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

Day 386: Death to the Daleks, Episode Two

Dear diary,

I’ve been wondering today about Doctor Who and ‘Jumping the Shark’. I’d imagine that several of my readers will be aware of what this means, but for those of you who aren’t, allow me to quote from TV Tropes;

””The moment when an established TV show changes in a significant manner in an attempt to stay fresh. Ironically, that moment makes the viewers realise that the show's finally run out of ideas. It's reached its peak, it'll never be the same again, and from now on it's all downhill.

It’s something of a contentious issue among fans of any number of TV shows, and there’s only a handful of programmes where the majority of people can pinpoint - and agree on - a single moment when their show has made the jump. For example, I’ve seen a lot of talk in recent weeks that the third series of Sherlock may have ‘Jumped the Shark’, while I’ve also seen plenty of people confirm that it was their favourite series of the three. The longer that a programme runs, the higher the chance that it will actually end up going off the boil somewhere, which surely makes Doctor Who a prime candidate?

Now I know what many of you are thinking. There’s a loud group of fandom who think the programme ‘Jumped the Shark’ during the 1980s, and depending on your age, the exact point you think it all went wrong can vary from the casting of Davison/Baker/McCoy (delete as applicable), or the introduction of the question marks on the lapel/that coat/question marks on a jumper, or even when Tegan/Peri/Mel/Ace joins the TARDIS as a new companion. There are even some of us who don’t think there’s any thing wrong with most of the above options, and have no issue with any of them.

You see, I think because of Doctor Who’s unique nature, it’s either not possible for it to ‘Jump the Shark’, or it’s constantly jumping it… and then jumping back again. Doctor Who changes too often for it to run out of ideas - it can go anywhere, do anything, and just when you’re getting bored of the regular cast, they go and change them. Take the latter half of Season 21, for instance, where in the space of four episodes we lose two companions and a Doctor, and gain a new one of each.

All that being said, I think that certain elements within the programme can become stale and - yes - ‘Jump the Shark’, and today I think we’ve witnessed the Daleks doing so. You probably know the moment that I’m thinking of. The Daleks have come to Exxilon in search of a rare mineral. The mysterious power drain on the planet which has stranded both the TARDIS and our guest cast’s spaceship has also rendered the Daleks’ weapons useless. Not to worry, though, because they’ve got a back up, using more conventional guns in place of their usual attack. So, off the Daleks pop to their convenient shooting range, where they test these new weapons… by taking pot-shots at a model TARDIS.

I can’t tell if it’s supposed to be funny. As in, genuinely, I just can’t tell. I think that it might be, but I spent more time wondering if the Daleks had stopped off at Toys’R’Us on the way to Exxilon and picked up one of the Character Options toys! It’s a tiny little scene, and it shouldn’t bother me so much (well, I’d not say it bothers me, as such, rather it just took me completely out of the story), but I think it’s a very definite moment when the Daleks ‘Jump the Shark’. We’ve had the pepper pots back once a season for three years, now, so I think I’m just starting to tire of them again. Their constant reappearance in the 1960s saw me growing to love them, but the more they turn up in colour, the less bothered by them I’m finding myself. Thankfully, they’ve only one more story before taking another extended break, and it’s supposed to be the ‘best Dalek story ever’, so I live in hope for next season…

I wonder if I might also be a bit put off by the fact that this episode feels like a distinct step-down from yesterday. I mused that the ‘daylight’ scenes at the tail end of Episode One weren’t anywhere near as atmospheric or beautiful as the night time ones had been, and seeing today’s episode entirely in daylight seems to have confirmed that to me. The scenes out on location is a quarry are just that - scenes out in a quarry. There’s no attempt to hide it at all, and the more I look at it, the less I like it. There’s some lovely direction on display, still, as we look down at our heroes, and up at the Exxilons, but they’re not a million miles away from similar shots in the last Dalek tale, but re-enacted in a smaller quarry with less scope.

Even when the Exxilons attack, and there’s arrows and spears being thrown everywhere, there’s not real tension or pace to the proceedings. It all feels a bit flat, and when we go from there to scenes down in the Exxilon’s sacrificial chamber… frankly I was just left cold by things. No wonder the sight of a Dalek shooting a toy TARDIS has me wondering if the show’s gone ‘past it’!

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

Day 385: Death to the Daleks, Episode One

Dear diary,

Over the last few seasons, there’s been plenty of examples of what I call ‘black spots’ in my Doctor Who knowledge. These represent stories which I know next-to-nothing about. As far as the Pertwee era stands, this is the last of these such stories, and in many ways it’s the last overall. The only things that I can tell you about this story is that it’s got Daleks in (as ever, the clue is in the title), and one of the cliffhangers has something to do with a tiled floor. Supposedly, it’s a rubbish cliffhanger.

Indeed, I think it’s the knowledge of that cliffhanger which has tarred my opinion of this story before I’ve even had a chance to watch it. You see, I’ve been dreading Death to the Daleks, because I’ve spent a number of years believing that it’s probably rubbish. I’ve not ever played the DVD, not even to look at the special features, because of a sense of general apathy towards the story.

Which, it turns out, may have been a huge mistake! This opening episode is pretty fantastic on the whole, and I’ve found myself completely caught up in it. I love it when this happens, and it’s why I always enjoy getting to stories I know so little about - there’s always the possibility that it can surprise me.

Now, of course, it’s the return of Terry Nation, which means the return of some age-old Terry Nation tropes. We’re left solely in the company of the Doctor and Sarah for the most part (we glimpse a hand about six minutes in, and some cloaked creatures 90 seconds on from that, but it’s a full fifteen minutes before any other humanoid characters actually turn up - until then, the only dialogue in the tale has come from one of our two regulars), there’s a small group of desperate military personnel (and, as in Planet of the Daleks, it’s not the regular leader who’s in charge), and then the Daleks turn up in a surprising cliffhanger that absolutely no one saw coming when the title was shown at the start of the story.

And while it seems that I’m complaining again about the reoccurrence of all these things, they’re done very well once again. The Doctor and Sarah being left to their own devices for so long is great fun, and I’m glad to see them in the TARDIS. I was trying to work it out in my head the other day - I knew that we wouldn’t see Tom Baker in the TARDIS console room until Season 13, and wondered if it would take that long for Sarah’s first shots in there, too, so it’s good to see that it’s not the case. My only slight disappointment is that the set is looking a bit tattier than I’d like - it’s far from the gleaming white space of The Three Doctors - and the Doctor seems to be collecting various bits of old fashioned wooden furniture to stand around as storage. As much as I mocked the flat-pack cabinets last time we were in here, this just feels like overkill.

It’s out on the planet’s surface that things really appeal to me, though. I got my first inkling that the story may not be as bad as I’d assumed from the DVD menu, which plays the shot of the TARDIS materialising on a dark, barren, smokey planet. Yes, of course it’s another quarry, but the way it’s shot and designed makes that look very different to the other recent examples. Even the studio-bound sequences on the planet’s surface look really good, and it’s got an atmosphere that I simply wasn’t expecting.

I think that a lot of it comes down to the lighting. Describing the episode to someone earlier, I could only settle for calling it ‘atmospheric’. Right from the start, as power is drained from the TARDIS, through to the eerie green glow on the planet, and the fact that some scenes are shot in what looks like near-darkness, it adds a level of threat to the proceedings that I’m not used to seeing in this series. If anything, it’s certainly one of the better-designed planets the show has seen. In the ‘daylight’ towards the end of the episode, things aren’t quite as effective, but I’ll wait and see more before I make my mind up on it.

So, yes, a great start that I wasn’t expecting. I love that - even after so long - this programme can still throw up surprise gems for me to enjoy!

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

Day 384: Invasion of the Dinosaurs, Episode Six

Dear diary,

I don’t know if it’s just me, but the film sequences in this episode look particularly impressive. It’s noticeable early on, when the Doctor watches two dinosaurs fighting in the street - there’s some great close-up shots of Pertwee’s face in more detail than I was expecting - and it’s repeated again later on, with some close ups of Nick Courtney. More and more it’s shots like this that make me impressed by Paddy Russell’s work on the programme, and for the first time I’m somewhat sad that we can’t actually watch The Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve, as I imagine that her work in black and white would have been stunning.

Unfortunately, such beautiful shots of the regulars on film don’t help the models when we cut back to them. I think I’ve worked out what my biggest problem with them is, though: it’s not so much the dinosaurs themselves as the sets that they’re being filmed on. Everything around them is just so flat. There’s one particular shot about halfway through, where from the angle we’re looking, you can clearly see that the wall behind the creature - windows, doors, and all - is just printed onto a flat piece of card. These sets are then lit very blandly all over, which doesn’t really help the effect. Add in a couple of not-great dinosaur models and you’ve got a recipe for disaster.

It’s telling that the best looking model shot today comes i the form of the triceratops in the tube station. Shot in near-darkness, both the set and the dinosaur look pretty convincing, and even the introduction of the brigadier being CSO’d into shot doesn’t ruin the effect too much. Again, though, I think that the story is let down more by the use of colour separation overlay than anything else, and it’s a real shame.

On the whole, I’ve rather enjoyed Invasion of the Dinosaurs. I couldn’t really remember all that much about it from my previous viewing a decade ago, but there;s an awful lot to like in here. The plot strand of people being held underground put me in mind of The Enemy of the World, though I think the similarities are only evident because I’ve so recently re-watched the former tale. I’m glad to see Sarah churning them up and leading the revolution against professor Whittaker, as it feels like her character gaining another piece of that puzzle which will make her a fully-fledged companion.

As if we needed that fact to be cemented for us, there’s that beautiful end scene, in which she tells the Doctor that it’ll be ‘a long time before [she] gets back in that TARDIS’. The whole scene is played as two good friends, and it’s clear from the way she says it that she does fully intend to take another trip with him. The Doctor’s response, to tempt her with the description of a beautiful world, is great fun, and put me in mind of the scene in The Eleventh Hour, where the Doctor becomes something of a schoolboy asking out Amy on their first date. It’s a beautiful way to end the episode.

It’s also a nice send off for Malcolm Hulke, who makes his final contribution to the series with this story. Although he co-wrote two stories for the Second Doctor, I always think of Hulke as being very much a Third Doctor-era writer, and he’s penned several stories that have shaped the last few years. The Silurians and The Sea Devils have contained ideas about preserving the Earth that crop up again in this story, and his futuristic tales in both Colony and Frontier in Space have been key to creating that shared vision of the future for this era which I’ve banged on about enough times since October. He’s always felt like just the right kind of writer for the Barry Letts period of the programme, so it’s perhaps fitting that we should see him bowing out just as the rest of this phase is changing, too.

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

Day 383: Invasion of the Dinosaurs, Episode Five

Dear diary,

I’ve seen it said that the thing which lets Invasion of the Dinosaurs down - even more than the titular monsters - is the story involving the ‘spaceship’. The general consensus seems to be that this entire strand of the plot lets the story down somewhat. It’s perhaps true that it’s not where you’d expect this story to go having watched that brilliant first episode, but at the same time I’m not sure that I take any issues with it.

For a start, I really do like the design of the spaceship itself. It’s very 1970s in places (and Emma, sitting in on this episode with me, was quick to point out that being kidnapped was the last of Sarah Jane’s worries, and that she should be more bothered by the double denim outfit that they’ve clothed her in. I didn’t have the heart to tell her how much I actually liked the costume…), but it works. It’s a nice design, and it stands out well from the other sets in the story. They’ve very cleverly kept the colour pallets for the ship and the underground base at opposite ends of the spectrum - you really do feel as though you could be somewhere else.

And it’s a chance for Sarah Jane to put her reasoning to the test again. I loved her during The Time Warrior, as she tried to work out where she might really be, and it’s good to see her doing a similar thing here. It’s clever that the injury on her head leads to her realising so definitely that something is wrong here, and her daring to use the airlock to escape is rather fun, too. It’s not all good news for her, though, as she heads right back to UNIT’s temporary HQ and admits that she knows everything to General Finch, before confirming that she’s not spoken to anyone else. Oh, Sarah…

Though, in fairness to her, there’s really no one that you can trust in this story, is there? Finch… is working with the bad guys. Sir Charles Grover… is working with the bad guys. heck, even dear old Mike Yates (who Sarah’s only known about as long as she’s know the other two men, but we’ve known for a few years by this point)… is working with the bad guys! It’s not often that the Doctor and his companions find themselves in such a tight situation, but it’s great fun to watch.

It also means that we get to watch as the Doctor’s friends are turned against him. We’ve known for several episodes now that Yates is working for the other side, but seeing the revelation from the rest of our regular cast is wonderful. The Brigadier is helpless to act (cleverly, we’ve been reminded in every episode that Finch is in charge and can over-rule any of the Brig’s decisions), and watching Yates be so stern with the Doctor is somewhat heartbreaking. Thankfully, it’s offset by a lovely scene in which Benton allows the Doctor to overpower him and escape (and that scene sets up a fantastic line when the Brigadier has been ordered to arrest his Seargent: ‘Well, Benton. Go and put yourself under arrest!’).

The fact that so long is given over to - essentially - a prolonged chase sequence should irritate me. Nothing’s really happening, it’s just filling time, but it feels somehow so right. Chases down country lanes, a helicopter… I know they’ll be doing something similar by the time we reach Planet of the Spiders in a couple of weeks, so it may not fare so well with me that time around, but it’s great for now. It also gives us some beautiful shots of the Third Doctor hiding in the woodlands. Though I’ve seen the story, I’d completely forgotten these images, but they’re stunning. Some great direction here.

And now… well… I can’t remember where we’re going, either. I can’t recall what actually happens at the end of this story. Do they blow up the base? Arrest everyone? I really can’t remember, and I can’t wait to find out…

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

Day 382: Invasion of the Dinosaurs, Episode Four

Dear diary,

Back during The Ambassadors of Death, I vaguely mused on part of that most contentious of all Doctor Who issues, the UNIT Dating Problem. I decided that – broadly speaking – the stories were set pretty much when they were broadcast in the early 1970s. Since then, there’s been a whole raft of additional information, and while this era of the programme is disassembled around me, I thought the time was right to have another think about it and see if I’m still of the same mind-set, almost one hundred episodes on.

To tell the truth, this train of thought was kicked off by Sir Charles’ comments in yesterday’s episode, about the hidden underground base being built ’20 years ago’ when the Cold War tension started to build up, and commenting that plans for other, similar, locations were shelved when the Cold War cooled down and came to a close. In the real world, the Cold War period stretched on throughout the rest of the 1970s and only really died off towards the latter part of the 80’s and the early 90’s. To me, these couple of lines seem to imply a mid-1980’s setting, by which time, presumably, Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks assumed we might be in the clear.

You also have to wonder about the technology on show here. Sarah has been taken aboard a ‘spaceship’, but she doesn’t seem all that surprised that such a ship exists, and the other residents we see fully accept the idea, too. This is a universe in which Britain had sent several manned Mars missions by the early 1970s, so I suppose it’s just about feasible that such technology as this could be on show by now, too. To be honest, I still think we’re sat broadly at the time of broadcast - making Invasion of the Dinosaurs mid-70s. The About Time books suggest a date of late 1974 for both this story and The Time Warrior, with Jo’s departure from UNIT coming a few months earlier.

About once a week, I get a message asking me if I’ll be tackling the UNIT Dating Problem fully in The 50 Year Diary, but for now I think this is as far as I can go with it. I’m choosing to entirely ignore Sarah’s ‘I’m from 1980’ comment (though, I’m sure, there’ll be some discussion of it when I reach Pyramids of Mars), but the real issue doesn’t really come into effect until Mawdryn Undead, and I’ll not be hitting that story for a good long while yet. For now, I’m simply going to reaffirm my belief that the UNIT stories of the Third Doctor’s era all take place - roughly - at the same time they were first broadcast, and I’ll be ignoring anything that messes up that train of thought.

Besides, there’s something else that I want to talk about today - we’ve got our first appearance of the Doctor’s new wheels in the form of the Whomobile. I’m not sure what the general consensus among fans is about this particular vehicle (although my friend Nick summed it up quite well when I’ve just posed the thought to him: ‘It’s ****’), but I have to say that I’m not the biggest fan of it. I’ve never really been all that bothered by Bessie as the Doctor’s car, but it’s always felt far more fitting than this one does.

The Whomobile strikes me as a cheap gimmick (in some ways, it is. Jon Pertwee commissioned the vehicle himself in part to capitalise on the fact that he was playing TV’s most famous alien), and it’s always felt a bit… silly. There’s an interview somewhere where Pertwee talks of K9 as being such a stupid idea that he would have simply refused to have anything to do with - but I’d rather see the Doctor with K9 than with this particular car. It just takes me right out of the story seeing him drive it around London - suddenly I’m not watching a good drama, I’m watching ‘Doctor Who’. I’m sure there’s a bit in the next episode where the Doctor is driving one of the UNIT jeeps around, and that seems far more fitting to this incarnation than the Whomobile does - though at least here it’s confined to travelling on the ground…

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

Day 381: Invasion of the Dinosaurs, Episode Three

Dear diary,

It can’t have escaped your attention that – until now – I’ve made barely any mention of the key selling point in this story: the dinosaurs themselves. Invasion of the Dinosaurs received quite a late release on DVD, not appearing until early 2012. For years, therefore, people assumed that when it did finally see release, it would have some shiny new CGI dinosaurs to replace the effects created in the 1970s. It was a fair bet – several stories over the years had seen optional CGI enhancements, and in the later years of the range we were seeing more and more elaborate examples of this, with some stories seeing entire re-edits, and Kinda receiving a fantastic new CGI Mara.

When it was announced that the story wouldn’t be getting this kind of feature, some people almost took it as something of a personal slight against them. There were cries that they could have ‘simply’ used the CGI models from Primeval, or Walking With Dinosaurs, and the fact that it hadn’t been done was lazy. It was pointed out that for a number of reasons, it wouldn’t have been a simple task, and that they wouldn’t have been able to create a finished product that was good enough.

So, we’re left with the original dinosaurs. For as long as I can remember, fandom has considered them one of the worst special effects in the programme’s history, and it has to be said that they are a mixed bag. Early on in today’s episode, we get a shot face-on of the T-Rex, and it’s far from being the most effective image in the world. But then, barely a minute later, we get another shot of the creature shot from another angle and as – what appears to be – a different model. It’s suddenly far less plastic-looking, the eyes blink, and it’s not half bad.

Sadly, a minute or so after that, UNIT succeed in bringing down the creature, and we watch on as the model is simply left to drop to the floor. It almost works, but then it might just be me being charitable. We’re caught in this same situation for the rest of the episode – sometimes the dinosaur looks quite good (when it’s ‘sleeping’ in the warehouse, it moves slightly in the background of the shots giving the effect that it’s breathing), but then other times, such as when it’s forced to smash through a brick wall and wobble out of the hole, it’s far less effective, and actually takes away from the story.

I’ve never thought of the models as being that bad, so I’d obviously chosen to remember the more effective examples of the creatures. I can’t remember how much of an impact they make on the rest of the story (Indeed, the T-Rex in the warehouse was the only big dinosaur sequence that I could clearly recall from first viewing), but I don’t recall anything standing out as particularly awful.

I think what bothers me more in this episode is the dodgy use of CSO scattered throughout. When people head into the warehouse to interact with the dinosaur, you don’t have much of a chance to think about how the model looks, because you’re too busy focussing on the fact that this person is missing some of their face or body! The yellow fringing is also an issue when the warehouse is superimposed behind the windows of the Doctor’s make-shift lab, and sometimes is hugely distracting!

In some ways, this is probably one of the worst examples of CSO that we’ve seen in the programme, and it’s a shame, because it only emphasises some of the less impressive shots.

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

Day 380: Invasion of the Dinosaurs, Episode Two

Dear diary,

For all that I said yesterday about the episode really suiting the black-and-white look (the cliffhanger reprise today simply serves to prove my point - the shot of the Doctor and Sarah peering out from the back of their transport doesn’t look half as effective and moody in colour), I am glad to be back to colour now. The blue outfit that Pertwee wears in this story is my favourite of all his ‘colourful’ costumes, and I’m still holding out hope that one day we may see an action figure in this scheme.

There’s a lot more going on in this episode than I remembered. For a start, Sarah Jane is now well and truly cemented in as the new companion, and the Doctor even announces that she’s ‘currently acting as’ his assistant, to ensure that she won’t be evacuated from the city while he’s off building his dinosaur stun-gun. For me, the highlight is watching her speculate on where the dinosaurs come from. It’s great to see her character being given a mind of her own, and I love the way that the Doctor simply watches on as she debunks her own theories. He’s several paces ahead (though still no closer to the truth), but he’s enjoying watching her settle into this lifestyle as much as I am. I’m keen to see how they act together at the start of the next story - although he has an opportunity to get rid of her here, they’re still technically only together because she happened to stow away in the TARDIS. I want to see at what point the Doctor starts to treat her as a traditional ‘companion’.

You’ve also got Mike switching over to the dark side! Because it’s been so many years since I last saw this story, I’d completely forgotten just how early you discover that he’s working with the ‘bad guys’. I spent much of today’s episode making notes to the effect that ‘once you know Mike is working with them it seems so obvious’, but then I think it’s supposed to be! I’m glad to see that he references the events of The Green Death, and even states that he had to take some time off after them, during which he got himself caught up in all of this. It feels like a real evolution of the character to have him being affected by things that happened some time ago, and it’s helping to make this feel lilt the early Pertwee years, in which the stories all tied back to each other, if only very slightly.

It’s also nice to see that you’ve got the full UNIT team back together again here. I worried that now Jo has left the programme, it could feel like UNIT wasn’t quite the same anymore. The early season with Liz, for example, was missing Mike. It’s only after Jo has joined that we get the so-called UNIT ‘family’, and now one of the key members is gone. Thankfully, though, the others are on top form, and they’re even being played more for comedy than usual. ‘That’s yer actual pterodactyl’ may well be my favourite Benton line ever, and there’s an amusing scene in which the Doctor keeps getting interrupted by various members of the team - much to his growing frustration.

What I’m trying to say is that it’s nice to see this format can still keep going strong, even with all the changes that are occurring around the programme at this time. I think there’s almost a loose link between these final few Pertwee UNIT tales - The Green Death, this one, and Planet of the Spiders, as the group is slowly broken up. Jo left in the last one, Mike will be leaving (technically) with this one, and the Doctor is off in the next. It’s almost as though they’re trying to dismantle the era piece-by-piece, so that it’s not too much of a shock in a season or two’s time, when UNIT simply aren’t there anymore.

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

Day 379: Invasion of the Dinosaurs, Episode One

Dear diary,

And here I am – full circle. You see, Invasion of the Dinosaurs was my very first exposure to proper, telly, Doctor Who. I’d seen Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150AD once before when I was younger, and despite growing up (mostly) during the ‘Wilderness Years’, I had a vague idea of the programme - it’s a part of British cultural heritage. These days, I think you’re almost born with knowledge of what a TARDIS and a Dalek is, but back then it was a combination of older family members making jokes about the series, or episodes of Blue Peter produced by Richard Marson which made reference to it. Through general osmosis, I had a vague idea that it was about an alien who travelled through time and to alien planets fighting monsters.

So, let me set the scene. I’m in the local library, trying to choose a VHS to rent (remember those days?). I’m picky when it comes to watching things. I don’t really like films, you see. Unless it’s something that I’m really invested in, I just don’t have the patience for them. I much prefer a TV series, where you can watch the story unfold over a number of episodes, and see the evolution of the characters and the situation over time. I’d always choose series over film, and it’s telling that my collection of titles (on DVD and Blu-Ray, now, as opposed to tape) is somewhere around 85-90% television.

Anyway. Having spent an age trying to pick something, I finally noticed a Doctor Who tape in the ‘new releases’ section. Knowing vaguely that it was a TV show, and checking the number of episodes, I picked it up and took it home. Now, as many of my readers are likely to know, Episode One of this story only survives in the BBC’s archive as a black-and-white print. The other five are in full colour, but this first instalment is presented monochrome. The back cover to the tape even makes note of this: Episode One is in black and white. Due to the archive nature of this material, the sound and quality may vary occasionally..

That night, I took the tape next door to my grandparents to watch it with them. I was keen to see it in the company of someone who would remember the programme. Confidently, I told them that this was the very first Doctor Who story to be shot in colour – but that they’d only started with the second episode. I’m not sure how I’d managed to interpret that blurb text in this way, but for the next few years, I seriously believed that the series had been black and white until Invasion of the Dinosaurs, Episode Two.

I can’t actually remember when I realised that this wasn’t the case. It was probably sometime around the programme’s return to TV in 2005, when I started to take a greater interest in all things Doctor Who. I remember thinking that it was an odd decision. Why not just start a week earlier and do this whole story in colour? Still, I didn’t really care, because the episode looks great in black and white – it really suits the story. For the DVD release a couple of years back, they were able to partially recover colour for this episode, though it wasn’t presented as the default as there wasn’t the time nor resources available to recolour it in the same way as we’ve seen for The Mind of Evil or Planet of the Daleks.

I gave that version a watch when I first picked up the DVD and - while it’s not perfect - it’s watchable. It’s nice to see the episode presented in a format closer to the original transmission, but for me the black-and-white remains the default for these 23-and-a-half minutes. The episode just looks so good presented in this way. The best examples come during the pterodactyl attack in the warehouse, where a great use of shadow is really given depth by the lack of colour, and it’s almost as though you’re supposed to watch it this way.

This first episode aside, I’ve not actually seen this story again in full since that initial viewing, though I can recall enjoying it a lot at the time. It’s not hard to see why based on this beginning. Things hit the ground running, with some beautiful shots of a deserted London. It’s often noted that director Paddy Russell took out a small skeleton crew some weeks (or months) before shooting officially began, because she knew that this wads the only way to get the required shots. It’s completely worth it, though, because in the space of the opening 60-seconds, we’re brought right up to speed that all of London is deserted.

We move from shots of recognisable tourist spots - the Embankment and Trafalgar Square - to more suburban areas, where the shot of a lone dog scavenging for food could almost be direct from a zombie film. The shots are hugely evocative, and it’s the first time in a while that the Pertwee era has felt so real. When we’re running around with UNIT sometimes, it can still feel somewhat devoid of reality, because they’re investigating strange going-ons in a high tech scientific establishment, or a prison, or a fair ground. It’s good to get some link to very well known places to remind us that all of this is taking place against a back drop of the real world.

And from then, it doesn’t let up! As with The Tomb of the Cybermen being my favourite story, this episode being my first means that I’m probably being a little bit more lenient with it than I perhaps should be, but I really do love it. The Doctor and Sarah searching the empty streets is great. The comeuppance to the first looter we meet (and the shot of the ruined car!) is great. The Brigadier having to stand up to his superiors to make sure that UNIT can handle the situation the way he intends to is great. Basically, it’s all great.

The Doctor and Sarah Jane are up and running, now, too. I worried that this time around it would feel odd for them to simply continue on into another adventure, but I can’t actually imagine them being separated. They work too well together, and the scenes they share after being captured are great.

One thing I don’t really get, though, is the ‘surprise’ of the dinosaurs. They leave the latter half of the title off this episode (presumably to keep it a surprise), and the cliffhanger, in which the Doctor and Sarah peek out the back of the jeep to see a T-Rex towering over them is written and shot as if we’re supposed to be shocked to see a dinosaur… but we’ve already seen that same one smashing its way through a house earlier in the episode! Equally, the Brig and UNIT refer to ‘creatures’ and ‘incidents’, they all distinctly avoid saying the word ‘dinosaur’, but by that point we’ve seen the Doctor under attack from the pterodactyls! It’s an odd decision, and I’m not entirely sure what they were hoping to achieve…

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

Day 378: The Time Warrior, Episode Four

Dear diary,

Over the course of the last few series, I’ve spent a lot of time being impressed by the model shots in this era of Doctor Who. The ones that have been the most impressive are occasions when buildings blow up (and it always seems to fall in the final episode - The Dæmons, Day of the Daleks, The Green Death, Letts and Dicks like blowing the setting up when they’re done with it!). It seems fitting then that we end today’s episode with the castle blowing up. It’s been heralded for ages now, and the threat of the castle exploding when Lynx manages to fix his ship has been one of the key threats throughout the story, so it was clear based on past form that we’d be getting some fireworks in this episode.

Sadly, it’s nowhere near as good as the prior occasions that they’ve pulled the same trick. We see the Doctor, Sarah, and Hal dash away from the castle, giving us plenty of opportunity to enjoy the beautiful location, before we cut away to what appears to be an explosion in a quarry. It could almost work as a close up spliced in with footage of a model castle blowing up, but as the only representation of the explosion… it’s rubbish, frankly. And it’s a huge let down after the quality of everything else in the story.

Having finished the episode today, I decided to take a flick through the special features on the DVD (I try to avoid them until after watching the full story if I’ve never seen it before), and noticed that this is one of those stories to contain optional CGI enhancements. I didn’t bother to check out anywhere else that the effects might have been tweaked (on the whole, the story is fairly effects-light in ways that CGI could ‘improve’), but skipped right to the end of this episode again.

To begin with, I instantly thought ‘well that’s better’, as we cut from our location shots to a new image of the castle gates. It’s nicely framed, fits in well with the footage around it, and seems like a good starting point for an improved climax. Then the CGI flames turn up and… Ah. Well. You can’t win them all, I guess! I’m not sure I can say whether I preferred the original version or the CGI one – they’re both rubbish in different ways!

Elsewhere in this episode, the filmed segments have the effect of making me wish that all Doctor Who had been made this way. I’ve been saying that since as far back as the Hartnell years, but incidents like today’s ‘swinging on the chandelier’, where you cut from the set being shot on tape to the same set, actors, and action, all being mounted on film, really does highlight how much better the series could look. We’ve not had a cut this noticeable in a while, and I think that’s why it’s made me so keen to see an increase in film work again. Even the final shot, in which the Doctor and Sarah depart in the TARDIS looks great – the prop still looks quite tatty, but in an effective way!

Speaking of the pair, I’m really impressed by the way that the Doctor and Sarah have been handled in this story. It’s nice to see a more ‘traditional’ companion introduction (both Liz and Jo were forced on the Doctor, no matter how much he grew to enjoy their company), and I loved that she didn’t trust him completely right from the start. It adds a great dimension to the relationship, but by the end they’re completely smitten. The Doctor’s parting quip that he’s not a magician is nicely shot through by Sarah’s response, and they’re really clicking well. I know she’s around for a good while yet, and if it’s as lovely as this throughout, then I’m in for a real treat. Just as the arrival of the updated title sequence heralded the beginning of the end for the Third Doctor, the arrival of Sarah Jane Smith marks the start of what many fans call the ‘Golden Age’ of Doctor Who…

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

Day 377: The Time Warrior, Episode Three

Dear diary,

Mark today’s date in your own 50 Year Diary (surely you’ve all got one by now?), because today I realised… I quite like Jon Pertwee as the Doctor.

I know.

Let’s be honest, I’ve been vaguely suspecting as much since as far back as about Season Seven, when I was surprised at just how much fun I was getting from watching him in stories like Doctor Who and the Silurians or Inferno, but over the last few seasons I’ve been back and forth on my opinion like a bit of a yo-yo. If I were to draw a graph to represent my feelings towards this Doctor since Spearhead From Space it would generally bit a bit luke-warm, with sparks of love.

But there was a moment in today’s episode – I can pin-point it exactly, it’s when he’s throwing the ‘stink bombs’ over the castle battlements and has such a happy look on his face – where I just realised that actually, yeah, I do like him.

Now, that’s not to say that I’m suddenly revising my opinion of him as my least favourite Doctor, I’ll not really be able to analyse that until I’ve finished the marathon next year sometime. In actual fact, his current story average is sitting slightly above Hartnell’s, and yet I think I still prefer the First Doctor on the whole, in my heart.

Besides, Pertwee is probably taking something of a boost from the fact that today is the third episode of another very strong story for him. He’s being given a load of great dialogue, his spark with Sarah Jane is just right (At first, I was a bit disappointed that he’d managed to talk her round to his side so quickly, but actually it seems entirely fitting that he should do just this – he’s the Doctor! Of course he can bring her round!), and he even looks the part. I was never all that fond of his green jacket (like the purple one from last season’s Dalek story, it’s always felt a bit too bold), but it looks great against the medieval backdrop.

Speaking of the backdrop – how good does the time period look? It’s been a while since the production team have had to provide this kind of historical setting (I can’t think of any since at least Season Three), but it merely reinforces that old adage about how good the BBC are at the historical stories. The Time Warrior signals the start of several stories using locations like this – not necessarily historical tales, but ones set in a Middle Age society – over the next decade, so it’s good to see them mastering it so well.

And when Irongron goes to storm a neighbouring castle… we’ve sat through two and a half episodes of him boasting about the number of men currently in his employ, but now we actually get to see them! It’s quite small by some standards, but there’s still quite a lot of extras involved in the attack. The only downside is the one extra who seems to be having far too much fun as the explosions go off around him!

I’ve already touched on the Doctor’s brilliant dialogue in today’s episode, but it really does bear coming back to. It seems to be a running theme in Robert Holmes stories, and once again it’s becoming something that I can’t avoid drawing attention to. Today’s highlight is the Doctor explaining the Time Lords to Sarah, even if describing them as ‘galactic ticket inspectors’ does somewhat rob them of their mystery! This kind of stuffy bureaucrat image will go on to be typical of the way that Holmes sees them during his own time as Script Editor on the programme, and will characterise them for the rest of the ‘classic’ series.

This same scene also includes Sarah Jane growing to understand more about the Doctor’s character when she asks why he doesn’t simply just leave if he’s not behind all of this trouble, and he explains that he has to stay because he’s got ‘a job to do’. It’s the first time that this incarnation has towed the party line, as it were (it’s this statement which leads him into explaining how the Time Lords try to stamp out unlicensed time travel), and it’s a great way of looking at the Doctor.

He’s got the freedom to leave Earth whenever he pleases now, and Jo’s departure cuts another tie to the planet, but he continues to stick around with UNIT because he’s grown some affection for them. It’s quite sweet, in a way, and it’s the perfect end-point for the evolution his character was experiencing during Seasons Seven and Eight.

It also puts me in mind of a similar scene between the Doctor and Rose during Bad Wolf, in which they discuss how easy it would be just to hop in the TARDIS and leave the Gamestation to its fate. It’s the Doctor who makes the suggestion to Rose, telling her that it is another option, but she replies that he’s never do it. It’s not hard to see the correlation between that scene, and this one here. If you’re going to borrow from Doctor Who’s past, then borrow from the best!

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

Day 376: The Time Warrior, Episode Two

Dear diary,

I’m going to start today by saying ‘ooh, look, new titles sequence!’. Not because I have anything particularly interesting or profound to say about it, but simply because it debuted in yesterday’s episode, and the longer I go without mentioning it, the more it’ll look like I’ve simply not noticed. For many people, this is the dawning days of the Doctor Who title sequence, the blue vortex and the diamond logo. I’m going to have to be honest, though, and say that I don’t really care that much for it. Oh, there’s nothing wrong with it, but it’s never been my favourite (I prefer both of the 1960s versions, for example. Or the 2005 – 2010 one. I think I prefer the current one, too). Of course, it doesn’t reach its most iconic style until the start of the next series, with the inclusion of Tom Baker and a TARDIS, but you can clearly see the through-line from here to there – they just update it to reflect the new Doctor!

Anyway! To business! I was surprised today, watching the cliff hanger reprise, just how rubbish Sarah Jane comes across. She’s being dragged inside the castle, events totally out of her control, ready for the Doctor to swoop in an rescue her… I made a note about how disappointed I was by how much of typical ‘companion’ figure she was being portrayed as, when things suddenly turned right on their head.

Suddenly, she’s brought before Irongron – lord of this castle – and she’s on fire. She snaps, and shouts. She wanders around the room, devising various scenarios for where she might be before dismissing them for logical reasons. There’s a way of watching this scene which sees her cast almost in the role of the Doctor, and you can’t help but love her. She proves her worth completely in this scene, and I felt a bit silly for complaining how ineffectual she seemed in the opening moments. She even manages to work in some funny lines about the ‘realism’ of this castle taking things a bit too far and making it far too grotty!

And then, as if that wasn’t interesting and fun enough, they turn her entire relationship with the Doctor on its head. I mused yesterday that they were clearly made for each other right from the word ‘go’ – though I countered this by saying how easy it was to think that with 40 year’s worth of hindsight. Today, they’re on opposite sides, and she’s actually suspecting the Doctor of being the man behind the kidnapped scientists, and plotting an attack to capture him. It feels like exactly the reaction that you’d expect someone to have, and you can easily see how she’s pieced all of this together;

Scientists go missing – They turn out to be trapped in the Middle Ages – The Doctor is there when one goes missing – He also happens to have a time machine in the same room – Also, he’s a bit odd.

Looking back, it’s almost the same kind of situation in which we’re first introduced to the Brigadier. There’s something odd going on, and the Doctor just happens to turn up at the right moment. Someone who will become hugely important to the Doctor in the future is initially very suspecting of him. It’s a brilliant dynamic to see again, and I had no idea that it was even here. It’s uncovering little gems like this that make the whole marathon worthwhile. And who can fail to love Sarah’s description of the Doctor: ‘He’s no magician! He’s just an eccentric scientist!’

The Time Warrior is another one of those pivotal stories in Doctor Who history. Yesterday saw the introduction of these new titles, Sarah Jane Smith, and the Sontarans. Today we get our first mention of the Sontaran-Rutan war, and the very first mention of the Doctor’s home-world, Gallifrey.

In the same way that I’m always surprised that the Sontarans don’t make their first appearance until the Eleventh Season, I’m really surprised that we don’t get a name for the planet until now. Heck, we’ve even been there more than once! It’s exciting, in a way, because all these little bits of the Doctor Who tapestry that we take for granted are starting to fall into place now. When the Doctor says it, it even in the style of the speeches David Tennant gives in the role: ‘I’m from Gallifrey. I’m a Time Lord’. It marks yet another milestone in the programme’s evolving story.

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

Day 375: The Time Warrior, Episode One

Dear diary,

It always surprised me that the Sontarans were considered to be such a major Doctor Who monster, considering that they only appear in four stories from the ‘classic’ era. They don’t even turn up until Season Eleven – almost half way through the series’ original run. Even recently, they didn’t join the Big Finish stable until very late into the audio’s run. And yet, they’re always grouped up there with Who’s ‘Second String’ monsters (not as popular as the Daleks or the Cybermen, but fondly remembered all the same, like the Ice Warriors).

It has to be said, though, that we get off to a great start here with Lynx. Kevin Lindsay turns in a great performance that manages to be captivating even when he’s hidden away under a helmet for almost the full running time of today’s episode – and when we do get a look at his face in the closing seconds, it’s filled with character. They’ve clearly been taking lessons from the Draconians last season.

People often sing the praises of Lynx the Sontaran – he’s one of the few characters that breaks out from the generic ‘monster’ role – and I’m starting to understand why. If he keeps up such a strong performance for the rest of the serial, then we’re in for a treat. It’s a great introduction to him, too. The first six-and-a-half minutes focus on the adventures of Irongron and this ‘Star Warrior’ before we even catch sight of the Doctor and the present day. It’s not even a brief introduction to the setting and the time period – at least a few days pass (though the implication seems to be longer) during which the two characters are forced into an unlikely alliance. We’ve the beginnings of a great Holmes double act here, and of particular highlight is both characters chiming in to say that if they didn’t need the other… It’s great fun.

A less unlikely alliance here is the Doctor and Sarah Jane. Oh, sure, forty year’s hindsight and all that, but they’re already made for each other the very first time they meet. They spark off each other, and they’re both as intrigued by the other. There’s a hint in the dialogue that you could read either way – is the Doctor annoyed by Sarah Jane, or is he simply teasing her? It’s clear from the direction Pertwee has taken it that he’s having a lot of fun with Sarah around, and even his musing about how she wound up in the middle ages is played with the same kind of interest the Eleventh Doctor takes in Clara.

That said… Sarah finding her way back in time raises two points for me. For a start, why does he find it odd that she should be there, when he’s just followed the trail of a disappearing professor to the same location? Secondly… just where does Sarah hide in the TARDIS so that the Doctor can’t see her? I know it’s supposed to be near infinite in there, but the Pertwee TARDIS has always seemed to be little more than the console room (it’s even where he keeps an emergency pop out bed just a few stories back), and she finds her way back out again pretty quickly, so she doesn’t seem to have gotten herself into a Tegan situation where she’s wandering the corridors for hours!

I love that the two of them are stuck back in time together – it’s a great way for them to bond. I know that Invasion of the Dinosaurs begins with them returning to their rightful time, so I’m assuming that they’ll be spending the rest of this story running around castles and courtyards!

Thankfully, we’ve got the Brigadier keeping an eye on things in the present, in a lovely surprise appearance from Nick Courtney. I didn’t know he was in this story, so seeing him come round the corner with the Doctor raised an instant smile from me. It helps to ease that transition from Jo leaving, because the rest of the team is clearly still carrying on. I wondered – briefly – if we’d get mention of Jo’s travels (the Brig does refer back to the Doctor’s jaunt to Metebilis III, after all), but I’m rather hoping now that we don’t. Now she’s arrived, I’d love the focus to be squarely on Sarah Jane – there’s a new girl in the Doctor’s life!