Following on for the recent colourization of the Second Doctor's swansong aventure; The War Games, the BBC iPlayer has now added it to their library!

Originally aired in 1969, The War Games marked the end of an era for the Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton), following him and his companions Zoe and Jamie as they land in a battlefield that appears to be a World War I military zone—but all is not as it seems. They soon discover that soldiers from different historical periods have been abducted and are being manipulated in a cruel game. As they work to uncover the mystery behind the War Lord and his twisted experiments, the Doctor faces one of his most difficult challenges.

For the first time, these original episodes have been meticulously colourised and enhanced with updated visual effects edited into a new, 90-minute feature-length experience to appeal to today’s modern audiences. With updated sound and a new score, this newly updated version of The War Games offers both fans and newcomers even more ways to watch the much-loved classic story.

In addition, the episode also features the Second Doctor's never-before-seen regeneration into the Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee), alongside recovered footage not seen since the original broadcast.

+  WATCH The War Games on the BBC iPlayer, here.

[Source: BBC iPlayer]

My Name is Barry Aldridge - I'm a Doctor Who fan, born and raised in Forest Hill, London. I also have autism. I am 35 years old and working part-time as a retail assistant (at the time of writing this). I moved out of London when I was 23, and lived in Brighton for 3 months, before moving to West Sussex, to a small town called Goring By Sea, where I live to this day.

I have been a Doctor Who fan since 1988. I can remember watching my first ever story when I was just 5 years old; Remembrance Of The Daleks. I recall the first episode cliffhanger, and my love for the Daleks began. The reason we watched was because my Mum didn’t want to watch Coronation Street (which was on at the same time), and, looking back, I'm so glad she made that decision! To me, the Daleks will always hold a special place, no matter what. It is their design by the late Raymond Cusick that was so iconic and memorable. I can see why people call them pepper pots, even though I never did call them pepper pots, myself.

I remember watching the rest of the season which included The Happiness Patrol which featured the Candyman, who freaked the hell out of me! I was glad he got dealt with by the end. Silver Nemesis was actually filmed near me in a town called Arundel. As for The Greatest Show In The Galaxy, I found that a bit weird as a five year old, but as an adult, I find it rather enjoyable now.

The next season of the show featured Battlefield, the confusing Ghost Light and two true favourites; The Curse Of Fenric and Survival. By the end of 1989 I thought it was coming back and then there was nothing... My Mum had bought VHS Tapes of the show from both the Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker years, and I loved all the stories. Nowadays, I have every single story - organised from outstanding to poor stories (in my view) - but hey, that's just my opinion!

I really loved the theme music, which I found mysterious, scary and generally wonderful to listen to - especially with McCoy’s era, which made feel like I was going into outer space for a big adventure.

Around 1990 there was a weekend where they showed, for the first time in a long time, the black and white episodes - and I loved them! I will admit that I found the first Dalek story a bit long - particularly the bits without the Daleks, which were a bit boring, but watching it years later, I love it. It was during that weekend that I truly fell in love with my favourite Doctor of all time; Patrick Troughton.

In 1993 I watched all the colour stories on UK Gold, which was a real gem. I would start watching at 7am, as some of the earlier Pertwee stories were longer as they were 7-parters.

In 1998, I have to admit that I fell out of love with Doctor Who for a bit, as GCSEs and other things in my life took over, but in 2005 I once again had to thank my Mum as she had watched the new series and told me to "give it a chance". I did, and at that moment, I was back in love with the show. I particularly loved Episode 6, Dalek, by Robert Shearman who actually shares the same birthday as me and Peter Purves. That’s something that being autistic can do; allowing me to build knowledge and remember even the smallest of facts that maybe others would forget.

I first got my diagnosis for autism when I was 3 years old, which, back then was more like an underground movement (like going to a rave club). All good in the hood in my book. I finally found out that I had it, probably around the age of 7 onwards, when I moved from a special school to a mainstream primary school.

Autism has really good and bad points to it. Normally people start with the good then go for the bad, but I'm going to start from the other way around.

When you talk about the show and there are sometimes disagreements, other people wouldn’t give me the time to explain my side and think I am very slow on getting through. It can normally be tricky, but luckily there are fans who are understanding. I can feel quite nervous at conventions, which can be really tricky as noise and lighting can be distracting and trigger a meltdown, which some people find really hard to understand. People wonder why I am having a meltdown and think I am mentally ill and should be locked up. I can also find the number of people at the conventions tough to deal with. I know some people who have had breakdowns owing to the crowds. It happened to me once, but I made sure I quickly got somewhere quiet to relax myself.

I would get anxious about time slots on whether it is a photo shoot or meeting one of the stars of the show. It was / is really important to me to make sure I get everything right. I know some people will see it as a selfish attitude but I call it being prepared and making sure I am on time. Autistic people I know, like to keep up with time and if they are late it can cause a meltdown.

One other downside is that I may not be able to understand certain forms of humour - if explained, then I would be alright, but a few fans can have trouble understanding that.

Now onto the good side of being autistic! You can build a real encyclopaedic knowledge of the show - for example, I know which stories were directed by Barry Letts, or how many episodes Tom Baker did (not stories but individual episodes to every single story he did). I can recall, at a moments notice, who did the music on each show and can even pick out which instruments were used at different times. I can even spot a reference to a certain time in another episode. There are a lot of autistic Doctor Who fans too who are the same and you can have a really good chat - especially talking about good and bad episodes of the show.

Every time I have met someone who has worked on the show, they have always been incredibly welcoming. Conventions or museums like the Doctor Who Experience in Cardiff and other places in Brighton and London were brilliant and very calming atmospheres - especially the Cardiff place which is no longer there, sadly. I think that conventions have improved over the years where there is more understanding for everyone, whatever condition you may have, and I think that is a wonderful thing. There is always going to be a negative that could overshadow the event but I never think of it for long and move on and focus on the positives.

Organising merchandise from the show is really important to me; like putting magazines, books, CDs and DVDs in order - that helps me to be calm! When I was younger, I would make sure to put the stories whether DVD or Blu-Ray, in order, so then I know which one to get down to watch. If it was messed around I would have a bit of meltdown.

Being a fan of the Daleks, I would love to collect anything Dalek related - it was like a mission, and autistic people love missions - or at least the ones I know, do - lol.

Every autistic person is different; not every autistic Doctor Who fan has the same favourites - we are different like everyone else, but the one thing we all have in common - autism or no autism - is our love and passion for the show. Whether we agree or disagree on certain doctors, stories, writers and so on, the one thing we can all agree upon is that we love Doctor Who.

Barry

+ Follow @BarryAldridge on Twitter!
+ Follow @DrWhoOnline on Twitter!

[Source: DWO]

In a first for a UK television programme the new BBC Worldwide animated version of Doctor Who: The Power Of The Daleks is to be premiered live and exclusively on Twitter via Periscope at 17:50pm on Saturday 5^th November, 50 years to the minute after the original version of the programme was first transmitted on BBC One in 1966.

Fans around the world will be able to watch an exclusive live streaming of the first three minutes of the first episode of the new animation on the @BBCStore Twitter account at 17:50pm this Saturday and UK residents will also be able to purchase all six episodes of the animation from www.bbcstore.com and on DVD from Monday 21^st November.

Doctor Who: The Power Of The Daleks is one of the Doctor’s most celebrated adventures but the original tapes were destroyed and no copies exist.

In September this year BBC Worldwide announced a brand new black and white animation based on audio recordings of the programme using the original cast, surviving photographs and film clips which will be released 50 years to the minute after its only UK broadcast on BBC One.

The six half hour episodes feature the regeneration, or as it was then called ‘renewal’, of First Doctor William Hartnell into Second Doctor Patrick Troughton, as the Time Lord and his companions Polly (Anneke Wills) and Ben (Michael Craze) do battle with the Daleks on the planet Vulcan.

Doctor Who: The Power of the Daleks is being produced by the team behind the highly successful animation of lost Dad’s Army episode A Stripe For Frazer, first released on BBC Store in February this year. The producer and director is Charles Norton, with character designs from acclaimed comic book artists Martin Geraghty and Adrian Salmon.

Jonathan Green, Director, BBC Store says:

“BBC Store is proud to be working with Twitter to bring fans this UK first. This episode broke the mould with the recasting of the Doctor and it’s still thrilling audiences in new ways today.”

Rhidian Bragg, Head of Sales, Consumer Products, BBC Worldwide says:

“We’re really excited to be able to bring fans a Doctor Who adventure that they thought they’d never see. The animation looks amazing and is a fantastic addition to our catalogue of classic Doctor Who titles.”

Georgina Parnell, Head of Entertainment Partnerships, Twitter said:

“Doctor Who is a global phenomenon and by broadcasting The Power of the Daleks live on Periscope, fans from across the world will - for the first time - be able to join together and watch it at the same moment, exactly 50 years to the minute since the very first episode aired in 1966. Even the Doctor couldn't have predicted that...could he?!”

+  The Power Of The Daleks is released on 15th November (DVD), priced £20.42.
+  PREORDER The Power Of The Daleks DVD from Amazon.co.uk for just £13.50!
+  Discuss all the Doctor Who DVD releases in the DWO Forums.

[Source: BBC Worldwide]

Doctor Who fandom is amazing! We're lucky enough to hold some of the most creative and inventive fans around (it's no wonder it's the Doctor Who fans who end up running the series) - and two such fans have created something a little bit special for those of us who love the classic series.

Christopher Thomson and Siobhan Gallichan have produced an unofficial Minisode titled 'The Glimpse', featuring the 1st and 2nd Doctors, with, perhaps, the finest impersonations you have ever heard of William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton, respectively.

Synopsis:
The Doctor and Jamie accidentally slip into another, rather familiar, time zone.

DWO caught up with Christopher and Siobhan to discuss the project.

Christopher Thomson discusses the genesis of the story:

"I've been an impressionist for many years, but aside from making people laugh for a moment, I wanted to go further. Michael Sheen is no Rory Bremner. And Patrick Troughton was an obvious choice.

I adored his Doctor, but also himself as an actor. I've watched many of his work that I could, and the more I read about his background made me more interested in him. In fact, I want to make a biographic film of his life after Who. If there's a real person I wanted to play in a film, like Sheen, then it would be Pat.

There sadly isn't much of Pat's Doctor we can watch. I've listened to the audio-books of his missing adventures, which is sadly half a performance, but you can vision in your head how great he was. I wanted to keep working on the voice to try and bring that enjoyment in new adventures. My aim was for people to sit back, listen to Patrick. Not me. And judging from the wonderful response I've had... I think I've succeeded.

I'm always working on the performance with each attempt. I don't want to disrespect his family or people who knew him. So I'm constantly learning and improving. Anything to keep Patrick Troughton going, and show the many fans the wonders of the Second Doctor that they've sadly missed.

The Glimpse came to be after Siobhan's fantastic suggestion late one night, which I immediately fell in love with. If I could bring back the Second Doctor, then why not have him meet the First (beautifully performed by SIobhan!)? Combined with telesnaps, which were fun to use, it really gave it that missing episode feel - almost as if Loose Canon had reconstructed an actual recorded episode!

I'm immensely happy and ecstatic with the response it's had. I'm a pessimist, and it's really shown me I should believe in myself more. I couldn't have done it without Siobhan, and she has been remarkable. 

I also voiced Jamie (for the first time) and have heard very little comments regarding it, which is pleasing!"

Siobhan Gallichan discusses working with Christopher and tackling the 1st Doctor:

"Whilst not as acomplished as Chris, I leapt at the chance to work with him. His script was very sympathetic and true to the characters. When I read it I imagined it being done as a charity thing - maybe for the Blue Peter Appeal, 1968, where Hartnell comes back - ill, but having the time of his life. Hence him sounding so happy. Like Chris, I too would very much like to work for Big Finish: as a new First Doctor in my case. We have been overwhelmed by the support and good wishes we have recieved for The Glimpse. And I'm sure that we'll do more..."

Watch 'The Glimpse' in the player, below:
[youtube:0sMd10WDOcw]
[Source: Siobhan Gallichan]

 a

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

Day 352: The Web of Fear, Episode Six (Revisited)

Dear diary,

When I first watched this episode, I was a little bit disappointed. Having worked my way through the tangled tunnels of the London Underground, the solution to the story came in as fairly simple on the whole, and very similar to the resolution of The Evil of the Daleks, which hadn’t been all that long ago at the time.

Part of my issue was that the Doctor’s plan in both these stories boiled down to him crossing some wires on the bad guy’s machinery, and taking control of a few ‘foot soldiers’ to do battle for him. I think – as with several elements of these recently recovered stories – being able to see the action has really helped.

Seeing the Yetis turn on each other and begin to fight is actually very effective, and there’s a sense of scale to this episode that’s you don’t really think about when listening to the narrated soundtrack of the story. Until now, only the Covent Garden battle has felt like it escapes the claustrophobia of the tunnels (even the scenes in the Goodge Street bunker have felt cramped and oppressive), but this final episode is filled with a lot more space. Almost as a way of showing this off, they pack the final shots with as many characters as they can – at one point the screen contains the figures of the Doctor, Jamie, Victoria, The Colonel, Anne, Professor Travers, Chorley, and Staff Sergeant Arnold. It’s not the biggest cast we’ve ever had in the show, but it’s a pretty impressive one.

It’s tricky, in this final episode, so say anything much else new or original. I spent six entries praising the story first time around, and all I have to add now is how brilliant the visuals are now that we can properly see them.

If anything, the best thing has simply been the opportunity to watch nine episodes of Patrick Troughton-era Doctor Who that we thought were lost forever. You may have noticed that since The 50 Year Diary reached the 1970s, my average scores have taken a bit of a dip. While I’m enjoying the Pertwee years more than I’d thought I would, it’s still just not doing it for me in the same way that the 1960s episodes did. Getting the chance to dip back into the Troughton years for a bit has been wonderful.

And it’s come along at just the right time. I’m starting to find myself getting a little bit nostalgic for the older episodes again. Maybe it’s having our two former Doctors back again for The Three Doctors the other week, but I’m starting to get a real hankering to watch some of the stories that I’ve already been through. Perhaps oddly, I’m really keen to pop in The Keys of Marinus - and I’ve no idea why!

I’ve absolutely no doubt that there’s more missing episodes out there waiting to be discovered, and that’s all part of the fun.

 a

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

Hello all – it’s Will from the future here! For me, it’s Day 374, and I’ve travelled back to tweak this entry, so that you can actually read my revised thoughts on The Web of Fear Episode Five. You see, somehow, this entry of The 50 Year Diary is our very own ‘missing episode’ (and how fitting that it should be for a recently recovered story!)

When I write up the Diary, I do so into an app on my computer designed for diary writing. The idea of it amuses me. The entries are then copied across to the Doctor Who Online website, where they’re formatted, the little sidebar images are added and then they go live for you to see. I go to bed, and when I get up the next morning, it’s time for another episode of Doctor Who.

But somehow, I’ve managed to completely wipe the original posting of this episode. I managed to write over it with another copy of Episode Six. Thankfully, a few readers tweeted and emailed to point out the error, so I headed to my diary app… to find a blank post where Episode Five should be. Lost in the Time Vortex! No idea what I’ve done with it – completely vanished. Luckily, though, all my notes for the episodes are neatly filed away (by which I mean when I run out of room on a bit of paper, I shove it in the cupboard with all the rest), and once you’ve written an entry, you can usually remember what you’d said.

So! With apologies for the delay…

Day 351: The Web of Fear, Episode Five (Revisited)

Dear diary,

The biggest problem with doing a Doctor Who marathon and blogging about it so publicly (The Doctor Who Online News Page receives upwards of 30,000 unique page views every day) is that I can sometimes feel a bit… silly. Not only because - just over 350 days in - I continue to assume that people actually want to read my thoughts on these episodes, but because I sometimes wonder if I should be saying something a bit more meaningful about them. There's several Doctor Who blogs out there on the web that really delve into detail on the series, and analyse each story from a new and unique perspective. I've several books on my shelf that do just the same thing.

And yet, having watched The Web of Fear Episode Five today, the only thing I can think to say is how good the effect at the end looks, when the fungus bursts its way into the base. I don’t recall it making all that much of an effect on me when I first went through this episode (indeed, checking back to my previous entry, I didn’t mention it. A quick look at the tele snaps makes it clear that it’s not all that impressive looking there).

It seems like such a ridiculously silly thing, but the moment the fungus pushes over a table is a highlight. It’s such a simple and uneventful thing but it suddenly makes the fungus look unstoppable. Maybe it’s because it’s so mundane that it holds impact? Or maybe because it just look pretty impressive for some model work?

Overall, I think I came away from this episode with the same general feeling that I did the first time around - that there’s plenty to love, but it does feel like the right time to start drawing towards a conclusion. The highlight is surely the Doctor and Anne working first on the control sphere, and then with the Yeti in the tunnel, and there’s lots of opportunity for Arnold to have some humour, too. The further through the story we get, the more I’m loving him.

Because this episode doesn’t have a whole lot going on that’s holding my interest, I spent the entry for it last time discussing the latter half of my ‘Great Intelligence’ time line. The recovery of the episodes doesn’t throw up any complications to it (Not that I expected they would - the main theories were all worked out based on the dialogue anyway), so I’m quite happy to leave it where things stand. The more I think on it, though, the more I’m keen to actually watch Downtime as a part of the marathon just to see if it all hangs together. What do you think? Worth doing?

 a

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

Day 350: The Web of Fear, Episode Four (Revisited)

Dear diary,

The last time I did this episode, I complained that they were using the Cybermen’s theme - Space Adventure - as the background music for the Yeti attack in Covent Garden, but having not heard it for a few months it is great to hear it again. Curiously, I didn’t make much of a mention of the attack in my first write up for this episode;

”Today’s Yeti attack in Covent Garden is lost somewhat by appearing only on audio - the telesnaps for the scene, coupled with knowledge of Dougie Camfield’s direction, make it look fab - the new style Yeti even look imposing when outside. Last year, the Mirror newspaper published online a load of photos from this scene, with the Yeti menacing a man and his dog - they do look great!”

But seeing it on screen does serve to highlight why audio isn’t the best form for this sequence because Camfield is such an action director. Right from the first shot of the Colonel and his men out on the surface and on film, you know what’s about to happen. Is it perfect? Well, no. There’s a few moments when you can see the rather large zips snaking up the backs of the Yeti costumes (Although, all right, you could make the argument that since these creatures are robots, the furry suits are simply added on after and zipped up…).

It’s also a shame that after such a good job is done of making it look like there’s lots of Yeti (and it does! It’s simply the same four outfits being shot from different angles down the street, but it multiplies them brilliantly) we don’t see any laying dead on the floor. I’m thinking in particular of one shot, late in the battle, where the floor behind an advancing Yeti is littered with dead soldiers… and nothing else. Having just watched a grenade attack that seems to take out several of the creatures, it just looks a bit odd.

It’s not a huge complaint, though, because the battle is fantastic. The Yeti really do manage to look scary even when out in the open, and as for the moment when the Colonel and another soldier hide up high in the warehouse and a yeti reaches up to grab the soldier’s foot… well it’s no wonder that this story had a specially made trailer to warn children that the Yeti were scarier than the last time.

They’re not the only things in this story to come across as unnerving, either. Even I was quite put off by the sight of a soldier in a gas mask being pulled back out of the tunnel coated in a layer of web. I was somewhat surprised – when the mask came off – to find that his face was perfectly plain. I think I’d half expected it to be made up somehow.

All the sequences down in the tunnels today have a real air of menace about them, and I think that’s the thing I’m most pleased to see from the recovery of this tale. I’ve always half-doubted the story that the London Underground thought Doctor Who had filmed in their stations without permission, but when you see how good these sets really are, it’s not hard to believe. I had worried that it might be like The Celestial Toymaker, where everyone who’d previously rushed to talk about how good it was suddenly has to back-track pretty sharpish…

 a

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

Day 349: The Web of Fear, Episode Three (Revisited)

Dear diary,

I thought I was clear of the era in which recons were an option! I really debated over how to best tackle today’s episode, because as long-time readers of The 50 Year Diary will be aware, I’m not the world’s biggest fan of recons. I find that I just can’t get caught up in them, and they actively reduce my enjoyment of an episode, more than they help it. I wondered about simply re-listening to the soundtrack of today’s instalment in an attempt to enjoy it more, but since the recon came as part of the complete serial on iTunes it felt silly not to watch it…

Sadly, I still find myself less than impressed by the experience. Several people have commented that this recon isn’t as polished as the one from Loose Cannon, so that may be where I’m going wrong, but the telesnaps really are no substitute for either the original episodes, or the visuals my mind fills in via the soundtrack release. I think coming from eight moving Troughton episodes in a row has spoilt me.

The episode is still quite interesting because it’s the first appearance of the would-be Brigadier. I said of the character last time; ”Interestingly, he's played as something of a 'grey' character here, and we're not entirely sure that we're supposed to trust him. Certainly, if you pointed him out to a viewer watching in 1968 and told them that this man would become the Doctor's best friend through several incarnations, they'd think you were mad,” and it’s even more interesting to watch having just emerged from the latter-half of the Pertwee years, in which he’s very firmly established himself as a part of the Doctor’s life.

What’s surprising to me, though, is that he’s not as different as a character as I’d expected. As I’ve said in the past, I always think of the Doctor and the Brigadier as being the best of friends, but even up to The Three Doctors, there’s a slightly uneasy relationship between the pair. It’s great to go back and see how much of a through-line there is between the Colonel that we meet down here in the tunnels and the one I’ve grown used to since September. Sadly, I can also feel myself enjoying the character (and Nick Courtney’s performance) more here than I do by the time Season Ten rolls around. I think it’s in the next episode that he takes the Doctor’s explanation of a time machine at face value, which will feels like such a relief after the blatant disbelief of anything he displayed during our multi-Doctor team up.

The other thing I drew attention to first time round: ”To put it bluntly, I'm not sure who is working with the Intelligence - and I like that! It's keeping me guessing (and second guessing) at every turn.” I’m still not sure who’s moving around the little Yeti statues at this point, and this surprises me a little. I was chatting to a friend about this story the other day and mused that I couldn’t remember who was behind everything at this stage. I know Travers gets possessed before long (end of tomorrow’s episode?) but I genuinely have no clue for right now.

‘Oh, that’s easy!’ he told me. ‘It’s Staff Sergeant Arnold. He gets taken over when he goes into the web…’ Darn, that’s ruined it for me a bit – a spoiler for a story I’ve already heard! Every time Arnold heads into the tunnels, I expect him to walk into the web and get possessed… but it’s not happened yet! It’s not the Staff Sergeant at this point in the story, so I’m completely lost. Am I just missing something really obvious? Is there some big neon light flashing over the culprit’s head?

But you know what? I kind of like that I still don’t have a clue. It means that the menace is still there, lurking in the darkness of the tunnels, and I’m just as lost as our heroes are at this point!

 a

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

Day 348: The Web of Fear, Episode Two (Revisited)

Dear diary,

“In some ways, this episode is absolutely made to be listened to as just the audio.”

I feel like I should regret saying that, now that I've just sat and watched the episode play out, but actually I think I stand by it. A lot of this episode is just ripe for audio. The dialogue between Jamie and Evans as they look at the Tube maps and emerge into stations is still very descriptive, but I think it's sticking out so much simply because I noticed it last time around.

By the same token, getting to see this one unveils things that I'd not really gotten from the audio. The key thing is the way that Camfield shoots Chorley throughout. You're bout supposed to like the reporter. He's infuriating, rude in places, a coward, a potential suspect once the grip of the Intelligence starts to close in… and yet when you can actually see the man on screen, all of this gets heightened. He's always a presence in the scenes in a way that he simply isn't on the soundtrack. When he questions Jamie and Victoria, the microphone is right up tight into their faces (and taking up a good deal of the shot). He's always hovering in the front of the shot, or hiding in the background chiming in with a quip here or there. When the sound of gunfire and a battle is heard down the end of a telephone, he makes sure to lean in with the microphone to get a good recording of it. It adds a whole new dimension to the character that I'd simply not seen before, and the story is all the better for it.

Now… you'll have to forgive me a bit today. I've just re-read my original entry for this episode, and there's so man things I want to bring up that it's going to sound like I'm simply answering myself. It's like a conversation through time!

“I also spent some time thinking that it was a good job we couldn't see the huge battle between the Yeti and the soldiers, until I remembered that it's a Douglas Camfield episode we're dealing with, and hurried to go through the tele snaps. It's hard to tell, because so many of the snaps catch people mid-action, but the impression I get is that it looked brilliant. The setting really helps, too, the cramped tunnels really helping to give the Yeti a kind of scale that was completely lost out on the Welsh hillside.”

Oh, Douggie. I do love you. My impression was right. The battle was lovely to watch. I was torn between a desire to make notes or simply sit and watch the action with a sense of absolute wonder. I plumped for the latter in the end. It's so wonderfully down from start to finish, and it really does make the Yeti look imposing… and actually quite scary! I can quite imagine being five or six years old and being absolutely struck by this sequence.

It's not just the tunnels that give these creatures a sense of scale, but the skill with which Camfield has shot them. The cameras aimed in their direction are almost exclusively placed low down, shooting up at the beasts, and making them look even bigger than they really are. The cramped tunnel does then help to accentuate this, and they just keep on coming. As if to really hammer the point home, they proceed to batter their way through the pile of explosive charges in a sequence which should look rubbish (no, really, it should. At one point, a Yeti stumbles trying to get over the props, but then it finishes the manoeuvre, straightens up, and carries on. Under a lesser director this could have been another 'Zarbi hits the camera' - well, not quite that bad - but here it seems to add to the threat!)

It's not all praise, though. The Yeti leaving their prisoners and simply wandering off when they think of something better to do seems even more odd on screen, because they really do just walk away when the moment comes, Still, that's a relatively minor niggle at the end of a very lovely sequence…

“I think it's probably a testament to how much I'm enjoying this one that it was fifteen minutes or more before I noticed the complete absence of the Doctor.”

And it's probably rather telling that I didn't notice it again this time around! Well, ok, that's not strictly true. I did notice, but only in the last couple of minutes when attention was drawn to it once more. For the rest of the episode, I was too busy enjoying the rest of the cast.

The one who needs extra special praise from me today is Deborah Watling. I wan't all that fond of Victoria during my first run-though of Season Five. By the time she left at the end of Fury From the Deep, I was rather glad to see the back of her. Now though, with these episodes coming free from all the others around them, I'm rather liking her once more. And I'm enjoying Watling's performance more than I have for a while, too. I think she really does suffer from having so much missing from the archives (not any more! For the first time in 40 years, we've more of her episodes in the archive than not! Hooray!), because when we can watch her performance, it's so much easier to appreciate.

There's two lovely moments from her today. The first has to be when she slowly comes to the realisation of who the blustery old man they're talking to is - while Jamie continues to put his back up and argue back, and beautiful smile breaks out across Victoria's face and she excitedly announces that they're back with Travers. Jamie soon swings round to a similar joyous reaction, but it's not a patch on hers - a simply fantastic piece of acting. After this we've got her listening in on the accusations against the Doctor and quietly excusing herself from the room again to go off in search of him. I'm so pleased that she's given these wonderful moments in the recovered episodes, because I'm pleased to think that I'm not the only person re-evaluating her now…

 a

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

Day 347: The Web of Fear, Episode One (Revisited)

Dear diary,

There was a point during the Troughton years when I really worried that I’d be ruining the series for myself. I was really enjoying the process of watching an episode a day and then writing about it, but what if once I’d finished them all… watched every scrap of Doctor Who… what if I was bored by the thought of ever watching any more? At the same time, I was trying to counter this worry my making a mental list of stories that I’d want re revisit once the marathon was through. Late Season Five ended up being added to the list in something of a chunk – I wanted to do The Enemy of the World a second time to see if I’d get different things from the story already knowing the twists of Episode Six, Fury From the Deep I wanted to hear again away from all the other stories around it, and The Web of Fear was ripe for a second go because – basically – it was bloody good.

Seconds into today’s episode and I’m completely reminded of that fact – it all just looks so good, doesn’t it? This first episode was the one we’ve had from this story for a long time now, so I’ve seen all of these shots before. Like last time, it’s the shot of the TARDIS doors closing as the camera moves back to the right position that really sucks you in, and it’s all uphill from there.

Funnily enough, the direction was the thing I was most drawn to last time I did this story, but I compared it very favourably to the preceding story:

”It's miles ahead of the stuff seen in The Enemy of the World Episode Three (our last surviving episode), and had me completely gripped.”

Now that we can actually watch The Enemy of the World, it’s more a case of just having two wonderfully directed serials in a row, which is a lovely thought. There’s something rather nice about having two stories emerge from 45 years in hiding and both turn out to be so good.

To be honest, that was another worry I had. I kept coming back to what I’d call Tomb of the Cybermen syndrome. A lost Doctor Who ‘classic’ suddenly unearthed after decades hidden away in a foreign television archive, rush released and shown to be… well, received wisdom claims that The Tomb of the Cybermen isn’t as good as everyone thought it was, but it’s still my favourite tale. I really did worry that Web would come out and we’d all go ‘ah…’ and quietly forget the years of desperation for its return.

I’m loathe to just go on about the brilliant direction in this episode, because that’s pretty much all I did the last time around. I’m sure I’ll have plenty of time to talk about it during our four newly recovered bits of the story. Instead, I want to touch on something that I’ve seen cropping up since the return of these stories could add an extra step to my ‘Great Intelligence Timeline’.

I’m not sure where the idea came from, but I’ve seen people musing that The Enemy of the World and The Web of Fear may share a common link – The Great Intelligence is Salamander. Yeah, yeah, I know. Put down that bit of lead piping and hear me out. That was my first reaction, too, but there’s a bit of me that rather likes it. The suggestion is (and I’m tweaking and elaborating to make it fit my earlier timeline) that when Salamander is sucked out into the vortex, he becomes scattered through time and space. This process robs him of his physical form, but also makes him greatly intelligent (see what I did there? Clever, that).

The Doctor himself even says that ‘He's not in a very enviable position, floating around in time and space…’, and you can quite imagine that he would be keen to get back to his own physical form. Maybe from here he finds himself in contact with Padmasambhava, and the rest follows on as I speculated during The Abominable Snowmen and the original entries for this story.

While it needs a bit more hammering into shape to make it totally work, I think I do rather like the idea. Adding in my previous musing that the Great Intelligence might have been behind the scenes, pushing Victoria to leave during the story after this one, it gives Season Five a kind of loose story arc – one which even has an element of ‘timey wimey’ to it, because the TARDIS crew’s first encounter with the Intelligence comes before they’ve even met Salamander.

What do you think? Plausible theory, or just plain nonsense?

 a

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

Day 346: The Enemy of the World, Episode Six (Revisited)

Dear diary,

Oh, I’m so very happy. All the way through this story – no matter how much I’ve been enjoying things – I’ve had something niggling at the back of my mind. Let’s face it, the ‘Doctor vs Salamander’ fight at the end of this episode has long been at the top of many fan’s wish lists when it comes to the missing episodes. It’s Troughton up against Troughton, and as I pointed out when I first did this episode, the single telesnap which shows the pair pretty much nose-to-nose made it look so good.

And that’s where my problem came from. I’d seen people praise the way that Episode One of this story was directed. I’d seen the excitement at finally having a date pinned down for events. General consensus was that Salamander's ludicrous accent was far less distracting when you could actually watch the rest of Troughton's performance…

But curiously, no one seemed to be discussing the final scene. Now, admittedly, I've been avoiding threads on the forum specifically dedicated to these recovered stories, but there's been several posts of praise about them showing up on Facebook and Twitter… but not a word spoken about these final few minutes. Ah. The doubt started to grow in my mind. Was no one talking about it because - God forbid - it wasn't very good?

Well, no, of course not. I watched the final scene, and then I went back and watched it again. And then again. And then once more, just for luck. Oh, it's stunning. Brief, yes, but stunning. And it's not just the actual fight that works so well. We've got an actual night shoot! That's rare even deep into the depths of the Pertwee era (remember how shocked I was to see one crop up in The Dæmons? Double it for this). The whole sequence on the beach is stunning, from the way the TARDIS is lit from inside, to Jamie staring out into the night and Salamander stumbling his way up over the dunes.

Once we're inside the TARDIS, things continue to be rather lovely. Salamander indicating to Jamie that he should set them in motion is rather nice (He doesn't actually say anything at this point, so it's hard to enjoy the subtleties of Troughton's performance when you're only listening to the audio), and the way he turns around to see the Doctor stood in the open doors… It's one of those things that will sound weird when I say it - but doesn't he just look so much like the Doctor stood there, staring into his ship? I don't know if it's the direction or what, but it's lovely.

The fight is then rather well done. The single tele snap that promised so much pretty much sums up the entire time they spend occupying the same shot, but I'm pleased to see that it's just as effective on screen as I' hoped. There was a very real danger that this may not hold together, but it's become one of the most striking bits to survive from the 1960s.

And isn't that just a brilliant sentence? Suddenly - wonderfully - we've got The Enemy of the World in its entirety ready to watch and enjoy. Waaaay back when I first did Episode One of this story, I told you a story about how it was my friend Graham's favourite tale ever, and how I was a bit surprised to learn this:

“My disbelief wasn’t because I’d heard bad things about this story, it was mostly just from the fact that, well, I hadn’t really heard anything about it. The sad fact is that The Enemy of the World is one of those stories that people just forget about.”

Since the recovery, these six episodes have had something of a reappraisal. I've seen a number of people commenting that it's now become their new favourite Troughton adventure, and I think a large part of that is because barry Letts was right all along - Episode Three was by far the worst example to survive from this tale. I wonder if people were simply put off it by seeing those twenty-five minutes?

It's not going to be to everyone's tastes (Another friend this week has said he didn't really care for the story, and thought it was a bit of a disappointment), and once the sudden thrill of having it all back wears off, I think it's going to balance out in people's estimations again. It's lovely to see that the recovery has won people over, though. This makes the next story all the more interesting, because The Web of Fear has been a fan favourite for years and years despite being just as missing as this one was. I've seen fewer comments on that tale since the return of the episodes, so I'm keen to see my reaction.

If nothing else, it's Douglas Camfield directing Patrick Troughton again! That may just be the most exciting thing in the world…

 a

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

Day 345: The Enemy of the World, Episode Five (Revisited)

Dear diary,

While I'm aware of the twists and turns in this story from my previous viewing, I can't help but think that the episode descriptions in iTunes are somewhat spoilerific for a first-time viewer. The caption for yesterday's episode opens by saying that 'Giles Kent is revealed to be a traitor, in league with would-be 21st century dictator Salamander.' Except… he isn't revealed to be in league with our evil friend until tomorrow's episode! Today's description is equally as misleading, telling us that the 'traitorous scientist Kent has blown up the research station', but once again, that hasn't happened yet! I do hope that no one had their first viewing of the story ruined by reading these descriptions in advance of watching - they give away some pretty major plot points way in advance!

However, I must confess that I actually learnt something from them today, too! There's a moment when Jamie and Victoria are carried into the research centre on a pair of stretchers, and I suddenly remembered that I didn't know what they'd been up to in the story, but the description for Episode Four confirms that they're not in that episode! Haha! A quick check of my write up for this episode the first time around confirms that I didn't notice it then, either. I spent so long during the 1960s tracking the holidays of the various cast members and yet this one has managed to pass me by twice!

It's rather nice to have them back again here, and given a lovely sequence to dig their teeth into. The questioning scene is fantastic right the way through, and it adds another layer to the relationship between Jamie and Victoria. The way that he cradles her while they're being held at gunpoint is lovely, and his determination to give in rather than see her hurt is touching. The tables then get turned as they question the man they believe to be Salamander, and we're treated to some more of Barry Letts' beautiful direction on the sequence, focussing on several close ups of the pair as they cut back and forth.

You can choose to see this as either clichéd or traditional, but I'm going to have to heap some praise onto Patrick Troughton again. Listening to this story on audio, the switching between his two characters is pulled off mainly by dropping the accent and adding a few more fluffs and stutters to the performance when switching back to the Doctor. On screen it's great to watch him making choices in every movement he makes. We spend a large amount of time today with him dressed as Salamander (indeed, his more traditional outfit doesn't even appear today!), but we're only in doubt as to which one he may be when we're supposed to be. It's a very well considered performance, and a great example of why he's one of the best actors to have been involved in the programme.

I also need to bring attention to how much I'm enjoying Milton Johns as Benik. On audio, I can't say that I ever really payed the character that much attention (I'd sort of lost track of who was who by this point), but he's really quite special on screen. I spent his first couple of episodes actively disliking him - the character simply made my skin crown when he appeared - but then today I realised that you're supposed to feel like that! There's a beautiful line where Jamie muses that Benik must have been a horrible little boy, and he simply replies that he was, but he had a good childhood. Terribly slimy, and one of the nastiest characters the series has ever given us. I'm so glad that I'm able to enjoy his performance all the more now it's available in full…

 a

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

Day 344: The Enemy of the World, Episode Four (Revisited)

Dear diary,

Salamander confirms today that the 'survivors' have been down in the bunker for almost five whole years, which means that they should be headed down there… well… any day now!

When these recovered episodes were released back at the start of October, I went into something of a lockdown while I decided what to do with them in regards to the marathon. I didn't just want to slot them in at the tail-end of Season Seven because it would have been very out of place (and I'd only just parted ways with the Second Doctor about three weeks earlier anyway!), but then I didn't know where to put them. The situation never drifted far from my mind, and people even tweeted me and left messages on the 50 Year Diary Facebook page to ask if I'd be tackling these episodes any time soon. No, I decided, I'd leave them until after the whole marathon was complete, letting me know that there'd still be a few bits of the 1960s waiting for me once I'd reached the finishing line.

Well… it was a nice idea, I guess. The problem is that so many of my friends these days are the kind of people who'd be downloading these episodes the very moment they arrived on iTunes, and suddenly my Facebook and Twitter feeds were filled with people discussing how wonderful they were. There was no way I'd make it all the way through to 2015 before seeing these stories again - it just wouldn't be possible. I made the decision to slot them in here after Troughton's (brief) return to the programme, and then carry on once more. I've still tried to ignore people's discussions of the stories for a while, though, because I wanted to be as unbiassed by outside thoughts as possible. I've even been avoiding the reactions on the forums. Have the tables turned? Is The Enemy of the World now a classic while The Web of Fear is universally panned? I guess I'll be finding out soon enough…

I wasn't able to avoid all mentions of the stories, of course, and there was one particular tweet from Clayton Hickman which caught my eye: “Ooh! We finally have a date (ish) when Enemy of the World is set. Astrid's helicopter license expires in 2018!” Cue a mad panic! Did this tie in with the timeline I'd been using for the stories? I only really touched on it once (During The Space Pirates Episode Three), but as I said back then, I was more than happy going along with the timeline proposed in the second volume of the About Time books.

In that essay, they muse that the Cold War style event that forced the people down into the bunker here happened around about 2025, with the events seen in this story taking place about five years later, which they place contemporaneously with The Wheel in Space. Well now we know that they're about twelve years too late - and as if to rub it in, the shot of the helicopter licence is big and bold and hard to miss! Ah, but why then does the description for the story on iTunes state that 'The Doctor has arrived on Earth in the year 2017 A.D.'?

Well… a discussion about this with a friend earlier today revealed to me that the newspaper found by one of the 'survivors' later on in the story bears the date '2017', but this is then described as being explicitly 'last year'. So there we have it, either the person writing the description got muddled up (or pressed the wrong key), or the survivors have lost track of the days and are out with their counting.

What's nice about having some (almost) firm dates for the story is that everything else still works! I can imagine The Wheel in Space as being somewhere around 2030, and the proposed timeline after that, leading through the Gravitron being installed in 2050, and then the events of The Moonbase in 2070 before another Cold War sets in for the 2080s feels very natural still, and if anything it spaces the stories out a little better. The other thing I rather like - assuming that we say they've been down there since very late 2012ish - is that Salamander could have used all the 'End of the World' myths that were floating around last December as a way to trick them all into believing the war was about to break out and destroy the world. I can imagine him as the leader of a cult, preaching portents of doom!

Anyway, away from dating quibbles, we're back into fine territory here. Within the first few minutes the episode is more visually interesting than Episode Three was - yet more proof that we've been left with the wrong episode for all these years! There's some lovely direction as the Doctor faces off against Kent, including some beautiful close-ups between the pair. Later on we get to watch Salamander's decent into the bunker… and it's like something out of Thunderbirds! The model work is rather nice, and the whole sequence is somewhat grander than I was expecting. I think I was simply picturing a rickety old lift last time around, because I still had this episode in mind with a very noir feel.

Indeed, that means that other areas of today have been something of a let-down for me. As I said first time around:

“I don't think I've ever been as visually connected to one of those soundtracks as I was during the first half of this episode, with the security forces closing in on the Doctor, Kent, and the others. It was like my head was mapping out exactly how I'd direct the scene if it were to be re-made, complete with angled cameras, and shots of our heroes on the run, silhouetted against the alleyway as the guards closed in.”

After The Enemy of the World, the number of missing episode soundtracks I had to listen to were severely reduced, but this episode - along with sections of The Macra Terror - still represent the best visualisations of the series that I ever had during the 1960s section of the marathon. Even now when I think about these scenes, I can picture the way that I saw them the first time around, with the high angles, and a city which to my mind was 1930s New York, complete with heavy film grain and the shadows of German expressionist cinema.

There was no way that the episode would ever live up to that. I don't care how much of a surprise Episodes One and Two turned out to be, or even the futuristic lift system in today's episode, even at the top of his game Barry Letts would be unable to achieve the shots i had in mind on the schedule and budget of a 1960s Doctor Who story. What's sad though is just how much of a let down the actual scenes are. I was braced for something a bit worse than I'd pictured, and when we get a shot of some guards high up on a balcony I did briefly wonder if we might really get some great high-angled images, but it wasn't to be. Ah well, you can't win them all, I guess…

 a

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

Day 343: The Enemy of the World, Episode Three (Revisited)

Dear diary,

Over the course of The 50 Year Diary, I try to quote myself as little as possible. While I'm going back and rewatching these two newly-recovered stories, though, it's rather difficult not to do so - a lot of my reaction to them is informed by my own experience of them the first time around. Today is something of a special case, because until recently it was the only episode from The Enemy of the World to exist in the archives, and thus it's the first of the entire marathon that I'll be watching again some months down the line. Unless we get some more missing episodes cropping up in the next year or so (well… you never know…), it will hold this title with only The Web of Fear Episode One. So, this episode, first time around was exciting because it was Doctor Who switching to 625-line video:

“And what a story to feature an upgrade in picture quality! Episode One features a hovercraft and a helicopter on the beach! The second episode ends with the eruption of a volcano! This third episode is full of… well, corridors, decorated with varying types of garish wallpaper. Oh dear. Couldn’t we have had Episode One saved, instead?”

If anything, having the preceding two episodes back in the archives and available to view makes this one seem even more of an oddity. At least last time, I'd been picturing things on a far smaller scale than we've seen was actually the case. This time around, I've just come from being shocked at the balcony scenes yesterday, and all the use of rear-projection to give certain set ups some more scope. To go from all of that to what we see today feels like a real come down, and I think it may have actually harmed this instalment. Barry Letts always said that Episode Three was the weakest of the serial (and thus it was ironic that it was the only one surviving!), and I think I'm seeing that point proved here now.

Still, I'm finding it a bit easier to follow than I did the last time. As I said yesterday, I'd initially been somewhat confused by the events of Episode Two, and this one relies so heavily on it. Being able to now differentiate the characters better means that I can become a little more involved in the story than on the first time around.

I'm also finding that I can appreciate some of the other performances and characters in this episode more this time around. The chef is a great character, and I enjoy every moment he spends on screen. Hiding under the table when he thinks that a battle is breaking out nearby is his highlight, as everything seems to roll on around him while he just shrugs his shoulders. The young guard who dares to ask Astrid out for wine while she's sneaking past him with a fake pass is another great character - very little screen time, and only a handful of lines - but he feels very rounded, and I rather like that.

It's not quite enough, though. I made a point today of not looking at the score I gave the episode last time, because I'm keen for these revisited entries to be very much based on my gut feeling (as though they were being rated as just the regular next episode in the marathon). Having finished the episode, I announced the the (empty) room that it was 'a five or a six'. Having then checked the original entry, I found that last time I gave it a seven. So there we have it - the episode is let down by being among it's more impressive siblings!

I'm feeling generous, so I'm going to be going with the upper end of my score for the day, and giving this one:

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

Day 342: The Enemy of the World, Episode Two

Dear diary,

The weird thing about going back to do these stories for a second time is seeing how my perceptions have changed in the four-or-so months since I first experienced them. I think that it’s fair to say that my feelings towards the series have cooled a little since Season Seven, and I’m finding myself handing out a lot more ‘average’ scores than I was during the latter half of the 1960s. I means that when I reached the end of yesterday’s episode, I instantly reached for a ‘9/10’. I’d enjoyed it much more than I had any episodes for a while, and a solid 9 placed it firmly in that bracket.

But then I remembered that I’d originally given it a ‘10’. If anything, actually seeing the thing had made it better again. All the action sequences being pulled off spectacularly, the Doctor and his companions interacting so perfectly naturally, and of course some outrageous flirting in a beach house. There’s no way I could mark it lower than full marks, so up to a ‘10’ it went.

It makes it tricky in the long run, though, because I may be rating these revisited episodes slightly lower that I did first time round, and there’d be several reasons for this to happen. For a start – these stories aren’t ‘fresh’ for me anymore. This time around, I know the twists in Salamander’s story. Next week, while I’m making my way through the webbed tunnels of the London Underground, I’ll know every beat of the great Intelligence’s plans. On the one hand, I might find it exciting to enjoy them in a different way, with the prior knowledge of what’s to come, but on the other it may well lessen the impact in a way that seeing the visuals can’t make up for. What I’m trying to say is that I’m still going to be giving these episodes my honest gut reaction when it comes to a final score, and I’m looking forward to seeing how that may have changed since my first viewing.

Today’s episode is another perfect example of the visuals actively helping a story in my estimations, though, because seeing this one has really benefitted the tale. It’s funny just how much I can remember about where I was during these episodes the first time around. During yesterday’s episode, I could pin-point exactly the bit of road I’d been crossing when I first heard Salamander’s speech about the crop growth. For today, I can recall listening to the scene of Jamie ‘saving’ Salamander while I’d been going through the self-serve tills at the supermarket… and then listening to it again five minutes later when I realised that I’d not got a clue what was actually happening in the episode.

In total, I’d listened to bits of this episode three times last time and I still didn’t quite have my head around what was going on and who was who. It didn’t help that I thought Astrid’s surname was ‘Ferrier’, when that’s actually the name of a completely different character. No wonder I’d confused myself! Seeing everything happen makes it much clearer – and also reveals a kind of scope that I’d not imagined for the tale.

I assumed that all of Salamander’s conference (plus Jamie ‘saving’ him, and the final scene as they looked out over the volcanic destruction) were taking place in an office. For some reason, on first listen, this story took on a very ‘noir’ tone in my mind, and I’d pictured this office almost in the style of your stereotypical 1940s Hollywood private eye. To be honest, while it did the job, I’d never imagined that it would look as good as the actual set. These scenes take place out on a balcony, surrounded by foliage, and a very nice set beyond the facade of the house, too. It’s quite a large set – helped somewhat by some clever rear-projection, which I’ll come to in a moment – and it’s far more impressive than I’d have guessed.

Then we’ve got the scenes on the park bench. These don’t work quite so well with the rear-projection technique (if anything, it makes the bench look as though it’s been plonked in the corner of the studio as an afterthought – a shame for a location we spend a fair bit of time in), but it’s great to see Barry Letts playing around with things like this even in his first contribution to the programme. Having sat though his first few seasons at the helm of Doctor Who, I’ve grown used to his pioneering work with CSO, and this feels very much like a fore-runner of all that.

Perhaps the biggest revelation of all, though, is Troughton. In my original write up for this episode back in July, I said ’towards the end of today’s episode, I thought about the fact we'd not had that much Troughton in this one, except that we had, just not in his usual form’. On audio, this is because he’s doing an accent so different to his own (today’s highlight: ‘Is not so good, boys, is not so good!’), but even when we can see him on the screen it doesn’t feel like he’s really here. His performance as Salamander is fantastic, and it only serves to remind me why I love him so much. There’s a great moment where he makes a joke about Ferrier, and then snaps at her to get him a drink. The way he moves his eyes, and the scorn that comes out in the performance… it’s stunning. Seconds later he snaps his fingers for a guard and one comes running. I thought I’d experienced so much of the 1960s, but these few episodes coming back really does show that so much is lost when we can’t see these performances – I can’t wait to see what other little gems get unearthed over the next few days…

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

Day 341: The Enemy of the World, Episode One (Revisited)

Dear diary,

Will Brooks sits in front of the control panel at Doctor Who Online. It may sound impressive and futuristic, but it's really held together by sticky tape and a couple of old washing up liquid bottles. Satisfied, he hits the 'publish' button for The Three Doctors Episode Four, and prepares to get on with the rest of the evening, having completed his daily dose of Doctor Who. It's then, as he grabs his coat and prepares to leave, that he finds himself caught up in something more unusual than he's used to. The hairs stand up on the back of his arms, a ringing enters his head, and he feels himself start to fade away and out of existence. Nearby, people report his final words carried on the wind - whatever's happening is making him giddy, apparently.

Well would you look at that. It would seem that - somehow - I've been scooped up by the Time Lords when they returned Patrick Troughton to his proper place in the timeline (the late 1960s on BBC1, as it happens). I seem to have ended up a little earlier in the time stream than he came from, which places me smack-bang in the middle of Season Five. You can see where I'm going with this, can't you? Go on, keep up the charade with me for the next twelve days - it's the 12th of July 2013. There's still a sun in the sky. You've no idea that Peter Capaldi will be taking on the guise of the Doctor. The revelations and thrills of the 50th anniversary special are still a distant dream…

It all seemed so perfect. Here I was, finally undertaking a proper Doctor Who marathon. After years of telling myself that I'd do it one day, I'd suddenly found myself not simply watching all of the series in order, but blogging about it daily on one of the web's biggest websites devoted to the subject, with a fair number of people reading along and being incredibly kind about the whole thing. Better than that: I was approaching the end of the William Hartnell era. I'd come too far now, there was no going back. And then things got even better. Not only would I be making my way through the Patrick Troughton years - home to the Doctor I'd always considered my favourite - but suddenly there was a lot more of it than ever before. The Enemy of the World and The Web of Fear back in the archives where they belong, and just in time for me to enjoy them for the very first time!

And then it all went a bit… wrong. I made my way through Season Four, and ventured off to The Tomb of the Cybermen. I ventured to Tibet and fought off the Ice Warriors. There was no time left. I'd reached The Enemy of the World… and it still wasn't available. I delayed viewing that day for as long as possible, just in case, and then grudgingly hit the 'play' button for the narrated soundtrack. Thankfully, the first episode was - frankly - brilliant, and there was no time to muse on it, I was too busy being caught up with hovercrafts, and helicopters, and doubles of the Doctor. There were Mexican accents galore, plenty of action, and more happening in 25 minutes that I could have ever dreamed of.

Following Patrick Troughton's brief return in The Three Doctors with the recently returned episodes was on the cards from the moment it became apparent that the announcement was to hit in October. Timing-wise, it gave me a good excuse to slip them in to the marathon without having to wait until the very end. There was no way I'd ever have held off watching these two stories for another 18 months - I'd enjoyed them too much the first time around. It also gives me a great opportunity to keep tracking how different Troughton's performance is between his own era and the return in 1972.

In my initial write up of this episode, I stated:

“I spent a while listening to these scenes thankful that this episode didn't exist in the archives, because it all sounded pretty good, and there was no way that the visuals would live up to the same standard… but then the tele snaps make the scene look just as epic as I'd hoped.”

Thankfully, seeing the scene in question (The Doctor and his companions being chased by gun-wielding strangers before being picked up in a helicopter and flown off over the ocean) makes it even better than it looked via the telesnaps. It's some of the finest direction work that we've had in the series so far and I'm somewhat surprised, as Barry Letts' directorial work in the current era hasn't really been making all that much of an impact on me. There's one particular shot taken fromthe helicopter as it flies out to sea that's very impressive, and it looks almost too good to be wasted on something like Doctor Who.

What the moving visuals give the story most though is the little interactions between the Doctor and his companions, especially Jamie. You'll no doubt recall that by the middle of Season Six, I'd rather had enough of Jamie. He seemed to have out-stayed his welcome in the series, and I was increasingly ready to see the show move on to something new. Dropping back down here in the middle of their time together makes it all seem fantastic again, though. There's a beautiful moment on the beach where the Doctor tells his companions that a hovercraft is a ship that can travel on the land and Jamie replies that he's too old for 'fairy tales'.

On audio, it's just a nice little bit of interplay, in which the Doctor introduces two companions from history to a futuristic machine. Seen in the recovered episode, Jamie gives the Doctor a little push on the shoulder as he delivers his line, and the pair grin widely throughout the exchange. They really come across as two best friends travelling through time and space together. Something else I've seen mentioned a lot since the episode was released is how much of a flirt the Doctor's being with Astrid - and it's true! Troughton, you old dog!

And as if all of this wasn't fantastic enough, it gives me an excuse to start saying 'Allo Bruce! What are you doing here, eh?' again.

 a

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

Day 340: The Three Doctors, Episode Four

Dear diary,

I've always rather liked the idea that various incarnations of the Doctor just don't see eye-to-eye, and end up bickering a lot. I once saw it described as being on a date with your attractive new partner, when your younger self from ten years ago shows up and manages to completely embarrass you. I think that's the perfect description for the relationship between the Second and Third Doctors - one takes themselves far more seriously than the other does!

It's crystallised here when Omega considers them both before taking the Third Doctor to one side to ask if he's sure that both incarnations are of the same intelligence. It's a great line and it had me laughing out loud - I really am more unfamiliar with the latter half of this story than I am with the first half. It means that I get to be surprised by just how well these two Doctors interact with each other. Once all the arguments and one-upmanship has finished, they actually make a rather good team.

As anniversary stories go, The Three Doctors is a bit of an oddity. We tend to class it as the Tenth Anniversary celebration, and it kickstarts the tradition of Doctors meeting up every ten years (a tradition that has held throughout the programme's life, although for the 40th anniversary not all the actors were playing the Doctor all the time), but it's not really a celebration of ten years, is it? For a start, it was broadcast almost a year too early, just after the programme's ninth anniversary, and the only real link to the past is the appearance of the two older Doctors - one of whom is in a sadly reduced role.

But there's several other elements that feel like they're missing here, too. There's not Captain Yates for example. Maybe he's on leave? He did have a bomb hit him almost square-on in the last story… It just seems strange that in this story we think of as celebrating the show, we're missing one of the key figures from this point of the legacy.

It does however start to set us up with a number of things that will be important in the future. The Doctors telepathically communicating with each other becomes a staple of their multi-Doctor team ups. Omega will return to do battle with the TIme Lords on the next big anniversary for the show. And perhaps most important of all… UNIT HQ has finally started to settle down! The laboratory seen in this story is the one that I most readily associate with the Third Doctor. It's the same one (or, at the very least, the same style) as the one we see again in Planet of the Spiders and Robot (and a single episode of Blue Peter…), and I have to confess that I'm surprised by how late into the UNIT era it's arrived. I think I'd always sort of assumed that this was the design of the UNIT lab, and that it was more-or-less constant throughout the early 1970s. I'm wondering if we'll see it again before Planet of the Spiders, and I'm hoping so - I'd hate to think that a set I've always considered so iconic only made three appearances!

I'm also slightly surprised by the break-up of the UNIT era. I've always known that the end of this story sees the Third Doctor given his freedom and allowed to travel out among the stars again, but I thought that with maybe one exemption, he'd been very much stuck on Earth before now. Having UNIT only feature at the top and tail of Season Nine has made it already feel like the Doctor has a fair degree of freedom, so there's less of an impact carried by this moment that I'd expected. What is rather lovely is the way that he insists on sticking around for a bit before taking off. Jo's worried that it means we'll be seeing the last of him with his 'family', but the Doctor decides that there's things to do before he can go gallivanting off to the stars. There really is a rather nice through-line from Spearhead From Space to now which sees the Doctor adapting to - and coming to terms with - his exile, and I think Jo is a huge part of that process. I'm glad that I can finally see what all the fuss is about with this pair, they really are made for each other, aren't they?

Oh! Ah! What's that strange feeling? It's almost as though I'm being picked up by a time scoop! Oh dear! Those silly Time Lords must have got something wrong! I seem to be heading for… 1967? Well this is really going to mess up the dating of the diary. And you thought the UNIT dating was bad!

 a

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

Day 339: The Three Doctors, Episode Three

Dear diary,

I'm never entirely sure whether Omega's realm is awesome or awful. On the one hand, I rather like the design of the bubbles which are present from the Gel Guard creatures to the archways in the set (and even for what appears to be Omega's 'scanner screen', a fact that has passed me by before), on the other hand… it does look rather a lot like a cheap BBC studio set, doesn't it?

I think the issue is in the sheer emptiness of the set. Between the bubble archways, everything is just painted black - from the floor to the walls - and it makes the whole thing look a little bit rubbish. Judging from the fight scene at the end of the episode, I think the black spaces are supposed to represent a complete void - they're left empty because Omega simply hasn't willed anything into being there. Sadly, it just doesn't work for me in that way, and it is a bit of a let down.

The same can't be said for Omega himself, though. I've always thought that it was a brilliant design, and it's the mask that really does it for me. There's something about the image, and I used to love a big full-page photograph of it in an old Doctor Who reference book back when I was new to fandom. It's such a striking design, and doesn't look too out of keeping with the style of Time Lord design that we're used to from the more recent series. One of these days, I might have to have a go at adding a few Gallifreyan symbols to the design just to see how it looks.

Stephen Thorne is giving his all in the performance of the man, too. I've always thought of his performance as being a bit over the top (and there are one or two moments where it does veer in this direction. I'm thinking specifically of the moment he catches the Doctors in the singularity chamber and enters with a highly dramatic 'WHAT!?!?!?'), but on the whole he's very good here. There's a lovely line when the Doctor has described him as a hero and he responds that he should have been a god. It's delivered brilliantly, and is actually quite menacing. It's a great example of treading that very fine line between a fantastic performance and a bit of a hammy one…

It's nice to see that the design of the other Time Lords in this story seems to be consistent, too. It works almost as a halfway house between the style seen in The War Games and the one that will be making an appearance from The Deadly Assassin onwards. It's little bits of continuity like this that I'm rather keen on - nothing over-the-top, but just enough to make everything feel fairly coherent.

And we get to see them summoning the First Doctor for orders! I mused yesterday that he seemed to be acting as a bit of a go-between for the Time Lords and his other selves, but had forgotten that we actually get to see this in progress. It's great to see him projected up on such a large screen, too, because it's the best he's looked all story. I have to confess that I can't really remember where the tale goes from here (save for the resolution involving Troughton's recorder), but I'm keen to see how they pull off the First Doctor being sent to get involved with the action - I'm assuming that he'll just be popping up on the TARDIS screen again?

 a

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

Day 338: The Three Doctors, Episode Two

Dear diary,

'I think the strain is a little too much for him,' Benton explains when the Brig has stormed off in a huff, refusing to believe that the Second Doctor could possibly have returned. It has to be said… this isn't the Brig's finest hour in the series. Right from the off he's being even more pompous and ridiculous than usual, refusing to take what the Doctor tells him at face value and simply becoming more and more exasperated. This now is very much the 'UNIT era' that I remember - and it's not one that I enjoy all that much.

When we had the character turning up in the 1960s, he was a pretty affable sort of chap. He got on well with the Doctor (after a few initial misgivings), but he was still decisive, able to get things done, and he'd take things at face value. For example, look at how quickly he accepts the Doctor's story about a time/space machine in The Web of Fear and compare that to his reactions here upon finally entering the ship for the first time. It doesn't help that even Benton is showing him up - in the last episode, he entered the ship, stated that the 'bigger on the inside' quip was pretty obvious and then announced that nothing to do with the Doctor would surprise him any more. The Brigadier takes almost the exact opposite approach here. When the Doctor tries to explain the situation, he snaps back 'I don't believe a word of it!'

It's a shame to see the character heading in this direction as I've really rather loved him up to now, and I was hoping that this story would be another four great episodes spent in his company. I will say that the shot of him first looking around the TARDIS is perhaps one of the most iconic he's ever had in the programme, and it's nice to finally see it here in context again.

Elsewhere, it's still Patrick Troughton who's stealing the show for me. In terms of his characterisation being a little off from the way he used to play it, I think he wavers in and out. There are a few moments that could have very much been lifted directly from his era of the programme without a great deal of trouble. I also need to hand out some praise to William Hartnell, who I've not seen in what feels like forever. He bowed out of the marathon way back in May for me, so it is good to see him again.

It's a shame in some ways that his last work for the programme came in such a diminished form, and I think that being confined to the TV screen means that he doesn't get as much attention as the other Doctors in the story, but there's still a few flashes of performance in there that are very much William Hartnell as he always was. I've often wondered how much of a performance he was able to give in this story, considering his ailing health at the time, but having watched the interview with him on the Tenth Planet DVD today I can see that he's acting just as much as he ever was. There's one particular moment today where he tells the Second Doctor to use his intelligence, and I can just picture him delivering the same line to Ian, or Steven, Vicki.

I have to wonder, though… are these earlier Doctors briefed for their involvement in the story? They both seemed to have a fairly good idea of what was going on when they arrived, and the First Doctor is almost acting as a go-between for the Doctor and the Time Lords. I'm a big fan of the idea that the Doctors don't remember their team-up adventures when brought together by the Time Lords (so the same would be true for the Five and the Two Doctors), so maybe the Time Lords are able to bring these two up to speed properly before sending them on their missions?

Another fan-theory that I tend to subscribe to is that when the Doctor regenerates, his past incarnation lives on in his head somewhere, occasionally chipping in with their own opinion. There seems to be some kind of evidence for this when the Second Doctor claims to have 'always had a great deal of respect for his advice,' in regards to his earlier self. What does everyone else think? Do the Doctors live on after their deaths?

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

Day 337: The Three Doctors, Episode One

Dear diary,

Do you remember, right back when I started Spearhead From Space, I told you that my over-riding memory of the story was tainted by the fact that I felt ill while watching it? A similar sensation hangs over The Three Doctors, but in a different way. I'd been holding off buying the DVD of this story for a while, because I was still pretty new to Doctor Who, and I wanted to have seen some other stories for the Doctors before I sat down to see them team up together (the same goes for The Five Doctors, although I can't recall when I first saw that one).

In the end, this story ended up on my birthday list for 2005. The return of the programme to television had kicked my fledgeling fandom up a few notches, and the time had finally come to experience this very special anniversary story. I was in my mid-teens by that point, so birthdays had gone from 'loads of presents' to 'here's your present', and because I was at college, the term had ended a while before the day itself. It meant that I'd picked this story to watch on my birthday, and I planned to really savour it.

I sat through Episodes One and Two, completely riveted by the whole thing, and then I had to stop. There was something else happening out in the real world, and it was far bigger than three actors teaming up to run around in a quarry and fight an anti-matter monster. It was the day of the London bombings, and the TV was quickly switched from Doctor Who to the news where it remained for the rest of the day. It's a strange event to look back on now, and I think in many ways it gets forgotten a lot more than other terror attacks from the last few years. It was (comparatively) small scale compared to the situation in New York four years earlier, but at the time it felt pretty big - it was bringing the spectre of this new age down onto our shores in a way that we'd not really experienced in a long time. I can't remember when I actually finished watching The Three Doctors - although I know I have seen all four episodes - but it certainly wasn't on that day.

It's not fair to say that it's ruined the story for me - indeed I seem to have quite fond memories of the tale itself - but I don't think that I've actually watched it again since that very first time. In contrast to The Five Doctors, which I've seen more times than I care to count, this one has been somewhat forgotten. It didn't help that, again, it was a part of the Pertwee era, and I've always been so sour to that period as a whole.

But we're off to a great start today! Even before all the business with the earlier Doctors turning up, the story is pretty good right from the off - the opening is quite slow for a season opener, but it worked well to draw me in, and I couldn't remember what happened to either Ollis or Dr. Tyler. I was even pretty captivated when the jellies arrived on the scene - I've never noticed the lights in their claws before! Let's be honest, they're far from being the best Doctor Who monster ever (Though they're still a league above Kronos…), but there really is something a bit appealing about them. It's perhaps telling that the action figure of one creature is out on a shelf in the flat, while even poor Jo from the same set is shut in a cupboard!

The real charm starts when Patrick Troughton shows up, though. I've been surprised by how much I'm enjoying the Pertwee years, but they're still coming out as fairly 'average' for me, and there's been something of a decline since Season Seven. Seeing Troughton arrive gives me an odd kind of nostalgic feeling that I wasn't really expecting. Right back when I started on the marathon, I commented that it was hard to form a real attachment to the older Doctors or companions when you can see any of the stories in whichever order you want, but here once again I can really feel the marathon format working. For me, it's only been a few months since I last shared a story with the great man, but it feels so nice to have him back again.

The question is… does he behave as the Second Doctor as I remember him? I've seen a lot of talk about the way that he plays the role in his return appearances to the series - perhaps the best summation I've seen is that from 1966 - 1969, he was playing 'the Doctor', while in theThree, Five, and Two Doctors he was playing 'the Second Doctor'. It may not sound like much, but there is a distinct difference, and I think I can see that in play here. When he tootles away on his recorder to the tune of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, I'm remembering the early version of the character, but it perhaps doesn't feel as natural as I remembered: here it's being used as a gimmick. I'm keen to monitor it as I go along and see how I feel about his performance by the end of the story…

Nine previously missing episodes of Doctor Who from the 1960s, which have not been seen for over 45 years, have been discovered and will launch exclusively on iTunes Today.

BBC Worldwide announced the find at a press event yesterday, which DWO attended, and we're delighted to announce that nine recordings from the 1960s featuring missing episodes of Doctor Who, were recovered in Nigeria, Africa, and subsequently returned to the BBC.

The episodes were discovered by Phillip Morris, director of Television International Enterprises Archive, by the tracking records of overseas shipments made by the BBC containing tapes for transmission. BBC Worldwide has re-mastered these episodes to restore them to the fantastic quality that audiences expect from Doctor Who.

The stories recovered are The Enemy of the World (1967) and The Web of Fear (1968) - both starring Patrick Troughton as The Second Doctor.

The Enemy of the World, is the fourth six-part tale of Series 5 which first aired on the BBC in December 1967. Episodes 1, 2, 4, 5 and 6 had been missing from the BBC archives. 

Alongside Patrick Troughton who plays both the Time Lord and his antagonist (Ramon Salamander) are his companions Frazer Hines (Jamie) and Deborah Watling (Victoria).

Also recovered is the 1968 six-part story, The Web of Fear. Episodes 2-6 were feared lost forever but now episodes 2, 4, 5, and 6 have been recovered. Unfortunately, episode three is still currently missing but a restoration team has reconstructed this part of the story using a selection of the 37 images that were available from the episode along with the original audio which has been restored. 

Also starring Patrick Troughton alongside Frazer Hines and Deborah Watling, The Web of Fear introduces Nicholas Courtney for the first time as Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart (who later returns as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart). 

All episodes are available to download exclusively from iTunes from today (links at the bottom of this article). The Enemy of the World will also be available to preorder exclusively on DVD from BBC Shop from 11th October for release on 22nd November. The Web of Fear will be available on DVD on 24th February 2013. DWO have been given the preview for the Limited Edition DVD cover which you can see in the right-hand image column.

Phillip Morris says:

“The tapes had been left gathering dust in a store room at a television relay station in Nigeria. I remember wiping the dust off the masking tape on the canisters and my heart missed a beat as I saw the words ‘Doctor Who’. When I read the story code I realised I’d found something pretty special.”

Fiona Eastwood, Director of Consumer Products, BBC Worldwide comments:

“We are thrilled with the recent discovery of The Web of Fear and The Enemy of the World and we’re very happy to be launching re-mastered versions of these treasured episodes to fans as we celebrate the 50th year of Doctor Who.”

The Press Event

The press event itself kicked off with a statement by Philip Morris, read out by TIEA archive coordinator, Roy Robinson, in which Morris thanked the BBC and Doctor Who fans for their support. This was then followed by a short video presentation by Philip Morris, explaining the story behind the recent finds, and conveying his own childhood memories of Doctor Who.

The room then went dark as Episode One of The Enemy Of The World was shown. It was a surreal experience - actually sitting down to watch brand new, yet old, Doctor Who - unseen for over 45 years! We were quite blown away by the opening scenes on the beach, with helicopters, hovercraft and long johns - and all in the first five minutes! Every moment was filled with joy as the episode unfolded and we got to see Patrick Troughton's dual performance as The Doctor and Salamander.

After the episode had aired, Mark Gatiss introduced Episode Two of The Web Of Fear, citing it perfectly as "the quintessential Doctor Who story that's also the most British thing you could imagine".

On a personal note, this was the story that we were *really* excited to see. To actually see the Yeti / Great Intelligence in action in the London Underground was really special. Interestingly, The Doctor only featured in the recap at the beginning of the episode, and doesn't show up at all in Episode Two - one of the first true examples of a Doctor-lite episode!

After a 10-minute break, we re-entered the screening room for a Q&A with Frazer Hines, Deborah Watling and Mark Gatiss. Below are some highlights:

Total TV Guide: (To Frazer and Deborah) Do you remember doing the scenes?
Deborah: Watching it just now, I knew the next lines!
Frazer: Yeh, but you didn't know them at the time on set, did you?!

Daily Telegraph: (To Frazer and Deborah) What made Patrick Troughton's performance so special?
Deborah: He had a wonderful sense of humour and a twinkle in the eye, but he was also a very, very good actor. We all got on so well and we were like a family. We had a chemistry, and I think it showed today.

Doctor Who Online: (To Frazer and Deborah) Did you keep any mementos from either of the two stories?
Deborah: I had one of the ornamental Yeti's but it broke in the middle, so Andrew Beech was kind enough to fix it for me.
Frazer: eBay! - I also had one of the Yeti's - and space glasses, but my mother told me to throw it all away, so I did.

BBC Worldwide have provided DWO with some trailers and clips from The Enemy Of The World and The Web Of Fear, which you can watch below.

The Enemy Of The World - iTunes Trailer

[youtube:9Kgd8sNJhmU]
The Enemy Of The World - 'Long Johns' Clip

[youtube:ERARlXb_ho0]
The Web Of Fear - iTunes Trailer

[youtube:0-hRRzv2hA8]
The Web Of Fear - 'Pyramid' Clip

[youtube:bSKZvkpy0AI]

As a final treat, DWO caught up with Frazer Hines (Jamie McCrimmon) and Deborah Watling (Victoria Waterfield) who recorded a special video greeting for our visitors:
[youtube:jL7U2P7rbJE]

+  Download The Enemy Of The World for £9.99 via iTunes in the UK.
+  Download The Enemy Of The World for $9.99 via iTunes in the USA.
+  Preorder The Enemy Of The World DVD on BBC Shop for just £13.99!

+  Download The Web Of Fear for £9.99 via iTunes in the UK.
+  Download The Web Of Fear for $9.99 via iTunes in the USA.
+  Preorder The Web Of Fear DVD on BBC Shop for just £13.99!

+  Follow Doctor Who Online on Twitter (@DrWhoOnline)!

[Many thanks to Chris, Phil, Emma and the rest of the BBC Worldwide Team]

[Sources: BBC Worldwide, Doctor Who Online]

After many months of speculation, the BBC is now tantalisingly close to officially announcing the discovery of missing episodes of Doctor Who from the 1960's.

Following yesterdays (inaccurate) report from The Mirror newspaper (quoting from the original Sunday People article) that "106 Doctor Who Episodes have been uncovered in Ethiopia", DWO took to Twitter to clarify some of the misleading details, simply stating missing episodes had been found, but that the BBC will announce it officially in due course:

There is definitely some misinformation with the #DoctorWho Missing Episode rumours in todays @DailyMirror. We will finally break our...

— Doctor Who Online (@DrWhoOnline) October 6, 2013

...silence on subject by saying missing episodes HAVE been found and some official news will be released within the next month! #Yay!

— Doctor Who Online (@DrWhoOnline) October 6, 2013

Radio Times then took it upon themselves to scoop the waiting media with further details by reporting that newly discovered lost episodes are being prepared for digital release this week. The article suggested that two missing episodes will be released on Wednesday, before quickly removing reference to the number two and the word 'episodes' - suggesting it could be whole stories.

Their amended statement now reads:

"BBC Worldwide will put the previously lost episodes from different stories – both believed to be from the Patrick Troughton era – for sale on digital platforms such as iTunes from Wednesday, RadioTimes.com understands. They are believed to originate from a haul discovered in Africa and have been digitally remastered for sale, although exact details remain sketchy."

Online speculation has been rife, with many rumours circulating that the two stories to be released will be 'The Web Of Fear' and 'The Enemy Of The World' - both featuring Patrick Troughton as The Doctor. There are also reports that the First Doctor adventure, 'Marco Polo' could also be announced.

It is also widely believed that beyond the imminent announcement, that further episodes have been recovered and will be announced at a later date.

Members of the press have been invited to attend a press conference this week which will officially confirm the news.

It is expected that an in-depth feature covering the discovery of the missing episodes will appear in an upcoming issue of Doctor Who Magazine.

Which two, missing Doctor Who stories would you like to be announced have been found this week? Post your choices in the comments box below! 

+  Follow Doctor Who Online on Twitter (@DrWhoOnline)!

+  Follow Doctor Who Magazine on Twitter (@DWMTweets)!

[Sources: Radio Times; The Mirror, Doctor Who Online]

Doctor Who Online is pleased to announce the publication of Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary1963 - 1969.

Doctor Who Online is pleased to announce the publication of Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary: Volume 1 1963-1969.

In celebration of Doctor Who’s 50th anniversary, Will Brooks sits down to watch every episode of the programme made between 1963 - 2013 at the strict pace of one per day.

Having watched each episode, Will records his thoughts in a daily blog for Doctor Who Online, and scores the episode out of ten, on a scale ranging from ‘Perfect, the absolute pinnacle’ to ‘Why am I doing this again?’

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary: 1963 - 1969 collects together more than 260 entries of the popular blog, covering the complete eras of the First and Second Doctors (William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton), and also includes exclusive entries for the two 1960s Dalek feature films starring Peter Cushing, and a foreword by Doctor Who writer Gareth Roberts.

Speaking about the publication of the book, Will told DWO:

“I’m still a bit surprised that I’ve actually made it far enough to collect entries together! I’m usually really fickle with things, and I’m bored very quickly. Even when I first started out on the marathon - slipping the DVD of An Unearthly Child into the player - I had a sneaking suspicion that I’d probably give up by the end of that first season.

What’s kept me going is just how brilliant Doctor Who is! Not everything is perfect, and there’s one or two stories from the 1960s that I’m not likely to ever watch again, but it’s an era of the programme that’s constantly evolving, and it’s been a fantastic journey to experience it all in context.

Putting together the book has given me a chance to go back and update a few entries - just small changes here and there where I felt things could read a little better! - and it’s also been a chance to look back over the first six years of the programme as I prepare to move onwards into colour and get started on the 1970s...”

In his foreword for the book, Gareth Roberts describes The 50 Year Diary:

“[Will’s] observations are fresh and often startling - his is a unique perspective on Doctor Who. I thought I knew all this stuff back-to-front but Will's jumping-bean prose snaps me out of my jadedness and I see it with new eyes.”

+  You can pre-order the paperback version of Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary 1963 - 1969 now from Pageturner Publishing for £14.99.

+  The Kindle edition of the book is out now, and can be purchased from Amazon UK and US. 

[Source: Doctor Who Online, Pageturner Publishing]

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

Day 260 Extra: The Second Doctor Overview

Dear diary,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Day 260: The War Games, Episode Ten

Dear diary,

'They'll forget me, won't they?' the Doctor asks solemnly, as he watches Jamie and Zoe led away and sent back to their rightful places in time and space. For me, the departures here pack more weight than just about any other that the series has ever witnessed. Much of this episode is a masterclass in building towards this, and the star of the show, put simply, is Patrick Troughton.

He's well aware that it's futile to try and evade the Time Lords. He knows that his companions have had their day and that their memories will be wiped. Their last desperate attempt to make a break for the TARDIS is simply the Doctor's way of getting his friends to the right place, so that they can be sent away with the minimum amount of fuss. It's evident from the simple way that Troughton plays the scene, with a sense of childish excitement, over-the-top in the way that people always think his Doctor is. It's patently obvious that he's well aware of their fate, and if anything he seems to be surprised that they're allowed to remember at least one adventure.

What surprised me is how the departures were followed up. I've seen the story before, so I knew that we got little scenes showing Jamie and Zoe’s returns to their own times but having now seen it in context - following on from every other episode made before it, they pack an even greater punch. And look! There's Clare Jenkins returning as Tanya to greet Zoe on her return to the Wheel! You'd almost expect something like that in the modern series, but in 1969? Tanya appeared for six episodes a whole year ago, but they've brought her back and recreated a part of the Wheel set, just to see Zoe off. Added to that, you've got that final line of hers - 'I thought I'd forgotten something important... but it's nothing.'

That, right there, is the saddest line in the history of Doctor Who. Zoe has learned so much, and evolved as a character hugely since she first came aboard the TARDIS. She's been through all those wonderful adventures (and The Dominators) but now she'll never be able to remember them. Worse than that - they're brushed off as not being important. The thing that gets me is that Jamie's return to Scotland isn't half as emotional. They play that as dropping him back off and watching him get right back into trouble again. Typical Jamie!

The downside to this decision is that Jamie's departure doesn't hit me half as hard as Zoe's does, even though he's been a part of my everyday life since way back at the end of May. It's fair to say that I'd started to go off him by the middle of the Sixth Season (it's the same trouble I had with Ian and Barbara when they started to out-stay their welcome, too), but I'd grown fond of him again by the time he's led away in today's episode. I don't feel the same sadness to see him go which is a real shame when his departure should really get to me.

Elsewhere, we get to enjoy something of a celebration of Doctor Who's last few years, with the Doctor projecting some mental images of his most fearsome foes (though he starts with the Quarks? Really?), we get plenty of messing around with the TARDIS as they try to escape the Time Lords, and we even get to see some footage from The Web of Fear and Fury From the Deep to illustrate their landings. It's a great way to tie up the era, and say goodbye to this phase of the programme.

I'm also really pleased to see just how effective the Time Lords themselves are in this episode. Over the years, they've become somewhat diluted to the point that they're almost a bit of a joke in the 1980s, but here they're absolutely terrifying. All that build up in the last episode was entirely justified by their appearance today - you'd really not want to run into this lot on a bad day. I remember someone once commenting that the Time Lords deserved to lose in the Time War because they were so horrible - the Daleks would never be as harsh as to wipe Jamie and Zoe's memories!

Their most effective moment comes during the Trial of the War Lord, in which his cool, calm, and collected exterior (which reminds me more and more of Steve Jobs with each passing episode) is completely shattered simply by having them stare at him. It's clear that they're performing some kind of mental torture on the man in order to make his speak, but watching this figure recoil in horror and scream his head off (and perhaps more significantly, watching his glasses - the absolute icon of his image - fall from his face throughout this moment) is extremely powerful.

As an episode, it's not really as good as the last few that we've watched. There's plenty of lovely moments, and it's a brilliant way to end the era (and, indeed, the decade), but it's mostly tying up the loose ends from the previous nine weeks. I'd completely forgotten that the War Lord had his guards turn up to make an escape attempt at one point, and recalled most of the episode being given over to the trial of the Doctor. Still, it's a great way to end the story, and entirely worth the long wait. 

And that's it! The last episode of monochrome Doctor Who. I can't really describe how massive it feels to be standing at this side of the 1960s, and realising that I've experienced every episode along the way.

There have been plenty of ups and downs, but when you look back at these first six seasons as the bedrock, there's no surprise that this is a programme still going from strength to strength all this time later. Inventive, funny, scary, absolutely bonkers, but absolutely brilliant. And now it's all change. From tomorrow, I'll be venturing into the 1970s, and one of my least favourite periods of the programme. I'm hoping that watching through in order will help to overturn my views on the era in the same way that it has for this decade (for better or worse!), but I think it's a whole new challenge.

Frankly, I can't wait.

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

Day 259: The War Games, Episode Nine

Dear diary,

Had it been invented by this time, the end of this episode would have been the TARDIS' Cloister Bell sounding, and the Doctor's hand slid slowly away from the lock. As is becoming common for this story, we've got another one of those cliffhangers that joins the club of 'the best ever'. It's a stunning example of how to do it today, and I think this must be the most powerful cliffhanger of the entire black and white era. Forget the mysterious shadow on the sand outside the police box, the sink plunger creeping into view, or even the Doctor's seeming change of sides in the last episode - this is an absolute blinder.

We've been drip-fed hints about the Time Lords more and more as this story has progressed, but today's episode is all leading up to these final few moments. The War Chief teases the Doctor that calling them will mean the end for both of them, but you can really feel his fear when he realises that the Doctor really is going to go through with it. Everything about them is built up to be mysterious and sinister, right down to the Doctor going into a kind of trance and mentally building a box as a means to contact them. The War Lord hammers it home as he quips that the Doctor will wish he were dead rather than meet them, and then turns fearful himself as an ominous noise grows louder and he simply exclaims that they're coming...

Perhaps the thing that sells the threat more than any other, though, is how quickly and desperately the Doctor is willing to abandon Jamie and Zoe just to get away from the Central Zone in time and save his own skin. We've not seen a selfish side to the Doctor like this since Season One, and it really hits home. It's the way that he simply tells them that they'll be sent home, and he's sorry but he has to go... after everything they've been through together (especially Jamie!), that hurts. It's stunning, and really makes the stakes seem higher than ever before.

It helps that we don't actually see the Time Lords at all in this episode. I could of course remember this cliffhanger (even if the rest of the episode was practically like new to me!), but I had a vague image of the final shot being a trio of Time Lords staring down at the Doctor and his friends. I'm glad that was a false memory, because it's so much more effective to be left with that huge sense of anticipation. After all that build up, all that teasing, all that threat... we have to wait a whole week to find out what they're really like. Well, I don't, thankfully. I'll be tuning in tomorrow. With a cliffhanger this good, I'm really thankful to be pacing myself like this - I'm desperate to go on and watch the last 25 minutes, but I like that I have to wait. Tomorrow is going to go slooow...

Since they depart in this episode, I want to take a moment and sing the praises of two members of the guest cast. David Savile as Lieutenant Carstairs has been fantastic throughout, and I've really enjoyed him being a part of the team. It does somewhat beg the question though as to why he isn't counted as a companion when people do count Sara Kingdom. I decided, having watched The Daleks' Master Plan that she belonged on the official role call, and I'm wondering if I might add Carstairs to my list, too. True, he doesn't meet any of the traditional criteria, but he does travel in a TARDIS of sorts, and visits several time periods with the Doctor (technically). Aside from all that, he's bloody brilliant, so there.

Edward Brayshaw also turns in a brilliant performance as the War Chief, and it's sad to think that he won't be turning up in any other stories. I don't recall having a strong opinion on his either way when he was in The Reign of Terror, but here he's one of the main players across the story, and he's impressed me right from the get-go. I can't let the character die without mentioning the often-debated idea that the War Chief could be an early incarnation of the Master. Personally, I'm not sure if I like the idea, but I can see why it might be appealing. For now, I'm thinking that he probably isn't, but I might review that decision once the character starts to turn up more regularly from Season Eight. If anything, the War Chief has the better-crafted beard, so that's something, I guess!

I also need to mention James Bree as the Security Officer (I think his role might have actually been the 'Security Chief', putting him on an equal footing with his enemy, but I've called him this all along, so it's a little late to back out now...). Again, he's been on fine form throughout, and I've enjoyed the almost childish rivalry between him and the War Chief. I think it's a triumph of both performances that you cheer for both of them at some point in today's episode. When the Security Officer played the recording out and gets the proof he's so desperately wanted, we're really pleased to see him finally take the upper hand. But then when we watch him gunned down by his mortal foe, I was glad to see him get his just desserts! Maybe I'm just trying to side with the winning team?

Right then. Tomorrow's the big one. It sounds silly when you consider that this is only a TV programme (and one made almost half a century ago at that!) but I've genuinely got butterflies in my stomach. We're about to hit perhaps the biggest change that the programme ever sees, and tomorrow is that final episode of normality before everything changes. It feels like a really big deal, and The War Games has done all it can to ramp up that sense of occasion with every passing episode. I'm a huge mixture of excited and terrified to be reaching the end of the 1960s, but if anything, it's been one hell of a journey to get to this point...

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

Day 258: The War Games, Episode Eight

Dear diary,

...Bloody hell. That could possibly be one of the best episodes that we've ever had. I'd started to worry that the story was beginning to feel a little bit padded out, and the fact that the Doctor had cooked up a plan to save the day in Episode Seven (of ten) left me a bit concerned about what was left to come. While parts of today's episode could be described as padding (and there's a whole host of comedy accents back again, including a Mexican who ends each line with 'eh?'. It's almost as though they're celebrating every little bit of the Troughton era all in one!), it really is a perfectly crafted 25- minutes.

We get to see a bit more of the various War Zones (though they all seem to look suspiciously like other war zones...) as the Resistance begin their coordinated attack, and it works really well. It's strange how seeing them take out a couple of communication units, coupled with an increasing rate of telephone calls and little flags on a map can make things seem so large-scale, but it does! It perhaps helps that when they destroy these things, they do it with a real vigour. The smashing up of the Roman Zone's screen puts the prop well beyond repair, while the explosion in the Crimean Zone is one of the programme's best.

We only see seven or eight members of the Resistance in this episode, but somehow it feels like we've got a whole army building up, ready to launch the attack. The one thing that does seem to be a bit of a shame is the lack of Lady Jennifer. She departed a few episodes ago to look after some wounded soldiers, and I keep waiting for her to return to the story, but it's looking increasingly as though it's not going to happen. Excitedly, I seem to have forgotten all of this from my previous viewing, so I really have no idea of where things are headed from here.

I'm surprised that I can't remember very much about any of this stage in the story because the cliffhanger at the end has to be the very best we've ever had. I've already stated my love for the cliffhangers in this story on more than one occasion, but this one in particular is stunning. We know that the Doctor is being put to the test, and that he's being forced to bring the leaders of the Resistance to the Central Zone, but I was fully expecting him to have some kind of get-out plan. As it is, the episode ends with that wonderful shout; 'Stand still! Don't move! You are completely surrounded!'

You could almost be forgiven for thinking that the Doctor really has gone over to the other side. Everything here is played as though the War Chief is the first Time Lord that the Doctor's encountered since leaving his home world, and you could really believe that he's managed to tempt him into being a part of the plans. The whole scene in which they converse, each stood on opposite sides of the War Table (for want of a better term), is flawless - it's almost as though all the battles and planning and stuff is there to keep Zoe and Jamie entertained while the Doctor goes off to have a 'grown up' talk in the other room.

He was at his best earlier in the story when commandeering the use of a military transport and bursting his way into the prison, but here he's on the absolute top of his game once more, in a completely different way. We get confirmation that the Security Officer's suspicions have been right all along and that the Doctor is one of these mysterious 'Time Lord' characters, and Troughton plays the scene with a quiet reserve. The actual revelation is almost brushed under the carpet - simply slipped into the conversation along with so many other little things that have become such an important part of Doctor Who's mythology over the years (is this the first time that they explicitly state that the Doctor stole the TARDIS? I've just watched through all of the 1960s stories in order, but it's such an obvious part of the narrative to me in 2013 that I honestly couldn't tell you wether it's been brought up or not at this stage).

'I had every right to leave,' the Doctor points out, and adds that he had his own reasons for doing so. People talk a lot these days about 'story arcs' and playing a long game with plot threads, but this is one that's been running for six whole years, dating right back to the very first episode in which the Doctor tells Ian and Barbara that he and Susan are cut off from their own people. We get some more references to it around Season Three in the Doctor's beautiful speech when Steven storms out, but it's largely been in the background since William Hartnell left. We even get the first hint that the Doctor may try to contact the Time Lords and alert them to what's happening here, but we're told that he won't because he risks giving himself away, too.

And yet it's funny to think that all these revelations - things which will go on to shape the series over the next forty-something years - came in the lowest rated episode of the 1960s! Worse that that, this will remain the lowest-rated episode of Doctor Who as a whole until Battlefield Part One takes the crown twenty years later! It's bizarre, but almost fitting considering the way that the revelations are treated so casually in the story that they should enter the programme in such an understated way.

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

Day 257: The War Games, Episode Seven

Dear diary,

I like that we finally get the introduction of the War Lord this late in to the story. It almost feels like a shot in the arm when things were in danger of becoming a little stale. Philip Madoc turns in a fantastic performance here, and I'd completely forgotten that we last saw him only a few weeks ago in The Krotons. Maybe it’s the addition of a beard? Either that or most characters are just blurring into one as I watch more and more Doctor Who (is it telling that I can’t remember his name from that story?).

The downside to the addition of this character – the brains of the operation as it were – is that it really serves to highlight just how incompetent the War Chief and the Security Officer are. We’ve had several episodes in which the Doctor and his companions are able to run around, continually managing to overcome any attempt to suppress them, but seeing the War Lord’s reaction to the news really compounds the mountain of errors that have been occurring in his absence.

I think the best moment has to be the argument between the Chief and the Officer, as they blame each other for each successive problem, only for the War Lord to cut in an announce that if they can’t get along, they’ll simply be replaced. There’s something cool, calm and collected about him, and when he does lose it and shout at them it really cuts through.

Although I’ve been enjoying the last few episodes, it feels like today we’re finally starting to move towards some kind of conclusion. I’ve commented all along that the Doctor seems to know that this is too big for him to manage, but even here, just three episodes from the end of the1960s, there’s no indication of just how big the shake up to the programme is going to be. If anything, it looks like the Doctor has it all sussed out. Until the last couple of minutes, when the guards turn up and take him away, he’s completely in control of the situation. They’ve gotten together a fair number of the resistance group, the chateau has been secured in its own separate time zone so they can’t be attacked by the various armies gathering outside, and they’ve got the deprocessing machine, ready to convert any soldier from outside. Even on top of that, the Doctor is pretty sure that he can replicate the technology given enough time (how? It’s not like he can easily pick up parts from the 1917 zone!), so that it can convert whole groups of soldiers at a time.

It seems as if we’ve got our solution all worked out and ready to go. I can’t really remember what happens from here (until the cliffhanger to Episode Nine), so I’m hoping it’s suitably grand enough to justify the Doctor having to go all the way and call in the Time Lords for help.

Something I do have to mention today is the name of the alien’s time machines. All the way through these entries for The War Games, I’ve been referring to it simply as a ‘TARDIS’, but of course I know that’s not what they call it. ‘SIDRAT’ has always been the term used to describe them (see what they did there?), but the only mention of the name on screen is in this episode in which it’s pronounced ‘side-rat’. I have to say that despite that being their ‘official’ name, I’m just not that fond of it. I’m pretty sure that one of the novels even gives the description of what ‘SIDRAT’ stands for, but it just doesn’t work for me.

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

Dear diary,

It's strange how my priorities have shifted in the last six days. During Episode One, I was really glad to be seeing something akin to an old-style 'historical' story, with the minimum amount of science fiction involved. As the story has gone on, though, I've found myself enjoying the sci-fi more and more, and now I'm more interested in what's going on in the Central Zone than I am with any of the stuff in the Civil War area.

It's great to see the Doctor using the Sonic Screwdriver again here, and for an application other than unscrewing things. It's interesting to note that he struggles with another method of getting the wall panel removed to begin with (he talks of reversing the magnetic forcefield, but stops short of mentioning any neutron flows...), and it's actually Zoe who suggests that the Sonic Screwdriver might be of use here. Maybe my assumptions all along that the Doctor simply hasn't developed the device to the point that it can fulfil the magic-wand like qualities it's capable of these days are completely wrong? Could it be that he actually designed it simply to remove screws (that's what it's been used for in 50% of its appearances so far!) and it's not until now that he starts to think there might be other applications for it? I think it was the Doctor who thought to cut through the wall with it in The Dominators, so maybe it's a combination of the two? It's not quite there yet in terms of the 'software', for want of a better word, so he doesn't immediately think to use it when a situation arises?

Forget all that, though, because today's episode is home to a far more important moment - it's the first mention we've had in the series of 'Time Lords'. It's mentioned in passing, just as a single line in the middle of a greater conversation about the War Chief. It's chucked in as part of a reference to the fact that he's an alien to these people as much as he is to everyone else, and they're described as his people. There's absolutely no indication that there's anything important about the line, and that makes this one of the rare times that I'm glad to have former knowledge about the programme.

Usually, I'm complaining that knowing all about this stuff means that I don't get to experience events with the sense of excitement a new viewer might. Here, knowing how significant that line is, I can sit back and enjoy being ahead of the game, watching as they start to draw all the threads together, leading to the Doctor's capture at the end of the story. Like the references earlier on to the Doctor hoping his suspicions about what's going on could be wrong, it's great to know what's just coming up on the horizon. 

I'm also pleased to see Zoe being sent off back to one of the war zones, while the Doctor remains behind with Jamie. It's great to have him spending some quality time with both of his companions before they get separated, and having had several episodes in which he gets to interact with Zoe's superior logic, we end today with Troughton and Hines gurning as the ceiling presses down on them. It's like they're letting us enjoy the pairings one final time before they're so cruelly snatched away from us...

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

Day 255: The War Games, Episode Five

Dear diary,

When the Doctor and Zoe first stepped out of the ‘TARDIS’ and into the Central Control Zone, I was a bit... surprised by the decor. Obviously, I’ve seen The War Games before, so I know what it looks like once they’re out of the various wars, but a bit of time away from the story really hammers the design in. It’s almost like the story is screaming at you: ‘This is the last Doctor Who of the 1960s!’

And yet, I really like it! The room they take Zoe to for interrogation today, with it’s huge black-and-white circle pattern on the wall, looks really striking, and in hindsight, they could almost be making the most of the departure from the monochrome era. The rest of the Central Zone sets are pretty unique as well, and I think a particular favourite has to be the way that the corridors are arranged. The odd banks of shaped 'partitions' create a pretty interesting effect, and somehow they're making it genuinely feel as though we're moving down different corridors, even though it's clear that they're simply changing the position of the camera. I think it's simply that it's not a long, thin set, but a much wider one. The use of the ramp down to where their time machines arrive helps with this sense of scale, too, and creates more opportunities for dramatic shots. Adding the height to the sets in this way has become more and more common over the last few seasons, but the stories from The Seeds of Death on have made it especially clear, and it really does add something.

The style used for the Central Zone extends out across all the other areas of design, too. I’m a big fan of the futuristic guns (the way the different squares flash as the weapon fires kept me amused. I've got a simple mind at times), though the guard's uniforms are perhaps less successful... I'm not all that keen on the way that the controls for their technology work either. While it's a good idea in principal, it does somewhat give the effect of those felt art sets you can pick up in a pound shop...

It’s brilliant that we’ve got David Maloney back for this one, too, since he did such a great job with The Krotons. It’s like with the more recent series, when the director who impresses the production team the most during the regular run gets invited back to do the special Christmas episode. Much of this particular episode has been pretty run-of-the-mill stuff, direction-wise, but there's been some lovely visual flourishes throughout the story so far.

For me, the highlight of today's episode has probably got to be the Doctor himself. Troughton really is on fine form for his last story, and they're showing off as many sides to this incarnation as possible before we see him bow out for good. Both yesterday and today we're being shown the fiercely intelligent side to him, as he tricks his way into finding the information that he requires. Yesterday he managed to get a scientist to give him all the information needed to remove the 'programming' from a soldier's mind, and today he manages to get the same scientist - who even points out that there's a warrant out for the Doctor's arrest! - to help get Carstairs back to normal.

Aside from that, we've got Zoe's interrogation scene. It's a wonderfully written piece, and I love the way Padbury plays her responses to the questions, with a sense of real desperation that she just doesn't know the answers. In some ways, it's a shame that we don't get a proper date of birth pinned down for her, aside from the repeated statement that she was born 'in the 21st century' and that she comes from the 21st century (which, if nothing else, is another nail in the coffin for the idea that The Wheel in Space takes place in the year 2000).

I'm a little sorry that I've already mentioned just how great the cliffhangers are in this story, though, because today's provides another real blow - Jamie and the rebels emerge from the time machine and are instantly gunned down! They're really not giving the companions an easy ride on their way out...

a