see it as the beginning of a slippery, continuity-filled slope, while others find it to be a year-long celebration of the programme’s past. It’s certainly got a lot to live up to after this season, and I’m not entirely sure it’ll be able to. John Nathan-Turner’s era of Doctor Who is probably the most uneven in the minds of fan opinion (although I can happily say that I enjoy parts from all of it), but I think it’s fair to say that had he left here, after two fantastic years, and having cast a great new Doctor - I’ve sort of stopped tracking the evolution of Davison’s performance, now, because he seems to have found his ‘groove’ - he’d be remembered as one of the best producers we’ve ever had.

Probably a good job he didn’t leave here, though: this would be an awful story to go out on!

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 606: Time-Flight, Episode Three

Dear diary,

I really don’t know what to make of Time-Flight at all. This episode is clearly another not-so-great one, and yet I’ve reached the end of it with a sense of vaguely enjoying it. I’m not entirely sure what I’ve enjoyed about it, though, and I can’t pick out anything in particular to highlight. The sets are alright, but that’s down to their sheer size more than the design, I quite like the plucky air crew sneaking aboard the TARDIS and getting into a pickle, I suppose. Anthony Ainley slapping the door controls for the TARDIS, and being paid to mostly stand around fiddling with props is good for him, I suppose? It’s one of those episodes (and this is usually the mark of an episode that has failed to engage me), where I really have nothing of interest to say, because it’s not offered me any threads to pull on.

Never mind, though, because there’s something else I want to discuss today, anyway. After writing yesterday’s entry, I was thinking more and more about how botched the apparition of Adric was. As I’ve said, the idea of having his reappear briefly after his death is a great one, but it’s an example of John Nathan-Turner understanding the ‘showmanship’ of the programme (Matthew Waterhouse is only there to help hide his death in Earthshock, after all), while failing to grasp the dramatic potential of such an event. I also got to thinking how I would have handled the situation (one that I’ve already admitted is difficult), and so I’d like to present another edition of ‘This is How it Should Have Been (I reckon)’…

Instead of the TARDIS arriving at Heathrow more-or-less by accident (having spent several stories earlier in the season trying to get there!), it should be on purpose. Tegan and Nyssa should be more upset by Adric’s death, the way they are in those final moments of Earthshock. They should ask the Doctor to go back and save the boy, getting ever more frustrated with his refusal, until eventually Tegan demands to get to Heathrow right away. She should make some comment about not wanting to arrive centuries too early, or too late, or on a different world altogether, but just to get home. Adric’s death should be the catalyst for a huge row on the TARDIS - it’s been simmering all season, and it sort of needs the death to be a focal point that sorts everything out once and for all.

Arriving in the airport terminal, we should then have her saying goodbye to Nyssa - but not the Doctor - and leaving the TARDIS behind. With the Doctor ready to depart with his one remaining companion, he should then get caught up in the events of the story. Either you have the police arriving at the police box and questioning the Doctor (as in the broadcast version), or someone commenting that UNIT had advised the Doctor would be along.

Somehow, Tegan should end up with the Doctor and Nyssa on the Concorde flight, and not be happy about it. He just can’t let her go, can he? In my head, Tegan should be really hard on the Doctor, not happy at all. This would then culminate when they reach prehistoric Earth, with Nyssa being released from the Plasmatrons and having a heart-to-heart with her friend, telling her that it’s not really the Doctor’s fault, and that Adric chose to live the dangerous life aboard the TARDIS, and went out saving their lives. It would help to inject a bit more urgency to the proceedings, with the Doctor trying to find out what’s happening here, while also trying to deal with someone who’s so angry with him.

You then have the apparitions in the tunnels. Adric shouldn’t be the first, I don’t think. It could work as sheer shock value, but it’s directed so flatly here as to lose all effect. Instead, I’d start with the Melkur - Nyssa confronting her greatest fear. This statue represents not only the man who killed her father, but also the one who went on to destroy her entire world, and kill Tegan’s aunt. Nyssa’s faith in the Doctor should be the thing that gets her through - after all, the Doctor did give his life to stop the Master.

I’d then pick up with Tegan encountering the Mara, and the worry that it could still be inside her mind. It’s an idea that was planted during the end of Kinda, when she asks the Doctor if she’s free, and he fails to respond. It should all add to her wavering trust of the man. Maybe Nyssa can help to convince Tegan that the Doctor is a good man, and that they should support him. If need be, you can have the Mara transform into a Terrileptil, and Monitor, and even a Cyberman if you want - a snapshot of their adventures together - before…

It’s Adric. Taunting her. Clutching his brother’s belt, still, and staring sadly at his former companions. Tegan needs the chance to say goodbye, and to apologise for not always being the easiest person to get along with. It’s all part of bringing the emotions of the season to a head. Able to move past the apparition of Adric, the pair should encounter the Doctor in time to see the villain revealed as the Master. I know that they’re in an entirely different part of the complex at that point, and much of this episode is about them being there, but it just feels wrong that these two characters - who’ve both had relatives killed by the Master - should find out that he’s here simply by the Doctor throwing it into the conversation. The trio need to be there to see the reveal together - the Master was the villain in all of their first adventures, and bringing him back in the season finale has to be a real statement, and his inclusion should be more symbolic than anything else.

The rest of the basic story can remain unchanged, I think. You can have the Concorde being transported down a time contour. You can have the hypnotised crew, and the split-personality brain, and the flight crew heading off for adventures in time and space (or a mile above the planet). But the story needs to be about the Doctor and his companions, about them dealing with the loss of Adric, and using that event to strengthen them and move forward, overcoming the ultimate villain together. I’m not sure if the whole ‘leaving Tegan behind’ thing at the end of the story would work so well after a few episodes of bringing them closer together, though it could make all the more impact, if she finally decides to make that same decision - to travel with the Doctor no matter the danger to herself.

It’s probably not to everyone’s tastes, and I think it’s far more character-driven than anything Doctor Who tended to do around this point in its history, but it’s what Time-Flight is supposed to be in my own head. Even the bland, generic science fiction wouldn’t feel out of place if it’s simply a stock backdrop to the real story. As it is, that’s out main focus, and it’s just not up to scratch.

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 604: Time-Flight, Episode One

Dear diary,

Time-Flight is the unloved child of Season Nineteen, isn’t it? On the whole, it’s a very strong run of stories, with some absolute ‘classics’ like Kinda and Earthshock, and some other tales that simply worked well for me, even if general opinion is mixed, with the likes of Four to Doomsday and Black Orchid… and then it ends with this tale. On the whole, I think the problems most people have with Time-Flight boil down to some of the more ridiculous elements, and I’ll get to those in the next few days I’m sure, but I was pleasantly surprised by this first episode… because it’s rather good!

I’ve only seen this story the one time, when it first came out on DVD, and over the years I’ve come to think of it as being one that simply never takes my fancy for a re-watch. All I can remember about it is that it largely takes place on prehistoric Earth, and the Master turns up somewhat improbably. I’d forgotten, for instance, that this first episode is largely set in the present day at Heathrow - I thought scenes here simply topped-and-tailed the adventure. I’m glad that’s not the case, though, because I’m really enjoying lots of the airport material. It’s almost like going back to the 1960s (I seem to be saying that a lot recently), where there’s something really exciting about seeing a location ‘as it was’ at the time. Landing the TARDIS right in the middle of the building is great fun, too, and I love the way that the Doctor decides that he simply has to go and have a look, and then on course he gets caught up in something. Curiosity defines this Doctor more than I’d ever noticed - making his comment in Black Orchid all the more appropriate!

There’s also something quite exciting about seeing the Doctor inside a Concorde. It feels at once like something too mundane for him (last week he was in a space freighter), and also terribly exciting because it’s not somewhere that you really get to see very often (especially not these days - Time-Flight has become a historical in more ways than one!). Seeing him peering round the cockpit brings the series closer than ever before to being Blue Peter.

I feel as though I’m being generous here - although I really do enjoy all the stuff at the airport and on the plane - because as soon as we touch down on to prehistoric Earth, things all start to fall apart for me. From the moment that they step off the Concorde and into some questionable CSO, we’re back into the story that I remember Time-Flight being, with not-particularly-great sets, some questionable guest performances, and monsters that aren’t… great. I have a feeling that the goodwill built up in the first two-thirds of this episode may dissipate over the next few days, so I’m glad that it has at least started strong. In that spirit, I’d like to add that the concept of everything in this episode is fantastic - the idea of stepping off the plane to find themselves back at Heathrow, until Nyssa sees through the illusion to a pile of bodies, is a great one, and I think it really is a case of the effect letting it down.

Something that does need to be mentioned is the way they deal with the aftermath of Adric’s death. It’s a tricky thing to pitch, really, and I’m not sure that they quiche get it right. Let’s use Journey’s End as an example: Donna’s memories of the Doctor have been wiped, and she’s been returned home. The Doctor can never see his best friend again, and she’s resigned to living a life in which she’ll never be as great as she could. The episode ends on a down-beat note, and you’re left with the Doctor alone, and sad, and soaked from the rain. But the crucial thing is… this comes at the very end of the season. When we next catch up with the Doctor, it’s Christmas, and he’s off for an adventure in Victorian London in the snow. Now, on original broadcast, there was a real gap between episodes that lasted months and months. You don’t get that now, if you’re watching the episodes through in order, but there’s still a real sense that a great deal of time has passed for the Doctor and the programme, so it can move on in to a bold new adventure. With Cybermen! That’s not to say that Donna’s departure is completely ignored, the Doctor is still hurting from it, and that gets touched upon later in the story, but it feels right that we should pick up with smiles, and festive cheer, and a brand new story.

Time-Flight doesn’t get that luxury. I commented the other day that to feels like a season finale… but it’s not. It’s the penultimate story of the season, so we’re going out with this one. As has become common practice for the series at this point, today’s episode picks up only a short time after yesterday’s one, and then we’re off into a new adventure. Now, this is where things get tricky. You can’t make the whole episode be about Adric’s death, or you’d never get a story going. Equally, you can’t simply ignore the fact that in the last episode you killed off one of the main characters! Do you see what I mean? Tricky to pitch. Time-Flight deals with it by… having 16 lines of dialogue between the three regulars, and then brushing it off with the Doctor promising a “Special treat to cheer us all up.”

After that, Adric is forgotten, and we continue on as though nothing had happened. It just doesn’t work for me, and it’s another example of the programme not always being good at the character-led pieces that a situation like this one really needs. A pity, in many ways, because those 16 lines between the Doctor, Tegan, and Nyssa raise some interesting points that I’d love to see explored further (for example, Tegan’s suggestion that they could save Adric and still allow the freighter to crash so that it wouldn’t change history would be - so far as I can tell - entirely workable under the rules of more recent Doctor Who!), and it feels like there needs to be something more. I know Adric makes a brief cameo in this story somewhere, so I’m hoping that might give us something a little bit better.

I should point out that despite what I’m saying here, I don’t think you could have ended the season with Adric’s death: it’s just too bleak. In The Writer’s Tale, Russell T Davies has long discussions with Benjamin Cook about the ways to end that Fourth Series, and he worries that you need something to bounce back. I think what we ended up with there was perfect, but I don’t think it would have worked for Adric’s death - it’s just too major. I keep on saying it… tricky!

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 603: Earthshock, Episode Four

Dear diary,

Having missed yesterday’s episode, Emma has rejoined me for this episode. It’s time to show her the second big twist of the tale, as Adric finally meets his doom. I’ve been ever so good up to now, making sure that the DVD is paused on the title sequence of the episode by the time she enters the room, so she won’t catch any glimpse of the footage on the DVD menu. I didn’t want to repeat the situation my friend Nick had a few weeks ago, with the ending being spoiled in advance. We sat and watched the episode, waiting for that ending…

…and five minutes before it arrives, Emma picks up her phone. A minute later she asks: “So this is the one where Adric dies?”

Confiscate the phone! It seems such an obvious thing, now. Ho hum. In Emma’s defence she claims to have only looked it up because she could sense it heading in that direction, but still: I was waiting for the surprise! Oh well.

Much as I’ve liked Adric’s time in the TARDIS (he’s certainly nowhere near as bad as received wisdom would have you believe, even though I still think he works better opposite Baker than he does with Davison), I really do love the idea of killing him off. It makes such a bold statement, and the sleeve notes to the DVD sum it up best:

”The final scenes of Earthshock shattered once and for all the cosy air of invulnerability that had pervaded Doctor Who. The Doctor was fallible, and fail he occasionally does…”

There’s just something so bold about the idea of killing off a long-running companion. The last time the show dabbled with the idea, back in Season Three, it only killed off characters who’d been a part of the Doctor’s - and the viewer’s - life for a few episodes at most. Here, we’re discussing the end of Adric, the boy who first encountered the TARDIS in Full Circle. On original broadcast, it was almost eighteen months between his arrival and his departure, which means it’s a really big deal. Watching all the stories in order like this also has an added advantage - I can better appreciate little things like the theme from Full Circle being introduced into this episode, and his clutching of his brother’s belt in his final moments. I don’t think I’ve seen this story since watching Full Circle for the first time - so this is the first time that I’ve ever really been able to appreciate what’s happening in that moment.

A somewhat embarrassing admission, though: on my first viewing, when the credits roll silently over Adric’s shattered badge… I didn’t realise it was his badge. I thought it was supposed to represent the Earth blowing up having been hit by the freighter, and it was just a particularly rubbish effect. I couldn’t understand what the point of that was, since it’s clear from the dialogue that the planet doesn’t blow up (of course it doesn’t, it wouldn’t make sense!). In my defence, though, watching through this time, I’ve never noticed before that the floor of the TARDIS has turned black for this shot! Is there a particular reason for that?

It seems pointless to discuss much else about this episode, because the death really is the thing that defines it, but that’s not to say that there isn’t a lot to enjoy elsewhere, too. People mock the Doctor’s speech to the Cyberleader, but I think there’s an element of the Doctor mocking his enemy here while trying to make his point. It raises a smile, and there’s something just so very Doctor Who about trying to appeal to a creature of evil by suggesting they should have a nice cooked meal!

The whole of Earthshock really feels like a season finale - and much more so that the actual season finale will. There’s a sense of the stakes being raised higher than ever before, and not everyone makes it out. I can’t remember the last time the programme had such confidence, and it’s probably this production team’s highest point. I loved Kinda, and that story scored better than this in my ratings, but I appreciate Kinda as someone watching now, when I know it would have gone a little more over my head as a child on first broadcast. Earthshock is a story that I can appreciate as a grown up, and I know I would have loved as a child.

Oh, and one thing: if I have to suffer, then so do all of you. Someone pointed out to me this week that this design of Cybermen has ‘eyebrows’ built in, giving them a look of being completely surprised all the time. Now I’ve seen it, I can’t unsee it, and I don’t plan to be alone in this. 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 602: Earthshock, Episode Three

Dear diary,

Way back in the mists of time when I first got in to Doctor Who, this was one of the earliest stories I saw. It wasn’t my first Cyberman story (that was The Tomb of the Cybermen), but it’s a tale that I think really helped make me love the silver giants. There’s really two main schools of Cybermen: you’ve got the sinister, scheming ones of stories like The Moonbase where they infect the crew slowly via the sugar, or The Wheel in Space, where people are hypnotised into helping them, and then there’s the ‘macho’ versions that really make their first real impact in this story. These are Cybermen reimagined for the 1980s, and they really go on to inspire the versions seen in the new series. Both types have their highlights (though I think right now the 1960s versions would win out, but ask me again tomorrow and it’ll be the 80s models. Then the 60s again. You get the idea…), and I don’t think that this particular style of Cyberman has ever been done better than in this episode.

Put simply, the Cybermen in today’s episode are unstoppable. They just are! There’s only a handful of costumes (though more than I’d expect), but they’re being directed and shot so well that it feels like there are hundreds of them. The implication is that we’re looking at something like 15,000 onboard this freighter alone, and you really get a sense that the figure could be true - there really are loads of them. From my twenty-something perspective, I can see that the slit screen and mirror shots don’t always look the best, but it’s another thing that I know would have worked absolutely for me as a child. For me now, it’s the repeated shots of them breaking out of containers, or ripping plastic off themselves that really sell it for me. We’re never told that there’s a whole army waking up here, but it’s all implied and works really very well.

I think it helps that I really like the design of the Cybermen in this story, too. By the time you reach Attack of the Cybermen it’s the controller that sticks in your mind, and the over-chromed versions of Silver Nemesishave never really been as appealing to me (watch me change my mind on that in a couple of months, I’m sure!), but in Earthshock, we get to see this design really shine. I’ve heard people complain over the years that it’s too much of a departure from what had gone before, but I can’t see that at all. This feels like a 1980s update of the costumes seen in Revenge of the Cybermen, and this outfits in turn felt like a 1970s version of the ones from The Invasion. There’s something about this version in particular - right down to the little tubes on the main body (I believe that these were converted from flight suits, and are part of the original suit as opposed to an added detail) that really works for me. The tubes leading up into the helmet and the see-through chin pieces all stand out, too. I think this is the closest to seeing the Cybermen as organic creatures with things plugged in to them, keeping them going, that we’ve come since their very first appearance all those years ago.

I will admit, though, that they do look pretty stupid when Tegan and her squad of soldiers spy on a pair of Cybermen who just mill around having a chat!

Elsewhere, there’s an awful lot to really like about this episode, and a lot of it comes down to the direction. I’ve already praised the way that the Cybermen bursting out of hibernation has been handled, but the lighting in these sequences deserves a bit of attention, too. It’s the same throughout lots of the episode - the different areas of the ship all feel distinct and they’re all lit beautifully. The shot of the Cyberman getting trapped in the door is one that I could bang on about for hours, too - it’s not only a great visual image, but it’s pulled off perfectly. Surely one of the best effects shots the programme has ever given us?

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 601: Earthshock, Episode Two

Dear diary,

Today sees the annual appearance of the ‘classic montage’ which John Nathan-Turner was keen on inserting into seasons in the first half of his time as producer. We get some clips in Logopolis as the Doctor watches his life flash before his eyes, then they turn up in today’s episode to represent the Cybermen looking back over their previous encounters with the Doctor (and to me, the absence of the Third Doctor seems to be staggeringly obvious. I’ve never really noticed quite how much it sticks out that he never got to face off against them, but it’s no wonder that we’ll see this rectified before too long!). Season Twenty-One sees clips integrated via the Brigadier getting his memories back, and then we get snapshots of the Doctor’s previous companions - well, most of them - in Resurrection of the Daleks. This fad seems to disappear by the time the Sixth Doctor arrives, and the programme gets its nostalgic kick from elsewhere.

I’m somewhat gently mocking this practice here, but I can only begin to imagine how exciting this must have been for kids watching at the time. Not only had they just had a shocker of a cliffhanger in which the Cybermen came back after a huge break away from the show, but they were getting clips of the old Doctors facing off against them! People talk about the Five Faces of Doctor Who repeats season as being absolutely massive because it was a chance to see stories they never thought they would, but now they’re getting snippets of them integrated into the series proper. I’d have genuinely wet myself with excitement, I think.

Whereas yesterday’s episode was largely split between scenes in a quarry, a cave, or the TARDIS, today’s episode is filled with far more things that I think of when picturing Earthshock. The freighter has a very distinct style to it, which is beautiful in a kind of industrial way, and much like Four to Doomsday, it utilises the actual television studio itself to help make spaces seem larger and more solid than they really are. When the Doctor and Adric are out exploring the cargo hold, you get a real sense of them actually travelling around the place, rather than it simply being a set. There’s some real tension in these scenes, and it all helps add up to make this simply one of the most exciting things ever.

Where this story differs from Four to Doomsday is in the success of its ‘name’ casting. Under that tale, I praised the inclusion of Stratford Johns among the cast, pointing out that John Nathan-Turner’s stunt casting really could work on occasion - bringing in a well respected and talented actor to fill the role of a major guest character. I mused that perhaps it’s wrong of us to always remember his headline-grabbing casting policy as being a bad thing. This story, however, presents us with the other side of the coin, in casting Beryl Reid as the head of this space freighter. The performance is somewhat out-of-kilter with everything around it, and you do somewhat get the impression that she doesn’t have the first clue about what she’s actually doing here. A pity, because I think it’s the one weak link that’s bringing the story down a little…

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 600: Earthshock, Episode One

Dear diary,

In the old days, Doctor Who wasn’t necessarily a programme which tried to really surprise you. Oh, there have been moments of it over the years - Sara’s sudden brutal death in The Daleks’ Master Plan, or the reveal of the Master in a few of the Pertwee stories for instance (hush, it was sometimes a surprise) - but generally, it’s only been surprising because there were very few places to get information about what was to come. The Daleks’ returns were often heralded in the title of the story, or previewed in the pages of the Radio Times. Companion’s arrivals and departures were in the newspapers some time before they occurred. Even the cliffhangers are simply a part of the programme, so you get to know the format they take.

So I think it’s fair to say that Earthshock is probably the first Doctor Who story that prides itself on actually shocking you. It’s full of surprises, and the production team went out of their way to make sure that these moments stayed intact for the broadcast of the tale. The gallery at TV Centre was closed off, so that passers-by wouldn’t catch a glimpse of the Cybermen in the studio. John Nathan-Turner turned down the cover of the Radio Times - the first offered to Doctor Who since the Pertwee days! - because he’d rather keep it secret. Even the death of Adric at the end of the tale (I’m terribly sorry if that’s a spoiler now, but more than thirty years on I’m fairly sure it’s common knowledge) was kept under wraps by finding a way to have him appear in the following episode - just so that his name would appear on the cast lists and thus throw you off.

Now, my friend Nick likes surprises in Doctor Who. Or, more specifically, he likes surprising unsuspecting fans with twists in the story and seeing how they react. He recently showed a friend The Caves of Androzani without her knowing that it was Peter Davison’s swan song. Oh, the joy of the reaction, as the end of that story approached and she realised that the Doctor was heading to his death! The plan for the next night would be to show her Earthsock, and see how she reacted to all the various twists in this one. The plan somewhat backfired, though, because having been filled once with the ending to Caves, she decided to do a bit of digging on this tale and uncovered the news about the Cybermen and Adric. A pity.

Thankfully for Nick, a week on from that event and it’s my turn to watch Earthshock. I’ve got my own guinea pig to test it out on, and thus I’m joined for the next few days by Emma, who thinks it’s just time for me to show her a Peter Davison story. She’s actually quite excited by it. I’ve gone to great pains to keep the DVD cover hidden from her, and to make sure that the episode is cued up to start playing from the opening titles by the time she enters the room, so that she won’t catch sight of the clips on the menu. We sit through 25-or-so minutes of the Doctor and his companions in a cave, before that stunning final reveal of the Cybermen watching them (‘Destroy them! Destroy them at once!’), and I snap my head towards Emma to gauge her reaction.

‘Friends!’ she declares. I forgot that were Emma to travel in the TARDIS, she’d make friends with pretty much any monster she came across.

But all is not lost. She may not have been entirely floored by the appearance of the Cybermen, but there’s something more interesting happening here which I’m looking forward to seeing play out over the next three episodes. She’s taken something of a dislike to Adric immediately (I have pointed out that he’s being made more whiny and annoying than usual here), and has already told me that it’s his last story because he ‘keeps banging on’ about going home. She’s sure that the story will end with the Doctor trying to get him back to his own planet, so I’m keen to see how she reacts when he ends up slamming into our planet, instead.

It’s quite hard to watch this episode when you know that it ends with the Cybermen showing up. All the suff with the androids in the tunnel feels like padding until the cliffhanger arrives (although it’s plenty enjoyable in itself). Earthshock was one of the very first Doctor Who DVDs that I bought - already knowing the surprises - so for me it’s a story in which I’m waiting to see the silver giants make their appearance. But I love all the stories about kids at the time falling open mouthed, and excitedly discussing it in the playground the next day. I think that’s where this new twice-weekly broadcast pattern really comes into its own: allowing children to analyse the story the very next day at school.

In the past, with returns of characters like The Master, I’ve always questioned how much the viewers of the time would have really known of the character (and several of you have commented with your own tales of the time - please do so today, too, as I’d love to hear how you reacted to this one!), but I don’t feel the need to do that with the Cybermen. They’re one of the elite of Doctor Who monsters, and this might well be the very best surprise that the programme ever delivered…

Episode #313 of the DWO WhoCast, Doctor Who Podcast is Out Now!

In this week's episode of the DWO WhoCast...

Dave and Thomas take giant steps while walking towards The Moonbase as they look at the latest DVD release and have a natter about all things Cyberman. Also a look at the wacky world of lost episode rumours.  

Listen to Episode #313 of the DWO WhoCast in the player below:

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[Source: DWO]

The BBC have released some details and a some promo images for the upcoming 2013 Doctor Who Christmas special, which now has a title; 'The Time Of The Doctor'.

Synopsis:

Orbiting a quiet backwater planet, the massed forces of the universe’s deadliest species gather, drawn to a mysterious message that echoes out to the stars - and amongst them, the Doctor.

Rescuing Clara from a family Christmas dinner, the Time Lord and his best friend must learn what this enigmatic signal means for his own fate and that of the universe.

Two promo images have also been released, which can can view in the right-hand column.

Watch the Teaser Trailer for The Time Of The Doctor, below:

[youtube:DMOOLd_44Mo]
+  The Time Of The Doctor will air on Christmas Day, at 7:30pm on BBC One. 

[Source: BBC]

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 260 Extra: The Second Doctor Overview

Dear diary,

I can't begin to tell you how happy I am. Way back at the end of last year, when I was first starting to get ready for The 50 Year Diary, I was most looking forward to the Patrick Troughton years.

He'd always been my favourite Doctor, based on the surviving stories of his that I'd seen, and I was really looking forward to actually making my way through all he had to offer. I'd dabbled with the missing episodes from time to time, watching the odd recon if it could hold my attention, or listening to a soundtrack here or there, but now I'd have a reason to actually stick with it, and really enjoy it.

But then I started to worry. The further I got into the William Hartnell years, the more I found myself enjoying him as the Doctor. Watching the programme at the rate of one episode a day way working perfectly for one of my main aims - I was forming an actual bond with the older characters. It's tricky to do when you can dip in and out of the stories on DVD whenever you like and in any old order. I wanted to really grow attached to them in the same way you do when a new series airs.

So as we came to the tail-end of Season Three and things started to fall into place for Troughton's arrival, I started to panic. What if, having grown so used to Hartnell, I'd find I didn't really care all that much for a silly new Doctor? Could my love for his Second incarnation be completely destroyed by seeing them all in this way? Even more crucially, would my favourite story of all time - The Tomb of the Cybermen - suddenly seem rubbish compared to all the other stories I'd found myself really enjoying?

Well no. Of course not. It seems obvious from here, having just finished Episode Ten of The War Games, that I love Patrick Troughton because he's a genuinely brilliant Doctor. There's a reason that every Doctor since has fallen in love with him and borrowed a little bit of his performance. And it didn't matter if I'd found myself really enjoying the likes of The War Machines, or The Dalek Invasion of Earth, because The Tomb of the Cybermen is still fantastic anyway.

What really surprised me is just how much I enjoyed Troughton's first season. Because so much of it is missing from the archives, stories from Season Four are often forgotten. Everyone thinks of the three key stories (The Tenth Planet, The Power of the Daleks, and The Evil of the Daleks) and then forgets all the adventures with the Macra, the Cybermen on the Moon, or the Fish People. I'm just as guilty of it - I'd never really payed the season that much attention.

It's a crying shame that we can't see more of it, because there's a lot to love in there, and I think these stories would be held in higher regard if we were able to stick the DVDs in as simply as we can many other stories (though this is becoming closer to a reality even as I type, with three of the stories lined up for release in the near future).

Season Five, on the other hand, which I was expecting to really love, fell a little bit flat for me. Individually, several episodes rated very well, but by the end of the run I was really starting to flag. Poor Fury From the Deep is probably deserving of a much better score than I've given it, but I was simply washed out by that whole format by the time it rolled around. It's definitely high on my list for a rematch once the marathon is over. Surprisingly, and likely due to the fact that I loved both Tomb and The Web of Fear so much, this season currently holds the highest average rating - 7.2.

And then we come to Season Six. Being mostly complete in the archive, it's the one that everyone hails as the best of Troughton's three years, and it's the stories from this period that helped me to first fall in love with the Second Doctor. While I've liked many bits of it, the overall score has been brought down a little by my utter contempt for The Dominators (and I promise that I'll stop banging on about it now that I'm done with the 1960s) and my disappointment during The Space Pirates.

As a whole, the era comes in with a very respectable rating of 6.8, putting it a little ahead of the First Doctor. Troughton's stories have currently taken the top four spots on my ratings table of all the stories so far, but he's also gathered a few at the other end of the scoreboard, filling the bottom three spaces, too.

And now it's onto the 1970s. I've made no secret as I've gone along that the next decade (and the Third Doctor's era in particular) has never been a favourite of mine, but I'm actually really excited to be moving on. I'm ready for the programme to do something different, and the success of stories like The Web of Fear and The Invasion have actually geared me up ready for the next massive change.

Whereas with The Tenth Planet, it felt right to move straight onto the next episode the following day, here it feels like there should be a bit more of a gap. Maybe it's because it's such a clean break, with the departure of the Doctor, both his companions, and the programme moving into the new decade with the introduction of colour to the adventures? That's not how the marathon works, though, so it's right on to Spearhead From Space in the morning, and (perhaps surprisingly) I can't wait!

BBC Consumer Products have sent DWO the cover and details for the Doctor Who DVD release of The Tenth Planet.

The Tenth Planet
Featuring: The 1st Doctor

The TARDIS brings the Doctor and his friends Ben and Polly to the South Pole in 1986. 

Their arrival coincides with the appearance of Earth’s forgotten twin planet Mondas and visitors from that world – emotionless beings called Cybermen.

It’s up to the Doctor and his friends to stop these creatures before they convert Earth’s population into similar cyber creations – but the encounter will have a devastating effect on the Doctor...

Special Features:

Disc One:

•  Commentary with actors Anneke Wills (Polly), Christopher Matthews (Radar Technician), Earl Cameron (Williams), Alan White (Schultz), Donald Van Der Maaten (Cybermen Shav and Gern), Christopher Dunham (R/T Technician) and designer Peter Kindred. Moderated by Toby Hadoke.
•  Frozen Out - Cast and crew look back on the making of the story. With actors Anneke Wills, Earl Cameron and Reg Whitehead, designer Peter Kindred and vision mixer Shirley Coward.
•  Episode 4 VHS Reconstruction - The reconstruction of the missing fourth episode using audio, stills and surviving clips, which featured on the BBC Video VHS release of the story back in 2000.
•  Radio Times listings - Episode listings for The Tenth Planet from the BBC listings magazine Radio Times (DVD-ROM only – to be viewed on PC/Mac).
•  Production subtitles - Subtitles provide the viewer with cast details, script development and other information related to the production of The Tenth Planet.
•  Photo gallery - A selection of production, design and publicity photographs from this story.
•  Coming soon - An exclusive new trailer for a forthcoming DVD release.

Disc Two:

•  William Hartnell Interview - Shortly after leaving Doctor Who, star William Hartnell joined the 1966 Christmas pantomime tour of Puss in Boots. Interviewed in his dressing room for the BBC Bristol’s Points West programme, Hartnell talks frankly about Daleks, the merits of pantomime and his own thoughts on his future career in this extremely rare glimpse into the mind of the man who first brought the role of the Doctor to life…
•  Doctor Who Stories – Anneke Wills - Anneke Wills look back on her role as Polly in the series, in an interview recorded for the BBC’s Story of Doctor Who in 2003.
•  The Golden Age - Historian Dominic Sandbrook examines the myth of a ‘Golden Age’ of Doctor Who.
•  Boys! Boys! Boys! - Peter Purves, Frazer Hines and Mark Strickson reminisce about their time as companions to the First, Second and Fifth Doctors respectively.
•  Companion Piece - A psychologist, writers and some of the Doctor’s companions over the years examine what it means to be a Time Lord’s fellow traveller . With actors William Russell, Elisabeth Sladen, Louise Jameson, Nicola Bryant and Arthur Darvill, writers Nev Fountain and Joseph Lidster, and psychologist Dr Tomas Charmorro-Premuzic.
•  Blue Peter: Doctor Who's Tenth Anniversary - Two weeks before the show’s tenth anniversary, the Blue Peter team take a look back at Doctor Who’s history. Ironically, the strict preservation of Blue Peter’s history means that the clip of the first regeneration has been preserved, but the final episode of The Tenth Planet that it came from was never again seen after its use here.

+  The Tenth Planet is released on 18th November 2013, priced £20.48.

+  Compare Prices for this product on CompareTheDalek.com.

[Source: BBC Consumer Products]

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 234: The Invasion, Episode Eight

Dear diary,

I think the biggest problem I have with a story like this is that after eight episodes, the ending still occurs in the blink of an eye. It’s an issue that I’ve been having with the series dating all the way back to The Daleks (which, incidentally, feels like a lifetime ago); you’ve got so many episodes building up, raising the stakes, and then they run out of time and the solution is all too simple.

Toady, it comes in the form of the missile launch. Around the halfway point, the Doctor declares that they have two options to stop the Cybermen from dropping their bomb – shut off the radio link at Vaughn’s complex outside the city, or blow up the Cybermen’s spaceship. The brigadier boldly announces that the Russian rocket won’t be ready for at least ten hours, which leaves them only the one choice.

Dutifully, the Doctor and Vaughn (now fighting against the Cybermen, not for the good of humanity but because he hates them; another lovely little touch) set off for the compound to knock out the radio signal. This mission accomplished, the Cybermen move their ship in closer to Earth, rendering the whole operation pointless. It’s ok, though, because the Russians have found a different way of preparing the rocket, so it’s primed and ready to go. Hooray! It hits the Cybership, defeats the ruthless, inhuman killers, and everyone gets back to normal, with Zoe pursuing a new career as a model.

Oh, I’m not complaining really. As much as the tension is dissipated in a matter of seconds, like so much of the story, it’s not about the payoff, it’s about the journey. So what if the Doctor and Vaughn’s trip to the IE compound is ultimately a waste of time? It looks gorgeous. Camfield’s direction really does seem to be at the best when he’s working outside on film, and it looks stunning for the whole sequence. The entire section takes up a fair bit of screen time, as we move into the big ‘UNIT Vs the Cybermen’ battle that I’ve been waiting for. Any disappointment at the lack of Cyberman action in yesterday’s episode must surely be made up for by the fight sequence here.

There’s plenty of behind-the-scenes photos of this filming, with cameramen sprawled out on the floor, shooting up at the Cybermen looming over them, so this scene is one of those which sits pretty prominently in my mind. If anything on this watch though, it makes me long to see the Yeti attack on Covent Garden from The Web of Fear. If it’s anywhere near as good as this, it would be a great treasure to see returned. The location really helps this scene, too – it’s that kind of industrial landscape that’s always fascinated me, and to see the two sides fighting surrounded by all the crumbling brick buildings and the huge metal girders is fantastic.

I think the main thing I’ll be taking away from The Invasion is how it’s altered my perception of what to come. I’ve mentioned it already during this story, but as regular readers will know, I’ve not been looking forward to reaching the Pertwee years. That early 1970s period has always been my least favourite ‘era’ of the programme, and as it crept closer I was beginning to wonder if it might be the thing that breaks me. In actual fact, though, I’ve found myself enjoying the slow evolution of that phase of the programme – the introduction of the contemporary Earth-based stories starting from The War Machines, the introduction of the Brigadier, and now UNIT turning up on the scene, too. Seeing characters like Benton arriving make it feel as though the programme really is evolving into a new style, whereas I’d previously always thought of it as being a massive shift in style right out of nowhere.

The only thing that does strike me is how much the UNIT we see here in this story differs from the organisation that works alongside the Third Doctor (or, at least, how much it differs from the version of UNIT in my head). The small number of soldiers present in the final battle here is explained away by not having enough ways of blocking the Cyber-signal – the Brigadier even explains that they’ve only got enough men awake to form a single platoon. As the years go by, though, they always seem to operate on a small number of personnel, with or without half the group put to sleep by the Cybermen.

It’s also a shame that we never again see UNIT’s aircraft base. It’s used well here as a means of getting from one location to another and drops all the right people off in all the right places as and when needed. This kind of funding just isn’t available to them in the 1970s, and that’s a shame. I have a feeling that it could feel like a bit of a step backwards when they start operating out of an old house in the home counties.

Overall, it’s an odd send off for the Cybermen, considering that they won’t be showing up – properly – in the programme again until Tom Baker takes over. Obviously, at the time, they didn’t know that we’d be seeing the last of them for now, but it’s still a bit of an unusual way to see them off. I’ve always loved that the Cybermen take over from the Daleks as the default ‘villains’ of Doctor Who once Patrick Troughton comes along, and I’m really pleased that, on the whole, I’ve rather enjoyed their stories. I’ve always found it a shame that they never made a Third Doctor and Cybermen story, but I think that The Invasion gives a good enough example of what that would be like that I’m not going to miss loosing out for a few seasons.

If I’m completely honest, this story hasn’t lived up to my expectations (or my memories), but it’s still been an enjoyable way to spend the last week, and it’s telling that I reached Episode Eight still not bored by the setting or the characters. There’s several things that I think I’d do differently, but it’s certainly doing an awful lot right.

Don't forget to 'like' the 50 Year Diary Facebook Page - where I'll be asking about your favourite Troughton stories before long!

ba 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 233: The Invasion, Episode Seven

Dear diary,

There’s a moment in today’s episode where one of our brave UNIT soldiers makes a dash for Professor Travers’ house, and bursts in the door exclaiming that there are ‘hundreds of Cybermen’ outside on the streets of London. And yet, despite them putting the human race to sleep and bursting out of every manhole cover they could find at the end of yesterday’s instalment, we don’t actually see any Cybermen in this episode outside of the cliffhanger reprise.

In some ways, it’s just continuing my complaint from yesterday. Whereas I couldn’t get the idea of a bustling city outside of these sets to sit right in my mind, I now struggle to imagine a city infested by the Cybermen. It feels like this story should be taking place against this vast canvas - The Web of Fear taken out of the underground and scaled up massively – but it all falls a bit flat. We seem to simply move through the same few sets, from Vaughn’s office (which is the same in both his London HQ and his complex outside the city, with the backdrop replaced behind the window), via the sewers, to Travers’ house.

The Invasion has always been down in my mind as the Troughton-era Cyberman epic; his equivalent to Hartnell’s Daleks’ master Plan. Actually though, it’s not really about the Cybermen, it’s all about Tobias Vaughn. In some ways, I’m quite pleased by this. Kevin Stoney puts in such a brilliant performance throughout the story that it’s great to see him given the space to really showcase his talents. Throughout, he’s been built up as the upper hand in the deal with the Cybermen, but it’s all beautifully undercut today when the Cyberplanner simply drones (and that voice really is a drone) ‘we no longer need you.’

It’s similar to The Wheel in Space that the Cybermen are kept in the background, keeping the attention of the kids while the story really follows a completely different narrative strand. It worked well enough in that situation, with the Cybermen finally making their real attack in the sixth episode, but here we’re stretched out another two. It’s not losing my interest yet (and since this is the longest story since The Daleks’ Master Plan, I did worry that it might), but I do hope we get some good Cybermen scenes in our final twenty-five minutes. As much as I love Tobias Vaughn, this is their final appearance for ages, and I’d love to see them go out in style.

Something else that’s carried across from The Wheel in Space is Zoe’s character in this episode. She’s been a little sidelined in places so far (trying on feather boas and posing for photographs while the Doctor and Jamie head off to do the real work), though she’s more than made up for it by charging out with Isobel and getting stuck in wherever the opportunity arises. Be it hunting for her friends at the IE building, or heading down into the sewers to catch a Cyberman, Zoe’s been willing to take part when needed.

Today, though, we get to see her intelligence shine through again. It’s a great scene when she asks for the missile launch to be delayed for just thirty seconds while she makes her calculations to knock out as many of the Cyberships as possible, and it’s very reminiscent of the Doctor bounding around the computers back in The Ice Warriors working out his own calculations. There’s a glimmer of her own arrogance turning up again, too when she’s told that she’d better be right with the numbers and she simply replies ‘I am!’

(But surely we could have had some Cybermats in the sewers? It seems so obvious!)

a 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 232: The Invasion, Episode Six

Dear diary,

A little after halfway into this episode, Ellie arrived at the flat. She didn't take a seat to watch with me, but couldn't fail to be at least a little invested in what was happening (mostly because every so often I'd point at the screen and excitedly exclaim 'Cyberman!'). With a couple of minutes to go, she joined me on the sofa and watched the end of the episode. 'Oh,' she spoke up, as the tips of the Cybermen's helmets began to appear over the steps outside St Pauls, 'Is this the really famous bit?'

I think it probably says something for this moment of The Invasion, that someone who has pretty much no interest in the 1960s era of the programme can identify 'The Cybermen at St Pauls' as one of those really iconic Doctor Who moments.

For me, though, it's not really all that. It's been years since I last watched The Invasion (probably not since the DVD was first released in 2006), and over that time, I'd built up the sequence of the Cybermen marching down the steps into this really big, bold thing. There's a brilliant photo taken on location of a silver giant stood on the steps, looking towards the sky with the dome of the cathedral in the background. It's an image that's so burnt into my mind that I was sure it matched a shot in the actual sequence, but it doesn't. If anything, the St Pauls moment forms just one tiny bit of that sequence, and it felt almost like an anti-climax for me.

Now, in part, this is all the result of forty years adding significance to the moment. As I say, if even Ellie can highlight it as an important bit of the programme's history, then it must be doing something right. Watching it without all that prior knowledge must be fantastic. And lots of the scene is - the moment that the manhole covers start to fly open and Cybermen start climbing out is brilliant, and it's odd just how right they look crawling out from under the streets. I think the feeling of disappointment at the ending has been added to by other factors, though…

The Invasion, as I've said before, is very much a follow up to The Web of Fear. Because of that, for some reason, I've got it in my head that London is deserted. Completely evacuated, like it was for the Yeti incident. It makes it tricky to panic when characters talk of the entire city being controlled, because I actively have to remind myself that there is a city full of people out there. When Watkins is told of Isobel's freedom, and Vaughn suggests that she's probably waiting at home for him, it felt odd to me - because it feels like the city should be deserted.

It doesn't help, then, when we get the establishing shots of the city in the seconds building up the Invasion. All the streets are completely deserted (that's the hazard of filming first thing in the morning, I guess!), and when we do finally get to see people falling under the Cybermen's control, there's only three or four of them, and we cut between them rapidly. Don't get me wrong, it's very effective, and I know that they don't have the budget for a whole host of extras being taken over by the strange noise echoing through the air, but it feels like as a key junction in an eight-part story… there should be more to it.

Oh, but it's not all complaints. There's loads packed into today's episode that I love - and 'packed' really is the operative word. When the Brigadier sends some men to intercept Vaughn's guards and free the professor, I was a little disheartened to see the action cut to after the battle, with its events relayed to Vaughn via Gregory. Knowing what Camfield can do with an action sequence, I was looking forward to getting to see it out on location, and it felt like a cop out to avoid showing it (I will say, though, that seeing the mini-battle between UNIT and the Cybermen in the sewers does make up for this a little. I love the clanging metal sound effect as a soldier batters a Cybermen's arm with his gun!). As the episode goes on, though, it soon becomes clear that it's cut to keep things moving - there's too much to get through!

It means there's one or two other places where the action cuts very suddenly, and it leads to a slightly disorienting effect (the one that springs immediately to mind if Jamie announcing that he's returning to his dream and then cutting to him being woken sometime later to carry on with the story. It's an effective way of letting time pass, but it feels very out of place to cut so quickly from one to the other), but it means we're moving at a pace rarely seen in the programme.

When we do slow down a little, it's for wonderful moments. The confrontation between Vaughn and the professor is perhaps one of my favourite scenes from the series so far - it's so well done on every level, from the writing, performance, and direction. Vaughn taunting Watkins with his charm is brilliant, actually handing the man a gun so that he can follow through with a threat of murder. The way he laughs when the bullets cut straight into his cybernetic body with no pain is simply fantastic: pitch-perfect in every way. The only thing that could have possibly made that better would be not finding out about Vaughn's partial upgrade earlier in the story, as it would have added a whole new layer to the scene.

One last thing, by the way: how right does the Doctor look, staring down a microscope in a UNIT laboratory? After everything I've said, I'm becoming a UNIT convert mighty quickly!

a 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 231: The Invasion, Episode Five

Dear diary,

As much as I loved the animation in yesterday's episode, nothing quite beats having the actual thing to watch. It's striking right from the off - the reveal of the Cyberman is much better when you can see it properly than it was in the animation. In the cliffhanger yesterday, the odd pulsating of the 'cocoon' just looked odd whereas now it's actually creepy. One thing, though… how do they hold those electrodes onto it? They don't seem to attach anywhere!

The sight of the Cybermen ripping their way out of hibernation is fantastic, and we get a few great opportunities to see it throughout today's episode. I'll admit that it doesn't always work (at one point, the recently burst cocoon gets caught on the Cyberman's handlebars, and the rest of the scene - shot from behind our metal monster - just looks odd because of it. In another instance, you can see where someone just off camera is trying to pull the cocoon away from another Cyberman), but when it does, it really does. The best ones are the shots where the Cybermen literally burst out from storage, ripping open their pods and stepping forward into the open.

It benefits from the fact that this design of Cyberman is gorgeous, too. There's no wonder that Big Finish tend to use them as the default model, because they're so brilliant. I've said before that the Tomb models are my favourite 60s version, but d'you know? I think it may be these ones. There's something about them - and the fact they look more like the 'standard' Cyberman model, with the addition of the 'ear muffs' - that just really works. The sight of one being inflicted with emotion and crying out in pain is pretty striking, and it relies on our former knowledge of the creatures. Admittedly, it doesn't look quite as effective in the closing seconds, when the creature lurches out of the darkness down in the sewers…

Some praise really does need to be reserved for the Cyberplanner: it's always been a slightly odd design, as though the leader of their invasion fleet has been built from assorted bric-a-brac, and even in this story, the Direction hasn't always done it the best of favours. When we see it in close up, it really does look cobbled together, and the effect is completely lost. Today, though, in a long-shot and towering over Vaughn, it works! We've got a few shots from behind the structure, too, which also make it look better than it has done.

I think one of the things that I'm enjoying most about this story at the moment is the fact that we've reverted to having three companions again. For a while, I was thinking about how much I'd rather Anne Travers turn up in the story than Isobel, but now that we're thick into the action she's fitting right in. I love that she and Zoe plot to go into the sewers and find the evidence the Brigadier needs, and then tempt Jamie into coming along, too. It makes for a nice dynamic, the likes of which we've not seen since Ben and Polly departed. I also love how normal it feels that a policeman thinks they're just a bunch of kids larking about in the sewers - the scale of what's going on is growing by the episode (especially now that the invasion has been moved up to tomorrow!), but for most people it's just a load of fantasy. No wonder the Brigadier needs to get hold of some evidence pretty sharpish!

The policeman is the second casualty of this story to come completely from nowhere. Back in Episode One, the poor driver that gives the Doctor and his friends a lift gets shot down in cold blood without the Doctor even realising (a few episodes later, he even muses to the Brigadier that the chap's probably fine), and here the policeman meets his fate simply by touching the outer fringes of the Doctor's life. The series has a gritty edge to it when we come back down to Earth, and it packs far more of a punch to see an innocent policeman meet his demise than it does some random scientist on the high-tech base-of-the-week.

a 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 230: The Invasion, Episode Four

Dear diary,

Oh, all right then. I'm a complete convert to the style of animation used in this story. For some reason, I'd always recalled it as being a bit ropey - almost like cheap flash animation that featured characters barely moving. Actually, it's completely the opposite to all that! I think I'm actually a little disappointed that Cosgrove Hall didn't get to make any more of the missing episodes - if they could all have been to this standard, then I'd be a very happy fan.

In some ways, it's also quite nice to have Cosgrove Hall connected with Doctor Who, even if it's only in a small way (and Scream of the Shalka, their other Who project, is seeing a DVD release next month too). For many people, it's a name that's synonymous with childhood and British animation, and is as much of a treasure to UK television as Doctor Who itself. Sadly, the company was wound down a few years ago, so chances of getting them involved with the Who range again are pretty much nil*.

It's interesting, though, that when The Invasion first came out on DVD, in 2006, we were told quite simply that the cost of regular animations were beyond the budget of the DVD line, and that we'd only managed to get hold of this one because of some complicated agreement with the Doctor Who website (I think I'm right in saying that these two episodes were commissions for the web, to follow on from their various other animation pieces, but that for some reason that plan fell through, too late in the day to cancel. Thus, we end up with these two episodes here on the DVD). Fast forward seven years and suddenly animations aren't just viable - they're plentiful!

This year already, we've had The Reign of Terror (I always found it amusing that the first two stories to be released with animated instalments were the second ever story with missing parts, and the second to last story with them. There's a kind of neat symmetry to that!), and a sneak-peak of The Tenth Planet on the Regenerations set, with a full release to follow later in the year. The Ice Warriors is out any day now, and then there's The Moonbase to come in a few months, too. Here's hoping that the last few stories with only two missing episodes (The Crusade and The Underwater Menace) can also be given the treatment - it's a lovely way of plugging the gaps.

And what a gap to plug in today's episode! Helicopters are simply becoming part and parcel of the programme's format, now, so it's nice to actually see one! Both their previous appearances have been in missing episodes, too, but here we get some idea of how the scene could have looked, and it's fab. I've no doubt that the animation takes one or two liberties (the shot of the helicopter flying away while Jamie dangles from the rope ladder, for example, probably looks a little better here than it might have actually done!), but it really helps to up the scale of the whole thing.

And yet, for me, it's still in the characters that The Invasion is really shining. Particularly in Tobian Vaughn. I've already said plenty of nice things about the performance we're being given here but the way that Vaughn's facade gently slips away throughout the first two thirds of today's episode, before he eventually snaps and begins to shout is fantastic. The best bit, however, comes a few minutes later, when he demands to be put through to a government minister. He snaps at the receptionist as she appears on the video screen, before remembering himself, and slipping back into his 'charming' persona. Characters are rarely as fully-rounded as this, and I think Kevin Stoney has to take a large amount of the credit, there.

And then the cliffhanger! We all knew it was coming, yeah, but you know what? I bloody love Cybermen, so it's all good by me!

*For the record, while everyone tends to list Danger Mouse as their favourite Cosgrove Hall production, for me it was always about Count Duckula. I still get the theme tune stuck in my head now and then.

a 

a  a

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 229: The Invasion, Episode Three

Dear diary,

The Doctor and Jamie as they appear in this story are, for me, the 'definitive' versions. Whenever I think of the pair, it's as they are here: right down to the way that Troughton's hair falls. I'm not sure why it's like this as opposed to any other episode, but it's always been the version that's stuck in my mind. The scenes as the pair climb the lift shaft together and emerge onto the rooftop just looks absolutely right to me, as does their time sneaking along the sides of the trains and peeking inside to take a closer look at the supposedly 'empty' crates.

I think the fact that so much of Season Six is still available to watch as opposed to stuff from earlier in the Second Doctor's era (there's almost twice as many surviving episodes in Season Six than there are in Seasons Four and Five combined!) means that this has rather become the default version of Troughton's incarnation for many people. Take, for example, three recent releases of Second Doctor merchandise: The Wheel of Ice, an original novel released last year, and two 50th anniversary releases in the form of the second Destiny of the Doctor CD and the second issue of the IDW Prisoners of Time comic. All three of these feature the TARDIS team of the Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe as opposed to the earlier set ups of this era.

I wonder if that might be why this version of the Doctor is so ingrained in my mind? Until undertaking this marathon, The Tomb of the Cybermen and The Moonbase were the only pre-Season-Six stories that I had any real knowledge of (though I'd seen bits and bobs from other tales, usually orphaned episodes), whereas I've seen a lot of Season Six before - merely by existing in the archive, it becomes far more accessible than his earlier stuff.

It's a shame, really, because I've noticed just how much Troughton's Doctor has evolved across his time on the programme. The Second Doctor - though still quite a fun character - gets to show off his darker side far more often these days than he did to begin with. He used to be a bit of a clown who secretly knew what was going on, but now he's maturing a lot. Even his look has moved on over time - compare the way his hair sits now compared to the way it was during the earliest stages of Season Four and there's a distinct difference. It's possibly something I'm projecting onto the character, but I think he looks older now far more than the three years that we've seen pass would allow.

It's another reason that I'd love to see him in a few more Jamie-less adventures, so we could get a real sense of time passing for this incarnation. I'd dearly love to have more to watch from his earliest adventures, so that this phase of the programme didn't feel so weighted to the late 1960s.

It's another one of those days where I could just wax lyrical about how brilliant Troughton and Hines are together, and a great instance of them really drawing my attention - I hadn't noticed that we were missing Zoe and Isobel until the pair clambered aboard the train carriage to take a look for them: I'm too busy caught up with them and their interactions with Tobias Vaughn.

Vaughn has always been hailed as one of Doctor Who's very best villains, and it's not hard to see why. Kevin Stoney turns in a performance that's pitch-perfect (he slightly over-plays it with the 'niceness' when face to face with the Doctor and Jamie, but this becomes a plot point when even the Doctor draws attention to it), and he's well suited to the part. He was just as good playing Mavic Chen back in The Daleks' Master Plan, but giving him a far more real character and placing him in a very real setting makes his performance all the more brilliant - we can really connect to the idea of this person existing behind the fake smiles of big business.

Perhaps worryingly, all my memories of his character come from this first half of the story, before the Cybermen actually make their appearance. Once they arrive on the scene, I can't really recall what happens to Vaughn. I'm hoping that it's more down to my own bad memory than the character being sidelined as the story goes on, as he's one of the greatest things to turn up in the programme…

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 228: The Invasion, Episode Two

Dear diary,

It doesn't matter how much praise I had yesterday for the animated version of Episode One - it's lovely to be back into moving images again today because we're back in the world of Douglas Camfield! I've made my thoughts on his work perfectly clear enough times since the start of the diary, and it's nice to see that he doesn't disappoint here in his last contribution to the black and white era of the programme.

I'm not sure that there's anyone else who could have taken the helm on this story, to be honest. In many ways it's The Web of Fear brought out onto a bigger canvas, so Camfield is right at home. I think he's at his best during the early scenes of the Doctor and Jamie trying to shake off their pursuers - it looks far better than Doctor Who of this era has any right to, and I'd love to see these film sequences remastered for High Definition. It helps that these scenes take place against a backdrop of late 1960s London - a period I've stated my affection for more than once - and yet they're made to look very different to any of the programme's previous excursions to the big city.

The Dalek Invasion of Earth gave us lots of scenes taking place around the capitol's landmarks (Indeed, this story will tick another off the list before it's through), The War Machines took place in some rather nice-looking upmarket areas as well as the warehouses of Covent garden, The Faceless Ones dropped us into the alien environment of Gatwick airport, and the previously mentioned The Web of Fear trapped us in the claustrophobic tunnels of the Underground. The scenes in today's episode puts us in the grimy industrial streets, and they feel just right for this story - they're hard edged and pose a great backdrop for the threats looming over our heroes.

It's tricky to watch these moments now, knowing that one of the men rounding up the Doctor and Jamie is the future Sargent Benton - it stops them from seeming too shady. It's a testament to the way that Camfield has directed the sequences that you still get the impression things are about to go very wrong for the Doctor, despite knowing that UNIT is around the corner. It's also apt that when we get the first shot of a proper UNIT soldier, inside their aircraft base (speaking of which - how posh is that? They never got that kind of funding in the 1970s…), the attention is drawn to the patch on his arm, as though it's supposed to mean something to us. An audience at the time wouldn't have known quite how important UNIT were about to become for the programme, but it feels like a significant moment, all this time on.

It's lovely to see Nicholas Courtney back as the Brigadier, too. I can quote the scene where he meets with the Doctor again verbatim, and often think of it whenever I see the Brig turning up on screen in any story. I'm never sure why, but it's always seems fitting. I think the thing that surprises me the most about all this is just how glad I am to see UNIT coming together and in a story that's not all that far removed from what's hovering on the horizon. I've made no secret of how much I've always disliked the Pertwee era, but as we move closer and closer towards it, and I can see the elements falling into place, I'm actively looking forward to it. It's a distillation of all the things I'm enjoying in the Troughton era, but with an added dash of colour. It's lovely to be feeling this way - as I'd expected to start stalling in my marathon around about now, in an attempt to delay my arrival to the 1970s.

I could draw attention to the Brigadier's comment that it's been 'four years' since the incident with the Yeti, considering that it will pose a stumbling block for UNIT dating further down the line, but that feels too much like causing problems for myself. There'll be plenty of time to discuss that later. For now, I'm just sitting back and enjoying a story which seems to take the best that Doctor Who has to offer and merges it all together brilliantly.

a 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 227: The Invasion, Episode One

Dear diary,

It's almost a shame that we can't trade the two missing episodes of this story for two episodes of The Mind Robber. The idea of that story being made up of animated episodes just seems so right, doesn't it?

That's not to say that the animation here doesn't work, mind. Let's be honest, it's gorgeous. When The Reign of Terror first came out on DVD, several people complained that they preferred the style used on this release, and I thought they were mad. I'd just seen Reign and thought it was brilliantly done, whereas I remembered The Invasion looking a bit more static. In my mind, for some reason, I'd almost imagined this as a bit of a flash cartoon, like the ones done for the Doctor Who website back in the day.

But actually, this really is beautiful stuff. The shot of the TARDIS console, its central column gently rising and falling as we emerge from the titles is absolutely stunning. I know it wasn't quite like that on original broadcast, but now it's one of the best shots of the 1960s. Elsewhere in the episode, the animation really captures the noir style that I've always associated with this story (and looking at some shots of the Doctor and Jamie being escorted from the IE building made me realise that it was this I was thinking of back in The Enemy of the World) and simply sicks you in. I think it's always a good sign when you stop focussing on the fact that you're watching an animated fill-in for a missing episode and start just enjoying the story itself.

That's not hard to do with The Invasion, really. It's always been a story that fascinated me, even back when I was taking my first steps into the world of Doctor Who. For me, it was this mythical eight-part Cyberman story: their last appearance in the 1960s and featuring what many hold up as one of the greatest TARDIS teams of all. The fact that there were two episodes missing didn't even really factor in for me at the time, because I wasn't all that aware that there even were 'partially-complete' stories. I think I thought that it was either in the archive in full… or it wasn't.

The point was moot anyway, because my first experience of The Invasion came in the form of the soundtrack. When I think of all the missing episode soundtracks I've been through now in the course of The 50 Year Diary, it seems bizarre to think that I'd ever bothered to experience an existing story in this way. But back then, new to this world, I didn't know all that much better. Coming across the VHS tapes was a rare burst of excitement, but it was the newer merchandise that was easier to get my hands on.

Imagine, then, my thrill at discovering the 'Cyberman tin' in a shop on one shopping trip to Norwich. Back then we used to visit a couple of times a month, and I'd save up whatever cash I could for the trip. I can actually remember standing in Kulture Shock (I think the shop still exists, but in a severely reduced form. On a recent visit back home I noticed that the bridal shop which took over the premises has now closed too, and it sent an odd, nostalgic pang down my spine), picking up the tin and reading the list of contents: The Tenth Planet soundtrack (brilliant! Not only was this the Cybermen's first ever story, it was the First Doctor's last!), a CD featuring a reason of David Bank's Cyberman book (I've owned that book for years, but I don't think I've ever read it. Or listened to the CD, for that matter…), and… no? Surely not?

The soundtrack for The Invasion. I'm surprised I didn't pass out in shock, to be honest. At the time I was still living at home, and I spent the next week rationing the episodes of the story out to strictly one a night (hah! Some things never change…) while I made my way through. I can't remember much about my reaction to the story - I think I was simply too busy being excited to hear it. This was the big one. In the same way that the First Doctor had that big, epic adventure with the Daleks in the middle of his last season, the Second Doctor got a massive showdown with his enemies in the middle of this one.

What I can remember is that I was a bit surprised by the absolute lack of Cybermen for the first half. I think I was probably a bit miffed by that. For me, it was all about this being some big Cyberman epic, a big farewell to them as they departed the series for the foreseeable future. Older and wiser (stop laughing in the back), I can appreciate the way that the story builds up to the big reveal, and I think it's probably going to be all the better for it.

I always assumed that the appearance of the Cybermen at the end of Episode Four would have come as some big surprise to audiences back in the day (although, of course, the Radio Times had blown it right at the start of the story), but now that I'm making my way through, I can see how the reveal of the Cyber-planner here is a great hook for them - it only turned up a few stories ago, and we know it's a bit of Cyberman technology. It's another perfect example of why the series really is better enjoyed chronologically - it adds a whole new context that you miss when watching in DVD release order.

a 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 216: The Wheel in Space, Episode Six

Dear diary,

This is the part of the story where I should be complaining that, after all that, we get a total invasion of about eight Cybermen. And six of those don't even make it into the Wheel. You know what, though? I don't care! I've really enjoyed the ride for this story, and even the lack of Cyberman turning up as a really big invasion fleet isn't enough to dampen my spirits.

Being able to watch this Episode means that we get a chance to watch plenty of special effects. Indeed, I think this is the most obviously 'effects laden' episode we've seen since about as far back as The Ark. Oh sure things like The Web of Fear has it's web effect in the surviving episode, and The Underwater Menace has fish people bobbing about, but today we've got meteorites hurtling towards the Wheel! Jamie and Zoe making their way across space to the Silver Carrier! The crew of the Wheel blowing up the meteorites while our heroes dodge them… and that's all in the opening few minutes!

As the episode progresses we've got the Cybermen effects (the hypnotising thing we've already seen in Episode Three) and the Doctor electrocuting one of his foes, causing it to crumple up on the floor in a heap. You've then got the Cybermen's back up heading across to the Wheel, marching through space like a cold, unstoppable force!

Hm? Sorry? Oh, all right, then. Fine. Yes, the Cybermen heading over to the Wheel isn't the greatest of effects that the show has ever done, and I'll admit that it did let the ending down a little for me. Quite apart from the fact that they'd almost become transparent by the time they'd approached the Wheel, the Cyberman at the front insisted on walking along flapping his arms like a bird. It doesn't make for the most threatening thing we've ever seen them do. It's a shame, really, because a few seconds later he's trying to force open the doors to the loading bay, and that does work! It looks really effective! You can't have it all, I suppose.

The other effects in the episode - on the whole - are pretty good. The opening few scenes with Jamie and Zoe outside in space did put me in mind of a 1950's B-movie, but they did the job, and they didn't leave me disappointed - always a plus. We're now heading back to a period with a great many more surviving episodes (thanks to the animated release of The Invasion, I've only got five more episodes that I can't sit and watch from the rest of the decade), so I'm looking forward to keeping a tab on the effects in the series. Part of the fun in the early days was seeing how the team's confidence would build up, until they tried to do something that was just beyond their abilities.

I'm also pretty impressed with the design of the Wheel itself. I've been able to see it via the tele snaps right the way through the story, but today we get an especially good look at sections of it. The actual station itself, spinning in space, is as good as any ship ever designed for the programme, and it's nice to see some blueprints (of a sort) for it. As for the inside, the thing that really caught my attention was the bank of lava lamps! I shouldn't find them all that fascinating - I've got one in my flat, even! - by they do look fab in black and white, don't they? It doesn't hurt that they're much larger than your standard lava lamp, so they move in a slightly different way, too. I'm not at all sorry to admit that every scene they decorated the background of had me focussing largely on them as opposed to the Cybermen in front!

With the closing moments of the story, Zoe has slipped aboard the TARDIS and we're off into the third phase of the Second Doctor's era. I wasn't keen on her as a character when this story began, but I've warmed to her as the episodes have gone by (I think that's the intention, too. She's become more likeable and human as the story has progressed). I'm sure all her character will be stripped away over the next fortnight, but I'm looking forward to her joining the crew all the same.

Her first test as companion? Settle in and watch a repeat of The Evil of the Daleks. I've always found it odd that they wrote the repeat of a serial into the series itself, but even more odd, it's the story that introduces the previous companion! That must have been a bit jarring back in the day. I've always thought it might be better if they'd shown The Power of the Daleks instead - remind viewers of how the Second Doctor began. Actually, though, having watched through the series in this manner, I can see the logic behind choosing this one. It's got Jamie in, for a start, and Victoria is still fresh enough in the minds of the audience to make sense. Ben and Polly are our companions in Power, and they left the series a whole year ago - they're old news!

I had debated doing the serial again, to see if my opinion might have changed, but to be honest, I'm not thrilled by the prospect. I even considered spending tomorrow reading the Target novel of The Evil of the Daleks so I could at least claim that I'd tried. In the end, though, I'm keen to press forward with the series, so I'll be moving straight on to the next story, and trying something a little bit different…

(And no, I'm not going to bring up the Doctor's 'sexual air supply'…)

a 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 215: The Wheel in Space, Episode Five

Dear diary,

Aha, now we’re starting to see Zoe coming in as the new companion, and she gets to share a cliffhanger with Jamie, moving through space towards the Silver Carrier. It’s an odd sort of cliffhanger to lead into the final episode – the Cybermen aren’t the focus of the threat but it’s much more about the impending shower of meteorites. That’s sort of true of The Wheel in Space as a whole, though: the Cybermen are there just to be the token monsters. Even the Cybermats are only there to help further the plot.

I’m quite fond of the way that everything we’ve seen so far – Jamie sabotaging the Wheel’s laser (which would have been the first point-of-call for the Cybermats anyway), the destruction of the bernalium supplies, the two crew members heading over to the Rocket… it’s all simply been happening as a way to get the Cybermen onto the Wheel itself. The crew are now of little importance and can be disposed of, but up to now, everything has been calculated.

The only problem? I’m not entirely sure that I buy the Cybermen’s motives. The Doctor claims that they desire the ‘mineral wealth of Earth’… but is that true? What use would the Cybermen have with Earth’s minerals? I guess he could simply be speaking poetically, and what he really means is that they simply want the Earth itself (that’s their goal in The Moonbase, after all, which is set sometime not too far from now), but I’m still not sure. It’s a shame, because everything else is really working for me, but my favourite baddies are just a bit redundant here.

What’s lovely though is that by relegating the monsters to more background roles, we’re given plenty of chance for the rest of the characters to shine. Jamie and Zoe get to share a lovely scene here, in which he reassures her that they’ll come up with some way out of all this mess and she confesses that she’s not too sure. It’s very reminiscent of a similar scene with Victoria from the last story, but on this occasion it’s being held with someone who doesn’t know the Doctor’s way of doing things.

It’s lovely when Zoe wonders what’s left for her after all this trouble has passed. The Doctor has broadened her horizons somewhat, and taught her that a blind reliance on logic isn’t always the right thing to have. It feels like a theme that commonly runs through the modern version of the series – the Doctor takes people and makes them better. I know that Zoe is likely to just slump into generic companion mode before too long, but it’s nice to think that there could be a real journey for her character, and that travelling in the company of Jamie and the Doctor really could be beneficial to her.

The big thing to mention with today’s episode surely has to be that it’s the last time I’ll be using the work of John Cura during this marathon. He continued telesnapping up to somewhere around The Mind Robber, but we’re about to enter a period of surviving episodes the likes of which we’ve not seen in months. I don’t think there’s any debate that fans of archive British television owe an awful lot to John Cura – without him, we’d have an awful lot less to look at from these early stories of Doctor Who, for a start!

Regular readers of The 50 Year Diary will be well aware that I’m not a fan of reconstructions, but I do tend to flick through Cura’s telesnaps either as I listen to the soundtracks, or afterwards before I write up my entry. Since the first load of snaps I used for Marco Polo, I’ve been through a fair few of them. It's a really novel idea for a business - capturing images directly from the TV and selling them to the people involved in a time before any kind of domestic video recording was thinkable at a reasonable price.

Without the work of Cura, moving through all these missing episodes would have been a lot more of a chore - it's lovely to picture the stories in my head and then get home and find out how close I was to the actual truth. After 216 days of the diary, I've become pretty well attuned to the look of 1960s Doctor Who, and it's lovely to have a series of photographs to refer to.

Cura's work has also been used on reckons for The Avengers, and is a way to see missing parts of many other archive programmes of which I'd consider myself a fan, so now is the perfect time to say thank you to John - for the foresight he displayed and the joy that he's managed to bring to millions by preserving these lost classics.

a 

a  a

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 214: The Wheel in Space, Episode Four

Dear diary,

This is quickly becoming another one of those stories where I really wish that I didn’t know what’s coming up. I know that Zoe becomes our new companion, because I’ve seen bits of Season Six. It’s not obvious, though, while watching this story. There’s plenty of candidates here that could go on to be the ‘new girl in the TARDIS’ – Gemma, for instance – and Zoe isn’t the most obvious of those they could choose from.

There’s a point towards the end of the episode, when things have started kicking off, where Zoe asks if she can be of any help. ‘No,’ is the rather abrupt response. She tries to protest, deciding that there must be something that she can do. Still no. It serves as another chance to show that Zoe isn’t really all that liked by her colleagues on the Wheel, but it also makes her look a little useless as a potential companion. At least she’s trying.

There’s more examples in this episode of that background detail that I’ve been enjoying all along, and it’s fleshing Zoe out nicely. We get something of an explanation for her being the way she is when she complains that her brain has been ‘pumped full of figures’ and we hear the kind of training that she’s received being described as ‘brainwashing’. It seems in some ways as though Whittaker is trying to draw a direct comparison between Zoe and the Cybermen – she keeps being referred to as ‘emotionless’ and all this talk of brainwashing comes at around the same time they start to notice the Cybermen hypnotising other members of the crew.

And then you’ve got that cliffhanger, in which the Doctor and Jamie go down into the loading bay and discover the crates used to bring the Cybermen across from the Silver Carrier. Surely this would be a great opportunity for Zoe to join them in their explorations? Really highlight her as being the one best suited to be a part of this team? On the plus side, the cliffhanger is the one that I’ve been expecting, in some form, since Episode One – the Doctor and Jamie turn around to see a Cyberman! Dun, dun, dunnn…!

Actually, though, it’s done very well. It helps that we’ve had to wait for this one, meaning that the Doctor isn’t confronting the Cybermen directly until the last third of the story. It’s been a bit of a slow burner so far (which might go some way to explaining why several people have been commenting on how boring they find this story to be), but that’s really working for me: we’ve been dropped into this world, and we’ve watched on as the Cybermen have mounted their (slow) invasion.

I think my only real complaint with the Cybermen on this occasion is that there’s only two of them. Part of the reason The Tomb of the Cybermen looked so impressive is because when they thaw out, there’s loads of the silver giants stood around. They tower over the archaeologists and form a very credible threat. Here, there’s only the two of them and they’re doing all the legwork. From time to time, they check in with the Cyberplanner, but then it’s all up to them. Where are the rest of them? I’m hoping that this pair is just the advance party, and that the creatures will be turning up en masse before the story is over, but coming at the end of the season, I can’t say that my hopes are high…

One thing I did want to draw attention to is a quick exchange of dialogue between the Doctor and Gemma. It’s only brief, but when I heard it I was holding the door for someone on my way out of a building, looking like a loon because I was smiling my head off. It’s a lovely exchange because it perfectly highlights the background texture that I keep banging on about in this story. The Doctor tries to attract Gemma’s attention by calling her ‘Miss Corwin’ and she replies that it’s actually ‘Mrs’. When the Doctor apologises, she explains that her husband died three years ago in the asteroid belt. It’s only a little exchange, and I’m sure that it’s not going to have any massive significance later on in the story (were this the modern series, I’d possibly expect one of the Cybermen to be revealed as her husband post-conversion), but it gives her character a bit of depth and background that you don’t always get when the crews of these bases are simply sketched in before being bumped off by the monster of the week.

The same is true of our commander today. We’ve had plenty of stubborn base leaders turning up in the series since The Tenth Planet, so it initially struck me as odd that the Doctor would be so confused by the presence of such a person in command on the Wheel. Actually, though, we’re watching him go through some kind of a breakdown as the story progresses. It’s another reason that a slower-paced story can be beneficial – we’ve seen him at the helm of this space station when he’s in his right mind, making decisions and giving orders, so it makes a real impact when things start to go off the rails for him. There’s a sharp change between his reaction to Bill Duggan being found with a dead body and talking of metal rodents, to later releasing the Doctor and Jamie from their guard – it’s not something he’d have been doing twenty minutes earlier.

We’re at the point of the story now where we can start to see some real pay off. Having gone through all this build up, everything is in place for an explosive finale to the season. We’ve got the Cybermen on the Wheel, Cybermats in tow, and the focus should now be shifting to the climax. It’s been a promising start, and it’s looking increasingly as though Season Five could be going out with a real bang!