When Tim Treloar and Katy Manning return as the Third Doctor and Jo Grant in The Third Doctor Adventures: Volume Five, they’ll be joining forces with three other iconic characters from 1970s Doctor Who.

In this new audio box set from Big Finish Productions made in association with BBC Studios, several friends of the Third Doctor will be returning for more Doctor Who adventures in this iconic science-fiction franchise.

Jon Culshaw takes on the role of UNIT commanding officer Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, a character appearing under licence from the Haisman Literary Estate.

After an extensive casting process, senior producer David Richardson and executive producer Nick Briggs finally remembered a conversation they’d had with Jon, when he told them the thing he’d most like to do for Big Finish would be to play the Brigadier.

Nicholas Briggs said:

"After checking his rendition of the character in the BBC Audiobook of The Five Doctors, we just gave him the job! It was a very tricky thing casting someone to do justice to Nicholas Courtney’s brilliant, original performance. Jon has done this with honour and love for what the splendid Mr Courtney did all those years ago."

Returning alongside the Brigadier is Liz Shaw, the first companion of the Third Doctor. She will be portrayed by Daisy Ashford, the daughter of the original Liz Shaw actress, Caroline John (who played the role on TV and returned to the role for several Companion Chronicles at Big Finish).

Plus, returning to play Sergeant Benton is John Levene. John first played the part of Benton (who was then a corporal) in the Second Doctor TV adventure The Invasion. He returned to become a regular with Third Doctor Jon Pertwee (also appearing with later with Tom Baker), and has previously reprised Benton twice for Big Finish.

Tim Treloar, who has portrayed the Third Doctor on audio since 2015, has been at the forefront of a new era of 70s audio Who treats.

David Richardson, Producer of The Third Doctor Adventures, said:

“It’s been so rewarding to see how Doctor Who fans have embraced these new Third Doctor stories. We knew Tim’s performance (and it is a performance, not a mere impersonation) as the Third Doctor was extraordinary – and it’s clear that listeners feel the same way too."
 

The two adventures in The Third Doctor Adventures: Volume Five will require the Third Doctor, all his companions AND the full might of UNIT to save planet Earth.

Primord by John Dorney 

The Scream of Ghosts by Guy Adams

The Primords (from the Doctor Who TV story Inferno) interrupt the Doctor and Liz Shaw’s reunion, and become one of the fiercest tests of UNIT and the Doctor to date. And in the second, 'ghostly' adventure, the population of a village are apparently being spirited away in the oddest of manners.

Katy Manning (who plays Jo Grant) told us during recording what it was like to bring back these beloved characters:

“It was a joy working with Jon Culshaw, and working with Tim has been so much fun, watching him become the Doctor more and more. But Jon came in and in an instant (and I won’t tell him how!) caught the Brigadier immediately!”

Daisy Ashford says of coming to the Big Finish fold to play Liz Shaw:

“I’m really excited and honoured to have been asked to play Liz, and to step into my Mum’s brilliant shoes!”

Doctor Who: The Third Doctor Adventures Volume Five will be released in May 2019.

Pricing:
Pre-order: £25 (CD box set) / £20 (Download) from www.bigfinish.com

Big Finish online: 

Website: www.bigfinsih.com
Twitter: @BigFinish
Facebook: Facebook.com/TheBigFinish
Instagram: @BigFinishProd

[Source: Big Finish]

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

Day 301: Colony in Space, Episode Two

Dear diary,

Styles always cycle back around again. During my last year at university, the look I'd been spotting for three years suddenly found itself thrust in the spotlight as being 'on trend'. Right the way through the summer of 2010, I was suddenly very cool, because I was wearing all the right things. Of course, these were the same 'right things' which - 12 months earlier - other people wouldn't have been caught dead wearing. After a while I decided to have a bit of fun with it, and I'd turn up to lectures in increasingly bizarre combinations, to see how far I could push the envelope. Surprisingly far, as it transpired. And then, as ever, the styles move on and something else becomes cool again. I've still got all those once trendy clothes (I call them 'idiot hipster', now) because at some point, they'll be fashionable again, and I will be cool.

It's the way they things have always gone. The 1980s seem to have been 'making a comeback' for several years now, with styles, music, and movies from that decade being given a reappraisal and brought back into being cool. Even Sylvester McCoy's Doctor has seen a huge upswing in popularity in the time since I started wanting into fandom, and it's nice to see him being given the attention he deserves.

In the year 2472, it would seem that the 1970s are making a come back into fashion, because everyone seems to be embracing the hairstyles - and the facial hair - of the period. I mean really, if you were to show this episode to someone and ask them to guess when it was made, I think it's fair to say they'd be aiming their guess around the 1970s. At one point, there's even a joke about 'Jim'll Fix It' - which makes Jo laugh! Perhaps oddly, Colony in Space was made a few years before Jim'll Fix It first his screens, but in hindsight it seems as though the production team is making a knowing nod to the programme.

All of this is only highlighted by the fact that they've all got fairly typical 'futuristic' costumes on. It's been so long since I saw anything other than 'contemporary' clothes, but it seems bizarre that this story - the one not set in (or around) the 70s is the one that looks most like them! I don't know if it's simply because we're in colour now, but this story has the look that I tend to think of for Doctor Who in this period. The style of the sets and the costumes feels very much in keeping with hazy memories of a few Tom Baker stories, and it's nice to see the programme moving into this style. We've got another alien planet quarry, but I think it works quite well - it's not become a joke just yet.

I'm most impressed by the design of the Interplanetary Mining Corporation's ship, though. It's a bit odd in places, and some of the colours are a little bold, but it looks good. The contrast between this and the colony really does hit you, and I think that makes it work all the better. I'm hoping we'll get a chance for the Doctor to explore it a bit more later in the story, as it would be a shame to loose such an interesting design so quickly.

I've realised today that there's another thing I knew about this story, without even knowing it. There's an image of the Doctor being menaced by the claws of the robot here, which I've seen plenty of times before. The image clearly shows the animal-like claws and the metal poles as the arms, but you can't see the body of the 'creature'. I'd always assumed that you never saw the metal poles on screen and it was just an unfortunate choice of framing the image, so imagine my surprise at discovering that it's meant to look like that!

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

Day 300: Colony in Space, Episode One

Dear diary,

It feels strange to be writing this one, because I’ve not actually watchedtoday’s episode yet. I wanted to capture this feeling, though, becauseColony in Space is one of those stories about which I know pretty muchnothing. I wanted to make a list of the things that I think I know about it, and see how close to the mark I get (or look like a complete idiot a few says from now if I turn out to be wrong on all counts…).

There’s only a few of these stories left in the marathon for me, because once we start hitting the late 1970s (and especially the 1980s and beyond), I know plenty about ever story, even if I’ve never seen them myself. I think that this and The Mutants represent the last two ‘black holes’ in my Doctor Who knowledge.

So, what do I think I know about this story? Well, I ‘know’ it’s the first time that this incarnation of the Doctor makes it to a planet other than Earth, and of course the Master is there (of course he is, that’s the only thing that I’m completely sure about). I think that it’s the first story of the 1970s to not feature Nicholas Courtney, and I *think*UNIT is absent, too. There’s a little voice somewhere in the back of my head that says this is the first time we actively see the Doctor sent on a mission by the Time Lords, but I don’t know how accurate that might be.

And that’s it! The sum total of my (potential) knowledge on Colony in Space. I could be entirely on the money, or I could be way off. That’s all part of the fun though – usually when I reach a story I know little-to-nothing about, I go though this ritual in my head where I almost test myself to see how close I can get, and I thought it might be fun to do this one in public so that you can all revere me. Or laugh at me. We’ll see how it goes.

Anyway, the DVD is loaded into the drive, my notepad is at the ready, and here we go…

Well… I was a bit right. Also a bit wrong. As things go, that’s not too bad. This is the Third Doctor’s first trip to a planet besides Earth, and the Time Lords have sent him (he doesn’t know that for certain yet, but he suspects it). I was expecting more of a meeting between the Doctor and his people, akin to the bowler-hatted messenger in Terror of the Autons, or the opening to Genesis of the Daleks, but this works. The opening scene here - where the Time Lords stand around in a dark room and discuss the using the Doctor to do their dirty work – feels like a great season opener, in which they recap the basic terms of the Doctor’s exile.

I was surprised to have the Brig turning up, but it makes perfect sense that he does. I thought the story simply opened with the TARDIS arriving on some alien world (or being taken there by the Time Lords), but having now actually seen it properly, of course you need the Brigadier to show his face. Way back during The Daleks’ Master Plan, I described my criteria for determining a companion to be that you’d have to explain their absence from a story. While I’d argue that the Brigadier isn’t a companion (as the Pertwee era goes on, there’s less of a need to explain the absence away), at this point in the narrative, wedo need to see him left behind.

It feels like this is the Third Doctor’s subtle arc – tinkering away with the TARDIS. We’ve seen him move from failed escape attempts inSpearhead From Space through to completing a new circuit and leaving the Earth behind today (with a bit of a hand from the Time Lords), and we need to see him making the departure for there to be any impact. I’m assuming now that we might get the Brig showing up again at the end of Episode Six, just to serve as a means of integrating the Doctor back into the ‘regular’ set up.

Opening on Earth means that we get to see Jo’s first reaction to the TARDIS, too. I’d sort of assumed that she already knew about it all (having decided that she’s been the Doctor’s assistant for something like a year now), and since the climax to the previous story hinges largely on the idea that the Doctor has used his Time Machine to save the day, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to her that everything he’s said is true.

But then, Jo was left completely perplexed by the Doctor’s explanation of a time loop yesterday (she wasn’t alone – the whole room was baffled!), and I wonder if he’s juts been loathe to let anyone else into the ship while he’s working on it? It’s a great scene, and we get the first ‘it’s bigger on the inside’ reaction that we’ve seen in some time. I love that she’s not jumping into it with both feet, but is more timid. Jo ended up rather thrust into the Doctor’s world when she joined UNIT, and now she’s even further out of her depth.

What was odd is that they seem to have forgotten how to do the TARDIS take off. Both when it departs from UNIT and when it arrives on Uxarieus, it simply cuts out of (or in to) shot. I’d say that it’s a case of them simply forgetting how it used to be (they’ve not had cause for a TARDIS take off in two years), but they got it right in the last story! It just looks a bit odd, which is a shame. I’m pleased to see the return of the view outside the TARDIS doors, though, with the planet right on their doorstep. The blow-up photo wall has been moved from the ‘lobby’ to the back of the console room to make its final appearance in the programme, having been around since the very first episode.

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

Day 299: The Claws of Axos, Episode Four

Dear diary,

Those of you who have been following The 50 Year Diary for a while now will no doubt have noticed how often I state my surprise at actually liking the Third Doctor. I've made no secret in the past of the fact that he's always been my least favourite incarnation, and I think it's fair to say that these five seasons were the point of the marathon that I was seriously worried about.

And yet, I'm repeatedly given cause to really like this incarnation! All the things I've thought of as bad traits are still there (I don't know if he's more dismissive to Jo than the previous Doctors were to their companions, or it's just the way that Pertwee does it, but he does seem to like sidelining other people), but there's so many layers to the character that I'm finding myself drawn to.

In today's episode, when he suddenly appears to turn rogue and form an alliance with the Master, there was a moment that I really believed it. He's tried to take off in the middle of an adventure before, leaving UNIT in the lurch, so when he suggests to the Master than he's rather leave Earth to its fate and get off the planet with him, I was genuinely interested in seeing this side of the character come back. He goes on to a lovely speech about not wishing to spent the rest of his life 'as a heap of dust on a second rate planet to a third rate star,' and it really does feel like he'd take off in a heartbeat.

It didn't take long for me to twig that he was really just using the Master, and it's simply because he's started to turn the Master's own arguments against him. 'We're both Time Lords,' he reminds him - the exact same plea that the Master used in The Mind of Evil when he needed help. If this were the modern series, with a show runner's guiding hand steering events, you could almost believe that this was seeded in, but I think it's more just luck than anything. It's the perfect example of the marathon working its magic again, because this moment carries so much more weight having seen everything from the start of the Doctor's exile to here.

When he's actually making his goodbyes and heading into the TARDIS - really playing up the moment to convince the Master that he's being quite serious - it's Pertwee at his finest. For an actor so famed at the time for his comedic roles, he really does excel when given scenes of anger or contempt. I especially love the way that he ends by saying goodbye to Jo, adding 'I shall miss you!'

It's good to finally see this version of the Doctor inside the TARDIS, here, although it has the unfortunate effect of making the already cramped set look even smaller when there's two people in there! Oddly, beyond the interior doors is the printed roundel backdrop that had become so familiar throughout the 1960s, giving the odd effect that the Doctor has added a hallway (it's especially jarring when the Master enters the police box and immediately arrives through these doors - it would look seamless if they'd had a shot of the power complex beyond the doors. With all the CSO work being slipped into the series these days, I'm surprised they didn't use it here!)

As the first story of the 1970s to really feature the TARDIS, it's fitting that it plays such a vital role in the resolution of the tale. I vaguely knew that Axos ended up trapped in a time loop, so it was fun watching the plan come together, and seeing the Doctor slowly manipulate people - the Master, mainly - into position for the plan to work. Axos has escaped the time loop a few times in alternate media, though the only one I've experienced was the DWM comic strip from a few years ago, featuring the Eleventh Doctor and Amy. It's certainly one of my favourite strips from recent years.

It's telling that the strip didn't feel the need to radically redesign the Axons, either. They use the near-infinite budget of the medium to make the creature more impressive (at one point, a large Japanese skyscraper becomes a giant axon), but it's still very much the same design. There are moments of today's episode where they really do look fantastic - usually when being shot in close up attacking the UNIT jeep. Unfortunately, when we cut to a wider shot they don't look quite as menacing. At one point, one of them has mounted the bonnet, and his legs wave up and down as the car drives on. Not their finest moment…

On the whole, I've been really impressed by The Claws of Axos. Having only ever had it on as background noise in the past, I'd assumed that there wasn't enough here to keep me interested, but I've been pleasantly surprised, and it's given me the boost of enthusiasm that I needed to pick up the middle of the season…

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

Day 298: The Claws of Axos, Episode Three

Dear diary,

It feels like the reappearance of the TARDIS console room should be a bigger deal than it is. We’ve not seen it since the end of The War Games, which was well over a month ago for me, and on original broadcast it would have been mere weeks away from two whole years. When it turns up again, it should make a massive impact, a feeling of homecoming. As it is, I’m left just sort of thinking ‘oh. There’s the TARDIS…’

It’s a hangover from being so familiar with the programme as a whole. I’m so used to seeing different versions of this same console room throughout the original twenty-six years that it doesn’t feel odd to be back here again. We’ve got a new TARDIS console on show, too, which makes the decision to keep it in a shade of pale green even more baffling. I can understand them not painting the prop for its few appearances in Season Seven (why bother? It’s a needless expense), but when you’re building one from scratch…

I’m pleased to see that they’ve dressed it up a bit to suggest that the Doctor really is working in there – it would have looked terribly off if it were simply the same as we’d always seen it. The one downside is just how cramped it all looks. When we got the first view inside the ship in An Unearthly Child, the sheer size of it really worked in its favour. It felt impressive to see this huge futuristic space tucked inside this battered old police box. Here, we've got the doors, a single wall (boasting an unusual CSO scanner screen in one of the roundels), and the console.

I also have to wonder… how would this have felt on first transmission? As I've said, the audience won't have seen inside the TARDIS for two years by this point, and yet it's simply treated as being 'matter of fact' that this is what's inside the ship, as if we're supposed to know it. There would have been children watching The Claws of Axos who couldn't remember back as far as the funny little Second Doctor, so this must have been a bit of an anti-climax.

For all I've grumbled over the last few days about having the Master turning up so frequently this year (there's only been a single episode in which he doesn't make an appearance), I'm really enjoying him today. With the Doctor trapped aboard Axos, the Master is filling his role admirably, and it helps to further highlight all the similarities between the two characters.

I don't think that much of his dialogue while helping UNIT would be out of place coming from the mouth of the Third Doctor (indeed, while I knew of the line 'You could take the usual precautions…sticky tape on the windows, that sort of thing', I'd always thought it was a line spoken by the Doctor), and his entire attitude towards events isn't all that far removed from our hero, either. The way he ponders over the TARDIS console working out if he can get it going again isn't a million miles away from what the Doctor was doing back in Doctor Who and the Silurians, or Inferno.

That's not to say that the Doctor doesn't get to shine a bit today. I'm really enjoying all the effects that we're being given in the Axos ship - although I've got a sneaking suspicion that I shouldn't like them. It still feels a bit like Michael Ferguson is melting a box of crayons over the camera lens, but it really works. Most impressive is the way that the Doctor and Jo communicate with one of the golden Axons - and the shot alters slightly on the screen as the head spins from side to side. I believe the effect was a achieved by fading between a few different shots of Bernard Holley* as the Axon, and it's an interesting new take on 'video conferencing', which has become a bit commonplace in the series (even Chinn is at it today…)

The spaghetti Axons get a chance to stand out a bit, too. Seeing the creature roam around the power complex is perhaps the first time since Spearhead From Space that I've really understood Jon Pertwee's oft-repeated comments about 'Yeti on the loo', but it looks so brilliant to see this odd creature against such an industrial backdrop. It's helped by the way it attacks (tendrils shooting out and blowing up their prey), and even though I can see exactly how they've achieved the effect, my mind sort of overlooks it and makes it work just right. An eight year old would love that moment. Heck, somewhere in my mind, eight year old me is loving it!

*Another name to add to my 'The cast from The Tomb of the Cybermen turning up in the Pertwee era' list. If we don't get one in Season Nine it won't matter too much - Season Eight has been a buy-one-get-one-free…

 a

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

Day 297: The Claws of Axos, Episode Two

Dear diary,

We're very much in a period of change for Doctor Who in the last season of the 1960s, and the first few of the 1970s. We've seen departures from several key production personnel from the programme - David Whitaker made his last contribution with Season Seven, while Timothy Coombe bowed out under the last story - and watched the arrival of several other key movers and shakers to the programme's history - Barry Lett's joined with The Enemy of the World, while both Terrance Dicks and Robert Holmes made their debuts with Season Six.

The Claws of Axos is a story that acts as a change in both directions. We get the first story to be written by 'The Bristol Boys', Bob Baker and Dave Martin, who'll be turning up a few times throughout this decade, and provide some pretty important stories to the show. At the same time, this tale is the last to be directed by Michael Ferguson, who'd been with us as a director on several occasions over the last few years.

It's lovely, watching through the series in order, how much you notice each individual styles. You can tell when they've got Camfield in the director's chair because everything is so well polished and done. David Maloney has a trademark style, too, that works very well with whimsical shots. Ferguson has several of his own little signatures, and several of them turn up in these episodes.

You've got the shot of a high-tech institution made to look huge with clever use of CSO (he did the same in The Ambassadors of Death), The return of the foam machine (the last time it makes an appearance in the programme, I believe), and even the return of some ma-hoo-sive sideburns on Bill Filer (both those last two, or three if you're giving that facial hair room to breathe, were in The Seeds of Death).

Something we do get today would perhaps be more at home coming from David Maloney, though. The shots of Bill Filer being replicated by Axos are some of the most bizarre, triply things that we've seen in Doctor Who. They're certainly reminiscent of the Kroton's ship, but whereas that occasion seemed to make the most of the monochrome look by giving us brightly-lit characters against a dark background, this scene positively delights in using every colour on the spectrum. I'd argue that this one scene justified the higher cost of a colour TV licence for the whole year.

Elsewhere, I'm still enjoying the story. It's nice to see the Doctor so suspicious of the Axons (or, I suppose, just 'Axos', now), and it's a good follow-on from Doctor Who and the Silurians. Here, he's berated Chinn and the Brigadier for being so ready to destroy the ship and the creatures, but he doesn't trust them. He even pretends to be on their side just to keep them sweet, while later confirming to Jo that he knows they're lying. I've never really payed all that much attention to the design of the golden Axons, but it actually looks pretty good. We get another 'face melting' shot today in the form of one of these creatures being absorbed back into the ship, and it really does work well.

When the first images were released of the Heavenly Host from Voyage of the Damned, Doctor Who fandom had pretty much made up their mind that it would see the return of Axos - how could it not? That design clearly takes some inspiration from here. I'm also quite fond of the 'spaghetti Axons' (as I insist on calling them in my notes). Today, I've dug out the Axon figure from the cupboard to sit by the computer with the Master (he's been hanging around the keyboard since I started this season), but having actually started watching the story properly now, I'm a bit disappointed that it's not the same design as these spaghetti monsters. I assume that they toy version of the creature is what Professor Winser is now turning into, but I think I'd rather the version covered in tentacles…

 a

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

Day 296: The Claws of Axos, Episode One

Dear diary,

Back in the days before I had a formal structure to my Doctor Who viewing, I used to quite often use the DVDs as ‘background noise’. I’d be pottering around the flat, with the story simply playing out in the corner somewhere. Not paying attention to it, but knowing it was there all the same. I can’t tell you many of the stories I’ve ‘watched’ in this way, but I know that The Claws of Axos was one of them. As with many of the Pertwee DVDs, I’d had it sat on the shelf for a while, and never watched it. One afternoon, I decided that enough was enough, and it was time to actually make an effort with the Third Doctor.

Of course, it simply became more of the ‘background noise’, and I don’t think anything highlights this fact more than the way it ended. By the time the story finished, I was in the bath. My flat at the time had a bathroom just off the living room, so I was able to keep half an eye on the telly while I was in the bath (though I was probably reading a book, meaning that I wasn’t paying any notice to the Doctor and Jo running around on the screen). After a while, I became aware that the story was looping. It’d gone back to the menu screen, and I couldn’t figure it out – I’d always assumed that The Claws of Axos was a six-parter for some reason. Suddenly discovering that it was much shorter seemed to make it more bearable, so I resolved to sit down and watch it properly.

Here we are, three years or so on, and I’m finally doing that. It can’t have been that much of an epiphany, because I’ve never bothered to make the time for it before. It means that this is the second of the Pertwee-era special edition DVDs that I’m watching having never really seen it before (though it’s not quite as bad as with Inferno, where I don’t think I’d ever watched a second of the disk): I’m basically their ideal audience – buy twice, watch once!

Know what, though? This episode was great! Right from the off, I found myself making an enormous amount of notes – things that I wanted to bring up here. Key among them comes right at the start – the Brigadier covering for the Doctor’s lack of records. I spoke a lot yesterday about the way that the pair don’t love each other, but have a kind of mutual respect, and this scene perfectly sums it up. The Brigadier confirms that the Doctor is his responsibility, and it’s a lovely moment.

In fact, all of those early scenes with UNIT at their HQ are fab – we get to see the Third Doctor’s rage again, which showed itself so well during Season Seven. There’s even a tiresome government official standing in his way – It’s almost like we’re watching a Season Seven story. With that comes a familiar feeling – that wishing that we could see this story spruced up for a HD release. I know it couldn’t happen (even if the film sequences could be rescanned for Blu ray, I’d imagine the fact it’s needed a special edition means that there’s some issues with the quality), but I’d love to see the UNIT convoy converging on the Axon ship in better quality.

This is the first time that I’ve really noticed it, but UNIT is actually quite well manned. Back during The Invasion, I made a comment that the series didn’t always have UNIT as such a large organisation, but actually there’s a fair few of them! I wonder if I was thinking more specifically of the ‘inner circle’ of UNIT, made up of the Brig, Benton, and Mike (with Corporal Bell thrown in for good measure, since this is her second story in a row)? Either way, it look quite impressive when the military units approach the ship, and I’m glad that I’d been misremembering the size of the Taskforce.

Mind you, anything rolling up to the location would look better than our chap on a bike. ‘Pigbin Josh’ has become something of a joke within fandom, an a term applied to several characters who crop up in this era, from Spearhead in Space to The Three Doctors and beyond. I’ve always known the joke of the character, but never realised just how close to the truth it was! We effectively follow his journey through the first half of the episode, as he occasionally mumbles in a thick accent. I’m not sure exactly what he’s saying, but it sounds an awful lot like ‘ooh arr’. The discovery of his body is strangely affecting, though and accompanied by a fantastic shot as his head ‘caves in’ on itself. The fade to white and cut away to Mike seems to imply that the rest of the image is too horrific to watch. Very well handled indeed.

Not quite such a good effect is the enlargement (and subsequent shrinking) of the frog. There’s lots of examples of CSO cropping up in these 25 minutes, and some is handled better than others – the shots inside the Axon ship are pretty well handled on the whole, even if they do occasionally leave some fringing around the edges. When it comes to the frog, though, it would appear that a side effect of using Axonite to grow your crops is that large chunks of the target simply vanish altogether!

I think the only thing that was a real disappointment today was the arrival of the Master. I said yesterday that I was looking forward to his return, but I thought they might give us a week off. The Mind of Evil doesn’t introduce him into the events until the second episode, and I thought the same might have been true of this story. It feels like after the very obvious goodbye scene for the character in the last episode, suddenly having him pop up again here is a bit naff. At least we find him in a position of weakness, captured in the Axon ship, which gives us a slightly different dynamic on the character. For all his ‘clever’ plots and schemes, mind, he does often find himself in need of the Doctor’s assistance…

 a

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

Day 295: The Mind of Evil, Episode Six

Dear diary,

If there’s one thing that Don Houghton is great at, it’s pitching the relationship between the Doctor and the Brigadier at just the right level. There’s no doubt that this is the same man who wrote those closing moments of Inferno, in which the Doctor decided he’s had enough and makes to leave for good – the antagonism between the pair is at its very best in these scripts.

Still, it’s nice to see that things have at least softened a little between the pair. There’s less outright dislike here, and more a sense of gentle teasing. The Brigadier arrives in the prison and shoots the enemy just in time to spare his Scientific Advisor’s life, and the Doctor asks if – just for once – the man could arrive before the nick of time. Later on he jokes that aside from losing both the missile and the Master, the Brig is doing very well in his job. It’s far friendlier than we’ve seen between them for some time, but it’s great to still see them playing off each other.

It’s a shame that I’ve still not really enjoyed this story. When today’s episode started, I thought it was strange that they’d gone back far enough to show a reprise of UNIT storming the prison – it felt like ages ago. It’s another one of those situations where I simply couldn’t remember what had happened in the cliffhanger, despite only seeing it 24 hours before. The Mind of Evil hasn’t boasted the best cliffhangers that we’ve ever had on the show. Several of them are essentially the same thing (the Keller Machine attacking someone. Usually the Doctor.), and the others just haven’t lodged in my memory. The positive is that we get to see a few shots of the Doctor’s old enemies (Cybermen, and Daleks, and Ice Warriors, oh my!), but there’s some odd choices in there. A Zarbi is bizarre enough, but Koquillion? Really? He’s one of the Doctor’s greatest fears?

What struck me the most about today’s episode is how much it feels like a nice ending to the appearance of the Master in the series. The dematerialisation circuit that the Doctor stole in Terror of the Autons makes a reappearance in the denouement, and the master takes it back, before heading off to the stars. During their final phone conversation (this pair spend a lot of time on the phone, don’t they?), the Doctor muses that they won’t be seeing the Master for a while, and he agrees, adding ‘By the way, Doctor, enjoy your exile!’ For all intents and purposes, it feels like we’re saying goodbye to the character after ten episodes and that we’re ready to move on to something different. Were the Master to suddenly turn up at the end of the season as a surprise, I think it would work brilliantly.

Sadly, I know that’s not the case. He’ll be back again in the very next story. So much for not seeing the Doctor again for ‘quite some time’! And yet… I’m specifically looking forward to it. The idea of this character turning up so frequently this season was one of the things not really exciting me about this run of stories, but I’ve been so won over by the man that I can’t help but anticipate their next battle.

Mind you, his plan is a bit rubbish again this week, innit? He’ll use the missile to spark off a war, destroying the Earth… and then take over of ruler to the now-dead planet. Not sure he’s really thought that through…

 a

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

Day 294: The Mind of Evil, Episode Five

Dear diary,

For the first couple of episodes in this story, it seemed like everything was going well. My interest had been raised back up after the season opener, we were seeing a better relationship between the Doctor and his companion, the setting was one that I liked, and everything seemed to be moving in the right general direction. Over the last couple of days, though, I've started to find my attention wandering.

I think there's a couple of reasons for it, but I'm not sure which is having the bigger effect. For starters, we've now pretty much entirely moved away from the contemporary London setting that I was so loving to begin with. As nice as the prison looks, it just doesn't have the same feel that all that location shooting in ordinary streets did. Secondly… the more I think about it, the more the plot just doesn't hold together. UNIT are supposed to be providing security to a major world peace conference, but by the time of today's episode, half the force has been attacked by the prisoners, another half is storming the prison itself, and the three top men (I know that - strictly speaking - Yates and Benton aren't really the 'top men' of UNIT, but they are in the eyes of anyone watching the Pertwee years!) are all away from the main conference, too.

Who's looking after things in London? I know they've removed the Master's influence on Captain Chin Lee, but at a conference where several delegates have been murdered and important documents have gone 'missing', you think they'd need to have someone keeping an eye on things!

And then you've got poor Jo - she's not been outside the prison walls since Episode One, and most of the time she's spent locked away in that cell. All of this means that I'm noticing far more the different variations on the old 'capture-and-escape' routine that usually pads out a third episode.

It's not all bad. Today we get a fantastic sequence in which UNIT storm the prison, and it's possibly the most useful we've ever seen them. It comes on the heels of a scene in which the Brigadier pretends to be delivering provisions (and the whole story is justified simply by hearing Nick Courtney - in as 'man-in-the-street' voice possible - use the word 'nosh'), and then it's all brilliant from there on out. The soldiers sneaking from the back of the van ready to attack is great, and the storming of the castle (complete with men climbing the walls!) is one of the best directed sequences we've had in a while. Director Timothy Combe has been with us in one form or another since as far back as The Keys of Marinus, so it's a shame to see him making his departure from the programme in this serial.

The attack on the prison does have to go down as another one of those things that just doesn't quite make sense, mind. The Brigadier is presented with a map and a suggestion is made that there could be a secret way in - it is an old castle after all. Luckily enough, there is! That's convenient. The Brigadier even knows the way. Also convenient. Above and beyond that - and despite the place now being home to hardened criminals - the secret passageway has never been blocked off. That's really convenient.

And also a little bit stupid.

But then they don't seem to use the secret entrance! They simply drive up to the gate with a big old van of nosh! There was one moment when a group of UNIT soldiers ascended some steps which seemed to be coming from a tunnel, and I assumed that it must be the secret way in, but it can't be because it's too bloody obvious! The prisoner's would be in and out as they please. It's never a good sign when I start to worry more about things not adding up than simply enjoying the story, so I'm hoping that things turn around for me in the final instalment. This story also marks the final contribution of Don Houghton to the series, and he did so impress me with Inferno a few weeks ago, I'd love to see him leave on a high…

 a

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

Day 293: The Mind of Evil, Episode Four

Dear diary,

I think the thing I'm enjoying the most about The Mind of Evil is how well it showcases the Doctor and the Master as enjoying their little squabble. When John Simm took over the role in 2007, much was made about the fact that he was a Master to play specifically against David Tennant's incarnation of the Doctor. He was young, and energetic. He would talk at a million miles per hour and pull faces in just the same way. It was an incarnation of the character designed to work against the Tenth Doctor, and I'm not sure how well he would fit in playing opposite any of the others.

Having never really watched this incarnation of the Master before, my main exposure to the character has been in the form of the Ainley version - who played against four incarnations from Tom Baker to Sylvester McCoy. Sure, he's got lots of characteristics that I instantly equate with being quintessentially 'Master-ish', but he isn't tailored to each individual version of his nemesis. I think he works fairly well against them all to some extent, but you can tell he's not custom-created.

The only other point of reference that I've really got comes in the form of the Master's precursor - for want of a better word - the Meddling Monk. Peter Butterworth was a great foil for William Hartnell, and came at a time when the character had softened somewhat. It meant that his little giggles and smiles fitted perfectly with the Doctor we'd been getting used to throughout the second season, but he was able to bring out the fire at the heart of that incarnation.

Moreso than the Monk, though, I'm finding that the Delgado Master is very much designed to be a part of the Third Doctor's life, and this episode highlights that perfectly. At various stages, they each call Jo 'my dear', and if the point had been lost on us, they abandon all subtlety and go for a full-on crossfade between the characters at one point, which has the odd effect of looking a bit like a dodgy regeneration. It's a joy to watch the pair of them on the screen together, though, and the moment that the Master frees his foe from the attack of the Keller Machine is wonderful.

'We're both Time Lords,' he pleads, and it gives us a dynamic that we've never been able to see in the series before. There's shades of the same argument used in The War Games, when the War Chief tries to make the Doctor help him, but it's great to see that angle being played out with a long-running character (or, at least, a character who will become long-running).

Yesterday's episode gave us perhaps the best examples of the Doctor and the Master playing a game with each other - the Doctor strolls into the Governer's office to find his nemesis sitting behind the desk, and simply says 'Yes… I thought as much…' while he takes his seat. A few scenes later, having made his escape, the Doctor barricades himself in with the machine, only to find the Master waiting casually for him behind the door. We've just watched the Doctor make his way across the prison in a proper action sequence, but the Master greets him by saying 'I thought you'd make for here…', before setting up the cliffhanger.

The pair are simply playing a game with each other, and it's a great counterpoint to all the high-stakes playing out elsewhere in the story. Today sees the missile being taken out of UNIT's hands (Again, you have to wonder why this lot have been entrusted with such high-stake jobs - I know it's the Master pulling strings in the right places, but surely there must have been a real wall of objection?!), and a wholesale slaughter of their soldiers - but it still feels as though the Doctor and the Master are playing cowboys and indians for fun. It's brilliant - and I'm really glad to see why people are always banging on about Delgado being THE Master.

 a

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

Day 292: The Mind of Evil, Episode Three

Dear diary,

Terror of the Autons feels like an absolute age back – everything here feels much more to my liking. I think it’s Jo who highlights this best. We’re a far cry from the character who’d managed to ruin the Doctor’s experiment and get hypnotised by the Master all on her first day at UNIT. The Jo in this story is far more confident and resourceful, seizing her opportunity to end the prison riot and trying to make the most of the situation. It’s odd to say it, but I think Jo here feels more like the kind of Doctor Who companion that I’ve gotten used to in this marathon – they’re not always the sharpest tools in the box, but they often highlight why they’re such a boon to the Doctor’s life.

It’s also lovely to see how much her relationship with the Doctor has evolved since the last story. It was evident right from the start, in the way the pair first drove up to the prison. They’re comfortable with each other, and more than that, they’re happy with each other. What’s great in today’s episode is the moment the Doctor learns about the riot in the prison, and his first reaction is to jump up and ask after Jo’s safety.

All of this does make me wonder, though… just how much time has passed since the events of the second Nestene invasion attempt? It feels like the Doctor and Jo have spent quite some time together, getting used to each other. It could just be that after the events of Terror of the Autons, all their barriers were down and they were able to simply become good friends - but if feels like they've been together for a fair old while by this point.

Equally, today sees the revelation that Professor Keller - inventor of the machine causing all this trouble - is actually the Master. A few episodes ago we're told that the machine was installed at Strangmoor prison almost a year ago. Does this mean that the Nestene attack was even further back than that? I think the Doctor's tinkering with the Master's TARDIS simply prevented him from leaving Earth, as opposed to playing with time, so he could have nipped back twelve months or so to begin his work?

I'm still avoiding any real discussion of a UNIT timeline at this stage (I've still not seen enough to make any definitive statements on the subject), though the third volume of the About Time books suggests a placement of October 1971 for Terror of the Autons and somewhere in mid-to-late 1972 for this story (and the next few, too). For now I guess I'm happy to go along with that. Throughout Season Seven, it was implied that large stretches of time happened here and there, in which Liz simply assisted the Doctor with making repairs to the TARDIS, so I suppose the same could have been happening here.

'm also wondering if that's why UNIT have been given a task as comparatively mundane as looking after security at a peace conference (compared to fighting off aliens, anyway)? There's been little alien activity on the planet since the Master fled the radio telescope, so they're being reassigned to other tasks to justify their existence? I will be trying to piece together my own timeline later on in this era, but for now I'll keep monitoring events…

 a

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

Day 291: The Mind of Evil, Episode Two

Dear diary,

One of the things I've found most rewarding about doing The 50 Year Diary is finding that Doctor Who is far richer than I'd ever realised. There's always little coincidences that crop up, which makes experiencing it all in sequence all the more rewarding. It's things like Nicholas Courtney helping the First Doctor to fight the Daleks, before returning to the Time Lord's life in a different role, or seeing the evolution of Doctors and companions over the years.

Today it's all about those few places in time and space which just attract aliens. I had a wonderful feeling when watching bits of today's episode that I'd been here before. It was when the road sign for 'Cromwell Gardens' appeared that I thought 'ah! The First Doctor fought the War Machines around there!' before suddenly realising that - actually - he'd trapped a War Machine in that very spot! Because I've never seen The Mind of Evil before, I didn't know that the series had ever returned to this location, but suddenly noticing it gives me such a great feeling - it's a whole extra layer to what I'm watching, and gives me a slightly odd nostalgic pang for William Hartnell!

It has to be said that this same scene is a wonderful example of why CSO isn't always the answer. When Captain Chin Lee makes her phone call, it looks so much better than a similar scene in the previous story, in which the background had been added via Colour Separation. It just feels more natural. Actually, all the location work in this story is lovely, and it feels like the right kind of setting for me. Central London is a location that I praised in The War Machines (fittingly, it seems!), The Invasion, and Doctor Who and the Silurians, and it's great to see so much time being spent here. I wonder if this might be another problem I had with the last story - the setting of a circus was just too 'out there' for what appeals to me?

Watching Benton (badly) try to keep tabs on a suspect, or seeing the Master stroll across a park just feels much more real to me, and I think that all helps. The shot that appealed to me most is only a few seconds long - the Doctor and the Brigadier exit the house and walk along the road. It's simple. It's short. It's real. It looks so good to see the Doctor out and about in his fancy dress (and it's become even more fancy dress now, with the addition of the red jacket) amongst real people going about their lives. It really helps to focus the series as being set in then contemporary Britain.

In some ways, I should be disappointed to see the Master turning up again today (I knew he was in the story - indeed, it's the only thing that I do know about this one!), but I was actually quite pleased to see him. It helps that he arrives on the scene utilising a disguise very well once again, and that once he has shown his face, he's back to being very suave. It's another chance to draw a comparison with The War Machines - there, I said that the Doctor looked out of place sat in the back of a car, as I was so used to seeing him out and about on Mechanus, or back in time during the Crusades. Here, the Master just looks right dressed smartly and smoking a cigar as he sits in the back of a car to hold a 'meeting'.

The way he hypnotises Chin Lee paints him as being very in control of the situation, and he feels like a genuine threat. While UNIT are busy running around, out of their depth, he knows exactly what he's doing, and he seems to be rather enjoying himself…

 a

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

Day 290: The Mind of Evil, Episode One

Dear diary,

It’s funny how simply being onto a new story has instantly turned around my mood – I’ve enjoyed today’s episode a lot more than I did anything from Terror of the Autons. I think it helps that everyone seems to be far more settled into their roles now, too. The Doctor and Jo laugh and joke as they approach Dracula’s castle – sorry, the prison – and his messing about into the security camera is brilliant - very Doctor, and I don’t think it would look out of place if Troughton or Tom Baker were doing it.

Once we’re inside, the Doctor is back to his usual pompous self… but I quite like that! He undercuts the demonstration of the Keller Machine at every turn by chipping in his own commentary on the situation. Rude and arrogant, yes, but it’s very in keeping with this incarnation, and I’m finding myself quite liking it. Professor Kettering's reactions to the constant interruptions are great fun, too.

As for the machine itself… well that’s nonsense. At one point, then Doctor asks what happens to all the negative energies once they’ve been extracted is that they’re simply stored in there – but not to worry because it’s only 65% full. Surely they’ve not thought this through, though? What happens in a few more experiments time, when it’s teetering on the 100% full mark? Do they construct another machine and bury this one as though it were nuclear waste? I’m surprised (although pleased) that the Master hasn’t turned up today, but I’m guessing he’s probably on his way to steal the machine, or he’s the one behind the invention in the first place.

It’s really good to see the Doctor and UNIT working on different missions. They can’t be foiling an alien invasion every day of the week, so it’s good to see them being given something more ordinary to do in managing the security for a peace conference. I’ve seen their performance before now, mind, so I’m not sure that I’d trust them with such an important job… I think what pleases me is that I’m just as interested by their story as I am the one that the Doctor is following up.

We get a good opportunity to see the Brigadier out on his own, away from the Doctor, too. I’ve said it a few times over the last few months, but we really are lucky to have an actor like Nicholas Courtney be so vitally involved with the programme. He does a great stock in ‘apathetic’ and 'exasperated' acting, and his reactions to Captain Chin Lee today aren’t a million miles away from the way he finds himself feeling in the Doctor’s company.

I think what’s impressed me the most about today’s episode is the colour of it. Until very recently, this tale only existed as a black and white copy, but restoration for the DVD has seen the entire serial returned to full colour for the first time since the 1970s. It's been brought back to life by hand-colouring several key frames, and then using a number of techniques to make this work for the full story.

It’s the work of the very talented Stuart Humphryes and Peter Crocker. Now, I knew they’d colourised this story. When it was announced, everyone was so excited about it. It’s telling that I only remembered the fact after I’d started writing this entry – the work is fantastic. I can’t begin to imagine the amount of patience needed to complete a project like this, but it’s well worth it because it looks gorgeous.

It does make me wonder, though, about a specific scene of the episode. During the demonstration of the Keller machine – while I’d forgotten about the recolourisation of the episode – I made a note about how good it looked once the lights were dimmed and the room was bathed in a pale blue light. Far more effective than the regular lighting on the set, and I was all ready to declare it as being better than a lot of the lighting we get in the programme. I’m wondering now if it would have looked as good as that originally, or if some of it is down to to the skill in the colouring? Either way, it looked stunning, and brought me completely on board with the story. We’re off to a good start…

 a

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

Day 289: Terror of the Autons, Episode Four

Dear diary,

Just what is the Master's plan in this story? The Master seems pretty chuffed with himself today when he declares that because he's helped the Nestenes invade, they won't kill him… but he's only on this planet to help them invade. If he wasn't trying to help them, there wouldn't be any risk of them killing him anyway! The only thing that I can think of is that they've (somehow) got him under the thumb, and are forcing him to come to Earth and help with their invasion plans. Haven't a clue how they might manage that, but it makes more sense than him helping them out simply for the hell of it.

It's not the greatest of starts for the character, really, but I suppose it is the perfect example of starting as you mean to go on. While I've not been all that impressed with his plan, the Master has been a fun villain to watch, and I'm glad we're finally at the point where he starts cropping up. It's nice that the Doctor has someone to battle against as a new arch enemy - and his reaction at the end of this story would seem to suggest that he agrees. My only problem with it is that I know the Master will be back in the very next story. Wouldn't it be more effective if he didn't show up again until the end of the season?

Still, I'm very impressed by the master's escape attempt. In the 1980s (the period of the Master that I'm most familiar with), he dresses up in elaborate disguises simply because… well… it means that they can reveal him as the surprise villain for a cliffhanger. In The Mark of the Rani, he seems to dress as a scarecrow simply because he gets a kick out of it. Here, though, it's being used really well, actively disposing of a puppet he no longer needs by dressing him up and sending him out for UNIT to shoot. Mike doesn't waste any time, though, does he? The second he gets a chance… bang!

As if you couldn't tell, I'm still not all that impressed by Terror of the Autons. It feels like it's actively trying to be a stumbling block for me, as though it's a punishment for enjoying Season Seven as much as I did. There's bits of today's story which makes UNIT look like Dad's Army, but even they couldn't help to get me interested. As I've said before, I think it's the effect of having loved Spearhead From Space so much, that this just doesn't seem to hold up to it.

I'm hoping that the next story will be able to knock me out of this funk and get me back to enjoying the series again. Terror of the Autons has reminded me much more of the Third Doctor's era I have in my head - one that I don't much care for. The Mind of Evil is a return for Don Houghton (writer of Inferno, which rated very well with me), so I'm crossing lots of fingers that he'll be able to get things back on track…

 a

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

Day 288: Terror of the Autons, Episode Three

Dear diary,

I think Terror of the Autons is stuck in one of those awkward situations where it doesn't matter what it does - I'm just not going to like it. I commented a few days ago that I was being put off by the bright colours and the way that I worried the series would dumb down by replacing Liz with Jo, and it feels like I'm constantly waiting to be proven right. I think that I need to have one really brilliant story to knock me back on track, but this just isn't it.

I was trying to explain the problem to Ellie earlier (I don't think she really cares, but she listens, and that's the next best thing), and I said part of the problem is that I'm three quarters of the way through the story and nothing has happened yet. Well that's clearly not true - the Master has arrived on Earth, he's taken control of a plastics factory by hypnotising the right people, and killing anyone else, the Autons are on the move, the Doctor's dodging attempts on his life… there's loads going on, I just feel a bit detached from it.

While I still don't think the Autons here look quite as good as they did during Spearhead From Space, today's episode has at least given me two chances to really enjoy them. The first - of course - has to be the way the Doctor opens a safe to find one waiting inside, gun at the ready. It seemed so obvious after the fact, but I didn't see it coming, which made it a nice surprise. The other occasion is the 'daffodil men', for want of a better word.

I've always had a real issue with these costumes. For years, I've assumed that they're fully plastic, and just what the Autons looked like in this story. It bothered me because they looked like such obvious costumes! A few weeks ago, while I was finishing up on the Troughton era, one of the original masks from these costumes surfaced on eBay. I was really put off by how noticeable the eyeholes were on it - not a good design at all. Except… they're supposed to be costumes! I'd never realised before! There's one particular shot of an Auton lowering the mask over its own blank face, and it's the first time that this version has really made an impact on me. Still not as good as the previous design (I think it's telling that they sell action figures of the Autons from Spearhead, Rose, and The Pandorica Opens, but not this story…), but I'm warming to it!

Of course, the real stand out for today's episode has to be 'first contact' between the Doctor and the Master. I love that it occurs on a telephone, as this is how they first meet in the 21st century version of the programme, too, and suddenly that scene has a whole new layer to it that I've never know about before. It's all so well played between the two men, and I can't wait for the pair to meet in person - I'm assuming it's going to come in the next episode, so I'm crossing my fingers that it could be the saving grace for this story - I feel like I really should like it, but there's just something holding me back…

 a

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

Day 287: Terror of the Autons, Episode Two

Dear diary,

With Toberman to guard the Doctor, there's nothing to fear! I rather like the idea that a cast member from The Tomb of the Cybermen might turn up in every one of Petwee's seasons - we had Cyril Shaps in for The Ambassadors of Death, and today we've got Roy Stewart making the second of his two appearances in the programme, playing the strong silent type once again!

I spent a bit of time yesterday complaining that Jo Grant hand't really gotten off to the best start at UNIT. Thankfully, she's won me over completely today. Things started to turn around when even she started to point out how rubbish she'd been ('I find the man that everyone's looking for, forget where he is, and finish up by trying to blow you all sky-high!'), and you can't help but feel a bit sorry for her. She's got that same quality that made Jamie such a good companion, in that she's terribly loyal, and is desperate to do the best she can. It doesn't show the Doctor in the best of lights, though, when she saves him from imprisonment, and he immediately snaps at her for being there in the first place. I wasn't expecting an instant overnight change to a softer character between seasons, but he's just downright rude now!

I'm also finding myself drawn to the Master. He really is very sinister, isn't he? It's another one of those times where I'm surprised that they've taken this long to introduce a character like this (a Moriarty to the Doctor's Holmes, as Barry Letts' puts it several times in the special features on this DVD), although I suppose they did try a similar trick before in the form of the Meddling Monk. The Master is already outstripping the Monk in my estimations, though, and he's making a real impact after only two episodes. I'm loving all the little traps he keeps setting for the Doctor (although the man is keen on trying to blow his fellow Time Lord up, isn't he? That's three bombs in the first 50 minutes!), and the description of this being 'the eve of war' for the pair.

His introduction - and the knowledge that he'll be turning up in every single one of the stories this season - is all helping to make this feel like much more of an ensemble cast. The Doctor and Jo may be the Doctor and his companion, but you've also got the Brigadier, Benton, Mike, and the Master on hand to share some of the action. I think I quite like having so many of them around - it gives us a chance to see Jo being comforted by someone other than the Doctor, and it makes UNIT feel larger than it might otherwise.

Despite all these little things that I'm enjoying, I can't say I'm all that taken with Terror of the Autons. It just doesn't feel like a patch on their first story, and I think the look of the titular creatures isn't doing them any favours. It's a great cliffhanger when the Doctor pulls away the policeman's face to reveal the auto head underneath, but it just doesn't look as scary or effective as they did in Spearhead. I'm also not sure how I feel about the use of other plastics to inject some threat. On the one hand, the idea that the Nestenes can take control of any plastic item is a great one, and very in keeping with what we've seen established, but the scene with the chair just didn't do it for me (there's too much obvious 'grabbing' of the prop) and the troll doll just isn't as effective as I'd like (the design is hideous, although hI suppose that's the point).

If I'm lucky, the last half of the tale will pick things up for me, but if not then at least it's serving as a good introduction for our new regulars…

 a

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

Day 286: Terror of the Autons, Episode One

Dear diary,

It almost feels like the first day back at school, this one. There's the Doctor, up to his usual tricks, the Brigadier is getting in the way, and Benton is pottering about in the background. We've got a few new kids in class this year, too, in the form of Jo Grant and Mike Yates, along with the new school bully - the Master.

It's confession time. I've never actually watched a full story featuring Rodger Delgardo's incarnation of the Master. I know, ok? I know. Everyone bangs on about how he's the best version of the character, and how he's so menacing and suave and wonderful, but for me he's simply in the wrong era. I've always been so dead-set against this period of the programme that I've never had any interest in checking it out. As if to make matters worse, I've seen every story to feature the Ainley incarnation at least twice!

I'm surprised to see him turning up so early into the story. His TARDIS - in the form of a horse box - materialises just over a minute in, and he's hopping out mere seconds later. He then doesn't waste any time setting himself up as this week's resident bad guy, hypnotising the circus owner, and setting off to steal a Nestene control device. As the story progresses, he shrinks at least one person (I'm assuming that they're dead after being shrunk?), takes control of a plastics factory, and revives some of the Auton bodies. It's a good start to the character, and I can see why people are so fond of him, but I'll reserve my judgement for now, and see what I make as the season goes on - there'll be plenty of chances to see him!

Making less of a great first impression on me is Jo, I'm sorry to say. I've found that it's an odd process working my way through this marathon - I move back and forth between dreading the thought of a certain story and being really excited for it. As I approached the Troughton era, I was dreading it. I'd become to close to Hartnell. Then, of course, it turned out to be simply fantastic. Fast forward a few months and I was dreading reaching Pertwee. And then I wasn't because I'd enjoyed The Invasion. And then I was again, 'cos I'd never been a fan. As Season Seven played out, though, I found myself really loving the style the series had taken on. All that left me with a bit of a problem…

I was loving the show being a bit serious, and having some pretty dark sequences (the more I think about it, the more the spread of the virus in Doctor Who and the Silurians is such a harsh image). I found that the Doctor and Liz worked well together, and everything just clicked for me. Suddenly, I was dreading Season Eight, and the introduction of a companion who - as the Brigadier puts it in this episode - is simply there to pass the Doctor test tubes and tell him how wonderful he is.

I've seen Jo's introduction before ('I'm your new assistant!' / 'Oh no…'), but it really feels like a let down after the introduction of Liz in Spearhead. There, we're being presented with a companion who doesn't especially want to be there, and could possibly be off doing something better. Here, Jo messes up the Doctor's experiment, and by the end of her first episode she's been captured by the enemy and brainwashed into wanting to kill the Doctor! Not off to the best start at the new job, is she? Thankfully, they have got the casting right - Katy Manning is simply fantastic right from the word 'go', and I think I can see myself being won over by her performance, if nothing else.

I'm also a bit dismayed at the look of this episode. As I say, the style of Season Seven ended up really drawing me in, and that stretched to the very real look of all the locations. The Doctor hard a different lab in each story - but they always felt like real places. The one he's based in today looks ridiculous! If anything, it all looks a bit too cartoon for me - and the bright colours of the set (that green door!) don't help… I know it's not around for long, so hopefully things will grow on me as time goes by. Pertwee's first 25 episodes did a lot to raise this era in my estimations, and I'd hate to see it all being for nothing…

Throughout Season Seven, I found myself making a note that simply said 'CSO' alongside many of the episodes. Colour Separation Overlay - or 'green screen' as we'd call it now - made its first appearance in Doctor Who and the Silurians, being used to give the shots of the dinosaur guard dog in the background mainly. I meant to bring it up there, but then I was swept along with the virus and the falling out between the Doctor and the Brig… It turns up pretty heavily in The Ambassadors of Death, too, when the Doctor is taken aboard that giant clam-like spaceship. Even Inferno uses it to provide the scene outside the Doctor's make-shift lab.

So, I told myself, having failed to mention it at all last season, I was to mention it at the absolute earliest opportunity this time around. Thankfully, today's episode gives me plenty of chances to bring it up! CSO provides the view from windows, the background to the museum, the effect of the Time Lord appearing in mid-air, the shrunken scientist in the lunchbox, and the room in which the Master is reviving his new Auton army. Some of the effects work a bit better than others, but that last one, with the Master, really put me off - the perspective of the background is all wrong! That, coupled with the oddly shiny Autons, knocked me right out of the story, and left me staring blankly at the screen.

This story is directed by Barry Letts, who was something of a pioneer when it came to the CSO process. He could see the benefit that the technology would have to making film and television, and will really push it to the limits during his time in the producer's chair. I'll be keeping an eye on how much more it crops up in this story, and seeing if anything can come across worse than that background…

 a

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

Day 285: Inferno, Episode Seven

Dear diary,

Is it just me, or is the Doctor’s return to his regular universe all a bit… sudden? I said yesterday that I was surprised he didn’t leave them behind during the cliffhanger, but today…! We get the reprise, the Doctor shouts that he can’t try to get the console working because there isn’t enough power yet. Petra screams out for Greg as they all turn and watch the lava flow towards the open door…

And then the Doctor wakes up. Back in his regular universe. There’s none of the odd sparkly effect to indicate that he’s moving between dimensions, no shot of him fading away complete with car and console. It’s a bit jarring, and I’m not sure if it leaves me feeling like I’ve been wrenched out of the parallel universe in a good way that makes it seem as though it’s suddenly ‘ended’ or if it’s just left me feeling a bit out of place. I would have at least expected the screen to white out…

Still, the story doesn’t give you enough time to really focus on it, and there’s a lot packed into these final 25 minutes. It helps to really keep the pace up, and rounds out the tale nicely. I was really worried that when the Doctor returned, we’d be stuck with a ‘cuddly’ Brigadier to highlight the differences between him and the Brigade Leader, but he’s as much of an obstacle to the Doctor as anyone in the other world. Having watched time run out for the planet once in this story, it feels almost inconceivable that no one is really listening to the Doctor’s warnings, but you can see why everyone thinks he’s simply unwell – the Doctor comes across as a complete lunatic here. When he bursts into the control room of the drilling project and starts to smash up the equipment, you can almost agree with the Brigadier when the order is given to take the Time Lord away.

It feels like a theme that’s been running through this entire season – the Doctor and the Brigadier locking horns. The final scene, in which the Doctor announces that he’s had enough of the man before attempting to take off with the TARDIS console (again!) could well serve as a good coda to this era – I’m guessing that we’ll start to see a real change in their approaches with each other from now on.

That scene also makes for a fairly good farewell to Liz Shaw. It’s never really bothered me before that she simply disappears between Seasons Seven and Eight, but having spent a month in her company, I’ve been completely won over. It was suggested to me before I started on this season that I should swap the running order of The Ambassadors of Death and this story, as it made her departure more natural. I can’t say I can see how that would have been the case, and the fact that some of the Doctor’s final words to her today are ‘Goodbye, Liz. I shall miss you’ makes this feel like just the right way to watch the stories. I’m also pleased that we get such a lovely shot of the pair hugging once the drill has been stopped, and the Earth has been saved. The final image of the story – and the season – is one of Liz laughing, which seems entirely appropriate.

I’m pleased to report that – as you’ll no doubt have noticed over the last few weeks – I’ve been completely surprised by the start of the Pertwee era. I’ve spent such a long time not looking forward to this part of the marathon, but it’s really good! I’m past the three-seven-part-stories-in-a-row phase that seemed like such a stumbling block before (and, indeed, that’s the end of seven-part stories completely! A form for the programme since the second story, it’s all six-parters and less from here on out, with the exception of Trial of a Time Lord, depending how you look at it), and now that I’m sold on Jon Pertwee’s performance in a way I never have been I think I’m really excited for the next phase of the programme. Here’s hoping it’s as good as this season has generally been…

 a

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

Day 284: Inferno, Episode Six

Dear diary,

I'm really pleased to see that aside from this story, Don Houghton also wrote The Mind of Evil for Season Eight. As I've noted, I'm less familiar with this period of Doctor Who history than I was with the 1960s, so as we start saying goodbye to writers like David Whitaker, it's nice to know that there's new people like Houghton and Robert Holmes stepping in, ready to take up the reigns.

Today's episode, much like the rest of the story, is absolutely filled with brilliant dialogue. Once again, my notes seem to comprise every third line from the script, and I've had to carefully pick and choose which ones are worth my attention when I come to write this entry up. I think it's fair to say that there is a standout winner from today, and it's the Doctor' comment upon seeing Sutton's reaction to the TARDIS console - 'What did you expect? Some kind of space rocket with Batman at the controls?' I hope they have Batman in the parallel universe.

It's fitting that we should get to see so much of the console in this story, especially towards the end of today's episode. Inferno marks the last appearance of the console built way back in 1963 for An Unearthly Child. I've never really tracked the evolution of the machine as I've gone along, but looking at it in some of the shots today, you can clearly see that it's full of bits and pieces I've seen before. Even if I've not been making a point of picking up on it, there's been a kind of subconscious thread linking these first three Doctors together in the form of this console.

I'm sure I commented on it right at the start of Season One, but that original design for the TARDIS real did hit the ground running. I know that Doctor Who never had the budget to constantly update and renew the design (though I think it gets a few makeovers before Pertwee hands in the keys to the police box), but there's a reason they stuck to this basic template for the entire classic run. As much as I love the current console room, I really do like this one. I must make a point of visiting the Doctor Who Experience again to see the replica of this console - they added it only a few days after my last visit!

I'm really pleased that I've enjoyed today's episode as much as this. Having really loved the addition of the parallel world a few days ago when it first turned up, the last few instalments haven't quite gripped me in the same way. Now that we're ready to transfer back to Earth A, I'm finding myself reluctant to say goodbye to this reality! It's been another great example of the Doctor changing people just by being in their presence, and it's nice that he was there in their final moments. I was expecting the episode to conclude with the Doctor vanishing again, so I'm hoping these few characters don't get let down by having to stick around for a few minutes at the start of the next episode.

By the same token, I'm really glad that the Doctor's only headed 'home' for the last 25 minutes of the story. I worried that we'd have to spend a few episodes watching him try to convince Stahlman that they needed to stop the drilling, and that we'd simply end up with a rehash of the last few days. With such a tight timeframe to finish up in, I'm hopeful that the tension will really carry through for the last little push.

Just briefly - it's a return to my monitoring of the Sonic Screwdriver. It turned up earlier in the story being used as a door handle to the Doctor's temporary lab, and now we see that Liz has her own (technically, she was seen using one the other day, but I wasn't sure if it might have been the same device. Now I know he's got one in the parallel world, the one in her bag must be a copy for Liz!) It's still not referred to as being a Sonic Screwdriver, though we get confirmation that the Doctor invented it - a rose by any other name? I'm wondering if Liz might be helping the Doctor to refine the design of it. She is a scientist, after all, and he's been tinkering with it for two whole seasons, now. We're drawing closer and closer to the point where it will become the all-purpose tool we know it as today, so I'm loving the idea that it might have taken a companion's touch to get it to the final stage!

 a

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

Day 283: Inferno, Episode Five

Dear diary,

The first half of today's episode is fairly talk-y, with little action. In the past, episodes like this have come in for both praise and criticism during this marathon, and I'm not entirely where this one sits. On the one hand, it's beautifully done. The way that the volcanic noises carry on in the background for so long that they just disappear into the back of your mind is fantastic - every now and then the noise creeps up a little, and you find yourself caught up in the methodic rhythm. It really helps to sell the idea that we've passed the point of no return and that there's no hope for saving this world.

I'm so pleased that they're using the parallel world format to tell an interesting story. It's not simply about meeting up with 'evil' versions of all our regular characters (although the lack of moustache on the Brigade Leader, and the absence of Professor Stahlman's beard suggests that facial hair in alternate dimensions of the Doctor Who universe works in the opposite way to those in the Star Trek franchise!), but rather a chance for the production team to blow up the Earth - really! - without actually endangering the programme's future.

I think I've worked out (roughly) where things will be headed from here, so I'm treating all the guest cast as though they're on borrowed time. What's going to be interesting is to see how much of what happens on this world also occurs in the regular one. For the sake of ease, I'm going to call the regular World 'Earth A' and the Republic 'Earth B'. 'The Petra of Earth B is a lot colder than the one we saw on Earth A, even if they do share similar traits, just emphasised in different ways. Despite that, in the moment of crisis, she's turned to Sutton for comfort. WIll we see that happening once the Doctor gets back to Earth A? Will the technicians all end up being transformed into monsters in our world? Will Sir Keith make it out alive? The only thing I assume it's fair to say is that Benton won't be turning into a Primord in both realities, though.

It's nice to see the Doctor demonstrating the TARDIS console to Liz and the Brigade Leader by pulling the same 'moving a few seconds into the future' trick that was seen back at the start of The Ambassadors of Death. More and more, I'm finding little moments like this that help Season Seven to feel as though it's one big story. In some ways, it's the closest in tone to the 21st century version of the series that we've seen from the classic show so far - taking seemingly insignificant moments and seeding them throughout the entire series.

To that end, it's almost a shame that we don't get a few more of these little references. I wondered back in Doctor Who and the Silurians (to myself, rather than in my entry - it felt like a silly thing to say then, but perfectly right for now!) if it would have been fun to see Masters among the government officials on display at Madame Tussaud's. Equally, I thought the same about Sir James in the last story, and I think having Stahlman there could have been fun for this tale, too. It would be equally nice to have the mentions in this story about the government being so desperate for Stahlman's project to succeed be because of the loss of the Wenley Moor facility. Suddenly, with that one blown up, there's going to be more pressure on the National Grid!

 a

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

Day 282, Inferno, Episode Four

Dear diary,

One of the things I loved about yesterday’s episode was that we weren’t simply plunged right into the parallel world. We get a few minutes in the regular setting first, with the Brigadier and Liz hunting for their absent colleague. It means that we get a little bit of time to re-establish the situation, before everything gets turned on its head. We get to see Sir Keith making threatening a trip to the ministry and make his formal complaints, and generally catch up with the rest of events.

It means that when we get to the parallel world and discover that their version of Sir Keith was killed in a (highly suspicious) car accident en route to the ministry, it chimes with us – because we know that’s where our chap is now heading. I have to admit that I’d assumed we’d be stuck in this alternate universe for a while now, right up until the Doctor crosses back over to ours. It came as a bit of a surprise, then, when the screen blurred and we entered back into the sparkly void between realities.

If anything, it was slightly odd. Even after such a relatively short period of time, I’ve gotten used to Liz with her dark hair, so when we emerge back into a real close up of the Liz we’ve known since the start of the season, it didn’t look quite right. It’s a shame that the return to our regular world ends up as a bit of a rehash from yesterday. Sir Keith pops up to remind us that he’s not dead and that he’s got a car outside to take him to London. Liz and the Brigadier hunt around for the Doctor. Nothing all that much happens, and before you know it, we’re back in the Republic.

It’s funny just how much I’ve been drawn into this parallel world, but I think it’s a testament to just how well realised it is, and how fantastic the performances are. Nick Courtney is so easy to love that I have to make a conscious decision to not praise him every day, but he’s especially good toward the cliffhanger today, when he orders the Doctor around and then pulls a gun on him. The one thing that perhaps lets it down a little is that he spends a few minutes strutting around in front of his soldiers as the tension is being ramped up, and it’s perhaps a bit too casual. The Brigade Leader has a carefree side!

I am very impressed by the handling of today’s cliffhanger in general. The presence of a definite ‘end’ point for the action (in this case a countdown) is usually a troubling sign – I’m thinking specifically of Vengeance on Varos, where they move slowly towards the image of a dying Doctor on the monitor before the voice comes though ‘and cut it… now!’, before we linger a few more seconds! It robs that cliffhanger of all the tension, and I worried the same might happen here. As it is, we get the final number of the countdown spoken over the image of the closing credits. Anything could be happening in that control room!

Speaking of the control room – how great is that set? For a start, it’s huge, and split into several areas. You get the impression when characters move from all the contros to the drilling room that they really have covered a lot of ground. It’s great to see so many supporting artists in there, too, all decked out in their lab coats and going about their business. There’s a shot in today’s episode where Pertwee walks over to one of the control panels to play with a few settings, and there’s loads of other people around him getting on with their job. It makes the place seem real, with a lot going on, and it’s as though every member of ‘staff’ has a role to play.

We used to get a similar format quite often in the Troughton Era, where the action revolves around one ‘main’ set with a few smaller ones dotted around (I think the best example is probably in The Moonbase, where I praised the set for reasons very similar to those I’ve mentioned today.)

 a

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

Day 281: Inferno, Episode Three

Dear diary,

I always used to find it so strange that Doctor Who waited seven years and fifty-something adventures before it went for that old sci-fi cliché, the ‘parallel universe’, but actually, having been through everything that comes before Inferno, it suddenly makes complete sense. Even though we’ve been in a different location for each story this season, they’ve all felt relatively close together. Trapping the Doctor on Earth, and giving him a wider circle of acquaintances (People can’t even agree on whether Sara Kingdom is a companion, so I doubt there’s any hope of getting all of UNIT added to the list!) means that when we follow him across the sparkly void and into the alternate universe, there’s a real impact to it.

That’s not to say that it couldn’t have worked to see the Doctor confronted by an evil version of Ian and Barbara, but if you set it out on some far-flung alien world, there’s far less of an impact. The Stahlman project, on the outside, looks just like the location from The Ambassadors of Death. Wasn’t the Brigadier chasing someone over some very similar gangways (though much closer to the ground) a few episodes ago? It’s not even that far removed from the location we see used as the factory in Spearhead From Space, which was previously used for The Invasion. I think that’s the big success of this story – it’s taking something which is readily in danger of simply becoming normal for Doctor Who, and it turns it completely on its head.

The same thing is being done to UNIT. When the Doctor emerges from what should be his lab, and a soldier starts to shoot at him, it genuinely feels unnerving. It’s why I’m so pleased that Benton turned up at the tale end of The Ambassadors of Death - I know that he’s a big part of the UNIT ‘family’, because I’m coming to this story more than 40 years after the fact, but today’s cliffhanger doesn’t pack half as much of a punch if it’s simply that Sergeant who turned up two episodes ago threatening the Doctor.

I’m not sure that the Doctor has too much to fear from his former friends here, though, because as in the last story UNIT are absolutely terrible. They spend several minutes chasing after the Doctor and taking shots at him (it has to be said that the chase scene in this story is far more thrilling than many of the action set pieces in the last one – hooray for the return of Douglas Camfield!), and then manage to completely lose him. As soon as they spotted people up high on the roof, I was willing to bet a considerable amount of money that they’d hit the infected soldier rather than our misplaced Time Lord.

One of the things that’s really impressing me is just how much back story about this parallel universe has already been seeded in, without it feeling like a massive info dump. I knew that we’d be seeing an alternate world in this story (I’ve head the eyepatch story enough times to recite it backwards!), but I didn’t know anything really about it. Right from the moment the Doctor arrives in this new world, we’re given lots of hints about this place. From the poster on the wall of his lab – ‘Unity is Strength’, a phrase which instantly says ‘totalitarian regime’ to anyone who’s read Orwell’s 1984 - to the odd symbols on the door of the lab. Even the Doctor lingers to give both a puzzled look, making sure that we get plenty of opportunities to take it all in.

(While I’m on the subject, there’s another one of those ridiculous things that I want to praise. The symbol stuck to the door of the ‘lab’ is all battered up. Now, I know it’s simply because the BBC props men have been lugging it around for a while before sticking it up onto the door, but it has the effect of making it look like the sign has been there for ages. I know it’s a stupid thing to draw attention to, but I’d not have been surprised to find that everything added to the sets to denote them as being from the parallel world looked brand new…)

We’re given lots of beautiful dialogue between the Doctor and the Brigade Leader to help establish the kind of world we’ve ended up in, too. My favourite is possibly the moment that the Brigadier describes the ‘Republic’ and the Doctor asks what’s happened to the Royal Family. He’s cut off mid sentence, simply told that they were executed. All of them.'

Perhaps my absolute favourite piece of dialogue from today's episode - possibly from the season so far - is the Brigade Leader's response to the Doctor's protests that he 'doesn't exist' in this world - 'then you won't feel the bullets when we shoot you.' Brilliant!

 a

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

Day 280: Inferno, Episode Two

Dear diary,

There’s a danger that I’m just going to end up repeating myself here, but frankly I’m so surprised by it that it really does bear repeating – I’m finding myself completely won over by the Third Doctor. I spoke yesterday about the fact that he was so willing to use UNIT as a way of getting access to the drilling project simply so that he could steal power (and let’s be honest, that’s exactly what he’s doing!) and try to get the TARDIS working again.

I really love the idea that he only works with UNIT because he’s stuck on Earth and he needs something to be doing. Today’s episode makes it almost quite dark – there’s a very real danger that everyone on this drilling project could be dead before long. There’s at least one person roaming the site murdering for no apparent reason. The Doctor has seen the effect of getting to close to those people who are infected (though he follows a primordial UNIT soldier across the gangways for a while, then seemingly forgets all about this!), and knows the danger of drilling down this deep – heck they’ve already come close to wiping themselves out.

And yet when Professor Stahlman cuts his power and manages to dispose of the computer circuit before the Brigadier can be alerted to the danger the man poses… the Doctor simply leaves. He announces that he could be doing something better with his time anyway, and heads off to tinker with the TARDIS some more. He even goes as far as to lie to Liz simply to get her out of the way while he makes a runner. It really does feel like a return to the personality that Hartnell’s Doctor had right back at the very beginning, when he was willing to kidnap people just to stop them revealing the secret of the TARDIS, or endanger them all to satisfy his own curiosity. I’m imagining that the Doctor will mellow and grow to accept his current lot (I always remember him as enjoying his time with UNIT, but maybe that’s simply my lack of affinity with this era), but for now it’s creating a really interesting dynamic.

It works pretty well when you give Pertwee some great guest characters to play off, too. He really works brilliantly opposite Olaf Pooley as Stahlman, and you can quite easily believe that the pair would wind each other up no end. Even Nick Courtney, who’s always on the top of his game, seems to be turning in an especially good performance here. The only problem I’ve got with the cast is that every time Christopher Benjamin turns up on screen, I find myself loudly saying ‘Henry Gordon Jago!’ to an empty room, especially having finished the Sixth Season of Jago & Litefoot just this morning.

This feels like a good time to heap some praise on Caroline John, too, considering that this is her last story. Liz has always been one of those companions I’ve never really had much time for. She’s only in four stories (Well, five if you count The Five Doctors, I suppose), and they’re from this era of the programme that I’ve never paid that much attention to. Up until this story, I was more-or-less ready to claim that – despite how good she might be – Liz wasn’t really a companion. She’s far more independent than a companion would usually be, and she’s really got her own life outside of the Doctor.

I think it’s helped by the whole format of Season Seven. Because the Doctor and Liz are having all their adventures within comfortable driving distance from London, you get the impression that Liz goes home to her flat at the end of each day, while the Doctor spends his time underneath St Pancras station, trying to kick start the TARDIS. When this story started, I was going to concede my point and suggest that maybe she was a companion, simply on the basis that she’s his friend, and he’s specifically asked her to help with his escape attempt (there’s implication in Episode One of this story that she’s been helping him with these ‘experiments’ for a while). As it is, though, he’s simply using her – he needs that extra knowledge on hand if he’s in with any chance of making the console work, and he’s willing to get her out of the way if he thinks she’ll get in the way of him making a break for it.

I’m going to keep the jury out on Liz’s companion status for the rest of this story, but I’m glad that there’s a new depth to it. Just like the new slightly morally ambiguous Doctor, it’s a fresh dynamic for the programme, and it’s really helped to freshen things up following the trend of companions all being a bit samey towards the end of the 1960s (no matter how much I ended up loving Zoe!)

 a

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

Day 279: Inferno, Episode One

Dear diary,

'This isn't an oil rig,' Petra points out early in this episode. What they're drilling for isn't anything like North Sea gas, we're later told. And yet… I'm watching Fury From the Deep! There's the drilling project, a mysterious substance from the deep, a person in charge who's adamant that the project can't be shut down (there it was because Robson didn't want to ruin his record for continuous drilling, while here Professor Stahlman doesn't want any delays to the schedule.) As if there were any doubt left, we get the first appearance of the Sonic Screwdriver in a Third Doctor story*!

And yet, whereas Fury From the Deep bored me at the time, being made up of so many elements that we'd seen too recently, here it feels like greeting some old friends, and I'm actually excited by them! That's not to say that Inferno isn't showing signs of repetition - there's a number of elements present in this episode that seem to be cropping up a lot during Season Seven, but I don't think I've had time to grow weary of them yet.

I think what's interested me the most about all this is the way that the Doctor and the brigadier interact with each other. During Doctor Who and the Silurians, I praised the way that they didn't exactly see eye-to-eye over how to deal with the threat. They were a bit more chummy in the last story (though only just), but they still don't seem to be the best of friends here. While I think they do respect each other, they're more 'colleagues' than 'friends'.

The way the Doctor strolls into the Brigadier's makeshift office suggests that the pair haven't seen each other for a little while. The same scene goes on to confirm that while Liz may 'have the misfortune of working for [UNIT]', the Doctor is a 'free agent'. The implication at the end of Spearhead From Space was very much that the Doctor was going to be employed on a permanent basis to the organisation - he even got Bessie as a company car! - but here we get to find out a little more about their arrangement.

I rather like the idea that he's not simply tied to working for the Brigadier, and that he's simply using UNIT as an excuse to get access into this drilling project. It gives the Doctor a kind of selfish edge that we've not seen much of since right back in the early days of Season One. There was a flash of it at the very start of Pertwee's tenure, when he tries to take off in the TARDIS during the Nestene invasion, but I thought that had all died down by now.

I'm also finding more and more that I love his outfit. I've never really thought all that much about the Third Doctor's costume - it's always been a lot of different coloured velvet jackets and capes for me - but it really does suit him in this season. There's a point when it's described as 'fancy dress', but he does cut a very definite figure amongst all the other people in the control room. I'm hoping that I'll keep being drawn to it when we start seeing all the variants creep in.

It's becoming apparent that Pertwee seems to have a particular clause in his contract, though. Every story of the season has given him an opportunity to gurn away, and today's episode is no exception. Having said that, the scene where he's thrown into the 'limbo' and the image distorts as he seemingly cries with pain is really effective - it's putting him into another situation we're not used to seeing, and making the threat seem very apparent. Forget the werewolves running around and killing people - it's the Doctor's own experiments which are causing the danger right now…

*Yeah, yeah, I know he doesn't call it the Sonic Screwdriver (he actually says 'it's only a door handle'), but we all know that it is…

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

Day 278: The Ambassadors of Death, Episode Seven

Dear diary,

One of the ways that I've been trying to keep myself amused though out this story is trying to figure out which - if any - of the characters might be working for Torchwood. It was always going to be tricky when the series introduced the Torchwood Institute. An organisation created in the Victorian era, with objectives to defend the Earth, scavenge technology for the good of the British Empire, and to capture the Doctor if he ever set foot back on british soil. An organisation which, presumably, was on the hunt for the Doctor during the time he spent trapped on Earth, and working for an organisation pretty similar to theirs.

During The Web of Fear, I picked out the member of Torchwood based solely on the fact that he had an outrageously strong Welsh accent, and was acting a little bit shifty. For The Ambassadors of Death, I've decided that General Carrington is our man from the rival organisation, at least in part. He's spent the last few episodes banging on about his 'moral duty' and seems determined to shoot down the alien vessel in case it poses some kind of threat to the planet - it's a stave that's pretty in keeping with Torchwood's appearances from Series Two of the modern series.

We also get plenty of references to the fact that he's gone off the deep end and is quite possibly mad. Therefore, I'm choosing to believe that he was placed on Mars Probe Six as part of some Torchwood mission (maybe to put some kind of tracking equipment up in orbit? I can't say I've given it that much thought), but instead ended up in contact with the race from which our titular Ambassadors hail. His exposure to them has somewhat warped his mind, meaning that he's gone rogue from Torchwood and decided to use them to unveil aliens to the world via the live TV broadcast we see in this episode - ready then to have their ship obliterated. He's taken away at the end of the story, presumably to be court-marshalled by whoever's in charge of the Institute.

Mind you, I'd be a bit sceptical about having him led away by a single soldier. It has to be said that based on this story alone - UNIT are rubbish. I've already commented about that scene from the first episode in which they're caught up in a big fight and seem to be doing pretty badly for the most part, but today they gat another chase at a shoot-out… and they still muck it up! Their enemy is out of ammunition. They've surrendered. They're still able to over power the two soldiers and drag the fight on that little bit longer.

The only one to come out from all this well is the Brigadier, who does look quite impressive when he's right in the middle of a battle. Nicholas Courtney has a specific 'look' (you know the one), and it just seems to fit in brilliantly. I've not had much chance to praise him since we moved into colour, so it's nice to see him getting some of the action in this story.

On the whole, I'm sorry to say that I'm just really disappointed by The Ambassadors of Death. Having enjoyed the last story so much more than I thought I would, this had the potential to be a real winner. Inferno is another one of those ones that I know precious little about, apart from the fact that it's got a supposedly golden reputation. here's hoping it can win me back round after this one…

 a

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

Day 277: The Ambassadors of Death, Episode Six

Dear diary,

So there we have it! The truth about General Carrington! The problem is, I'd been sort of guessing this for a while, now, and it's not the most interesting of reveals. On the plus side, it does seem to even out my debate as to how many different groups there are working together - it looks like it is three, but Carrington works for one and is the shady paymaster of another.

Still, even if the reveal isn't the most interesting thing the series has ever given us, the cliffhanger itself is pretty good. The Doctor's often threatened at gunpoint (has already has been in this story), but the gun isn't usually so close to the Doctor's nose!

I'm sorry to say that I'm still not massively enjoying The Ambassadors of Death. Things have picked up a bit today, but I think my interest dropped too long ago - it's too much of an up-hill climb to try and get back into it now. For a while, when the Doctor was taken aboard the giant clam and encountered the astronauts all safe and well, I did think that things were going to start turning around for me. It was fresh, it was exciting, but then, it was right back down to Earth, so we could carry on with the story at a snail's pace once more.

Something I do have to wonder about this story could potentially be opening a bit of a can of worms. I'll be discussing the actual placement of the UNIT stories further down the line, once I've seen enough of them to make up my mind properly, but The Ambassadors of Death seems to be the first real hint we've had that this isn't as contemporary as I might like to think.

At the time, the Doctor Who production team intended that the Third Doctor's adventures would be taking place in the near future. The Radio Times write up for The Invasion specified the story as taking place in 1975, which would put these tales in the late 1970s at the earliest. Aside from a few bits of equipment seen in the last few stories, I've not had any real reason to assume that the stories aren't simply set an the time of broadcast, but today we've got a full on British Space Programme!

I'd be tempted to simply say that in the Doctor Who universe, things are a little different to the way that they are in the real world, but by the time of The Christmas Invasion we're sending probes up to Mars that are nowhere near as advanced as the manned missions we're seeing here - and they're now on the seventh one! I'm not going to be opening the big can of worms today, but I am wondering what people generally think on the subject - are the UNIT stories set at the time of broadcast or are they set later?

Leave a comment, or head over to the 50 Year Diary Facebook page and let me know - I'll be discussing it all at some point, I'm sure!

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

Day 276: The Ambassadors of Death, Episode Five

Dear diary,

'Can't you hurry it up a bit?' the Doctor snaps as he sits awaiting his trip into space. I think that's a fairly good line to sum up this whole story. Things have shifted a bit for me now - I'm no longer simply failing to connect with The Ambassadors of Death, I'm actively bored by it, and that's not something that you ever want to say about an episode of Doctor Who.

As we counted down to the Doctor's lift-off, I quickly assumed that today's cliffhanger would be a shot of him heading away from the planet. No. Then we started to get some sabotage, so I figured that maybe it would be a closing shot of the Space Centre finding out about the interference. No. Maybe it would be the moment of blast off, but with the rocket exploding? No. Oh, but they can't steer the ship via remote control and the Doctor could end up shot into the sun! That must be the cliffhanger! Nope. 'We don't really know what's in there,' Cornish warns the Doctor as he moves to enter the Mars probe. Right then, the cliffhanger must surely be that the probe is empty? No! We may never know, because all of a sudden there's an unidentified object closing in on the Doctor at high speed - and it's going to hit!

It's not so much the fact that the cliffhanger is sudden and from nowhere, bur more that it felt as though it took forever to actually get to one. It's almost as though The Ambassadors of Death has the ability to actually warp and slow down time around it.

Oh, ok, that's not entirely fair. There are a few things to like about today's episode. For a start, the 'astronaut' looming over the Doctor in Sir James' office really does look pretty sinister. I don't know what it is about a space suit - that odd mixture of something so familiar and yet still very alien - that really works for a Doctor Who story. It's no wonder that Steven Moffat has used them on a few occasions to inject fear into the series, be it with a skeleton inside or simply someone capable of 'killing' the Doctor.

And then we've got the return of Benton for the first time since The Invasion. He'll become a regular fixture in UNIT over the next few years, so it's perhaps odd that I've not actually noted his absence from the last two stories. All the same, it's nice to have him back, and looking after Doctor Lennox so well. I'm pleased to see the return of Cyril Shaps to the series, too, considering he was in The Tomb of the Cybermen, still my favourite story. When he first appeared a few days ago, I instantly saw him as Viner from the other story, but I've taken to him as Lennox now. His fear in the cell is very real, and you can’t help but feel for him. The idea of sitting down to dinner and finding an isotope waiting for him is striking, too, though I do hope he gets to have a chat with the Brigadier (unlikely, I think!)

 a

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

Day 275: The Ambassadors of Death, Episode Four

Dear diary,

Back during The Invasion, there's a point where the Brigadier has to go to a government official to ask permission before he can send the troops in to take control of International Electromatics. Tobias Vaughn gets there first, though, and the minister he needs to speak to has already been won over (read: 'blackmailed') to side with the Cybermen. I very nearly commented at the time that wished the Brigadier had to spend more time with the government during the Pertwee era, because it would make it more 'real' or something. I specifically thought of it comparing to the Big Finish series Counter Measures, featuring the team from Remembrance of the Daleks. They answer directly to a member of the government - Sir Toby - who can at best be described as 'shady'. It's a great dynamic, and one I'd love to have in the UNIT years.

I'm glad I didn't actually say anything, though, because I'd have looked like a complete fool! In every one of the Season Seven stories so far, our heroes have come up against a 'higher power' in one form or another. In Spearhead From Space it's Major General Scobie (or, rather, an Auton replica of him). Doctor Who and the Silurians marks the first - and last - appearance of Masters. This story gives us Sir James Quinlan who, much like our character from The Invasion is working for the other side (or is he? More on that in a minute…)

What I'm realising through all this is just how little I actually know about this period of Doctor Who's history. I can rattle off the big, obvious facts in no time, but the intricate details of the story… not a clue. On the whole, I think it seems to be working to the Pertwee era's advantage - there's plenty of room for me to be pleasantly surprised by things as I go along, almost entirely uncoloured by years of knowledge building up in my head.

It's not doing much to save The Ambassadors of Death for me, I'm afraid. Try as I might, I just can't get into the story. It's not helped by the fact that I have absolutely no idea what's going on. For a start, I've lost track of wether there's two or three different organisations at work (I'd settled on three at the start of today's episode, but now I'm back to thinking that there's just two), and I'm not sure wether all the 'contagious radiation' stuff from yesterday was just an excuse to throw UNIT off the scent or not. The Doctor seems to imply here that it's a load of old nonsense, but I'm sure it was talked about a lot in scenes that didn't feature him - or any of his colleagues.

I'm also finding that things are moving just that bit too slow for my liking. I've just sat through the entire 1960s era - large chunks of which no longer exist to watch! - but this may be the most leisurely pace we've seen in a long time. At various points during Doctor Who and the Silurians, I commented that the fast cutting between scenes, losing chunks of time in the process gave the impression that there was more than enough story for the seven-week running time, but this tale seems to be having just the opposite effect.

Today, Liz manages to escape from her captivity only to be picked up as a hitch-hiker by a man heading back where she's just come from, and one who knows that she's not supposed to be out and about. The scene isn't a total waste - it gives us an opportunity to see that Doctor Lennox isn't completely siding with the 'baddies' - but it does feel like that typical 'Episode Three Syndrome' of capture and escape.

Now that I'm past the half way point, I'm hoping things might start to pick up a little. I've been enjoying the series so much this far, and I'd hate for The Ambassadors of Death to be the black sheep of the season…

 Day 274: The Ambassadors of Death, Episode Three

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

Day 274: The Ambassadors of Death, Episode Three

Dear diary,

I'm beginning to get a sinking feeling that The Ambassadors of Death will be this Season's slightly duff story for me. It's a shame, really, because there's a lot in here that I think I should be really lapping up, but it's all just falling a bit flat. It doesn't help that the quality of the picture is one of the worst that we've seen from the series - even the film sequences are murky and don't give the best of impressions. There are a few shots during the end-of-episode chase that could almost make my eyes hurt!

And yet, they really are going with it on the action sequences for this story, aren't they? We had the big warehouse shootout in Episode One, the stealing of the recovery capsule in Episode Two, and today we get Liz in a chase, first in Bessie and then by foot. The cynic in me wants to say that it's a good way of them padding out the running time of the story to help fill out the full seven episodes, but maybe they just wanted to go for lots of these big locations scenes? Again, I'm brought back to a bit of a disappointment with the quality of the picture. Were I able to enjoy these scenes in the kind of crystal-clear quality offered in Spearhead From Space, I might be enjoying the tale more. As it is, I'm left feeling as though they're just sort of there. I'm told that the DVD release is a marked improvement on the picture used for the VHS release of the story, too, so perhaps it's a good thing I never bothered to watch that particular tape!

Behind the scenes, The Ambassadors of Death had something of a troubled journey to the screen. I won't go into all the details of the many script revisions, but the overall outcome is that David Whitaker ended up being paid for the first three episodes, and then then rest of the story was tidies up by a mixture of Malcolm Hulke, Terrance Dicks, and Trevor Ray. This means that although Whitaker will receive a credit for another four episodes, this is his last major contribution to televised Doctor Who.

It's quite a momentous occasion - the man has been a part of the series since pretty much day one, script editing the first year-and-a-bit of the programme, and going on to write several key episodes after that. Let's not forget - Whitaker is the man responsible for The Power of the Daleks, and helping to ease in the new Doctor for the first time.

Fitting, therefore, that this story should contain what can nobly be called 'dubious science'. And that's putting it mildly. It's always been quite fun to watch Whitaker's conception of science though out his time with the show, but here it's even commented on by the characters in the story. 'What you're saying is contrary to everything that is understood about radiation' we're told early on, as the 'truth' about the astronauts is revealed. As the episode progresses, Liz and the Doctor both join in when pointing out the slight absurdity of what's going on. As I say, it's very suitable that Whitaker should depart from the series with such questionable stuff going on - I wouldn't have it any other way!

 a

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

Day 273, The Ambassadors of Death, Episode Two

Dear diary,

“The Ambassadors of Death, a thriller for television in seven parts by David Whitaker (sort of)”

Right the way through today's episode, I had a nagging suspicion in the back of my mind that I'd seen it before. I couldn't figure out for the life of me where, or how, and I'd definitely not seen Episode One, or any of the ones that followed this. Then it struck me - this is the first episode of The Quatermass Experiment!

Space shuttle goes up, contact is lost, the shuttle crashes back down (here it's in the middle of a remote location which might as well be the same one from the previous story, in Quatermass it demolishes a house in London), and it turns out that some of the crew are missing. In fairness, we don't yet know that our crew aren't in this shuttle, but they've not been getting any response from inside, and when they do finally manage to make contact, it's just the same message being repeated over and over again. Still, Doctor Who hasn't ever been afraid to 'borrow' ideas from other well-regarded places, and Quatermass is a pretty good template to have in mind when you consider the Seventh Season. I'd be willing to bet money that the production team had this in mind when planning this story.

I'm not really sure what to make of this one so far. Yesterday left me thinking that we were in for another serious drama with elements of comedy injected in all the right places. People insist on calling the stories of Season Seven 'gritty', and it's hard not to simply use that term. Today, the tone has been a bit all over the place. Early on, the Doctor pulls a conjuring trick to hide the recording, and simply pops it back into existence when the time is right. He describes it to Liz as being simple 'transmigration of an object', but the whole thing threw me completely. It was comical, but it just felt very out of place.

We then settled back down for some more (sigh) 'gritty' action, in which the Doctor tricks their prisoner into revealing that he's a member of the military (and it's very well done. It's similar in style to the way that Troughton forced his way into the prison during The War Games, and yet it feels perhaps even more authoritarian when it comes from Pertwee), and then we're treated to a long dialogue-free sequence in which UNIT get the recently returned capsule onto a convoy, before getting ambushed and loosing the thing.

What follows is an odd sequence in which Pertwee puts on a funny voice (it's what he was best known for at the time he started playing the Doctor, so it was bound to come up sooner or later. It does have to be said that he really was the master of voices), and tricks two men into being stuck to his car. It feels a bit slapstick again when they can't remove their hands (as does the button to activate this strange mechanism), and it jolted me right back out of the action again. Before you know it, we're back at the base and given an eerie cliffhanger in which they've finally made contact with the people they hope to be inside the capsule, and are treated to the same message playing on repeat.

I just don't know what to do with any of this. Doctor Who is usually very good at blending comedy with drama (Troughton was a dab hand at doing it - scripted or not!), but here it seems that we can have either one or the other. I'm hoping that it's simply a bit of a blip and the story can settle down and pick which way it wants to lean from now on, so I can try to get my head around it!

The one bit of comedy that I did really enjoy today is the emergence of a running joke about Bessie. The Doctor was patching her up at the start of the last story, and she'd broken down by the time that tale was over. Today, it seems to be in another questionable condition and even the Brigadier makes a joke about it ('I'll see you at the Space Centre. If you can make it'). I quite like the idea that even though the Doctor's gotten hold of his dream car now, it's just not reliable enough to keep him going. But it can stick people to the bodywork .Yep.