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

Day 852: Final Overview

Dear diary,

”There are two things in life that I'm very bad at (look at that, I'm just thirteen words in, and I've already lied. Truth be told, there's lots of things in life I'm very bad at. Like trying to make flapjacks, or successfully remove an intruding spider from my flat. There's two things I'm very bad at, though, which are vital to this entry); keeping a diary and completing a Doctor Who marathon.”

That’s how I opened my very first post of The 50 Year Diary on December 15th 2012 - just an introductory post to establish the fact that the Diary would be tasking up residence on the pages of this here website from the new year. Deciding to take on this project was a huge task right at the beginning, and especially since I know what my attention span is like. I’m interested in something for a few months at most and then my attention wanders off to something else and I never give the original topic a second thought. Frankly, the only reason that Doctor Who itself has managed to remain on my radar for this long is because there’s so much of the thing that there’s always something else I can go and look at if one part of it is starting to bore me.

But the decision to set up residence on the pages of Doctor Who Online and pen a daily diary, watching every episode in order right from the start… well, yeah, that was a big commitment. And I dived into it with barely a second thought. Had I stopped to think8 about it for longer, I’d probably never have gone through with it. There would simply be too many reasons *not to do it. Instead, when the option came up, so close to the start of a new year - Doctor Who’s 50th anniversary year - I simply grabbed it and ran.

And if I’m honest, I’m frankly stunned that I’ve made it this far. I genuinely used to wonder at what point I’d give it up. In my head, I used to try and work out what the best ‘exit’ points would be. Maybe I could do to the end of Seres One, then stop? Or just the First Doctor? Just the 1960s? I’d have to end it at a suitable point to avoid people simply pointing out that I’d failed in my mission. Obviously, I still would have failed, but had there been a nice clean break, I might have gotten away with it a little easier. In all honestly, it wasn’t until somewhere around the middle of Tom Baker’s run that I realised I’d gone too far - it was all or nothing, and there was no way I’d not go to the very end.

Which brings us to where we are today! 852 bloody entries, all of them talking about Doctor Who! Actually, slightly more than 852, because I did the two Dalek films and bits of spin-off programming for the collected volumes of the Diary. I really don’t know how I’ve managed to find this much to talk about. there are several days - lots of them! - where I read back my entry and wonder how it’s possibly of interest to anyone but me, but there’s you lot! I don’t know how many of you have been reading along since the very beginning and how many have joined along the way, but thank you very much for doing so. It’s always lovely to get comments and encouragement, and knowing that people are actually reading these posts has been reason enough to carry on! Not that all the messages have been so pleasant - I particularly liked the email we received when I dared to suggest that I didn’t really care for The Evil of the Daleks, and it was rather strongly suggested that I should be replaced by someone ‘who actually knows something about Doctor Who’. Ho hum. I’ve got that email printed out and near the computer - I look at it and smile every time my opinion on an episode doesn’t match up with the norm!

So, for this final entry, I’m just going to go back over each Doctor and give you a few facts and figures. How did their era rate on average? What was their highest-rated tale? How do I feel about them in retrospect? That sort of thing…

Starting, as is traditional, with The First Doctor… I only have one regret with the ratings I’ve given episodes throughout the course of this marathon, ad it;s the score I gave the very first episode - An Unearthly Child. I was being cautious, you see. As this project has gone on, I’ve reached a point where I don’t really have to even think8 about the scores I’m giving - I reach the end of an episode and simply *know that it’s an ‘[x]/10’, based on the scores I’ve given all the other episodes. But I didn’t want to peak too early. I’ve always hated the way that lots of ratings seem to win between ’10/10, that was brilliant’ to ‘1/10, that was awful’, with very little grey area in between. Starting with a ’10/10’ simply felt wrong, so I played it safe. 

Oh, but of course that first episode is a 10/10! I think I even knew that at the time, deep down (well, probably not even that deep…). I’d like to go back and give that one an honorary ’10’, simply because you really couldn’t ask for a better first episode to this programme - still as effective almost 52 years on as it was first time around.

Across his run of episodes - including the one-part Mission to the Unknown, in which the Doctor doesn’t appear but is credited, but excluding the audio of Farewell, Great Macedon, as it was something of an early side-step for the project - the First Doctor averaged a score of 6.57/10. The story I rated the highest from this period was The War Machines, which scored a solid 8/10 for each episode.

Looking back on these first three-or-so years of Doctor Who now… Oh, I love them. There’s an inventiveness to the William Hartnell era that I don’t think the programme has ever quite recaptured since. The facilities and budget simply aren’t there for them to achieve everything they might want to, but they still dare to at least try stories like The Web Planet, or to stage an entire Dalek Invasion of Earth from a pokey London studio. These episodes may not rate the highest overall - though this period achieved very few low scores; only two 3/10’s and a handful of 4/10’s for the entire era - but it still sits quite fondly in my memory as one of the best.

Which brings us on to The Second Doctor! Before starting out on this project, I’d always confidently claimed that Patrick Troughton was my favourite Doctor, and that The Tomb of the Cybermen was my favourite story, and I’l admit that I was a little worried that taking on this marathon might challenge that view. If anything, it’s actively strengthened the point, because I simply fell in love with this little cosmic hobo all over again.

Something that did surprise me was just how much I loved the run of stories in Troughton’s first series. Because such a chunk of that period is lost, it’s one I was far less familiar with than some of the later stories. But there’s some real gems in there, including The Macra Terror, which was the first story to receive a glowing 10/10 score (for Episode Two).

The Tomb of the Cybermen still comes in top, with an average of 8.75/10 across the four episodes. It makes it not only my highest-rated story from the Troughton period, but also the top story of the entire ’classic’ era (I’m looking at the 21st century stuff a little differently, as I’ll explain when I get there). Now, I’ll be fair an admit that the score was probably just helped by the good vibrations I get from watching this story - I’ve thought of it so long as my favourite that I simply can’t help but to enjoy it… but that’s surely the whole point of a favourite story!

What was nice about doing this marathon at this point in time is that there’s been more Troughton episodes available to watch than ever before - and by quite a margin, too! The Underwater Menace Episode Two was provided to me early on to enjoy in context, and while The Enemy of the World and The Web of Fear weren’t viable to watch at the right point in time, as we’d hoped, I dipped back to them a few months later, because the alternative would have been waiting until now to see them, and frankly that just wasn’t an option. Being able to see the episodes was great (and both of them improved their average score by a small degree - it’s their second average I’m using today to calculate overall averages), but I wonder if some of that excitement simply came from the fact that I was watching two long-thought-lost stories. It’ll be interesting to see how they hold up the next time I see them - will they still be as good as I think here, or will the novelty have worn off a little, leaving them as just ‘some other Doctor Who stories’… 

Their success this time around, though, coupled with the high score of The Tomb of the Cybermen propelled Season Five into the top spot for the 1960s, averaging a score of 7.23/10 - the only black-and-white season to break a 7/10 average. I’d been worried about this particular run of stories because it was lots of six-parters in a row, and so many of the episodes were missing, I really thought it could be the point where I’d crash and burn, so it’s heartening to see that I enjoyed it all the more in the end.

Overall, the Second Doctor averages 6.90/10 across all this episodes, a healthy figure, especially when considering that two of Troughton’s stories - The Highlanders and The Dominators - sit way down towards the bottom of the list, both with an average of 4/10.

If Troughton had always been my favourite Doctor, then his successor, Jon Pertwee as The Third Doctor had always been my least favourite. It’s not that I completely silkier him, but I’d just never connected with his era in the same way I had with all the others - despite him being the first ‘classic’ Doctor I ever saw, when picking up a copy of Invasion of the Dinosaurs from the library.

What I actually found is that this run of stories is consistently strong, and it helped to contribute to an average score of 6.63/10 over the five seasons. I think that the Third Doctor was helped by such a strong first series, which helped to put my doubts about this period to rest before moving on to view the rest of it - Spearhead From Space being available to watch restored to high definition on blu ray was the perfect way to kick-start the era and catch my attention, and it came out as the top-rated story for this Doctor, with an 8/10 average.

The era then continues to be of a fairly consistent quality from then on - it never quite breaks into a 10/10 in the way that several Troughton episodes had done (though it scored several 9’s across the run), but equally, it doesn’t get as many lower scores, either, with only The Curse of Peladon rating below a 5/10 average.

Pertwee’s era is particularly notable for it’s run of high-quality opening episodes - fourteen (out of a possible twenty four) of them score an 8/10, and there’s a run from The Three Doctors to Death to the Daleks which consistently scores an 8/10 for the first episode - the longest run of this type across the entire marathon. That winning streak is only broken by The Monster of Peladon scoring a 7/10 for Part One, before we’re greeted by another three with such strong starts, which moves us past the regeneration and into the era of…

The Fourth Doctor! Oh, everyone talks about Tom Baker as the ‘definitive’ Doctor (or, at least, they did until David Tennant came along to steal the crown). As soon as I took my first steps into fandom, I was told that the Fourth Doctor was by far the best. That was just an established fact, and you weren’t to argue the point. Within that ‘fact’, the Hinchcliffe era of Seasons Twelve, Thirteen, and Fourteen, were by far the peak of not just this Doctor, but of Doctor Who as a whole. I love to be a bit country and simply say what I think, even if it doesn’t subscribe to the accepted opinion of an era, so I was all ready to point out that the Hinchcliffe run is merely alright…

But then it was actually pretty darn good! On average, the episodes produced by Philip Hinchcliffe rate 7.06/10, which for the ‘classic’ series places him behind only Derek Sherwin (who’s helped by only producing two stories, one of which features three 10/10 episodes), and in the gran scheme of things places him third, just 0.01 point behind the Russell T Davies run. Sadly, this means that Tom Baker is on a generally downward trajectory from the off, with the Graham Williams run of Seasons Fifteen, Sixteen, and Seventeen (including Shada), averaging a significantly lower 6.33/10, and Season Eighteen, under the eye of John Nathan-Turner only coming in with 6.14/10.

The highest rated story of the Fourth Doctor’s mammoth run is The Face of Evil, which comes away with an average score of 8.25/10, while over all, the Fourth Doctor rates 6.60/10, dipping him just slightly behind the Third Doctor. It’s undeniable that Tom Baker is brilliant in the role, and he’s often a joy to watch (for many different reasons - his closing around in the likes of City of Death is just as engaging as his anger and fury in Planet of Evil), but the latter half of his run really does suffer with some below-par episodes, and the lack of money being given to the programme at that point becomes cripplingly obvious in places. Wheres the Hartnell era managed to take its meagre budget and make the most of it, by putting the cash on screen, some parts of this era… um… doesn’t. In the end, I think it’s fair to say that Baker simply remained in the part for too long, and it’s telling that there’s a real breath of fresh air when the new chap comes in.

The first season to feature The Fifth Doctor, Season Nineteen, really is a shot in the arm, jumping up to an average of 6.69/10, and featuring the Fifth Doctor’s highest rated story - Kinda, with an average of 8.50/10. On top of this, the season also features the 8/10 Earthshock, which would have been a high enough score to win outright in other eras.

And Earthshock isn’t the last Fifth Doctor tale to score so highly - The Five Doctors and Frontios both also tip the scales at 8/10 on average, with The Caves of Androzani not falling too far behind, with a 7.75/10 average. On the whole, there was a lot about the Fifth Doctor’s era that simply chimed with me, and the presence of so many great stories really did help.

In the end, though, Peter Davison’s Doctor comes away with an average of 6.65/10 - only just scraping above Tom Baker and Peter Davison’s score by the tiniest of margins. He’s hampered by a weak second season, in which only two stories manage to hold a higher average than 6.25/10, and despite Season Twenty-One having a slew of better tales, it’s simply too late to make any real difference. Peter Davison has often said of his time on the show that if the stories of his third year had been the stories of his second, then he’d have stayed longer, and it’s really not hard to see what he means.

Ah, The Sixth Doctor. Doctor Who’s problem child. If it was made clear to me early on that everyone loved Tom Baker and considered him to be the best Doctor, then it was made equally clear that Colin Baker held the exact opposite position in fandom’s heart. And yet, I’d always enjoyed the Sixth Doctor - I’d seen all of his stories at least once before taking part in this project, and I’d always enjoyed them well enough.

This time around, however… well, no, I’ll be fair. the majority of the Sixth Doctor’s run is rather good. Not outstanding (no episode scores higher than an 8/10), but fairly solid, and at least on par with large chunks of his predecessors. The problem for me came in the form of both Attack of the Cybermen and Timelash, two stories which are consigned to languish right down in the bottom five of the list. They each averaged just 2.5/10, and were the first time I really appreciated just how bad Doctor Who can be when all the elements fall into just the wrong place. 

Colin Baker himself though is electrifying from the word go, and every bit the Doctor as any of the others. It’s a crushing shame that we didn’t get to see more of him, because in the right production atmosphere, I think he’d easily be considered equal to Tom in the popularity stakes. With a bit more creative force working behind the scenes, this period could have really shone. As it is, Colin’s Doctor rates only a 5.77/10 average, making him the lowest rated in this marathon, sadly, and the only incarnation to sink below a 6/10 average. His highest rated story - The Mark of the Rani - is a crowning jewel in his lacklustre first season, and while things do pull back together again for The Trial of a Time Lord season, it’s not enough to save him from the bottom of the pile. A real shame, and very undeserved for a man who not only turned in a flawless performance during his time on the programme, but has continued to be one of the greatest ambassadors for the show in the thirty years since. 

It’s perhaps for the best, though, that they didn’t give Colin Baker just one more season to prove himself in, though, because The Seventh Doctor’s debut run in Season Twenty-Four rates as the weakest season on average across the entire project, coming in with a measly score of just 4.93/10. I was so sure that I’d be a champion for these our stories. They were so often blasted as being terrible, and I was in a position to be a real spokesperson for the quality in each of them… but oh dear.

It’s not that they’re terrible - there’s lots of great ideas and concepts in there - but something seems to have just gone wrong with this season. It’s as though every department has been handed a directive from above that Doctor Who is a children’s programme, and that it needs to be treated as such. It’s very strange, and a real shift in direction for the show - probably the biggest change since the switch between Seasons Seventeen and Eighteen. After all the behind-the-scenes troubles of the Sixth Doctor era, it’s almost as though the team behind the programme simply don’t know what to do with it any more, and you can’t really feel John Nathan-Turner’s hand in this as well as you can elsewhere.

But it’s not the be-all and end-all, because this new creative team really pull themselves together for Season Twenty-Five, which shifts up a massive amount to an average across the run of 6.93/10! It’s here that you can feel Andrew Cartmel starting to take hold of the programme, and reinvigorating the entire thing. It’s Doctor Who starting to find its voice again, and that transformation only continues on into Season Twenty Six, which sits a million miles away from the low points at the start of this era - becoming my highest rated season of the entire marathon with an average score of 7.57/10! There’s something really rather marvellous about the fact that a single era can manage to straddle both ends of the scale like this, and it makes it even more of a crushing blow when the programme comes to an end at this point, with the final story - Survival - taking to top-rated spot for this era, with an average of 8/33/10. 

As the programme’s longest-serving producer, John Nathan-Turner comes in for a lot of flack. It’s fair to say that he didn’t always manage to make the best decisions for the show, but he held it together through a decade which would have, I suspect, always seen the end of the run. Overall, his time in charge of the show averages 6.36/10, which places him in around the same ballpark as many of the other producers across the programme’s lifetime - and he certainly did a lot more good for the show than he did bad.

It’s all change as we reach The Eighth Doctor, and it becomes a little trickier to compare story-to-story across eras. You’ll have noticed that there’s no great big list of how things stack up against each other with this post - and that’s because there’s no really fair way of doing it. I chose to give each episode an individual score out of ten, so that the ‘average’ score is a truer representation of the way I felt while watching. That way, the fantastic first episode of The Space Museum, for example, isn’t tarnished by the awful three episodes that follow it, but rather balanced fairly against them. That’s fine for the ‘classic’ series where all but two stories contain multiple episodes to balance, but when you reach the TV Movie and forward into the 21st century run, there’s so many ‘one-off’ stories that it becomes trickier to offset them against their predecessors.

Paul McGann’s Doctor is the perfect example of this - his Doctor average is 9/10, which places him way out ahead of all the other incarnations, but only because that’s being based on this one single episode! It skews the data a little bit, but we can at least still see how the Doctors stack up roughly from here-on out (and, in fairness, it’s really comparing the episodes that causes trouble - trying to compare the Doctors is only hampered by the one-off nature of McGann, and arguably John Hurt…

The Ninth Doctor heralds the start of the modern era of 8Doctor Who* - the first set of episodes that I’d watched on original transmission and had followed right the way through to the present day. I was looking just as forward to this version of the programme as I had been any part of the ‘classic’ run, because though I’d seen all these episodes before, many I’d not watched since their original transmission, so it was still like coming to them new in many ways.

Whereas Colin Baker’s short run had shown how so few episodes could lead to a lower score because there simply wasn’t long enough for the right episodes to come along, Christopher Eccleston’s Doctor shows that the opposite can also be true. His thirteen episodes average 7.31/10, and he’s the only Doctor to have two stories occupying the spot of ‘highest-rated’, with both Dalek and Boom Town sitting happily in a ‘9/10’ slot. The rest of his run holds fairly decent scores, with only The Long Game really letting the side down with a 5/10.

But in the blink of an eye, our fantastic northern Doctor was gone and replaced with The Tenth Doctor, who manages to become an icon for the programme to a whole new generation. David Tennant’s run isn’t a million miles away in trajectory from Sylvester McCoy’s - although he doesn’t start from such a low position, the seasons do tend to get better as they go along - with Series Two averaging 6.79/10, Series Three climbing up to 7.07/10, and Series Four soaring to 7.43/10 - far and away the highest scoring series of the 21st century. The Tenth Doctor’s final fun of specials drops way down to a 6.20/10 average (if added onto Series Four, as they were listed as such in production terms, the average for that season drops back to 7.11/10, putting the run second to Eccleston’s series), leaving the Tenth Doctor to bow out in a somewhat muted way.

The highest rated story of the David Tennant years is The Unicorn and the Wasp, coming in with one of only two 10/10 scores this side of Kinda. The Tenth Doctor on the whole rates a solid 7/10, and Russell T Davies as the architect of the modern era comes in with a respectable average of 7.07/10.

Things take a bit of a dip again for me as we reach The Eleventh Doctor era. On first transmission, I found that I simply didn’t enjoy this period of the programme. I’d tune in each week and find occasional gems, but overall I simply wasn’t fond. This time around, I think things have fared a little better - and getting to watch the era back-to-back over a couple of months like this has really made some of the links between stories stand out all the stronger. None of the Eleventh Doctor seasons manage to break past 7/10 on average (the highest is Series Seven with a score of 6.87/10), and the Eleventh Doctor rates slightly lower than his immediate predecessors, with an average of 6.80/10.

The Snowmen comes in as Matt Smith’s strongest story, with a perfect 10/10 score, while at the other end of the spectrum, both the previous Christmas special, The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe, and Series Six’s Night Terrors sit at the very bottom of my list, with a score of just 2/10 each.

And finally onto The Twelfth Doctor’s run. When this set of episodes first went out last year, I loved them. Was completely blown away by them. It felt like a real shot in the arm after a few years of not enjoying the programme as much as I’d like. On this second run through, I’ve found my opinions cooling a lot towards them, to the point that the entire 2014 run (up to and including Last Christmas) has only averaged 6.77/10, which places it in more-or-less the same ball park as any of the Eleventh Doctor’s seasons, although lower than both Series Five and Seven. I’ve explained some of my reasoning behind that in yesterday’s entry, but I’m hoping that as the era is still young, I can find a little more to love as I go along. 

Equally, it may simply be that these episodes have suffered by being the last ones. After two-and-a-half years of doing an episode every day, being this close to the end of the line has probably contributed towards the feeling of Series Eight being a bit of a slow to watch again - hopefully that feeling will abate when I see any of these stories again in due corse. Besides, it’s not all bad news, with the era’s highest-rater, Robots of Sherwood, scoring a healthy 9/10.

***

And so… that’s that, I suppose! Over the last two-and-a-bit years, I’ve often wondered how I’d feel about Doctor Who once I was done. Having sat through it all, would I find myself horrified by the thought of ever watching another one? Tipping my entire DVD collection into a big skip? Sick at the sign of a Dalek?

Well, I’m pleased to say that, no, none of those things have occurred. If anything, watching the programme in this way has given me a renewed respect for Doctor Who, and I can appreciate even more just how brilliant this programme is, for having watched it unfold in order. If anything, I have to admit, I’m keen to do it all over again, right from the very beginning. I’m probably going to give it a little while before doing so (I’m actually on holiday back home at the moment, and it’s going to be nice to enjoy the next week away without having to tune in to the TARDIS for a change!), but I reckon before this year is out, I’ll be back on the pilgrimage!

So finally, I just want to issue a few thanks. Thank you, of course, to Sebastian J. Brook, editor of Doctor Who Online, for handing over his website to me for two years to fill with all my ramblings and nonsense. Thank you to Nick Mellish for listening to me whine on about all these episodes as they come and go, and acting as a sounding board when I can’t figure out what on Earth to write about. And thank you to you lot, for following along with me on this journey, and keeping my interest there in the project. It really does make a difference when you know people are taking part!

Will

If by any miracle you’re still interested in me wittering on, you can find me over on Twitter, where I tend to post just as much nonsense as I have in this Diary, as well as snippets of artwork and projects that I’m working on. And if you’re eager for more of the Diary, you can find it all collected together in book form - both in physical format and on Kindle (UK/US). There’s occasional extra entries in the books, and on several posts I’ve gone back and re-written the bits that simply don’t make sense.

Manufacturer: Big Finish Productions

Writer: John Dorney

RRP: £10.99 (CD) / £8.99 (Download)

Release Date: March 2015

Reviewed by: Nick Mellish for Doctor Who Online

“The Asteroid - notorious hideaway of the piratical Rocket Men. Hewn out of rock, surrounded by force-fields and hidden in the depths of the Fairhead Cluster, their base is undetectable, unescapable and impregnable.

In need of allies, the Master has arranged to meet with Shandar, King of the Rocket Men. But the mercenaries have captured themselves a very special prisoner - his oldest enemy, the Doctor.

What cunning scheme is the Doctor planning? How does it connect with Shandar's new robotic pet? And just what has happened to Leela? The Master will have to work the answers out if he wants to leave the asteroid... alive…"

***

The Rocket Men were arguably one of the greatest successes to come from The Companion Chronicles.  Nasty, beautifully 1960s-ish in their style and approach, and the central antagonists in two of the range’s best and best-loved releases, it was perhaps only a matter of time before they made the transition to another range and another Doctor.  Whether this needed to happen is another question altogether, but happen it has and John Dorney’s Requiem for the Rocket Men is the result.

The third story in this series of Fourth Doctor Adventures, it carries on the tradition set down so far this year by being perfect for the two-episode format and the regular cast.  Leela, K-9 and the Doctor alike are all served well by Dorney’s script and scenarios, and the addition of the Master turns out to be a really smart move, showing the Rocket Men to be smaller players than they perceive themselves to be and remnants of an era that has past them by.  Indeed, one of the cleverest things about this play is how they reflect the change in Doctor, and era they’re aiming for, by making the titular Rocket Men feel very… retro now; outdated and outpaced in this new world of robot dogs and rival Time Lords and female savages.  It’s no wonder they need the Master to give them a hand, and no wonder he treats them with such patronizing contempt.

Just as Dorney subverts his own creations, so he also plays with the traditional Master/Doctor set up by having the Master stumble into one of the Doctor’s plans and adventures rather than the other way around which is the norm.  It could be a gimmick in the wrong hands or so post-modern it hurts, but here in Dorney’s capable hands it’s a lot of fun and never once feels out of place in the story being told.

Another good thing is the fact it isn’t slavishly trying to recreate the Fourth Doctor’s era, something else in common with the plays so far this series. (Speaking of changes, the pedants in us will probably be interested to note that the font on the back of the CD has changed for this release, the sort of heinous crime that usually generates half a dozen protests on the forums and threat of a boycott or alternative cover. Let’s hope they didn’t look at the spines for the first series of Early Adventures, eh?)

I’ve noted before that I have found this quest for authenticity to be a foolish one; one which has stunted the growth of the series or stories, so I am glad to see it gone at last.  It also makes the ability to mix ‘traditional’ stories with character development less of a messy fit.  We get more depth of character for the Master in this story than we ever had on screen during Doctor Who’s original run, and Leela gets to grow stronger and braver here than she was ever allowed to.  One of The Fourth Doctor Adventures’s strengths is the interplay between the Doctor and Leela, far wittier and cosier than we ever saw on screen, and the final scenes of this play give us a warmth and pleasure and— dare I say it? — closure we were robbed of in Invasion of Time.  It’s nice to see that addressed here.

It’s hard to fully judge the story in its own right as it leads directly and explicitly onto Death Match, next month’s release in this series (which isn’t a spoiler as such as it was advertised by Big Finish themselves in publicity for the series, though I will admit that I missed it somehow, which made the ending far more surprising than it perhaps should have been!) but in its own right it’s another damn good play from John Dorney and another good release for this series.  I hope next month proves to be every bit as strong.

Manufacturer: Big Finish Productions

Writer: Scott Handcock & David Llewellyn

RRP: £14.99 (CD) / £12.99 (Download)

Release Date: February 2015

Reviewed by: Nick Mellish for Doctor Who Online

“Times change…

Romana is approaching her final term of office, and hopes to leave her world in a state of peace and harmony. Narvin is concerned about the implementation of a controversial Precog programme, one that seeks to predict the Time Lords’ future. Ace is an operative for the Celestial Intervention Agency, having learned the art of interference from one of the best…  

And somewhere, across the stars, an ancient force is stirring: one of the Time Lords’ greatest heroes is returning to our universe. But he may also prove to be their greatest threat.

When the history of Earth is threatened, and an ancient conspiracy reaches the heart of Time Lord government, can even Romana’s closest allies truly be trusted?

Time will tell… but by then, it may already be too late.”

***

Gallifrey.  Ah, Gallifrey.  Much like the planet itself, this is a series that stubbornly refuses to actually die despite us being told it has gone for good: it’s the Hex of the Doctor Who spin-off world.  Series 3 was the end, but then came all the others, years after, and that was definitely the end of it all, and then came this play, with a series announced to follow in 2016.  For a dead series, that’s quite some staying power.  I know of series alive and well that would kill for that longevity and dogged determination for survival.

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves though.  Let us instead look to Intervention Earth, this year’s entry for the series.  Set several years (lifetimes, even) after one of the many conclusions to Gallifrey, this four-part story takes place on Gallifrey itself and features the third incarnation of Romana, Ace and Narvin trying to thwart ne’er-do-wells from bringing Time Lord despot Omega back from the universe of anti-matter and into ‘our’ world.

For the most part, this serves as a really good reboot for the series, giving us a good flavour of the treachery, political bickering, Gallifrey mythology writ large, and action that the series large dealt in with spades.  True, the politics here are slim and largely centred around Narvin wanting more respect in his profession and, true, the treachery is more pantomime villainy than grand betrayal, but it’s a good flavour for aspects we know well.

We’ve had two performances prior to this from Juliet Landau as Romana III and she continues well here, giving us a blend of the haughtiness and confidence of Mary Tamm crossed with the acidic wit and blistering intelligence of Lalla Ward, with her own, reserved and timid but calculated cool.  I am certainly keen to see where she takes the character next, if afforded the opportunity to by Big Finish.

Sophie Aldred here is in her all-grown-up Ace-guise, an agent of the CIA and unsure as to when and how she arrived in that position.  Big Finish have rather flip-flopped around with Ace over the years, initially changing her fate from that which was always planned for her in Season 27 (and indeed changing much of what was planned for Season 27 at all when making that season year later, or at least what purported to be that season at any rate), and then showing us in UNIT: Dominion that, actually, she did end up on Gallifrey after all.  We’ve had whispers that all this is to come since, and now here we are, with Ace a fully-fledged CIA agent, the best of the best by all accounts.  As a glimpse of what’s to come, it’s interesting, I’m just fearful that the journey leading to it will take another six-or-so years whilst Ace’s direction is steered in various directions once again.

Of the guest cast, Stephen Thorne is marvellous as Omega, delivering his lines with a punch and authenticity, as if he only recorded The Three Doctors a couple of weeks ago, but he is sorely underused.  The same can be said of Gyles Brandreth, who puts in a great performance as Rexx and, for me at least, was the star of the show.

As for the script and play itself, it is clear that writers Scott Handcock and David Llewellyn are having fun with it all, but things fall apart in the final episode.  For a start, Omega’s great plan isn’t half as clever or unexpected as the writers seem to think it is, and having the cast repeatedly tell us how clever the plan is doesn’t endear me towards it any further.  Instead, it just makes the regulars look fairly silly, as traitors can be spotted a mile off, the twists likewise.  Where it really scores an own goal is at the very end, which will completely alienate anyone not familiar with the series’ past, thus totally blowing the notion of it being a jumping-on point for new listeners out of the water.  To put it mildly, it’s frustrating.  To be stronger on it, it’s an incredibly bad move.

Added to this is a sound mix which isn’t up to usual standards, with dialogue often sounding muffled and hidden, a fair distance away from Big Finish’s usual high standards.  The music was fine but not the best, going for bombast over any real mood enhancing, but worse than that is that it is overwhelming in the mix, rendering some lines very hard to pick out.

So, it’s not all glowing for Intervention Earth by any stretch.  The ending suggests more to come, though whether this will be what we see come 2016 and the new series of Gallifrey is a mystery at the time of writing this.  Perhaps like Ace’s fate we’ll be waiting a while longer.  I’ll certainly be listening, but hope that some of the flaws from this escapade are gone by the time the future unfolds.  Gallifrey falls no more: let’s just hope it lives up to the glory days of the past.

Manufacturer: Big Finish Productions

Writer: Justin Richards

RRP: £10.99 (CD) / £8.99 (Download)

Release Date: February 2015

Reviewed by: Nick Mellish for Doctor Who Online

“Cut off from the TARDIS, the Doctor and Leela find themselves stranded on a small island.  But they are not alone.  It is 1907, and members of the Caversham Society have gathered on the hundredth anniversary of the death of Mannering Caversham, the greatest Magic Lanternist who ever lived.

But Caversham was also a supernaturalist who claimed to have conjured up a demon from the depths of hell. As people start to die, the Doctor begins to wonder if Caversham’s story might have more than a grain of truth in it. Can the Doctor and Leela discover what really happened to Caversham a century ago?  And if they do, will they live to tell the tale..?”

***

Audio can be a tricky medium to get right.  Often cited as a very visual medium despite the absence of picture, it conjures up images through sound and description alone, uninhibited by budget limitations and limited only by the mind.  That’s not to say that it comes without problems: lack of visuals means a more descriptive approach to storytelling at times, and that in turn can be problematic, leading to dialogue which sounds very unnatural (“Oh! Look! That green door is half-open with a broken handle! How strange!”)

Credit where credit is due, Big Finish is usually very good at avoiding this sort of thing.  Big Finish is also very brave with what it tries to do with its plays, and on paper, a play about lanterns casting shadows and the danger that entails seems an odd beast for audio, but Justin Richards has given it his best shot here all the same.

The first episode of The Darkness of Glass is easily the strongest, setting up an isolated group of illusionists and enthusiasts in a house with the Doctor and Leela whilst the rain falls down, the wind batters all, and there’s something wicked in the glass.  It loses points for explicitly drawing parallels with Fang Rock by having Leela nod to it in such a way you can almost hear her winking to the imaginary camera, but that’s a minor point in an otherwise near-flawless opening.  Richards has a gift for distinctive voices, which is never more apparent than it is here, and Nicholas Briggs’s direction helps milk the tension for all its worth.

Sadly, it undoes a lot of this in Part Two, or more specifically, with the finale.  I mentioned at the start that audio can sometimes fall into the trap of being unnaturally over-descriptive, and to some extent it can probably never escape that, but here it felt so much so that I found myself increasingly disappointed that the resolution wasn’t so reliant upon people telling us exactly what is going on with various props, though I appreciate also that doing that in sound alone would have been impossible.

Maybe, though, that suggests that it wasn’t the best story, or ending at least, to be committed to sound.  I don’t know for sure as the first episode is so very strong, but it took this listener out of the moment at least, which was a shame.

There is a lot to celebrate still though.  The setting, though familiar, is fun and executed well, and the cast is universally good.  (The extras for this release show Baker and Briggs to be especially playful and happy throughout proceedings, and that certainly seeps through into the finished product.)

A special mention should definitely go to Jamie Robertson, whose soundtrack is brilliantly evocative of the original Fourth Doctor/Leela era and perfectly suited to the script, too.  One thing which Big Finish really excel at with these plays is music that fits like a glove, so often done that it is overlooked a lot of the time, so I hope flagging it up here goes some way to rectify this on my part.

Another thing I want to highlight here is how much better the two-part format is fitting the Fourth Doctor this year.  Pacing, story and plot this series all fit well in a way they never have done before now, as if someone at Big Finish has sat down and worked out how to really make this Doctor fit in with the format they’ve given him, rather than giving him a format and trying to make it fit as has been the feeling previously.  It marks a big leap forward in quality for the series and is the first time I have been genuinely excited to hear what happens next month on month.  

Though not perfect, The Darkness of Glass is a fun and interesting play nonetheless and I am certainly of the mindset now, perhaps for the very first time, that the Fourth Doctor Adventures not only can carry on as strong as this, but hopefully will carry on as strong as this.

It may have taken a while, but the Fourth Doctor finally feels at home at Big Finish, and that’s something worth celebrating. 

Manufacturer: Big Finish Productions

Writer: Nicholas Briggs

RRP: £10.99 (CD) / £8.99 (Download)

Release Date: January 2015

Reviewed by: Nick Mellish for Doctor Who Online 

“Planet E9874 supports a developing civilisation known as the Tarl. The peaceful, technologically advanced Locoyuns are helping the Tarl develop rudimentary technology. What could be more innocent than that?

When the Doctor, Leela and K9 arrive, they find the delicate balance in the relationship between the two cultures reaching an unexpected crisis point. The spears are flying and the threat of all-out war is in the air.

The Doctor must use all his guile to tread a careful path with Tarl leader Ergu, while Leela and K9 discover an ancient power of unimaginable strength which threatens to tear the minds out of its victims.” 

***

Here we go then: another series of adventures for the Fourth Doctor, another old enemy returning to face our foe.  It’s fair to say that I have not been too taken with much of the Fourth Doctor Adventures range thus far, finding it to be the wrong format for this incarnation, as I noted in my review of The Philip Hinchcliffe Box Set.  There have been some good stories and some that really stand out, but for the most part they have merely plodded along for me, doing their best to not stir things and playing things ever so safely, and a lot of them have failed to make much of an impression.

I went into The Exxilons with a certain reluctance: another story in which the Fourth Doctor uncharacteristically encounters something from his past and has to defeat it whilst tiptoeing through a peppered field of continuity references.  John Leeson, Tom Baker and Louise Jameson would all be on fine form (they forever are) but the script would probably just… plod and do little for me.  Each to their own, I realized, but there we were: my expectations were set low.

I realize that complaining about traditional formats is going to make my next declaration of “imagine my surprise, then, when I really enjoyed it!” seem all the more clichéd, predictable and a tad hypocritical, but nonetheless the two episodes of Exxilon fun wowed me in a way that hasn’t happened for quite some time in this range.

Nicholas Briggs is a self-confessed big fan of Death to the Daleks, as his praise for it on the official BBC DVD and in the pages of Doctor Who Magazine will attest to, and quite right he is, too: it’s a marvellous story with a lot to recommend, plus a cliffhanger so utterly absurd that I never fail to burst into laughter when the end of Part Three approaches and the camera dramatically zooms in on some rather incongruous patterned tiling.  I mention Briggs’s love of that story as he has clearly given the Exxilons and their culture a lot of thought before writing this script: it shows in every playful nod to our first encounter with this alien race, every continuity-enhancing titbit concerning the Exxilon City, and oozes through in the Carey Blyton-esque musical score and original sound effects which enrich the atmosphere.  Briggs has managed to skilfully take points from Death which I never considered worthy of addressing, and has given them importance and development, in a way which actually enhances things rather than feel spurious or done for the sake of it.  This is a good case of actually using past stories to a purposeful and good effect, and for once the two-episode format of it really fits the story well and suits the team of K-9, Leela and the Fourth Doctor like a glove.

The story is simple enough but well told: our heroes land on a planet where the Exxilons are present and up to things disturbing the local natives who are unsettled by their presence.  Throw in some murder, maniacal dedication to The Cause, and subtle parallels between the Exxilon presence here and the Daleks’ in Death, and you’ve got enough meat to chew upon for the next hour.

The only minor niggle here is the presence of Hugh Ross in the guest cast: he is brilliant in the role and does it well, but is so associated now with Counter-Measures that it is hard to shake off Sir Toby from the mind’s eye whenever he speaks.  It’s unfair for me to criticize that aspect of the play, really, but here I am.

By the time the play ended, I was won over by it all and smiling at how much I had enjoyed it.  The CD extras show us Tom in a rather reflective and almost sad mood at times, which is notable all the more after such a joyful listen, but it had me rushing over to my DVD collection and grabbing Death to watch afterwards, which is about as good a sign for a play of this ilk as you can get, really.

Do I want more returning to the past time and again as has been the case more often than not with this range? No.  Done well as it is here and you get something good, but it’s all too easy to do it cack-handedly and the range could do with fewer nods and more of an individual identity (as well as a move away from two-episode stories, but that’s a moan for another day).  The trouble with these continual callbacks is that it slowly— slowly but oh-so-surely— squeezes the Universe(s) in which the Doctor travels, making it feel smaller and less spontaneous, which is a pity.  The magic of Doctor Who is its boundlessness, and the moment every third story involves meeting people or enemies or creatures from the past, the moment boundaries appear and that magic starts to ebb away.

Still, it doesn’t stop The Exxilons from being a lot of fun, from proving my fears wrong, and from being a strong start to this series of Fourth Doctor Adventures. 

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

Day 443: The Seeds of Doom, Episode Three

Dear diary,

I’ve always thought of Tom Baker-era Doctor Who as being divided into three different ‘sub-eras’: The ‘Gothic’ Era, The ‘Comedy’ Era, and The ‘Serious’ Era. You may have guessed that these subdivisions are based on the tenures of Tom’s three producers, Philip Hinchliffe, Graham Williams, and John Nathan-Turner. Of course, there’s transitional periods (Season Twelve is a change from the Pertwee years, but it’s not as far removed as Season Thirteen is, for example), but largely, in my head, they’ve always been very distinct.

So I’d always thought of outright funny episodes featuring Tom Baker as coming from the Williams period of the show - with Douglas Adams as script editor, there’s plenty of moments of humour. The ones that spring to mind are from Season Seventeen: The Doctor’s excited exclamation of ‘Rocks!’ when the TARDIS lands in Destiny of the Daleks, or… well… every episode from City of Death. There’ve been flashes of this kind of Doctor ever since Baker took over the role (Indeed, at times, Robot didn’t feel all that far removed from that later period), but this episode is the closest I’ve ever felt to that style.

So many of the Doctor’s lines are funny. Even with the seriousness of the situation (don’t forget, the Doctor and Sarah come close to being murdered twice in this episode, and we’re in the unusual position of having already seen what will happen if the pod is allowed to grow), I found myself laughing throughout. Amelia Ducat’s sudden realisation that she was never paid for her painting. The Doctor’s attempt to introduce everyone in the room to Chase. The grin he gives when waking up in the snow to see Sarah’s face. And, of course, ‘That’s right! Grab us! We’re very dangerous!’

And yet, it never slips into farce. The whole episode is still very dark, but the moments of humour are being used very effectively to bring the tone up some more. Hope never feels lost, but you’re always aware of the severity of the events on screen. In amongst all the funny lines and the jokes, there’s some very powerful moments. The Doctor’s anger when he returns to the World Ecology Bureau is so effective - we’ve seen the temper of this incarnation before now, but this is perhaps the strongest its been yet. Even here we get to see the humour seeping through, in the Doctor’s description that ‘the end of everything’ will also include Sir Colin’s pension, but you almost find yourself laughing nervously, because you’re almost scared by the Doctor.

He’s even fairly violent in this episode, although only when trying to escape death himself. The way he jumps on the chauffeur, wrestles him to the ground and then punches him out cold is harsher than we usually get to see him behave, but then later on he cricks Scorby’s neck in order to make his escape. This kind of action is usually reserved for indicating someone’s neck being broken (indeed, at first I thought that’s what had happened, and I was almost a bit put off by it!), so it’s a very serious thing to see our hero doing.

It’s this fine line of ‘comedy’ and ‘darkness’ which is making this story (and, in some ways, this season as a whole) so appealing to me, and I’m rather glad to see that this period of the programme’s history isn’t quite as segregated as I’d imagined it to be. This story wouldn’t be half as effective if it was just bleak from start to finish, but it’s managing to be hugely entertaining this way.

Oh, and is it just me, or is the World Ecology Bureau based in BBC Television Centre?!

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

Day 442: The Seeds of Doom, Episode Two

Dear diary,

It became so common during the Pertwee era as to almost become a cliche: when you’re done with the setting for your current adventure, you build a perfect model replica of it and then you blow it up to create a spectacular finale. The one upshot of it happening so frequently was that they became really rather good at it. But even deep in the heart of the early 1970s, where they were blowing up everything from churches to stately homes, they never went as far as to blow it up a third of the way into the story!

I suppose I should have seen it coming, really. I mused yesterday that I didn’t know about the story spending so much time in the Antarctic base, and I thought the whole story took place in England. At some point, the action had to shift. I’d assumed, though, that we’d simply see the Doctor and Sarah making a daring escape from the snowbase, possibly heading off in a helicopter while the Krynoid was left behind to fend for itself in the Arctic wastes. I figured that the second pod they’d uncovered would somehow make it onto the helicopter with them (probably placed there by a sneaky weed), and that they’d then all end up back home thinking the threat was over before it starts up all over again.

I’m glad I was wrong – this is a much more exciting way to do things! It’s typical of this period of the programme ot be so bloodthirsty, killing off all three of the characters I was so full of praise for yesterday, each in a gruesome way. That we say goodbye to this setting with a huge explosion of the set seems only fitting, because this is the end of an adventure – we’re off somewhere new from tomorrow, and I’m imagining that the whole story is going to feel a bit different as a result.

So it’s worth taking the time now to say how good all the Antarctica sets look. When Doctor Who Confidential followed the filming of Planet of the Ood a few years ago, they spent a bit of time telling us how they’d covered a large area of quarry with fake snow, and then used CGI effects to insert that into a larger ice world. Upon the Doctor’s return to the planet for The End of Time, they went a whole step further, and coated an entire ‘cliff face’ with the stuff.

But here we are, in 1976, and the sets we’re given here are just as serviceable. The over-layed ‘snow’ affect on top of many shots can get a bit much at times (it falls too un-naturally to look all that good), but you really do get the impression of a vast expanse that the Doctor and our guest cast are running around in. That’s good – because it contrasts very well with the cramped, claustrophobic interiors of their research station. There’s a shot early on in this episode, when Winlett (half converted into a Krynoid) makes his way towards the door, and we follow him down the dark corridor. It’s creepy, and beautiful, and you’re left in absolutely no doubt that you’re watching Douggie Camfield back behind the camera again.

Someone told me today that these first two episodes were crafted onto the start of The Seeds of Doom after the other four had been written, because they needed to extend it up to a six-parter. While these instalments do seem to have their own separate function, and I’ve not seen where the story is going from here, I can’t imagine that to be true (a bit of digging around on the web tells me that it isn’t, anyway). These episodes feel integral to the story – they set everything up nicely, and tell a rather nice, self-contained story of their own. If the rest of the tale can continue at the same quality, then we’re in a very good position for a season-closer…

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

Day 440: The Brain of Morbius, Episode Four

Dear diary,

This episode contains another one of those scenes which Doctor Who fans find themselves arguing over. You know the one - the Doctor and Morbius are engaged in a spot of Time Lord wrestling, and we watch on the screen as an image of the Fourth Doctor’s face shifts into that of the Third Doctor. As the battle goes on, we then see the Second Doctor! And then the First! Hooray! All the old Doctors! But then… hold on… who’s that?

The… Zeroth Doctor… and the… Minus First Doctor… and… hold on… what?

Eight more faces appear up on the screen, all in various costumes plucked from history. Specifically, it’s the faces of Christopher Baker, Robert Holmes, Graeme Harper, Douglas Camfield, Philip Hinchcliffe, Robert Banks Stewart, George Gallaccio and Christopher Barry - all people working on the production team at the time. As the faces begin to appear, Morbius wonders how ‘far back’ the Doctor goes, and the implication is seemingly that these are the Doctor’s first eight incarnations, pushing Tom Baker up to number 12!

Obviously, this goes on to cause problems a year later, when it’s announced that Time Lords can only have thirteen lives (although we’ve recently seen the Doctor overcome this problem on Trenzalore). I’ve seen all kinds of theories thrown around over the years to try and explain away these various other faces, but to me the most plausible explanation is that they’re the faces of Morbius’ earlier forms. There’s nothing to contradict this, and while his dialogue about reaching back in to the Doctor’s past overlaps with the first of these faces, the longer they go on, the more Morbius seems to be in pain… and then the machine displaying the faces blows up! As fa as I’m concerned, this explanation is as good as any other, and it’s certainly the one I’ll keep in mind if I ever need to join the debate. To be honest, the whole sequence was less of a big deal than I’d been expecting it to be - considering all the fuss that seems to be made of it from time to time, it seemed to be quite tame!

I have to draw special attention to an exchange in this episode which may be my favourite ever between the Doctor and Sarah. She stumbles across him having escaped from the lab, and is surprised when he starts to wake up. ‘You thought I was dead, didn’t you?’ he asks, before adding ‘You’re always making that mistake…’ Considering how often I’ve drawn attention to it over Sarah’s time in the TARDIS, it’s lovely to see the show itself drawing attention to it!

It’s just another example of this being one of the best scripts that Terrance Dicks has ever produced for the programme. It was extensively rewritten by Robert Holmes one it had reached the production office (so much so that Dicks asked for his name to be taken off the broadcast, and have it put out ‘under some bland pseudonym’), but I think as a team working together, they’ve created something really rather special. Is it a perfect story? No, it’s not. As stories go, it probably isn’t deserving of the high praise it often receives. But there’s bits of this tale which are really very good, and I’m sure I’ll be revisiting it again at some point in the future.

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

Day 439: The Brain of Morbius, Episode Three

Dear diary,

In November of last year, when Night of the Doctor first premiered on the internet, everyone was thrilled and excited and surprised by the return of the Eighth Doctor after so long. But not me! There’s been rumblings for ages that we’d be getting a return of the character during a short episode simply to show his regeneration, and so that morning when I received word that the special would be arriving online later that day, I wasn’t surprised at all. Thrilled? Yes! Excited? Very! But not surprised.

What did come as a surprise, when I finally sat down to watch it a few hours later, was the Doctor’s return to Karn! And the return of the Sisterhood! I’ve not seen The Brain of Morbius before my current viewing, but I know enough about it to know of the Sisterhood, and their flame of eternal life. That set my mind wandering, though. Was the sister we saw in Night of the Doctor one of the ones from this story? Was the flame so key to regeneration when it made its first appearance back in the 1970s? I can’t tell you how tempted I was to head online and find out, but I wanted to wait and maintain the surprise. At the time, I was still knee-deep in the Pertwee era, and it felt wrong to skip ahead and read about the Doctor’s upcoming adventures. Like cheating, somehow.

So right the way through this story, I’ve been enjoying piecing things together. I’ve decided that the character who helps the Eighth Doctor to regenerate into the man he needs to become is not one of the ones during this story, but only because a quick scout round on the web just now seems to imply that she isn’t. Somewhere, deep in the back of my mind, I’d rather hoped that one of the original caresses had returned for the part. It’s no great loss, of course, but it was still something I liked to hope for. I’m more keen to see just how linked the elixir is to the Regeneration cycle.

The Doctor explains here that the Time Lords only use it for particularly difficult regenerations, which does tie in with the Eighth Doctor’s end. We also find out today that ships crash so often on Karn because of the Sisterhood, so it’s nice to think that they purposely brought the Eighth Doctor down to their world to further the course of the war, and eventually bring an end to it. There’s something quite fun about the Fourth Doctor here setting up the flame to burn brighter and longer than anyone had ever guessed, and knowing that this will one day come back to save his life - there’s a kind of neat symmetry to all that.

I’m also impressed by just how well the look of this original serial holds up. Night of the Doctor is shot with some very nice looking caves as the background, whereas The Brain of Morbius is one of the entirely studio-bound adventures. Thankfully, it’s one where all the design elements hang together very nicely. As much as I like the surface of Karn, I think it’s possibly the weakest element of the design - and I do prefer the digital matte painting we get during the planet’s second appearance.

The highlight in terms of the set design is probably Solon’s home. Every bit of it feels really well-done, from the entrance hall, to the basement, to the lab. It’s holds a pleasing sense of gothic architecture (and it wouldn’t look out of place in a horror film), but at the same time contains enough elements to make it interesting and unique. In a special feature on this DVD, Barry Newbery explains his thought process behind the design, and goes into great detail about my favourite aspect of the set - the various columns and buttresses that run throughout the house. He explains that on this world, architecture had taken a different course to that on Earth, where we place things like this on the outside, or at least with the walls where possible, and that he wanted to creature something different. Of course, ti also works out beautifully for a director, and leads to some especially nice shots in the ‘lower lab’ set - especially during Episode Two, when Solon and Morbius argue.

Perhaps the greatest bit of design on show here, though, is the Morbius creature itself. A few years ago, when the action figure for this one came out, I made a point of not buying it. It came as part of the second ‘wave’ of classic figures, where releases such as an Ice Warrior or an Earthshock Cyberman took up most of my budget. I was never all that fond of this design, and I didn’t think that it related particularly well to figure form. Now, though, I think that I appreciate it more. There’s something about the odd mash of elements that simply works, and I simply love that Condo’s missing arm has gone into creating the creature. In retrospect, that fact seems blatantly obvious (mad professor is building a body from various parts. Same mad professor is holding on to one of his servant’s arms. It’s not that difficult to put two and two together, but I didn’t! Hah!), but it comes as a lovely surprise when watching through.

My only complaint is that there’s nothing really recognisable within the Morbius design. I’m sure I’d be complaining if it were completely made up of creatures we’ve seen in the last few seasons, but having encountered a Mutt at the start of the story for the first time in years, it would have been nice to see one or two elements that I’d recognise as a part of the design. Someone did point out to me today that Morbius’ ‘claw’ could come from a Macra, and that’s something that I’m going to be clinging on to for now, but it’s a pity there’s nothing more immediately obvious to pick up on!

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

Day 438: The Brain of Morbius, Episode Two

Dear diary,

I seem to say this a lot, but Tom Baker really is very good at this whole ‘being the Doctor’ thing, isn’t he? There’s so many moments in today’s episode where you simply forget that anyone else can have ever played the part, because it’s just so right for him.

He’s helped by a rather brilliant script - there’s a lot of humour in here. For all the darkness in an episode where Sarah is blinded, the Doctor is very nearly burnt at the stake, and a mad professor has an argument with a brain in a jar, I found myself smiling and laughing right the way through today’s instalment. It’s doing that thing that Doctor Who is so very good at: walking the very fine line between scares and humour, and being throughly entertaining throughout. I’ve enjoyed a lot of episodes over the past few months, but I can’t remember the last time that I had so much fun watching one.

It’s the Doctor who benefits the most from all the joking around in the script, from his ‘confession’ to the sisterhood, through seconding the motion that he be spared from death, and the way he reacts to the TARDIS being moved via mental projection (‘Now, if you were to get yourself a nice little fork lift…’), and Tom also gets a fair amount of physical comedy, too. When Solon emerges from the basement to find the Doctor sitting there, grinning away… it’s impossible not to love it. Solon, too, benefits from the jokes, and his insults towards Condo are as amusing as anything else in the story.

All this humour being injected could run the risk of making the story seem light-hearted or trivial, but Dicks manages to alternate these moment with a fair amount of darkness. The aforementioned argument with Morbius is very well played, and I love that you never see who he’s arguing with, but merely hear the voice as we keep following Solon, letting Philip Madoc’s performance be the sole draw for your eye. Then you’ve got Condo finding out just how little his master cares for him, and threatening to kill him… it’s all quite powerful stuff, and it helps to readdress the balance between light and dark in the story.

It’s also nice to see more and more detail being shaded in about Morbius and his history. I mused yesterday that he was being built up as a kind of mythical figure in Time Lord society, much like Omega or Rassilon, and I still think that’s true, but there’s shades of it bridging the gap more with the version of the Doctor’s race that we’ll be seeing soon enough. Morbius led a rebellion, centring on Karn. He was exiled and disintegrated, and now Solon prepares to revive him to rule once more. Obviously, there’s great big shades of Frankenstein in Solon’s methods, but it’s still interesting enough to watch here.

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

Day 437: The Brain of Morbius, Episode One

Dear diary,

The Ark in Space, Genesis of the Daleks, Terror of the Zygons, Pyramids of Mars… People always seem to rate the Hinchcliffe years as being Doctor Who’s finest, and it’s not hard to see why. Every other story is one where I find myself saying ‘this tale is considered to be a real classic’. And here we are again! The Brain of Morbius is another one of those tales that people always speak about with such glowing praise, and another tale that I’ve never seen before.

It certainly gets off to a good start. The opening shot of a Mutt’s hand as it scrabbles up over a rock is lovely, and the lighting throughout this scene is simply gorgeous. The whole scene - and, indeed, the episode as a whole - is dripping with atmosphere, and hooks you in right from the very beginning. That’s always a good sign: if a story starts well, and snaps up my attention quickly enough and firmly enough, then I’m always happy. Things don’t let up from here, though, and once the TARDIS arrives, things get even better.

Over the last few weeks I’ve praised both the way that Tom Baker can play ‘brooding intensity’ and the relationship he has with Elisabeth Sladen, and we get to witness these two areas in action here. The Doctor emerges from the TARDIS shouting to the heavens against the Time Lords (and I love that, though an alternative explanation for their arrival on Karn is offered by Sarah, we’re not actually sure if he’s been directed here by his own people or not), and then goes into a wonderful childish strop. He claims that he’s just going to sit on a nearby rock and play with his yo-yo, but he does it with that wonderful voice of his, so it feels exciting - like the best tantrum ever.

And then Sarah Jane mocks him for it! Sticking out her tongue, making silly noises, and telling him that she’s going off to explore their new surroundings even if he can’t be bothered. It’s lovely, and we really are deep now into the period where these two are best friends. That he jumps up and rushes after her the second she screams is another beautiful touch, and it’s something that he’s seen to do quite often, from Revenge of the Cybermen through Terror of the Zygons… it’s almost becoming a trademark!

As they continue to explore, the Doctor’s more playful side emerges again, and he’s back into his usual fine form by the time they reach Dr Solon’s house on the hill. I love the way he jokes about having several heads, including an ‘old grey model’ before his current one (I love even more the way he jokes that ‘some people liked it’, and Sarah replies ‘I did!’), and the way he flashes his smile all the way through drinks with their host. One of Baker’s finest assets is his ability to switch between serious and smiley in the click of a finger, and all of that is in full display here.

We’re also at a point now where more and more is starting to be added to the legend of the Time Lords. This era of the programme adds more to the Time Lords than any other point in the show’s history, starting really with the story of Omega in The Three Doctors and getting stronger and stronger from there. Season Eleven gives us the name of their planet, events in Season Twelve where they send the Doctor to avert the creation of the Daleks will go on to have much graver consequences in the 21st century series, Pyramids of Mars gives us co-ordinates for the world, then you’ve got Morbius being introduced here, everything during The Deadly Assassin next season, and on to The Invasion of Time after that…

At this stage, they’re still somewhat mythical. During The War Games, they appear as these powerful, God-like beings, but then by the time we reach the Doctor’s description of them to Sarah, they’ve been reduced to ‘galactic ticket inspectors’. Here, they’re seen as almost omnipotent – not responding to the Doctor’s calls at the beginning of the episode, and being involved in a strange deal to share ‘The Elixir of Life’ with the cult-ish Sisterhood on Kern.

The legend of Morbius hasn’t really been fleshed out yet, either, but we know from the Doctor that he wasn’t a particularly nice figure in Time Lord history. I know they’ll be adding more details to this as the story progresses, so I look forward to seeing that happen. From the middle of next season and The Deadly Assassin, they’ll start to lose some of their mystery again, so I’m enjoying these great mythical aspects to their story while I still can…

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

Day 436: The Android Invasion, Part Four

Dear diary,

Ahhhrg! Roughly translated, that means ‘The Android Invasion is so bloody frustrating that I think I may burst…’ This episode continues in the same style at the previous three - throwing up lots of interesting ideas and a few really brilliant moments, but then managing to undercut them with just a lot of rubbish. I wan’t so desperately to like this story, and I’m always so glad every time I think it’s about to swing round for me, but it just doesn’t work.

Still, let’s be positive to start with. Things I love in this episode… The Doctor is on fine form throughout, and the scene where both the real Doctor and his android double encounter android Benton in quick succession is brilliant. One of those genuinely lath-out-loud moments. As the two Doctors then go on to fight each other on a few occasions, I have to confess that I’m impressed by the direction - it really works. The pod opening behind The Doctor and Sarah as they talk on the rocket, and the duplicate of our hero peers out is wonderfully sinister. Later on, a similar trick in employed by Sarah Jane, when her duplicate sits up from a pod. If anything, that moment is possibly one of Lis Sladen’s best… but then we never see her double again! Where did it go?

Speaking of sudden departures, it’s a good job I was paying attention today because that’s goodbye to Benton, Harry, and UNIT… and they don’t waste any time in giving them a send off! Benton’s final moments see him accepting the Doctor’s orders and heading out of the main control room at the Space Centre… before being seen unconscious a few seconds later, where he’s walked right into an ambush (John Levene continues to play android Benton for the rest of the episode, including the scene I’ve already mentioned where both Doctor’s confuse him, but this is the last sight of the real Benton). Meanwhile Harry gets an equally inglorious send off, being rescued from the rocket by Sarah, and expressing surprise at the fact that he’s got a twin.

The Brigadier - who was clearly supposed to be around in this final episode - has been replaced with a completely new soldier, who speaks lines that would be just right for our regular man-in-charge-of-UNIT. In a funny turn of fate, though, the replacement soldier is played by Patrick Newell, who was also in the episode of The Avengers that I watched yesterday! Small world.

I suppose at the time, they didn’t really know that UNIT wouldn’t be seen again for such a long time. Although Phillip Hinchcliffe was moving the series in a new direction, and Tom Baker wanted to get away from the trappings of his predecessor, I’d imagine they still expected the organisation to crop up from time to time. As it is, we’ll never see Benton or Harry again, and UNIT, save for a brief cameo at the end of this season, won’t be back properly now until Battlefield.

We also say goodbye to Barry Letts with today’s episode, as it’s his last directing work on the series. He’ll be back to oversee things as an executive producer for Season Eighteen, but this is the last time he takes such a direct input to the series. It’s nice to say that the direction has been one of the highlights for the story, and it was only today that I realised both Letts’ first and last direction work for the series feature doubles of the Doctor fighting themselves. In The Enemy of the World, we get to see the Second Doctor fighting against Salamander, while here we’ve got the Doctor vs his android double. It’s not the only connection Letts makes to his first work on the series, either, because Milton Johns turns up in vital roles for both stories.

I’m tempted to say ‘this is the last time Terry Nation writes a non-Dalek story for the programme’, too, but he only does it on two occasions, over a decade apart! Having been an active voice on the writing team for the last few seasons, though, he’ll now be slipping back into the shadows for a while to concentrate on Survivors and Blake’s 7, and we won’t see him again until the Daleks decide to make a reappearance in the Doctor’s life.

On the whole, The Android Invasion is filled with some brilliant ideas, some great concepts, and some wonderful moments… but it just doesn’t quite gel when you put everything together. A real shame, and possibly the biggest ‘blip’ in Season Thirteen’s track record…

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

Day 435: The Android Invasion, Episode Three

Dear diary,

There’s a few people who I tend to use as a ‘sounding board’ when I’m making my way through the stories for this marathon. It’s usually quite simple – just someone I can talk to about the stories, which tends to help clear my head a bit so that I know what to write about when I sit down to pen the day’s entry. It also serves the useful purpose of giving me extra things to consider, which I may not have thought about myself. When I told my friend Nick the other day that I was now starting out on The Android Invasion, he suggested that I take a look at the production subtitles on this DVD, because they were a particularly good set.

I usually find that I only resort to the Production Notes when I’m particularly bored by a story. Nothing against them as a special feature (they’re often one of the best on every disc), but I find them too distracting when I’m watching a story for the first time. Episodes One and Two of The Android Invasion have had an awful lot to love in them, but they’re not exactly thrilling me as much as I’d like. So, taking on board Nick’s advice, I decided to go back to the menu and switch on the Subtitles before starting out on today’s episode.

It’s ironic, then, that after I’ve spent two days talking about how much this story feels in places like an episode of The Avengers, that the subtitles to this episode should highlight a few episodes from that series which share elements with this story! If nothing else, it’s nice to know that I can pick up on the similarities in style. The main story that’s brought up comes from Season Four of The Avengers, and since it’s not one I’ve seen, I headed straight for the box set and watched it after today’s instalment of Doctor Who. So… now it’s time for something completely different…

Day 435: *The Town of No Return*

This is The Avengers right at the height of its popularity, with arguably the most famous of the teams, Steed and Emma Peel. They take the train out to a small coastal town, where agents have been sent to investigate strange goings on and never returned from. The story isn’t a complete clone of my current Doctor Who tale – the village doesn’t turn out to be a training ground on an alien world, for example – but there are a lot of similarities.

People in the village known to one of your ‘good guys’ who aren’t quite who they seem (indeed, in The Avengers, the people have been replaced with entirely different people taking their place), there’s a hunt out on location with bloodhounds, a character taking a pivotal role in the plot who turns out to be officially ‘dead’, and a sting of slightly unusual mysteries to solve, such as missing parish records for the last 20 years, or the lack of pupils at the school.

There’s even a slightly surreal scene where the ‘new’ versions of people arrive in the town for the first time. In The Android Invasion, a truck rolls up in the village loaded with perfectly still people. For The Town of No Return, a black sack walks out of the ocean, unzips, and a gentleman steps out, strolls across the beach, and greets a watching man. Both are rather brilliant in their own ways, but I think – and this goes for the story as a whole – I prefer this episode of The Avengers to these four episodes of Doctor Who.

It’s possibly helped by the fact that the entire Avengers story is told in 50 minutes, whereas the Doctor’s adventure in Devesham is spread over almost double that time, and the fact that it reminds me so much of a recent story with a similar plot which I’ve seen so recently. Still, all that said, and no matter how much I’ve enjoyed by brief excursion back into the 1960s with this Avengers episode, there’s still plenty that I’m liking about The Android Invasion.

The idea that the village isn’t even on Earth, but rather is a testing ground for a later full-scale invasion really works for me… but I’m not entirely sure why they’ve got copies of Harry, and Benton etc around. I did wonder if it might be to prepare themselves for a confrontation with UNIT (although we’ve only seen the androids working for the Kraals at this stage, presumably they sometimes get set to act simply… ‘normal’?), but then why no Brigadier? And where did they get the plans for them? I’m sure there’s something about them being drawn from people’s memories, which would imply that Crayford has met them before, but… Oh, my head hurts.

And there, you hit the crux of my issue with the story. There’s so many great ideas, but they’re all just out of reach from being brilliant. In many ways, then, it’s the typical Terry Nation of old. Perhaps my biggest issue is the Kraals themselves. I can’t tell if they’re supposed to be ‘funny’ comedy aliens, who are a bit inept and bumbling… or if they’re just really rubbish by accident. It’s been troubling me for a while, now…

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

Day 434: The Android Invasion, Episode Two

Dear diary,

Oh no. Oh, no, no, no, no, no… I can’t think of anything worse. This may actually be the most nightmarish thing to have ever happened in Doctor Who. People talk about the Hinchcliffe years as being dark, but… this? An entire village, trapped eternally on a single day. July 6th… the day before my birthday. If I lived in Devesham, I’d wake up every singe day, and my birthday would never arrive. Boo. Course, it would also mean that I’d be an android duplicate, having undergone a painful process aboard the spaceship of an evil alien, but still… I’d never get my presents!

The Android Invasion is blowing a bit hot and cold for me at the moment. On the one hand, there’s loads that I’m loving. This episode continues with some of the strange mystery that we started building up in yesterday’s episode, and I’m finding it more and more like something out of The Avengers (the Doctor’s reaction to finding that calendar would surely give us the title of the story, too: The Village Without a Future), and that’s no bad thing. It’s nice, sometimes, to get away from the usual Doctor Who fodder and have something a bit different.

But then, on the other hand, this episode isn’t getting away from being generic Doctor Who at all - in fact, I think it may be the epitome of it in places! What I actually mean is that this story seems to be drawing inspiration in places from the programme’s past. Specifically, the past of just a few stories ago, because there’s an awful lot in here which feels like a sub-par Terror of the Zygons. I don’t know if that’s intentional, or simply a coincidence, but both Terry Nation on writing duties and Barry Letts as director seem to be aping elements of the season opener throughout this episode.

On the writing side, the local pub (well… the local inn) is being used to spy on the operations of the outsiders to the village. In Zygons, the hidden camera was in the eyes of the deer head, whereas here it’s in the centre of the dartboard (it’s a good job the Doctor didn’t damage it with his triple bullseye!). This then sort of leads into the similarities in direction, where a shot of the Doctor looking down the camera lens and being watched on a monitor in the Kraal’s spaceship is almost identical to a shot of Benton doing the same with the Zygon spying device. Then, while I’m glad that they’re trying to conceal the look of the aliens for as long as possible, we seem to follow the same process as in that earlier tale. Our first glimpse is a close up of the face (In Zygons it was a more extreme close up on the eyes, whereas here you get the full face peering through a hole in the cliffhanger to Episode One), this is then followed by a shot of the creature’s hand on the controls of the ship. At least the reveal is done well, again, with the face of the creature appearing as Sarah undergoes her processing.

That’s not to mention the fact that this is a story about a species of aliens we’ve never seen before, who are able to create perfect facsimiles of human characters, and have created a version of Harry who’s hostile towards the Doctor and (especially) Sarah. It’s not just minor similarities - there’s whole ideas which are shared between the two stories. It seems odd that the production team have let this happen so close together (only eight episodes between the end of Zygons and the start of this one), but I wonder if that’s a peculiarity of Zygons being held over from Season Twelve? Had it been shown earlier in the year, as planned, this story may not have come as such a close resemblance.

Of course the big moment today is the cliffhanger. Sarah Jane falls down a slope… and her face falls off! She’s an android! It’s another one of those moments that you just know about when you’re a Doctor Who fan, and I’ve probably seen it a thousand times. But I’d always assumed that it was supposed to be a shock to the viewer more than it actually is. Earlier on in today’s episode, Sarah trips and falls, spraining her ankle. I’d always figured that a similar thing would happen at the end of this episode. She’d stumble, fall to the ground… and then when the face pops off, it’s a huge surprise! I didn’t realise that by the time this cliffhanger rolls around, we’re supposed to know that she’s a duplicate.

I wonder if I prefer the version of events that I’ve had in my head for all these years? By the time of this scene, we know that they’re making android duplicates of people, we know that Sarah has gone through the process, and they’ve laid more enough hints to the fact that this isn’t the real Sarah. It suddenly makes sense of the Doctor’s new obsession with ginger pop (in yesterday’s episode, when he steps out of the TARDIS, offers some to Sarah, and she makes a point of saying how much she hates it I wondered if they were just trying to pad out some time - the whole exchange felt odd!), and seeing Sarah accept it is all the indication we need that she’s not herself.

But then they also add in the fact that she can make a phone call. The Doctor makes a point of checking several phones to make sure we know that they’re not working, and even highlights it as being odd that Sarah can manage to phone in to him. It’s made clear that her story doesn’t quite add up about her escape from the aliens. And then the Doctor’s main deduction is that the duplicate is wearing a scarf… when he’s got Sarah’s scarf in his pocket still from earlier. Actually, that last one is the cleverest idea (and, I have to admit, I didn’t spot it!), but it feels like overkill to add yet another clue.

That said, it’s nice how neatly that ties in. As I say, I didn’t spot the scarf thing, but it’s nicely woven in daly on when the Doctor takes it from her to lead the sniffer dogs off her trail. That chase also gives us a chance to look at the Doctor’s new clothes (the second coat to be introduced in as many stories!), which is quite nice. I much admit that I’d forgotten just how soon this grey coat is introduced. I knew he wore it in this story, and the next, and the one after that, but in my mind I’d never realised just how quickly he started adding these new bits to his costume. To my mind it had always been the corduroy jacket, the brown frock coat introduced in Pyramids of Mars, which then evolved into this one, before heading back to a different brown one, a new grey/beige one for Season Seventeen, and his Season Eighteen look. I rather prefer the way it’s actually turning out, with the Doctor able to swap his coats around on a whim - it gives the impression far more of him choosing clothes as opposed to a costume, and that’s a nice touch.

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

Day 433: The Android Invasion, Episode One

Dear diary,

It’s always a nice transition to go from such an acclaimed story to one which I really have no clue about when it comes to other people’s opinions. I don’t know if I hear so little about The Android Invasion because it’s considered to be a bad story, or if it’s simply by chance. I know about as much about this tale as I did Planet of Evil last week, and that turned out to be a real highlight for me, so fingers crossed…!

If this first episode is anything to go by, I may well have another hidden gem on my hands. Once again, we get to spend a lot of time in the company of just the Doctor and Sarah (Right the way through this marathon, I’d assumed that the ‘Doctor and his companion(s) explore the new location without much interference from guest characters’ was something exclusive to the early years of the programme, but it seem increasingly common at the moment for me to refer back to ‘this thing from the early 1960’s’ cropping up - it seems to be just as common in the mid-70s), and the more time we spend with this pair, the more I can understand the love for them.

It also helps that they’ve got an interesting mystery to solve. It feels more like the plot from an episode of The Avengers than it does one from Doctor Who. An entire town has suddenly become deserted? A soldier throws himself from a cliff top? All the money in his wallet (and in the till of the local pub) is freshly minted? The lanes are patrolled by mysterious figures in a kind of radiation suit who fire bullets from their fingers at anyone who trespasses? Mrs Peel, we’re needed!

The Doctor comes up with quite a good explanation for it all. A radiation leak, meaning that everyone’s been evacuated in a hurry. Makes sense. The soldier could be infected, meaning he’s not of sound mind. Makes sense. All the money has to be changed because of the high radiation levels in the area naturally, so it can’t be allowed to circulate far. Makes sense. And yet, it’s interesting to watch the deduction while knowing that he’s completely wrong. I don’t know a great deal about the plot to this story, but what little I do know tells me that it’s got something to do with androids (the clue’s in the title), and they don’t feature in the Doctor’s analysis.

But just when you start to think he’s piecing together a coherent explanation for everything, they go and make it even more mysterious, by bringing in a group of people to populate the pub with. There’s something eerie about the way they all come in silently and resume their positions (it’s a shame that one extra is forced to move his chair to sit down - there’s something creepier about the people before him who just slide down into their pre-placed seats), and when Sarah bursts into the room and they all turn to stare at her with a look of anger… oh, yes, it’s all very effective.

So it’s almost a shame when we follow the Doctor off to the Space Centre, and we’re caught up in boring old action sequences. Chasing, evading, running around… even Tom Baker flipping over a desk can’t make this part of the story as interesting as that initial mystery. It’s telling, perhaps, that all my notes for today’s episode end with Sarah at the pub. After that, I’m just not as engaged.

Something I did notice, and it’s been brought up in a few other recent stories, too, is the fact that Sarah doesn’t seem to have her own TARDIS key. We’re only a few stories away from the Doctor’s claim that she’s his ‘best friend’, and they’ve been travelling together for absolutely ages now, so it does seem a little odd that she’s not allowed her own access to the ship. But then she goes and does something silly, like put the key in the lock and wanter away from it! No wonder the TARDIS has taken off of its own accord - it’s probably trying to teach her a lesson!

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

Day 432: Pyramids of Mars, Episode Four

Dear diary,

I think the issue that I’m having with this story is that I don’t really believe in Sutekh’s power. Ever since the Doctor realised what they’re fighting against, he’s spent time telling us how many millions will die if they don’t succeed in stopping this ancient god. We see the future, ravaged and destroyed. Five men are already dead - some quite brutally killed - and they’re only the first of millions once Sutekh has broken free of his restraints. But that’s all we get - a lot of talk about the fact that he’s all-powerful, and that he leaves desolation in his wake. Because he doesn’t get to stand up until the end of this episode, and then finds himself immediately trapped in a time corridor, the threat of this creature feels less potent than, say, the anti-matter force from the last story. Or the Daleks last season. Or… well, you get the picture.

It’s a pity, really, because the opening few minutes of today’s episode consists almost exclusively of the Doctor being tortured by Sutekh’s mental powers. In some ways, these scenes are the ones which come closest to showing you just how powerful this god really is, because he’s reduced our hero to being his plaything, but they feel as though they’re lacking impact having come after Planet of the Spiders. The mental torture inflicted on the Doctor here is far greater than the ‘walking round in circles’ that the Great One caused, but it’s less shocking because we’ve already had that earlier example.

The one thing that really does work for me about Sutekh, though, is his voice. I remember there being quite a bit of excitement back in 2006 when it was announced that Gabriel Woolf would be returning to the world of Doctor Who to voice the creature in The Satan Pit, and I can see now why people were so thrilled. He manages a tone that is at once scary and playful, and the way he laughs as he speaks some of the lines can be genuinely chilling. It’s by far the best thing about the entire story, but it still doesn’t really make me fear him.

Even when - following the Doctor’s protests that he will never help the god - Sutekh takes control of the Doctor’s mind and starts using him as a puppet, I just don’t believe it. I don’t know if it’s something in Baker’s performance, or if it’s just the way that I’m reading into the events, but I was convinced that the Doctor was faking possession. I kept waiting for him to turn to Sarah and give her a wink, a signal to both her and us that things were really ok. After a while, it turns out that - no - he wan’t faking it, and he really was under the control of an outside influence, a puppet for Sutekh… but it comes too late!

Oh, I know, I’m simply having a moan. I think this is another one of those instances, like The Evil of the Daleks, where I’m looking at a story’s high standing within fandom and thinking ‘go on, then. Impress me…’ There’s lots to love about this story, but I just can’t understand why it’s quite so loved. At times, today’s episode feels a bit like a rehash of Death to the Daleks, with logic puzzles standing between the Doctor and his goal (even Sarah comments that it reminds her of the city on Exxilon. A lovely, and unexpected, surprise… although Sarah didn’t actually get to go in to the city. Presumably, the Doctor must have told her all about it…), but at least they’re livened up with some funky moving backgrounds throughout the set.

On the whole, I think the story just lost some of the atmosphere once the action was shifted mainly to Mars. Suddenly, that great mansion set, or the woodlands, was gone and replaced with a fairly generic location for the final showdown. Although the moving segments are a nice idea, they don’t always work well, so I found them more distracting than anything. I think, no matter how I try, I’m just not going to get the love for this one. A good story? Yes, undoubtably. A great story? Not for me, I’m afraid.

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

Day 431: Pyramids of Mars, Episode Three

Dear diary,

Whenever we have a historical story, I always catch myself being terribly nice about the set design, and quite often the location work, too, but I rarely seem to talk all that much about the costumes. I think this is a fitting place to do so, because all the outfits in this particular story are fantastic. Elisabeth Sladen really suits the white dress she wears (and it’s a marked change from the type of outfit that Sarah was wearing in the programme for the last few seasons. I hate to use an anecdote from Sladen’s autobiography again, but she talks of loosening up Sarah’s wardrobe the longer she travels with the Doctor, and you can clearly see that in motion here), the fact that it’s mentioned as having been Victoria’s is a nice little nod to the past, too.

Then you’ve got the Scarman brothers. Marcus’ outfit is interesting enough without being too overbearing, but it’s Lawrence’s togs which appeal the most to me. I think most Doctor Who fans have their own ‘Doctor outfit’ - the type of clothes you would wear if you were the Doctor. I think Lawrence’s ones here are pretty much my ideal costume. Indeed, I own a similar three-piece suit (though in a more modern cut, and with a smaller pattern), so there’s no wonder that I’m so keen on his style!

And then you’ve got the real Doctor’s outfit. It’s been evolving for a little while, now, and we’ve settled on the look that - in various guises - will define much of the programme’s next five years. The hat, the scarf, the frock coat, the waistcoat, the ‘chequered’ trousers… There’s a moment in today’s episode, when the Doctor rounds a corner and we see a full-length shot of him and all I could think was how close it looked to the action figure of the Doctor from this story! It seems obvious (this is the tale they based it on, so it would look similar), but it’s a spot on capture of this costume that they’ve produced. In terms of the figures, this was always my favourite version of Tom, but often alternated with the Season 18 variant on the shelf when I couldn’t make my mind up! I think that all things considered, this is my favourite look for the Fourth Doctor - he just fits the style so well.

We’re also seeing just how different this incarnation of the Doctor can be from his predecessors. People talk of Tom Baker as being the first actor who really understood how alien the Doctor was, and it’s perfectly showcased today with his utter lack of concern for the dead Lawrence Scarman. Early in the story, once they’ve escaped the mummy attack he asks if the man is ok. Receiving a positive answer, he barks ‘You don’t deserve to be! You nearly got us all killed!’ It’s not a line that I can imagine as being unique to Tom’s Doctor (I can picture Pertwee saying something similar, and probably Hartnell, too), but the delivery only carries the weight like this when it comes from Tom Baker’s mouth. And then you’ve got a later exchange between the Doctor and Sarah, once they’ve found the man dead:

SARAH
He was so concerned about his brother…

THE DOCTOR
Well I told him not to be. I told him it was too late.

SARAH
Oh! Sometimes you don’t seem… (she catches the next word in her throat, but the Doctor finishes the sentence for her anyway.)

THE DOCTOR
…Human?

From there, he just carries on with his deductions of what’s happening. Sarah tries to protest that a man has just been murdered, but the Doctor simply replies that four men have been killed. Five, if you include Professor Scarman himself. It’s wonderful to see the Doctor as detached as this, and it really does serve as a reminder that he’s not like us. He sees death all the time, so this is just another corpse to him. Even with everything else that the Doctor has had to do through this story, all the fun and laughing with his companion that I love so much, I think this may be his best moment of the story.

I told myself that I’d try not to mention the sets in this story all that much, which is one of the reasons that I’ve chosen to look at the costumes above. That said, I do need to draw attention to one of the set dressings - the Osirian rocket. It looks massive in the courtyard, which really helps to make the whole thing look impressive. I knew that it took this form somewhere in the story (again, from the action figures. I don’t own the set, but one of the Pyramids of Mars releases comes with a model of this missile), but I had no idea that it was so large! When it blows up at the end, the effect if pretty impressive, too. According to the ‘Now and Then’ feature on this DVD, the prop was given to a local school to keep once it was finished for filming… how come nothing that exciting ever happened in my schooldays?

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

Day 430: Pyramids of Mars, Episode Two

Dear diary,

Oh, Sarah Jane, you don’t make it easy for me, do you? Right the way through the Pertwee years, I managed to mostly avoid discussing the whole ‘dating’ issue, but this is one of the most glaring errors at the heart of it all - I simply can’t ignore this one! The last time I touched briefly on the whole dating issue was during Invasion of the Dinosaurs, where I commented that I was going to ignore Sarah’s ‘I’m from 1980’ comment in this story, and only really worry about the dating issues when I reached Mawdryn Undead… but I had no idea that the whole 1980 date was such a pivotal part of this story.

I knew that the Doctor took Sarah into the future to see what would happen to the Earth were they to leave now and not stop Sutekh, but I didn’t realise that they repeated that 1980 date over and over. Sarah says it. The Doctor says it. They open the doors and we look right out in to it. Frankly, the reason I’ve been choosing to ignore the whole subject is because it can’t be reconciled. I’ve seen fans claiming that Sarah is simply rounding up from 1975 to 1980 (which is ludicrous), or that there’s a time slip which moves the UNIT stories around between the 1970s and the 1980s… nothing really works for me. I just have to accept that this is a programme being made by several different production teams over several decades, and that things won’t always line up neatly. It’s a shame, but the 1980 comment is always going to stand out! Now, if only they’d recored as few new bits of dialogue for the DVD, to change the date they all keep saying?

Still, aside from the headaches that it’s given to fans over the years, that whole sequence when they skip forward to see what would happen if they left now is very nicely done. We’ve had a similar idea given to us before in dialogue, but to actually see it is far more powerful. They did a similar thing in The Sarah Jane Adventures, where Sarah Jane emerges back through a time fissure and into the ‘present’ day, to find that her actions in the past have allowed the Trickster to take control of the world, and turn it into a desolate husk. Modern budgets (even the comparatively small one for the spin off) mean that we get to spend a bit more time in this new world, but the core of the idea is the same between both stories.

But back in the world of 1911… well I’m just not sure what to make of the story. There’s nothing wrong with it, I’m certainly enjoying it and being swept along with it, but I can’t quite see how it’s always made it into such high spots on lists of ‘the best ever episodes’. Oh, sure, there’s a great deal of tension - the scene where Ernie Clements is chased by mummies is a great example of this. For ages, he’s way in the lead, with the mummies lumbering along far behind him. After a while, you start to think that he’ll always be able to out-run them, but in that moment, he hits back into the forcefield running through the woods. The same character was used to introduce us to the device earlier in this episode, in a bit of a comedy sequence, but now it turns out to be his downfall. The mummies close in closer and closer…

But then when they do actually catch up with him and crush him to death… People have always hailed this as one of the darkest bits of the story, and in a way it is. The mummy design is beautiful, but the fact that their protruded chest cavity is at just the right height to break his neck is a lovely touch. I don’t know if it was intentional or just a nice coincidence, but it works all the same. That said… I found it more funny than scary. It’s the two mummies cuddling him to death! Much more effective in the closing moments, as one stretches their hands out toward Sarah Jane’s neck, or early on in the episode when we hear the attack, but we don’t actually see it…

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

Day 429: Pyramids of Mars, Episode One

Dear diary,

Pyramids of Mars is another one of those stories which usually finds itself placing quite high on fans’ lists of favourite episodes. Indeed, in our recent poll, it came in at number 6 out of 239, which makes it one of the stories that people rate among the best that Doctor Who has ever produced. As usual, I’m slightly sceptical about such high praise, but considering how fan ‘wisdom’ on stories like Genesis of the Daleks and Terror of the Zygons has seemed to chime pretty well with my own feelings lately, I’m intrigued to see if things will continue their current good trend with this one.

This is one of those stories that I’ve seen before, and actually I’ve seen it a couple of times. When I first started out collecting the Doctor Who DVDs, I picked it up simply because of its high regard among other fans… and I have to say I recall being a bit bored by it! That’s all I can recall – no specific scenes or bits of dialogue at all – but it meant that I then spent years thinking of it as a bit of a duff story, one which I could never understand the love for.

I’m not completely alone in this. Nick Mellish – who I mention a lot during my Diary posts, but he’s usually fairly spot on with his assessments of Who stories, by which I mean that we’re usually in tune with our opinions! – pointed out to me when we released our poll results that he could never get his head around why this story always graced the tops of lists.

But a few years ago, when Elisabeth Sladen died, they included all four episodes of this story as a tribute to her on the DVD and Blu Ray release of The Sarah Jane Adventures Series Four. I love The Sarah Jane Adventures, so I was quick to re-watch the entire series when the discs arrived. Having exhausted the supply of episodes, I found myself popping this story on. I didn’t watch the full thing, but I can remember getting to the end of Episode One and being surprised by just how much I’d enjoyed it.

Thankfully, I’m pleased to say that the second viewing of the episode is the one which most closely resembles my thoughts on it today. It may not be an instantly perfect episode like some people would have you believe, but it’s a good strong start to the story, and it’s absolute dripping in atmosphere. I think the highlight for me comes a little over half-way through, when we’ve spent several (largely dialogue-free) minutes watching the Doctor, Sarah, and Dr Warlock being chased by Ibrahim Namin and his mummies. There’s lots of stalking about in the woods, hiding behind fallen trees and in bushes… and then the scene is cut through by the sound of the organ blaring up again from the house. It takes you completely by surprise every time, and it really is a wonderful moment.

Lots of what comes afterwards is very good, too. Namin seems to be set up as the villain of the piece throughout the episode. He’s the one who appears to be covering up Scarman’s absence. He’s the one occupying the house and performing weird rituals with the Egyptian artefacts. He’s the one who pulls a gun on anyone who dares to get in his way… so it’s a real shock to see him killed during the cliffhanger. It serves so well as a demonstration of Sutekh’s power, and that great line ‘I am the servant of Sutekh. He needs no other.’ is really rather wonderful.

And then there’s a multitude of little things that all come together to make this simply an enjoyable episode. Opening with stock footage of Egypt was a real delight (I had a vague memory that they’d used a still image of the pyramids - no idea there that thought came from!), and is actually quite impressive. It means that when we step into a BBC studio set for the Egyptian tomb, it feels exotic and remote - you really get the impression that you’re somewhere very new again.

And then we’re back to somewhere very… familiar. Almost, anyway. Large country houses always feel like a staple of the programme in the 1970s, and I love the idea of visiting the location of UNIT HQ many decades before it’s used by UNIT. In some ways, I find it a shame that we’re in a previous house, not the one they actually use for UNIT, but then their HQ changed so much throughout the Pertwee years that I’m not sure I’d notice them simply redressing the set that became more common towards the end of the run.

But for me, the highlight is in the Doctor and Sarah Jane. I mused during Planet of Evil that I was starting to see the ‘best friends’ aspect of their relationship coming out, but it’s even more obvious here. From the way she playfully teases him in the TARDIS (‘you’ll soon be middle-aged!’) to the way they laugh and joke during their initial exploration of the house, there’s just so much to love in this pair. it’s clearly two people (The Doctor and Sarah and Tom Baker and Lis Sladen) who really love spending time together, and are just having fun. If this is what their relationship is like for the rest of their time together, then I’m in for a real treat.

Hm? Sorry? What? Oh, yes. That. I managed to successfully avoid the whole UNIT dating topic for most of the Pertwee years, but then today we’ve got one of the elements which makes it such a contentious issue.

SARAH JANE
We travel in time, Mr Scarman. I'm really from 1980…

I suppose I’d better finally start thinking properly about the whole UNIT time line issue…Well… Um… I guess that… Wait. Hold on. Was that the doorbell? Yes, I rather think it was…

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

Day 428: Planet of Evil, Episode Four

Dear diary,

There’s always a risk built into stumbling upon stories that you didn’t realise were very much up your street. That risk, put simply, is that they might fall apart on you. Over the last few days, I’ve been growing more-and-more impressed by Planet of Evil, a hidden gem amongst the early Tom Baker era that I’d never before given a second thought. Everything seemed to be holding together really rather well - from the sets, to the performances, and the effects. The one thing that had been letting it down for me was the story, but even that had started to draw me in by yesterday.

But then today, I’ve just found myself… I won’t say ‘bored’ with it, but I certainly didn’t feel as engaged with the episode today as I have over the last few. It’s a shame, because everything I’ve loved about the story is still in evidence here, but it feels like a case of diminishing returns. Seeing the outline of the monster rising from the pit towards the end is great - it still may be one of my favourite effects in the series - but the versions of Sorenson as an outline that stalk the ship for much of the episode just don’t quite work for me. I think it’s simply because the costume of the regular monster is designed specifically to give the best version of the effect, while they have to make do with Frederick Jaeger in a werewolf costume this time around.

While I’m on the subject, it’s nice to see Jaeger back in the series - I was rather fond of his performance during The Savages, so it’s good to actually see him this time around. He’ll be back in a few season’s time again, too. In fact, Planet of Evil is a bit of a dumping ground for people who’ve appeared elsewhere in Doctor Who, including Ewen Solon - who was also in The Savages: it’s like having a reunion - Prentis Hancock, Louis Mahoney, and in his last appearance in the programme, Michael Wisher.

I’ve spent a lot of time during this story making notes about just how fantastic the direction is, so it came as no surprise that it’s David Maloney back in the hot seat again. He really has become one of the programme’s most reliable creative personnel. Paired with Roger Murray-Leach on the design side, it’s a truly winning combination. The pair will work together on two further stories (The Deadly Assassin and The Talons of Weng-Chiang) which are both considered to be proper ‘classics’, so I can’t wait to see their work some more.

Now that Season Thirteen is under way properly, with scripts wholly commissioned under Philip Hinchcliffe and Robert Holmes, and in a new recording block, it feels like Doctor Who has really hit its stride once more. The tone of the programme has been shifting ever since Pertwee left, but we now feel far more rooted in the ‘horror’ phase of the programme. I can’t imagine him starring in this story, but it feels so right for the programme. We’re starting to see the Doctor’s costume changing, too (with the addition of his orange cravat, and today marks the last appearance of his ‘Season Twelve’ jacket), so it feels like we’re a million miles away from the programme as we knew it not all that long ago.

I’m now deep into what fans seem to think of as a ‘Golden Age’, and I’m really starting to see why. I’ve never been sure that any era would come close to rivalling my love for the late 1960s, but I’m beginning to wonder if this may well be a contender. The next story is yet another one that fans praise very highly, so I’m hoping that the winning streak can continue from here…

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

Day 427: Planet of Evil, Episode Three

Dear diary,

Someone asked me today how I was finding the marathon at the moment, and I told them that I felt the show had gained back some of its momentum, and that Tom coming into the role had sparked up a renewed interest from me. I went on to say that I was mid-Planet of Evil, and that while I was loving the sets, and the performances, the story was leaving me cold. The truth is, though, that I’m not sure who I’m kidding when I say that. I finished today’s episode with a vague sense of not really caring about the plot… but I spent the 23 minutes before that completely wrapped up in the story. I always know that something is going right when I find myself thinking ‘I should really make a note about something’, but I don’t want to miss a second of what’s happening on the screen.

Today, I’ve found myself interested really by the various effects in the story. It’s like the first time I watched The Ark (oh, so long ago now!), and it was throwing in all manner of special effect shots as if they were just a matter of course. The same seems to be true here – there’s all manner of various effects being thrown around in this story, and they’re all being pulled off extremely well. When I brought up this story earlier today, someone joked that it was ‘the one with the string monster’, and while that is a fairly good description of the anti-matter guardian, it was said with a tone to suggest that it wasn’t a very good creature, when it is!

I think what impresses me the most about it is that while I have a vague idea of how they’ve created the effect, I can’t really be entirely sure. I like that! No, I love that! It’s so easy to become jaded when watching through Doctor Who at such a consistent pace and seeing the same old tricks being used over and over again. When the programme pulls something like this out of the bag it’s genuinely pleasing. I’m also very impressed by the way they have the creature rise up out of the big anti-matter pit at the close of yesterday’s episode (and covered here in the episode recap), because it really does look like it’s rising out of the set, even when it’s just camera trickery.

It’s even impressive against a simple black background, where it does risk loosing some of its uniqueness. I think it’s helped by having such an enormous scale next to the Doctor, and coming after we’ve just witnessed some really surreal scenes of the Doctor falling through the darkness. To start with, those shots reminded me of The Three Doctors, and Pertwee preparing to square off with Omega’s mind, but the more that I think about it, the more I realise they remind me of The Krotons - all those slightly unusual angles and actions, with our hero in genuine pain. It’s really quite a striking sequence.

Then you’ve got all the various bits of model work, too. The spaceship exteriors are nicely done, and the way the ‘coffin’ is ejected while the ship carries on with its journey is especially well done (we’re at a point in the history of the show now where spaceship models are simply becoming par-for-the-course). Then you’ve also got the flying CCTV camera. It’s mostly prominent in Episode Two, but it looks really good whizzing through the jungle, and it gets some lovely high-angled shots to go along with it. There’s a particularly nice one (again, from yesterday’s cliffhanger) that follows the Doctor as he makes his way through the jungle. Although I’m not sure this is one of the better quality prints we’ve had for a story, I can’t say that I saw any wires or anything supporting the device, which all helps to add to the effect.

This is one of those wonderful and somewhat rare things for me – a Doctor Who story which I know very little about suddenly turning out to be really right up my street. Thinking back, I seem to recall that Lis Sladen cites it as being one of her favourites in her autobiography, and I’m starting to see why. And yet, there’s a nagging voice in the back of my mind that I’ve seen it all before…

It started yesterday, when the Doctor explained why they wouldn’t be able to leave this planet. A slight twinge, somewhere in my memory that said ‘this feels familiar’. The moment from today’s episode, when Sorenson looks into the mirror and sees his eyes glowing with a bright light simply confirmed it – this story is very much an inspiration of the Tenth Doctor’s adventure in 42. A group of humans exploiting a celestial body (here, it’s the planet, while in 42 it’s the living sun), trying to steal parts of it to take back for their own uses. Their victim is then able to take control of them and turn them into killers.

In the more recent story, the sun is specifically said to be taking possession of the humans (and the Doctor), whereas in this story that’s left down much more to the pull of the anti-matter stopping them from getting any further away while it corrupts Sorenson. Still, I can’t judge them for taking elements of this story to use again – I’m completely loving it.

The only downside – and this is a criticism of this period of the show, rather than the story itself – is the way that Sarah Jane reacts any time the Doctor gets hurt. Here, they watch the feed from their flying CCTV camera as our hero falls into the anti-matter pit, and Sarah screams out ‘No! Not the Doctor! He can’t be dead!’ You think she’d be used to this by now. She thought he was dead twice in The Monster of Peladon, saw him die and be reborn during Planet of the Spiders, and has spent time in both The Ark in Space and Genesis of the Daleks assuming that he’s dead, too. She’s a bit too quick to jump to this conclusion every time, and watching all the episodes so quickly in succession means that I’m noticing it more and more… and it is starting to grate a bit. That’s nothing against Lis Sladen’s performance, though, because she sells it particularly well on this occasion. Mind you, it’s no wonder that when she encounters the Tenth Doctor for the first time, having not seen her friend for decades, she tells him that she thought he’d died, it seems to be a recurring trend!

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

Day 426: Planet of Evil, Episode Two

Dear diary,

I’ve been praising Tom Baker’s portrayal, and the way that he just ‘gets’ the Doctor since he first appeared in Robot, and it’s true to say that he’s been nothing short of wonderfully confident in the role through all his other stories. But here, today, in this episode, I’ve suddenly completely understood what people mean when they say that he’s the best Doctor ever.

It comes as he’s started to work out exactly what’s happening here, and while he’s under trial for his life, accused of murdering seven people. Every time he’s tried to interject - either seriously or with that typically ‘Doctor’ sense of humour - he’s been cut off, and told that he’ll have his chance… eventually. In the end, he gets sick of waiting, and uses an opportunity to answer a simple question to turn the situation in his favour.

DOCTOR
Here on Zeta Minor is the boundary between existence as you know it and the other universe which you just don't understand. From the beginning of time it has existed side by side with the known universe. Each is the antithesis of the other. You call it “nothing”, a word to cover ignorance. And centuries ago scientists invented another word for it. “Antimatter”, they called it. And you, by coming here, have crossed the boundary into that other universe to plunder it. Dangerous.

The speech is given while the camera mostly focusses in on Baker, moving slowly towards him. Moments later, when Sorenson confirms that all his mineral samples are aboard, the Doctor continues…

DOCTOR
Sorenson, you can’t take any part of this planet with you. Sorenson… if you don’t listen to me, you’ll never leave this planet!

As he says that final sentence, he’s dragged away by guards to be locked back up in a cell. Right the way through this sequence, I found myself completely captivated by Baker’s performance. It is, put simply, the best I’ve ever seen from one of the Doctors to date. He completely sells the threat of the situation to me, and he manages to make it scary. He’s got a very distinctive voice, and here it’s used to its best effect as he drops down into a solemn tone to deliver his deadly warning.

It contrasts so nicely with his attitude earlier in the episode, because I think that this is also the first time I’ve seen a hint of that whole ‘best friends’ thing between the Fourth Doctor and Sarah. She had such a great rapport with the Third Doctor, and although they share their moments (that scene in Robot, where she successfully convinces him not to just fly off in his TARDIS, for example, or the famous ventilation shaft sequence from The Ark in Space), I feel as though her relationship with this new incarnation has been overshadowed by his friendship with Harry.

But as they make their way through the jungle, even though they know they’re being followed and accused of murder, they’re nothing short of good friends. They laugh and joke about Shakespeare, and you can just as easily imagine Baker and Sladen making it up on the spot - it’s not particularly vital dialogue, and it’s not even focussed on, it’s just chatter as they make their way into the background. I’m completely caught up by his performance, and I’m genuinely thrilled by it. During his serious speech today, I actually had goosebumps; it’s not often that Doctor Who has moved me like that.

And yet it’s all the more apparent to me that I’m not really all that bothered by the story to this one. There’s some interesting concepts going on, but it’s not grabbing me in the way I’d like. I’m far more distracted by the performances, or the sets, or the direction. Sometimes, you can have too much of a good thing to focus on, so the storey itself ends up fading into the background somewhere. Still - what a complaint to have!

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

Day 425: Planet of Evil, Episode One

Dear diary,

I thought that reaching the end of the Jon Pertwee years meant that I’d gone past that phase of the programme where I simply didn’t know all that much about certain stories. With this season for example, I could have told you some of the plot to Terror of the Zygons, I know a fair amount about Pyramids of Mars, The Android Invasion, and The Brain of Morbius, and while I don’t know a huge amount about The Seeds of Doom, I know it features a trip to a snowcap, and a plant that grows to the size of a country house. I even know how they defeat that story’s alien menace.

But then, amongst all of those, we’ve got Planet of Evil. I can tell you that it’s set in a jungle, and that the Doctor takes off his scarf for a fairly long stretch of the story. That’s it. Truth be told, I’d sort of forgotten that it even existed. Certainly, I had to go back and edit an earlier entry for the Diary where I mentioned not seeing Tom Baker in the TARDIS console room until Pyramids, because I thought that story would be following on directly from Terror of the Zygons! Oh, but that’s good, because I like it when Doctor Who can surprise me, and here it’s done so with an entire four-part serial I’d all but forgotten!

As I say, I know that this story is set in a jungle. And I know that because it’s supposed to be one of the best sets that the series ever had. For years afterwards, it graced the pages (and, I think, the cover) of the BBC’s set design manuals as an example of just how to do the job right. It’s not hard to see why - the jungle set in this story is simply beautiful. This is Season Thirteen’s entirely studio-bound story, but that doesn’t really matter, because we’ve got a set here which I can’t stop looking at - even right into the distance there seems to be something to focus on.

This feels like the moment that I should trot out my frequently used ‘I wish all of Doctor Who had been shot on film’ comment, because there’s a few film sequences with this set which do look stunning. They allow you to get some water onto the floor and give the impression that we’re in a proper swamp (who needs to go out on location to film, when you can make a jungle this convincing in the studio?), but in all honesty, even the video sequences make this set look good - it simply is a brilliant design.

It doesn’t even stop with the jungle. I groaned a little when the entrance to one spaceship was a simple pair of doors, with the rest of the ship off-camera, but then once we see inside Salamar’s control room it’s huge! I always tend to praise sets which use different levels to their advantage (The Seeds of Death is still the one that sticks best in the memory), but here you’re on really different levels. It’s almost like having a big two-story room on the screen, and you don’t often get something this size in Doctor Who. I’d assume that it’s because there’s relatively few sets in the story, but I’m finding it hard to feel - that jungle feels as though it stretches on for miles, and I can’t get any idea on just how big the set really was. You can barely imagine how excited I was when a set of steps is lowered so that they can disembark the ship. It seems like such a little thing, but when you’re watching through in order, you really do notice the little things like this.

And speaking of watching through in order, I think I’m right n saying that this is the first time the Doctor has been actively drawn to an adventure by following a distress signal. It becomes pretty ubiquitous as a plot device as the programme goes on, but I can’t remember it ever really happening before now. I suppose it ties in with the TARDIS now becoming a bit more reliable.

Had the First or Second Doctors picked up a distress call, they would have had a fair amount of difficulty answering it, and the Third Doctor was only set off Earth as a Time Lord missionary for a while, before we started to see him getting better control as time went by. His best bit of piloting is Planet of the Spiders, where he arrives mere feet from his companion - though I suppose the TARDIS had someone familiar to home in on! It feels like we’re entering a period now where the Doctor has more control over where he’s going (even if the ship is still somewhat erratic), and I’m looking forward to seeing how that develops as we move forward.

I suppose it’s another sign of the times - Planet of Evil is the first Philip Hinchcliffe story to go out without any kind of input from Barry Letts. While Zygons opened the season, it was commissioned by Barry. We’re now entering a period of the programme entirely separate from the previous production team, and that’s an exciting prospect after so long…

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

Day 424: Terror of the Zygons, Episode Four

Dear diary,

Yesterday, I spent a bit of time complaining (well, not so much complaining... ‘musing’, maybe) about the fact that although the spaceship taking off and heading away from Scotland was a fairly good effect, any sense of scale was lost, and that I simply couldn’t get a handle on it. It’s almost as if the story is trying to prove a point, now, by using a few very well done forced perspective shots to show people looking tiny in comparison! I have to admit that I was completely taken by surprise the first time it happened, and even had to wind the episode back a few seconds just to check I hadn’t imagined it.

The extreme close-up means that we get a good look at the model of the Zygon ship - it really is quite a lovely design, isn’t it? There are some spaceship designs in Doctor Who - such as the Jagaroth ship from City of Death, the Sontaran pods, the modern-series Dalek saucers, or even the TARDIS itself - which are pretty well known, and I’m surprised that I’ve not encountered this Zygon one before. My only slight gripe is that it doesn’t match up as neatly with the inside of the ship, and it’s the only weak link in the cohesive ‘organic’design right across Zygon technology. A minor complaint, though, because it’s a beautiful ship all of its own!

While I’m on the subject of model work, I need to bring up the Skarasen. I’ve been swinging slightly between loving it and being less sure right the way through the story, but this episode contains perhaps its most infamous moment. Fans often bring up ‘the Skarasen in the Thames’ when making a list of those effects where the series hasn’t quite got it right, but when it appeared in shot, CSO’d in behind Tom Baker, I was actually quite impressed. I was ready to say that people were complaining over nothing!

And then we cut away to a shot of a hand-puppet Skarasen, sticking its head up above the side of the river, and everything falls to pieces. While something in the design of the creature hasn’t really worked for me all along (it’s still something to do with the face. I wonder if it’s too similar to the dinosaur from Doctor Who and the Silurians?), the model work up to now has been pulled off rather well. This effect just feels a bit cheap right at the end - it does let things down somewhat.

At one point today, when the Doctor has blown up the Zygon ship (in perhaps the serial’s best effect. You see little sections of the ship blow up first, before the whole thing finally goes. It’s very well done...), he turns to the Brigadier and asks if it was a big enough ‘bang’ for him. I was all prepared to make a point about them blowing something big up every time a new incarnation of the Doctor has a second adventure with the Brig, citing this as the example for Tom Baker, the Silurian base as the Jon Pertwee incident (setting up a long tradition throughout that era of simply blowing up the main location at the end), and for Troughton’s second adventure with the Brig, in The Invasion... ah. They don’t really blow anything big up. Darn, I thought I was on to an interesting and never-before- noticed point there. Still, as if on cue to make me feel better, we get a lovely establishing shot of the river, before the camera pans around to show us a shot of the World Energy Conference building... and it’s the former headquarters of International Electromatics! I like to imagine that the government have converted the building since the attempted Cyberman invasion.

Ah, but all of this is simply me dodging a point that I need to make... because it’s the last we’ll be seeing of the Brigadier for a long time in this marathon. It’ll be about another six months of so until I see him again, and for viewers at the time, it was around seven years until his next appearance. I was waiting for there to be some kind of fantastic final line for him, some send-off after so many years of loyal service to the programme (he’s been popping up for well over half of Doctor Who’s life by now, which makes him a pretty important and recognisable element), but it doesn’t really come. Of course, at the time, they didn’t know that this was the end for the character in the short-term - heck, UNIT will be back later this seasonwithout him - so I suppose they didn’t feel any need for him to be given a send off.

I’ve been wondering throughout this story if it’ll feel odd to not have Nick Courtney around for so long... but I don’t think it will, really. Both he and UNIT were far less integral to the Pertwee years than I’d ever realised (even by Season Nine they only really turn up to top- and-tail the seasons), and watching through Season Twelve, in which they only appear for a fifth of the stories didn’t feel particularly as though they were missing. Still, it marks yet another step in the programme’s evolution, as it finally outgrows the boys’ action adventure serial format, and continues its shift into more gothic areas.

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

Day 423: Terror of the Zygons, Episode Three

Dear diary,

This story just keeps on being dark, doesn’t it? I was going to make a point a few days ago about the sinister nurse: she’s so obviously a Zygon, and I was going to say that it was another example of Doctor Who taking a figure that’s usually respected and trusted by children, and turning them into something sinister and frightening (as with the policeman during Terror of the Autons). What I wasn’t prepared for was the sequence in todays story, where shortly after being chased through the woods in its natural form, a Zygon takes back on the shape of the nurse, and then clubs a soldier round the head with a large rock to make her escape.

You don’t see anything, really, and the actual impact is rather muted. It’s not stated whether the soldier was killed in the attack (although, in my mind, being hit round the back of the head with a rock that size wouldn’t leave you much chance), but it’s still pretty sinister. For all my moaning yesterday about the pitchfork scene being a bit too much for Saturday tea times, I must admit to rather enjoying this darker tone for the programme. It’s fantastically watchable, and once again Camfield’s direction is helping to push things that extra mile.

I’m perhaps most impressed by his work with the model spaceship at the end of the episode. It looks good enough in shots at the bottom of the lake, and I love the way the sand kicks up around the base of the vessel as it prepares to take off, but then I did that natural Doctor Who fan thing of preparing myself for the worst. I assumed that one of two things would happen: either we’d not actually see the ship emerging from the loch, or we’d see it and it would look rubbish. In actual fact, it’s... well, I’m not going to lie and say that it was great, because it wasn’t. It was a lot better than I was expecting, and i have to admit that I was really impressed by it, but the longer we spend looking at it, there more I couldn’t get any real sense of scale, so it just ended up looking like a model being pulled out of water. As it flies off, then, it still looks quite impressive, but having already lost my sense of scale, it did bring things down a bit for me.

And I’m still not all that sire about the Skarasen. We get another shotof it lifting a claw, today, which works quite well, and then as it walks away we get to see the tail swishing about from side to side - an unexpected treat and one which works incredibly well. There’s just something about the face of the creature that’s throwing me off, and I don’t know what it is.

Elsewhere, all the human characters are continuing to impress me. I love all of the stuff up at the castle, and the sinister way in which the Duke behaves. He complains that Sarah Jane is smarter than she looks when she stumbles into the secret passage behind the bookcase, but you do have to wonder why he left her alone in the room if there was even the tiniest chance that this could happen! Do the Zygons underestimate us that much?

That same tunnel also provides me with my favourite moment from today’s episode, where the Doctor excitedly heads off into the passageway to see what he can find. We linger on the darkness of the opening, as he’s warned to be careful... and then we simply hear hims scream. Perhaps the most effective part is that we then don’t get to see what’s happened to him - simply that two Zygons emerge into the room. We’re left to speculate as to what situation the Doctor is left in, and I’m wondering if we might get some doubts as to how ‘real’ he may be, when he emerges in the next episode...

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

Day 422: Terror of the Zygons, Episode Two 

Dear diary,

One of the things that the Philip Hinchcliffe years of Doctor Who are known for is the interest television campaigner Mary Whitehouse took in the programme. I’d imagine that many of my readers will be familiar with Mrs Whitehouse, but for the benefit of those who aren’t: Durung the 1960s, 70s, and 80s (and to a lesser extent, the 90s), Mary Whitehouse fronted a number of organisations who companied for better moral standards on British TV. She took a particular interest in things which she felt were unsuitable for broadcast, and at this point in the programme’s history, Doctor Who became one of her highest profile targets.

She described Genesis of the Daleks as ‘teatime brutality for tots’, and took especial dislike of the cliffhanger to The Deadly Assassin where the Doctor’s head is being held in water. In her autobiography, Elisabeth Sladen jokes that when Mary Whitehouse took an interest in your programme, you knew that you’d made the big time. Generally, Who fans mock her criticisms of the programme these days, but the BBC at the time did take note, and her complaints were part of the reason that Graham Williams was brought in to produce the series from Season 15, being asked specifically to tone down the violence.

And, it has to be said when watching episodes like this one, she did have a point! There’s a sequence in today’s instalment where the Zygon-Harry hides in a barn while being pursued by Sarah Jane. Once she’s close enough to spot him, he gently picks up a pitchfork... and then starts launching it at her, trying to impale her! The subject matter itself is already quite dark for a programme going out in this time slot, but Camfield’s directing really takes it up to the next level. During the attack, every shot of Harry is taken from Sarah’s point of view, so we watch as Ian Marter gives perhaps hisbest ever performance, sneering towards us while forcing the weapon forward.

Even the shots leading up to this one, where Harry peers out from between bails of hay, are laced with a kind of sinister feeling that I’m just not used to from Doctor Who. I’ve been commenting since The Ark in Space that the programme is taking on a darker, more frightening tone, but this is perhaps the best example that we’ve seen of that. Don’t get me wrong - it’s very well directed and acted, and it wouldn’t be out of place in an adult drama or a horror film, but it does feel very wrong to place in a programme going out early on a Saturday evening. As my friend Nick put it; you wouldn’t get away with that sequence on television today!

Something that I do approve of, though, is the design of the Zygons and their ship. In yesterday’s episode, we were treated to several close ups of their eyes and their hands, but today we get to see them in full as they move around their spaceship. I spent so much time during The Ark in Space talking about how well everything worked together on the design side, but I think that the work they’ve put into all the Zygon elements trumps even that. They look right in this setting, and even in those tight close-up shots, the costumes work very well.

Purely by chance, a few weeks ago I watched the episode of Doctor Who Confidential where David Tennant takes control and interviews people about their relationship with the series. At one point, his question is turned back on him and he’s asked which is his favourite Doctor Who monster:

”The one that I loved - and they've never been seen since - is the Zygons. The organic sliminess of them. It just didn't look like a person. This incredible design with a face that's all little and scrunched up, and this huge domed head, and these suckers... It's just a brilliant design.”

It’s hard not to simply repeat that over and over while I talk about the creatures, because he’s right - it is a brilliant design. I’m really pleased that he’s actually been able to work with them now, too, during The Day of the Doctor, because after he’d said this (the episode of Confidential was from Series Three), it seemed a shame that he’d never had the chance. My first experience of the Zygons came with a Tenth Doctor novel (The Sting of the Zygons), and I always thought that would be the closest he ever got to them!

One thing I’m less sure about, sadly, is the Zygons’ pet Skarasen. It’s always been considered the weak link in this story, and I’m not sure yet what to make of it. When it first appeared, swimming past their space ship, I was willing to say that it didn’t look too bad, but then as the story goes on and we get gradually more and more shots of the creature close up... something just doesn’t work about it. I’m not even entirely sure what I’m not liking, but there’s something in there.

We get a few lovely moments (at one stage, we see a shot of the creature move its foot forward, and it’s quite unexpected!), but then sometimes... oh, I don’t know. I’m hoping that as the story goes on, appearances of the creature will be kept to a minimum, with only the very best shots being used. With everything else doing so well, it would be a real shame for this to drag it down.

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

Day 421: Terror of the Zygons, Episode One 

Dear diary,

It’s somewhat fitting that for this, the last of the UNIT stories, we should have Douglas Camfield back in the director’s chair. Camfield was the man responsible for The Web of Fear and The Invasion, so it feels only right that he should be here again at the end of it all*. To tell the truth, I had no idea he was the director of this one. I knew he came back for The Seeds of Death at the end of the year, but not that he’d been part of the series again here, too. It’s so plain to see as you’re watching through, though. Emma was about while I was watching, and I think she was getting somewhat sick of me constantly stating that it simply ‘has to be Camfield’, because no other Doctor Who director of the classic era ever produced anything this polished!

It’s helped by the fact that we’re in such a stunning landscape. There’s several beautiful shots in this episode, where you can really see for miles and miles across land or sea, and it really does open up the story. Genesis of the Daleks gave us some stunning shots of the Doctor and his companions as tiny specs against a larger landscape, but they’re set in quarries and in barren landscape. We’ve never before seen the series take us to such a wide open location, and coming so soon after stories like The Ark in Space and Revenge of the Cybermen, it’s great to see so much space

Oh! And do you know, as I’m typing that I’ve suddenly realised there’s a little voice in the back of my head that’s piping up to remind me that The Sontaran Experiment took us right to the middle of Dartmoor, and I only watched it a few weeks ago! I’ve somehow decided to completely forget about the vistas on display in that story, and I think it might be because this one is proving my point - shooting locations like this on film rather than video really does make a difference. I’ve watched today’s episode at Emma’s on a Blu- Ray player, so I don’t know if it’s the work of upscaling, but the film sequences have never looked better.

I decided to treat myself during this one, so stuck on the ‘director’scut’ of the episode. It only adds in a couple of extra minutes at the start, where the Doctor, Sarah, and Harry arrive in Scotland, but they’re really rather lovely. They’ve also been restored so beautifully. We’ve got more colourisation from Stuart Humphryes to help tie everything together, and the work on the film elements is nothing short of stunning. Disc Two of this release contains the un-restored footage as an easter egg and it shows just how much love and attention has gone into it. It’s not such a big deal to me - this story, plus Revenge of the Cybermen and the upcoming The Android Invasion are all ‘new’ Doctor/Sarah/Harry adventures to me, but there’s something a little bit magical about finding a few extra minutes of this team together after so long.

They’ve never been finer than they are here. There’s a certain comedic element to the Doctor stepping back out of the police box dressed in his Socttish gear, but the real charm is that we get to see his companions tailing him dressed in his regular outfit. Harry rather suits having the scarf draped around his neck, and there’s something about the hat being that bit too big for Sarah Jane which is rather wonderful. These really are three best friends enjoying their time together, and I love that the Doctor gets angry at the Brigadier for calling him back to Earth and interrupting their fun.

That said... they must be shattered! I made a similar observation about Ian and Barbara right back at the start of the programme, but the return to a serial format for Season Twelve and into this story means that the TARDIS crew haven’t had a break since fighting the SRS and that giant robot! From there to the Ark. From the Ark to post-solar-flares Earth. From there to Skaro. From there back to the Ark, and immediately into a tussle with the Cybermen. From there back to Earth of sort out the mystery of the vanishing oil rigs... it’s no wonder Harry leaves at the end of this adventure - he must be dying for a lie down!

I know I spent an awful lot of time during Revenge of the Cybermen complaining about the way that their return to the programme was handled, but it does bear drawing attention to agains here. We don’t know what the Zygons are yet (or, at least, we wouldn’t have on initial broadcast), but since their name is in the title, it’s a given that we’ll be seeing one appear for the cliffhanger. Just as in Revenge, we cut to the creatures in their own base about half way through the episode... but this time it’s all being directed much better.

I don’t know if it’s down to Camfield’s influence, or if the script specifies it, but these moments are all shot in tight close ups. Images of the hands on the organic controls. Close up shots of the eyes staring at their screens. There’s one long scene in which two of the creatures communicate with each other, and we’re basically expected to watch the close ups of them working their machines for a few minutes, but even this is given a brilliant kind of life by being so nicely directed. We take slow fades from one shot to the next,back and forth while those whispery, raspy voices sound out. If you want to build up excitement about the reveal of your alien menace, this is a perfect masterclass in how to do it.

 *Yeah, yeah, some of the UNIT guys will be back later this season in The Android Invasion, but this is the last of the real UNIT stories, for pretty much the rest of the classic series. There’s an attempt to create a ‘modern’ version of them at the end of the 1980s (in Battlefield), but this story marks the end of the format we’ve been so used to for the last half of the programme’s life.

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

Day 420: Revenge of the Cybermen, Episode Four 

Dear diary,

Although not much of the story is catching my interest, something did strike me today (though more from my mind wandering off while the episode played out than because I was inspired by it). I suddenly realised how few female characters there are throughout Season Twelve. Obviously, there’s Sarah Jane on her travels, then you’ve got Miss Winters in Robot, plotting to take over the world, Vira on the Ark, assuming command and preparing to lead her people back to the Earth, Bettan leading the fight against Davros and the Daleks... and that’s pretty much it! All the other speaking characters in the series have been male.

It’s not particularly unusual for the series (I’m sure we must have had an incident or two of it before now... Dot Cotton is the only female in The Time Warrior’s guest cast, Jill Tarrant is alone during Death to the Daleks, and Ruth seems to be the only woman left in London following the dinosaur evacuation during Invasion of the Dinosaurs, for instance), but I can’t say I’ve ever really noticed it before now. I think it’s only cropped up today because I was just going through the motions trying to watch the episode.

I’m sorry to say that - right to the end - Revenge of the Cybermen just hasn’t really grabbed me. Today, I even went as far as turning on the commentary half way through, because I thought I may find it more interesting than the story itself.

It’s a real shame, because there’s actually a few things in here today that I should rather like. There’s the Doctor’s famous line ‘Harry Sullivan is an imbecile’, another one of those things you just know about when you’re a Doctor Who fan, but it’s given more context seen like this, and after a season of the pair bonding and playing off each other so well it comes as a real highlight. There’s some lovely shots of the Cybermen aboard Nerva, illuminated in a blue light (on the commentary, even Elisabeth Sladen picks up on how good this looks). The Doctor fills a Cybermat with gold dust and uses it to attack a Cyberman, in a clever way that parallels the plague being delivered right back at the start of the story...

But for everything that crops up that I do quite like, there’s something else that irritates me. The way the Cyberleader looses all sense of power when he stands over Sarah with his hands on his hips. The Sky-Striker rising from the planet of Voga... where they’ve decided to spend some time (and some of their budget, though I guess that’s not so much an issue for a planet of gold) on printing ‘United States’ on the side (yeah, yeah, I know it’s stock footage). The way that Nerva skimming the surface of the planet looks quite good in a way, with a lovely detailed planet surface... but the roll that they’ve created it on is a bit too small in diameter, so it looses any sense of scale that it really should have...

In the end, it’s all just lost on me. Still, it’s only fair that I find something positive to say... um... well, no, ok. I do quite like the soundtrack. I can’t say that I really noticed it much during the story itself, but the menu clips on both the main menu and the special features one start with some lovely musical cues from the story, and they’ve been looping in the background for a while now, rather pleasantly. Yes, I’m really reaching.

Still, the story is over now. It may go onto the pile of tales to revisit in the future and see if my mood has changed towards it. Stories like Fury From the Deep are on my list to revisit one day, but for now, I simply have no desire to see this one again. I’m sure it has its fans, but I’m sorry to say I’m just not one of them.

Season Twelve on the whole has been a bit up-and-down for me. Generally, I’ve really enjoyed it, but it’s very much characterised by some great highs (The Ark in Space and Genesis of the Daleks) and a few lows (The Sontaran Experiment and this story). Still, I’m completely sold by Tom Baker as the Doctor, and we’ve got a great team as we move forward into the new season. It’s such a shame that they’re only really together for one more story...

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

Day 419: Revenge of the Cybermen, Episode Three

Dear diary,

Break out the party hats, and bring me a cake. As of today, I am officially half-way through The 50 Year Diary. Sort of. Maybe. Not quite.

Perhaps it would be better to say that I am officially half-way through televised Doctor Who for the purposes of this marathon? The 50 Year Diary will cover every episode from An Unearthly Child to The Time of the Doctor, which is 800 episodes in total. Revenge of the Cybermen falls perfectly in the middle of those two, coming in as the programme’s 400th episode.

I can’t decide whether it feels like way more than 400 episodes to reach this point, or if it feels like we shouldn’t even be anywhere near 400, but it’s exciting to think that I’m somewhere around the middle of the project. I’m not exactly sure, because (as you’ve no doubt noticed), the 400th episode doesn’t necessarily fall on the 400th day. I’ve taken a few side-steps to reach this point, you see. There was the experiment with Farewell, Great Macedon between Seasons One and Two, and the day out to hear Daleks: The Destroyers between Seasons Three and Four. Then those two Patrick Troughton stories arrived back in the archives from deepest Africa, and they had to be slotted in as well.

All those things pushed the number of Diary entries up. And there’s more to come! In the next half of the marathon, I plan to take time out to listen to one of the Fourth Doctor ‘Lost Stories’ (I know people weren’t overly keen on me doing so with Hartnell, but I’ve heard nothing but praise for The Foe from the Future so I’m adding it in), then we’ve got Dimensions in Time, Scream of the Shalka, the Doctor’s appearances in The Sarah Jane Adventures... At this stage, I honestly don’t know how many entries the Diary will run to. I’ve always known that it would be around the 800 mark, just based on the number of episodes, so it’s quite an achievement to be somewhere around the middle. I know I say it a lot, but I really am very surprised (and delighted!) to have made it this far. It’s just a shame that the story this landmark falls in isn’t one of my favourites...

Still, I’ve realised today what my problem is with this story. It’s got Dominators Syndrome, a condition in which – no matter what happens in the story – I simply cannot enjoy anything on the screen. These situations do crop up from time to time. The Dominators has been my most recent example for a while (although The Curse of Peladon was developing symptoms for a while), but the same has also been true of stories like The Highlanders. It means that in my mind, I’ve just completely switched off from the story, and it’s unlikely to pull me back in.

It’s a shame, because it means that I’m not even giving the episodes the attention they deserve. They’re playing out on the screen, I’mwatching them, but I’m just not taking them in. I’m not even really making any notes, just jotting down the occasional bit of dialogue that I find amusing or emotive, because I’m not engaging with the story enough to really care.

Another problem that this causes is that I find myself just being incredibly negative about everything. Yesterday, I spoke of how much I like the way that these Cyberman costumes are such a neat halfway between The Invasion and Earthshock, but today even that’s grown stale for me, and I’m focussing far more on the fact that I don’t like their voices in this one. Sometimes, during the 1960s, they could be quite hard to understand... but at least they sounded alien! These Cybermen sound like guys with buckets on their heads. Oh... wait...

Even the design of Nerva is irritating me this time around. I spent ages during The Ark in Space praising the way that the design of the beacon really held together and worked, but I’m just not liking it here. They’ve added a number of panels to the set – grey with little inset circles – to give the impression that we’ve visiting Nerva at an earlier point in its history. In theory, I quite like this idea. I love buildings being taken over and getting a new purpose, but so that you can still see bits of the history shining through into the new design. Sadly, I’m finding that the design modifications to the Nerva set make it look worse than the version we saw earlier in the season!

I’m guessing that the final episode will have a real fight to try and get me interested in the story again. It’s a shame, after so long without a story like this which really just doesn’t grab me in any way, that this season should limp out rather feebly as opposed to going out with a real bang.

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

Day 418: Revenge of the Cybermen, Episode Two

Dear diary,

For all my complaining about the way that the Cybermen are being treated in this story (and I’m still not keen. The Doctor muses that the Cybermen must be planning an attack on the planet of gold because they’re so allergic to it: it’s treated as a fact we should all know, but it’s news to anyone watching through in order like this!), it does have to be said that their appearance in the cliff hanger is very well done. They emerge from their own ship, board Nerva, and are instantly greeted with a hail of bullets from our human crew. They don’t even leave a scratch. In return, the Cyberleader fires three shots from the gun built into his head – and hits all three targets. It’s cold, and it’s by far the best moment we’ve had in this story so far.

It’s just a shame that this couldn’t have been their first appearance in the story! In my head, I’d prefer an Episode One where there’s a mysterious space ship just in range of Nerva’s scans, but it’s failing to answer any of their communications. The ship just sits there silently, while Nerva’s crew all fall victim to a horrible plague. As the Doctor investigates, he realises that they’re in orbit not far from Voga, the planet of gold. But how are the two connected? Could it be? As the episode rolls on, the ship finally starts to make its approach, docking with the beacon. The airlock opens... and then the cliff hanger plays out exactly as we’ve seen here. The Doctor makes his deduction that it must be Cybermen at the same moment they emerge from their ship, but it’s too late.

I think that’s what’s missing from this story for me – any real sense of tension. We know the Cybermen are involved from the title, but the story is treating it so matter-of-factly that there’s been very littleexcitement in there for me. I want the Cybermen to emerge triumphantly, not for us to occasionally cut back to them stood in their control room with their hands on their hips. Still, I am glad to have them back in the programme, and hopefully now that they’ve arrived properly and taken out the crew (I’m assuming they’ve simply stunned them all, or clipped them?) we can get down to some proper Cyberman action.

I rather like the design of the creatures seen in this story – they feel very much like a half-way house between the models from The Invasion and the ones that we’ll go on to have for Earthshock. The guns in the head is a fairly neat idea, and it does make sense for them to have some kind of built-in weaponry like this. We’ve also got the first appearance of the ‘black handlebar’ design to denote the Cyberman in charge, and that’s something I really like. It’s toned down by the time the Cybermen next pop up in the series, but I was really pleased to see it brought back again for The Next Doctor a few years ago.

Less effective for me is the Vogan prosthetics. I’ve never been a big fan of the design – it’s the ultimate example of ‘man in ill-fitting- rubber-mask’ for me, and I’m finding it quite hard to take them seriously. It’s a story of political power struggles, with factions developing different goals... but whereas a similar story about the established power being overthrown was presented as gripping and, in some ways, adult during Genesis of the Daleks, here the whole thing is failing to engage with me because I can’t stop looking at those masks!

There’s something else that’s drawing my eye, too, and it’s the Seal of Rassilon! Now, I know about many of the fan ‘workarounds’ for little continuity blips like this, but I don’t know of any which explain why the Vogans have adopted the Time Lord’s ceremonial symbol for their own design. It’s not even only slightly part of their culture – it’s on their walls, their tables, their robes... it’s a big part of this society. Now, obviously, I know that in reality, they’ll come to make The Deadly Assassin a couple of years from now and decide that they like this symbol and could re-use it, but when you look back on the series, knowing just how much this will become a part of Time Lord design does make it a bit jarring!