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

Day 463: The Face of Evil, Episode Three

Dear diary,

Oh, I thought it had all fallen apart with today’s episode. I’ve so been enjoying the Sevateem, their style, the sets they inhabit and the jungle they live in, so as soon as we introduce the Tesh, with their bizarre costumes and customs, I thought things had really gone off the rails. I even made a note about things going down hill from here. But then… I just carried on enjoying it! Yes, the Tesh costumes are bizarre (and the bowing movement they make at the start and end of every conversation leaves at least one of the actors looking as though they can’t pin-point where it all went so wrong for them), but they kind of work. Being so very… futuristic Doctor Who, they contrast really nicely with everything we’ve seen so far.

The greatest bit of design on show in this episode, though, is the spaceship they live in. The corridors are pretty plain - all white panels and mirrors - and as with the costumes, it looks like the kind of set that people always think of Doctor Who using. They’re very simple, and very basic, and very effective. They’re such a stark difference to the locations we’ve been in up to now, and the colour pallet really helps to set them apart from all the deep, Earthy colours that the Sevateem live with. And then you’ve got Xoanon’s main room, with the three big screens glaring down at the Doctor. It’s another bit of really simple design, but it’s done really well once again.

One of the working titles for this story was The Day God Went Mad. While it’s tempting to think of it as an early example of the programme taking a mid-season break before coming back with a deliberately provocative title (Let’s Kill Hitler, I’m looking in your direction), I think I’m quite glad that they decided to go down a more traditional route. Mary Whitehouse would have had a fit! That said, all the religious undertones in this story are really working well for me. It’s the Doctor’s reactions to them which are most interesting, and the way that he both seems to completely understand the way it all works while also being completely absent from it. There’s a lovely moment today when Jabel drops to his knees before the Doctor (believing him to be his lord), and the Doctor idly muses if the man has dropped something.

It’s nice to see the series playing with the idea of the Doctor as a somewhat mythical figure here. It happens quite often in the 21st century incarnation of the programme, but I’m not sure we’ve ever had it before this point. There have been instances where the Doctor has returned to worlds he’s visited before (and encountered people who remember his last visit, or at least know of it), but this is the first time that his - unseen - interference in a planet’s history has set up events that will return to haunt him in a new story. There’s lots of lovely dialogue which all fits in rather nicely with this, such as the description of the Doctor as ‘Lord of Time’, and it’s really rather enjoyable to watch.

We’re also getting lots of nice background to the Doctor’s previous visit. On screen, it’s not stated when the Doctor made his first trip to this world, but in the Target novelisation it’s placed during that moment in Robot, when he tries to flee from UNIT HQ not long after his regeneration. To be honest, I can’t actually remember the ship dematerialising during that part of the story (the light flashes, the noise begins, but then the Docto’s head appears around the door), and I’m fairly sure that it came before the Doctor had changed into his now famous outfit, though the mountain-side carving features a hint of a scarf.

That’s really just be being pedantic, though, because it’s a great place to put his first adventure. The Doctor can’t really remember it now because he wasn’t in his right mind during the aftermath of the regeneration (he only really started to settle down once all the business with the Giant Robot got underway), and that would also explain why he’s managed to make such a massive mistake when reprogramming Xoanon the first time around. The Doctor hurries off in the TARDIS, finds the Mordee Expedition, goes through the events we hear about in this episode not because he needs to, but because he’s the Doctor, and making things better is simply what he does. Before he has a chance to realise his mistake, he remembers Sarah’s voice shouting as he left UNIT HQ, and hurries back to catch up with her. It makes a lot of sense to place it in that gap, so I’m going to squint and overlook the fact that it doesn’t seem to quite work with the events we actually see in his first story…

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

Day 462: The Face of Evil, Episode Two

Dear diary,

Because I have a vague idea about the background to this story, I know that the Doctor arrived on this planet at some point in the past, and that the computer has taken on elements of his persona. I’m not sure if I’ve seen a clip of it, or simply a still screen capture, but I know there’s a scene at some point where the Doctor’s face appears on large screens shouting at him. What I didn’t know is that the computer spoke in the Doctor’s voice. I first noticed it during yesterday’s episode (Baker has such a distinctive voice, it would be pretty hard to hide it!), but it really starts to make an impact when the Doctor begins a conversation with - in effect - himself.

‘You. Me. We. Us…’ There’s something really un-nerving about the whole exchange, and the fact we simply focus in on the empty helmet as we hear the voice seems to just make things all the more effective. The Doctor piecing things together as he goes is pretty interesting too, and I can’t wait for him to figure out the rest of his previous visit to this world. I’m also surprised to see the invisible creatures revealed to be giant versions of the Doctor’s face! It’s such a bizarre concept, that should be really rather rubbish… but it works! I think it’s because it was so bonkers and unexpected that it makes such an impact. I even had to skip back a few seconds on the DVD, just to check that I wasn’t imagining it. Mind you, if they’re just giant floating Doctor heads… then how did they make to footprints we saw in the last episode?

Considering he takes on so many different parts throughout this episode, it’s perhaps useful to see that Baker is really at the top of his game. He’s made very few mis-steps since taking over the role, but I think we’re now entering the phase where he’s really at his peak. From the serious moments to the comedic ones (I love his tennis commentary as people argue over his life!), he’s rarely been better than this. He doesn’t even come across as acting - he simply is the Doctor.

The only slight downside to this comes during his trial against the Horda pit. Watching the programme as an adult, I’m well aware that the Doctor will find a way to make his escape. There’s no way that he’s going to die here and now, and he’s not in any real threat because I know he’s got another four-and-a-half seasons to go yet. But even putting that out of mind for a moment, Baker’s performance as the Doctor is so self-assured by this point, that I think much of the tension is drained from the scene. Right from the moment where he first steps onto the platform, you just know that he’s going to be able to hit the rope and get away. It was nice to see Leela dive in, though, in an attempt to save him. She’s only known him a few hours, but he’s already made such an impact on her.

I’ve really very little to add today. I’m simply enjoying the story, and I’m really interested to see where we go from here. Although I’ve enjoyed the overwhelming majority of stories so far in this marathon, it’s not often that I find it hard to ration myself to the one episode a day. I’m used to this pace, and I find it really suits me. Were I watching any quicker, I fear that I’d have burnt out a long time ago. This story is one of those one’s where I’m actually willing tomorrow to hurry up and get here, because I can’t wait to sit down for another episode. You can’t get much higher praise than that!

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

Day 461: The Face of Evil, Episode One

Dear diary,

When I was watching Genesis of the Daleks, I mentioned a work colleague who used to watch Doctor Who back in the 1970s, but only really has a passing interest in the show these days. Every now and then, he asks me how the marathon is going, and I update him as to my whereabouts in the run. I told him the other day that Sarah Jane had just left the TARDIS, and his face completely lit up. He proclaimed this to be the start of ‘the greatest run’ of Doctor Who ever made. It’s clearly made some impact, because he was able to pick out details from the next few stories beautifully. He referred to ‘Tom Baker’s face on the side of a mountain’, ‘Green Robots’, ‘The little dummy man’, ‘The Lighthouse’, and several other things which are going to be making up the Leela era, before adding that Leela remains, to this day, his favourite companion. Considering the slight apathy I seem to have been feeling towards stories of late, maybe this is a good sign?

Certainly, we’re off to a very good start for the new season. Hm? What? No, no, I’m fairly sure that this is the opening episode for Doctor Who’s Fifteenth Season. Oh, go on then…

When Series Six was announced as being split in two for transmission in 2011, there was something of an uproar in fandom. We’d grown used to the idea of a straight, 13-week run in the spring. Suddenly, there was going to be a great big gap in the middle of the series, airing half in the spring, and the rest in the autumn. They did a similar thing for Series Seven, but at the time of writing, it looks like we’re back to a straight run for this year’s set of episodes. People complained that Doctor Who had never done such a thing before, but it had in a way. What we now think of as Season Fourteen was broadcast in two chunks in the mid 1970s. The Masque of Mandragora, The Hand of Fear, and The Deadly Assassin all made up the first half of the series, running twelve weeks from September to November.

The series then took a six-week break before resuming on New Year’s Day with The Face of Evil, and continuing on through to The Talons of Weng-Chiang. Even the Radio Times listing for this first episode bills it as being the start of a ‘New Series’. I’ve been a bit tongue-in-cheek above when I suggest that this is the beginning of a new season - from a modern perspective, it’s far easier to think of it as all one block - but it really does feel like a fresh new start, and I’m hoping that it’s a good sign for where things are headed.

So: where do I begin with this one? I’ve never seen The Face of Evil before, though I’m sure I’ve read at least some of the Target novelisation. Not that I can really remember all that much about it, mind. The one thing that I do know is the image of Tom Baker’s face being carved into the side of a mountain. It’s a shame, really, because it’s such a striking image, and I can’t begin to imagine how brilliant that must have seemed on first transmission. It’s fun, throughout the episode, to watch people react to the Doctor as ‘the Evil One’, because it gives the Doctor a great chance for some comebacks. Tom Baker is on fine form here - it’s almost as though he’s enthused by the fresh start to things, too.

He even gets to bring in the Jelly Babies for a few appearances. I’ve been surprised so far just how little they’ve been a part of his Doctor. When people talk of the fourth incarnation, they tend to mention the long scarf, the floppy hat, the curly hair, the toothy grin… and the Jelly Babies! It’s one of the defining aspects of this Doctor, but they’ve made a surprisingly small impact on the character thus far. When Tom took over the role, I decided to start keeping count of how often he said that famous phrase: ‘Would you like a Jelly Baby?’ By the end of The Ark in Space, we were up to three mentions, but then I sort of lost track. It didn’t turn up in every story, and to be honest, I’m not entirely sure I’ve heard it since those early episodes of his.

Here, though, they’re being used to great effect. I genuinely laughed out loud at Leela’s reaction to the sweets (‘They say the Evil One eats babies’), and the Doctor’s threat to poison someone with one of his ‘deadly’ sweets is similarly priceless. I’m wondering if this may be where the idea of the Doctor being so fond of the sweets really begins in earnest?

And then you’ve got the new girl. They don’t waste any time in setting Leela up as a new presence in the series, with her being front and centre in the very first shot of the episode. We’ve had contemporary Earth girls in the role of companion for a while now, and all of the Doctor’s recent companions have come to the TARDIS via UNIT (Sarah Jane is the only one who wasn’t under UNIT employ when they first met, but even she stumbled in during one of their assignments). It’s a stark difference, then, to be introduced to our new regular while she’s being put to trial in a fairly un-evolved court.

She’s great right from the start, though, standing up to the people in charge, making her voice heard, and refusing to bow down to their rules where she disagrees. When she’s then pursued through the jungle by two guards, and then proceeds to kill one of them, it’s clear that we’re dealing with a very different kind of assistant. I love that she continues to kill the people who threaten her – and I love even more than the Doctor is able to make a point of telling her not to do it. I know that she’s intended to have something of an ‘Eliza Doolittle’ vibe, with the Doctor teaching her to become a ‘lady’, and this is a great step in that direction.

It also helps that most of her scenes with the Doctor are set on that stunning jungle set. I praised the one from Planet of Evil to the high heavens (and rightly so, I think, because it was a brilliant design), but this one is up there in the same league. Once again, the majority of it is being shot on film over at Ealing, so it gives these scenes a different, richer quality than you might expect. The trees, the ‘vines’, the smoke… it all really works. The only bit which doesn’t quite work for me, I’m afraid, is the reveal of the Doctor’s face on the mountainside! I think the intention in the first shot (featuring the Doctor in the foreground while the mountain stretches up behind him) is that we don’t immediately notice what he’s looking at, but it means that I was desperately scanning the image for Tom Baker’s face, and then the impact of the sudden close up was a bit lost on me. I’m really pleased, though. After a few stories which haven’t really hit the mark, I’m glad to see that I’m not tiring of Who - I just needed a fresh start.

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

Day 460: The Deadly Assassin, Episode Four

Dear diary,

What with the Doctor reaching the end of his thirteenth body last Christmas, the way that a Time Lord’s regeneration cycle works has been in the spotlight a lot lately. For as long as I can remember in fandom, it’s always been a talking point, and there’s been any number of theories as to exactly how the Doctor would manage to escape his ‘final’ death. The suggestions ranged from the unconcerned (‘they’ll simply ignore it’), to the over complex (something about the number of trips he’s made in the TARDIS naturally extending his lifespan). Some people suggested that all ‘limits’ on the number of lives a Time Lord can have were lifted when the Time War became serious, and some have suggested that it’s never really been an issue.

In my mind, the whole ‘twelve regenerations’ thing has always been a suspension applied by the Time Lords themselves. The Doctor implies that - barring accidents - Time Lords can effectively live forever - I think the limit is imposed simply to stop them from going on, and on, and on. The Time Lord society may be stale, but they’d never want it to become so stale that they never changed, but the same group of people carried on forever. I’ve always imagined that the more you regenerate, the less effective it becomes. By the time you reach your twentieth-or-thirtieth body, the process is fairly unstable. There’s only so often that you’re able to change every cell in your body before the effect starts to wear off. It’s why the Ninth Doctor wonders if he’ll end up with two heads - or no head - and it’s why the regenerations have been getting gradually more explosive over the last few occasions.

The fact of the matter is that over the years, a number of different production teams have all had a hand in the evolution of the regeneration mythology. The Second Doctor implies that he couldn’t have done it without the TARDIS, and the Time Lords of The War Games seem to treat it as something unique to the Doctor (‘You have changed face before…’). By the time Romana fancies a change, she’s even able to ‘try on’ a few bodies before settling on one. When we get to The Five Doctors, the High Council are even able to bribe the Master with promise of a whole new regeneration cycle. It’s at this point that I have to wonder… did the Master give them the technology to do that?

In this story, we learn that the Master is on his final life, and it seems that the only way he’s found to overcome that is to tear Gallifrey apart by ripping into the Eye of Harmony. Could it be that Rassilon programmed the ’13 lives’ limit into all Gallifreyans and it’s being held in check by the Eye? Maybe, now that the Master has helped to show the Time Lords that it actually exists, and it’s left sticking through the ground of their grand Panopticon, they’ll find a way to harness the power and gain a bit more control over the way in which regenerations work?

Aside from inspiring a little speculation like this in my head (which is never a bad thing - Doctor Who, and indeed TV in general, is at its best when it makes you think), I’ve watched this episode with the same kind of disconnect which has tainted the rest of the story. My disinterest is perhaps best mirrored by Spandrell’s faction to the Master’s survival at the end of the story, in which he half heartedly points and exclaims ‘Look, it’s the Master’, with all the interest of a man who’s just seen some leftover cabbage in the fridge.

The highlight of today’s episode is, again, the Panopticon set, which actually does look rather impressive as it collapses around the Doctor and the Master. When the destruction first begins, and a few polystyrene rocks are thrown towards Tom Baker’s face, I worried we were in for a rather limp ending, but by the time the floor starts to split open and the roof really begins to cave in, things were looking decidedly upwards. It’s just a shame that the whole story hasn’t been as fantastic as that!

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

Day 459: The Deadly Assassin, Episode Three

Dear diary,

In much the same way that the Doctor’s return to Gallifrey should feel like a really big deal, the return of the Master for the first time since Frontier in Space should feel absolutely huge. We’ve not seen him for about four years (which in terms of this marathon means that I’ve not seen him for almost three months), and he’s back to exact revenge against the Doctor. But it’s not treated as any kind of special event. The reveal of the Action Man miniaturised Time Lord in the Panopticon should be this stunning reveal as to who the real enemy is… but then it’s just treated as somewhat blasé - the Doctor simply confirms that it’s a sign of the Master’s presence, and then carries on with the story. As seems to be customary for this story, we get a chunk of information about who the Master is to bring us up to speed, but it’s lacking in any real fanfare.

I think the biggest issue is the fact that, by this point, Roger Delgado has been dead for some time. Looking back from 2014, when we’ve had several different incarnations of the Master, it’s difficult to think of a time when Delgado simply was the character, but watching through the series an episode a day like this means that I’ve not been through a Master story with a different incarnation since sometime back in 2012, and even then it was probably just an episode on in the background. To anyone who’s watching this series for the first time, and doing it in order (on first transmission, for example), all of this feels really, really, strange. We know that the Master is back… but where is he? Is he supposed to be the decaying figure in the cape? What’s happened to the suave gentleman we knew opposite Jon Pertwee? The one who looked so at home in a high-backed leather chair?

I’d really go for a story in which the Doctor and the Master fight each other in some kind of dream-scape (and we’ll come to that in a minute), especially if it comes as the reveal of the character. Someone’s been tampering with all this equipment. They’ve tried to have the Doctor framed for murdering the president. They stalk the Doctor through this land of nightmares for ages and ages, and when the face mask comes off… it’s the Master! After all this time! Obviously, they couldn’t have had Delgado back by this point, and in some ways I’m glad they haven’t just recast the role with an impersonator. But it doesn’t feel like they’ve brought the Master back because they have a story to tell featuring him - he’s simply here because someone in the production office has said ‘Hey! You know who hasn’t been in the show for a while…?’

Then we’ve got the land of nightmares inside the Matrix. I have to admit, even though I vaguely knew what was happening here (the end of Trial of a Time Lord is effectively a remake of this storyline), there were points where I was completely lost. I couldn’t figure out why the inside of the Matrix looked like this barren landscape, or why there were trains, and planes, and crocodiles in there. I think the implication is that Goth has spent so much time in the Matrix that he’s been able to create this ‘virtual reality world’ inside it, and some tampering with the machine means that the Doctor has gone straight there once he tries to enter the Matrix (as the master knew he would - earlier in the story he makes a comment about how predictable his foe is).

But then it begs the question… why has Goth populated his world with the aforementioned trains, and planes, and crocodiles? Not to mention clowns, and surgeons, and spiders. The implication earlier in the story is that Time Lords aren’t overly familiar with Earth, but does Goth have a special interest? Or are these things being drawn from the Doctor’s mind as fears? If so, then why don’t we see any Daleks, or Cybermen, or Koquillion? That’s my main problem with the episode: I love the idea of the Doctor and the Master trapped in a world of nightmares made real, fighting to the death… but that’s not what we get. This is the Doctor fighting the Master’s stooge in a landscape that’s not hugely interesting, with disparate elements thrown in to fill the episode out. It’s your standard ‘Episode Three’, but instead of running up and down the corridors from the previous two episodes, they’ve gone out to location.

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

Day 458: The Deadly Assassin, Episode Two

Dear diary,

I don’t know if I was simply feeling especially sour yesterday, but I’ve been much more willing to go along with The Deadly Assassin today. It’s still not perfect, but it’s a darn sight more solid than I was giving it credit for being. There’s still one or two moments peppered here and there which take me out of things (I can’t decide if the chalk outline of the murdered president - complete with Time Lord head gear - was supposed to be funny or serious), but on the whole I’m being much more swept along with the story.

Yesterday, I said that there were elements of the sets that I rather enjoyed, but I tempered my praise with complaints that they were - on the whole - a bit drab. I think I still feel the same way having watched this episode, but I’m willing to give them a bit more attention than I was before. Seeing the Panopticon set without all the Time Lords stood around inside it means that we get to see the full scale of the area. There’s some great high shots looking down across the space, and it’s here that the setting makes a real impact. We also get some nice wide shots which also seem to include a domed ceiling overhead (Though I can’t decide if we’re supposed to be looking at a painted dome, or windows looking out onto a night sky). This is the design at its best - the shape of the room and the scale of it really do make the impression that they’re supposed to.

But then it’s still all looking a bit drab. Don’t get me wrong - I’m not expecting some kind of fantastically elaborate setting that would cost a million pounds, but I’m just sort of looking for something… more. My favourite version of Gallifrey, I think, is the one we see briefly at the very start of the Animated Shada webcast. The Eighth Doctor returns home to visit President Romana in her rooms in the Capitol, and it’s a lovely hybrid of ‘classic’ Gallifrey, and the snatches we see of the war-torn planet in the more recent series. The animation is basic, but we get to see a room with high, arched windows which look out across the stunning landscape, bathed in reds and golds. This is the Gallifrey I imagine when Susan describes it during The Sensorites, or the Doctor recalls little details in Gridlock.

As I said yesterday, I completely understand that the idea here is that the Doctor ran away because Gallifrey is like this - he left because he didn’t like the place being so stuffy, and dull. It’s only when you’ve said goodbye to something that you start to really remember all the good aspects, and that’s what he’s doing when he tells Martha all about his home world. And yet, as much as I love the idea of a young(er) William Hartnell getting bored with all the tedious rituals and boring info dumps and running away in a TARDIS, I still want to see Gallifrey as beautiful. I want to see the place as stunning… but populated by people who simply can’t appreciate the beauty.

I was thinking about this yesterday, actually. For years and years, around the time Torchwood started up, and the TARDIS began making infrequent stops in Wales, I told myself that - one day - I’d live in Cardiff Bay. The image of that water tower, and the Millennium Centre, and the water… that was the dream for me. Well now… I do! I live about a four minute walk from that water tower, and I can see the Millennium Centre from my window. And it is brilliant, and amazing, and everything I’d ever hoped… but then you start to just take it for granted. When I go into the Bay now, it’s not because I want to go out and experience everything the area has to offer… it’s because I’m on my way to Tesco. Or the Bank. Or to collect a pizza.

It was a nice day, yesterday. One of those rare ones where the sun is out, it’s not too cold, and we’ve got tourists around. There’s people over there taking pictures next to the water tower, trying to figure out which of the paving slabs John Barrowman has stood on the most, and carrying bags to the Doctor Who Experience. They’re all full of the excitement and joy that I had, the very first time I was brought to the area. But now it’s all just there. I barely even look at the water tower any more, and whereas I used to purposely walk past it on my way to buy milk, I’ve now found a slightly quicker route, and I don’t even really miss seeing the tower - I know it’s there.

Then there’s times like the other day, where I rounded a corner on the way to the shop… and there was the TARDIS! The actual TARDIS, stood in the middle of the street. And there’s Clara Oswald (well… Jenna Coleman) and the Doctor (ok… Peter Capaldi) in the middle of an adventure. Crew, and cameras, and extras all busying themselves about. I smiled, text the missus, and then carried on with my day. There was a time when turning the corner and running into the Doctor Who crew making a new episode would have been the most amazing thing in the world, but now that I’ve been here a few years, it’s simply become a part of everyday life. I’m sure they’ll turn up a few more times before the year is out.

This is exactly how I imagine the Time Lords. They live in - or, rather, they should live in - the most beautiful place we’ve ever seen in the series. A world where the sky is a burnt orange and there’s trees with leaves of silver. I want it to all be the reds and golds of the new series, with a sense of grandeur which almost borders on the obnoxious. I think if you were to take all the characters in this story, exactly as they are, and drop them into that setting, I’d be on top of the world. All these stuffy old people who’ve been here so long that none of this is beautiful to them. But that’s when you start needing a character like Sarah Jane to be alongside the Doctor when he visits home. You’d need her to be pointing out how stunning it all is. How rich, and beautiful, and unappreciated. You need a scene where the Doctor and his companion gaze out across the landscape as the suns set, and she wonders how anyone could ever leave a place like this.

(For the record, not that you asked, my perfect Gallifrey would be filmed in the entrance hall to the Natural History Museum. Those huge stone staircases. The pillars. The arched windows, which would be perfect for streaming in that deep, orange light. If you get a change, Google for images of the place shot with a fish-eye camera lens - that’s my Gallifrey.) 

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

Day 457: The Deadly Assassin, Episode One

Dear diary,

Has there ever been a better example of ‘fan wisdom’ than The Deadly Assassin? When it was first broadcast, the general feeling among fans seems to have been that it was a mis-step. Taking the Doctor home to Gallifrey, and destroying the mystery of the Time Lords forever more (I can’t speak for everyone, here, but that seems to be the impression that I get asking around). As the years have gone by, though, people seem to have re-evaluated their opinions on the story, and subsequent generations seem to have deemed this one yet another of those Hinchcliffe-era ‘classics’ - taking the Doctor home to Gallifrey, and finally giving us a good look at the Time Lords.

And certainly, when the story opens, you know you’re in for something different. There’s an opening monologue read out by Tom Baker, as the text scrolls over the screen (I did wonder, briefly, if they’d stolen the idea from Star Wars, but that wasn’t released for several more months, yet), which sets up the mythical status of the Time Lord society, and warns that they’re about to face the ‘greatest crisis in their long history’. As if that weren’t tantalising enough, you’ve then got the Doctor almost collapsing in his TARDIS as he gets a vision of the Time Lord president begin assassinated! It doesn’t waste time in setting up a lot of mystery and intrigue.

But once they’ve got that excitement out of the way, Gallifrey’s just a bit rubbish, isn’t it? There’s nothing here which stands out to me as saying ‘We’re On The Doctor’s Home Planet’ - it’s just this week’s ‘space’ set, with this week’s set of dusty old men to fill in the guest roles. If anything, it’s a bit boring, with lots of characters stood around spouting information at each other, so it feels more as though you’re being loaded up with facts rather than being presented with an interesting world you want to explore. When the Doctor tries to tune into ‘the local news’, I’d completely had enough. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great idea for another society to have a kind of television system like we do (it’s something lacking in many alien civilisations throughout the series), but it just feels so bloody dull for Gallifrey!

Even when the Doctor’s being chased around the corridors by guards, there’s no real excitement to any of it. He simply hides behind things and waits until they’ve moved on. This then gives us time for scenes in which the captain of the guards is chastised for allowing his captive to escape him. What I’m trying to say is… we’re on Gallifrey! The Doctor’s Home World! Where’s the spectacle? The majesty? I understand the idea that the Doctor stole his TARDIS and ran away to escape such a crusty, boring old life, and I’ve always been a fan of that idea, but actually reaching this episode now, after 400-odd other ones, it simply feels like a let down.

Oh, but I’m being unfair. It’s not all bad, and there;s several things in here which I have to confess a love for. On the whole, the sets don’t really do a lot for me, and they simply blend into this bland feeling across the episode. That said, when we get our first proper glimpse of the Panopticon, with raised levels and filled with people, there’s something fairly spectacular about it. We’re not too far away from it being quite a good design, and I wonder if I may grow to like it more in subsequent episodes, given longer to experience it.

The real stand out, though, has to be the costumes. I’ve complained about the ineffectual guards above, but I really do love their costumes. They’ve got the right blend of space-age and medieval, and they really stand out against the very flat colours of everything else on display. I think I’d go so far as to say that they’re one of my favourite costume designs from the entire series. Then we’ve got the now famous ‘Time Lord’ collar and robe combination. It’s another winner, and it’s strange to look back now and think that this design didn’t debut until Season Fourteen. It seems so iconic, now, when we’ve seen it crop up again and again throughout subsequent adventures.

So, a shaky start to a story which may - or may not - be a ‘classic’. I’m remaining cautiously optimistic for now, and hoping that once the initial disappointment at Gallifrey has subsided, I may continue to find more to love as the story goes on…

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

Day 456: The Hand of Fear, Episode Four

Dear diary,

I’ve been putting off the writing of this entry all day. This is it! One of the big ones! It’s the final appearance of Sarah Jane Smith during her original run in the programme! A huge moment, and one which is filled with emotion and heartbreak. When Elisabeth Sladen died in 2011, Babelcolour uploaded a video tribute to her, and it’s always been my favourite Sarah Jane related video. The tone is perfect - joyous, but tinged with a bittersweet sadness - and the clips of her saying farewell to the Fourth Doctor are really rather moving. I’ve been creeping closer to this episode, just knowing that the actual scene, coming in context after all her other episodes, will be even more emotional.

But then… it wasn’t. Didn’t even seem to move me one jot. I don’t know if I’m broken, but I didn’t find it half as sad as I was expecting to. I mean - yes - it’s very well done, and the way both Baker and Sladen play it is beautiful… but I’m just not sorry to see Sarah leave. Because of her return to the series in 2006, and the years she’s spent in her own spin-off, Sarah has always felt like the companion. The ultimate. The definitive article, you might say. While I’ve really enjoyed her time in the TARDIS up to now, though, I can’t say that I view her as being all that much better than Jo, for example. Or Jamie. Ian and Barbara… She’s a good companion, yes, one of the better ones… but I’m not sure I really understand what all the fuss is about.

And that, I think, is the root of my problem. So much of what makes Sarah Jane so well regarded is the fact that she was the right companion at the right time in the programme’s history. She’s paired with two of the more polar Doctors, and her time with Tom covers one of the most successful periods of the programmes history - both in terms of creativity and general popularity among the public. I think there’s a certain amount of nostalgia to the decision to crown her as the ‘best companion ever’.

All of this sound like I’m taking pot-shots at Sarah Jane in her final moments, but I’m really not. I have loved having her aboard the TARDIS for the last few months, and I’ve really grown to see what so many people love about the character. The issue is that I was just expecting more from her departure. I was expecting to feel more moved by it, and I think I’m a little disappointed that I’m not. Equally, it could be because I know she’ll be back now and again. I know I’ll see her when I watch K9 & Company at the end of Tom’s run, and again during The Five Doctors. I know she’ll pop up fairly regularly during the Tenth Doctor’s era. Maybe it’s not so emotional because I know it’s not the end?

I think I’m also a little miffed by the way the episode unfolds before we even reach the big farewell, too. It plays out like a rehash of Death to the Daleks again - in which the Doctor and Sarah have to overcome a number of puzzles to make their way somewhere inside this alien city. We’ve only recently had a similar scenario pop up in Pyramids of Mars, so it’s little too fresh in the memory for me. We’ve even got the same ‘creature watching a screen turns out to have been dead for millennia’ trick which worked so well when Terry Nation first did it a few seasons ago. It’s not often in this blog that I’m caught praising Terry’s originality!

During The Masque of Mandragora, I mused that I was feeling ready for a change in the programme, and I think that’s contributing to my general weariness here. The programme has had so many strong hits of late that any time an episode doesn’t quite live up to that same standard, I find myself feeling somewhat let down by it. You attune yourself to the average quality of the era you’re in. You’ll notice sometimes (the last season and a half of Pertwee is a good example) that I seem to be levelling out with my scores. Lots of sixes and sevens. That generally means that an era has been of a consistent quality for a while, and so stories then start to gather as extremes when they’re slightly better (or slightly worse) than those around them.

We’ve now got four episode of the Doctor on his lonesome, and then we’re going to be getting a brand new companion. I think this shake-up could be just what I need to shake off my fatigue and get my head back in the game. For now, I’ll say goodbye to this phase of the programme’s history.

Until we meet again, Sarah…

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

Day 455: The Hand of Fear, Episode Three

Dear diary,

The pacing of this story is really throwing me. Episode One moves relatively slowly (though that doesn’t mean it’s boring in any way), then Episode Two really races by, with two nuclear threats and lots of people getting possessed by Eldrad. Then we reach Episode Three. I’d assumed Eldrad’s full reveal would be saved for use during a cliffhanger, so when it didn’t arrive yesterday, I wondered what that would mean for the pacing of today’s instalment. I wasn’t expecting to see the fully-formed creature emerge a little way into an episode.

I then also wasn’t expecting us to leave the location of the power station this early, either. I had no idea that we spent time actually on Kastria - I assumed we only saw it during that opening scene of the story. Events at the power station are left a bit suddenly, but we do at least get a nice send off for Professor Watkins wondering who’s going to believe him about all the events we’ve just been through!

To be honest, it was looking like we were heading for the kind of story I’m more familiar with from Dragonfire - the guest villain would want to get back to their home world, only to find that so long has passed, their world is long since dead. There’s certainly shades of that kind of story in here, but at least there’s a home for Eldrad to return to. I’m convinced that there’s more to her story than we’re being told, though. If she’s such a key person in that planet’s evolution, why would they have been so keen to destroy her? The booby trap in the cliff hanger adds another dimension to the culture, too. Did she place it there to deter intruders, or was it designed to keep her at bay should she ever return?

I’m also loving her bargaining with the Doctor. This season is seeing a heightened amount of ‘Time Lord’ being added in to his character, and it’s making for an interesting new thread. During the Pertwee years (and even into Season Twelve and Thirteen), the Doctor was unhappy to be sent on missions for his people, but now he seems to be talking a greater interest in their cause. During The Masque of Mandragora, he claims that it’s ‘part of a Time Lord’s job’ to step in and save the day against the Helix. Here, when Eldrad questions him about his home world, he says again that he has to protect the indigenous population when they’re threatened. Obviously, the next story will see our first proper trip to Gallifrey (as opposed to the brief excursion at the end of The War Games), so maybe they’re trying to thread them in deeper in preparation?

And then there’s all the stuff in the TARDIS. I only touched on the new console room briefly when it first appeared in the last story (to be fair, it does only make a fleeting appearance itself before we’re off to Italy), but now that we get to spend some proper time in here I’m really rather fond of it. As I said the other day, this room has always stuck out as something of an anomaly, but I’m really rather impressed by the set. Something about it feels so right, and it really does suit Tom’s Doctor. We’re given a slightly odd description of it, though. The Doctor explains that when they’re inside the TARDIS, they don’t really exist, so they can’t be harmed. Now, in one of the Matt Smith stories he describes this ‘state of temporal grace’ as being a clever lie - so maybe he’s trying to throw Eldrad off here? - but it is a bit of an odd one!

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

Day 454: The Hand of Fear, Episode Two

Dear diary,

I spent much of The Masque of Mandragora banging on about just how brilliant the locations looked, but the same is true of this story - perhaps to an even greater extent. Oldbury Nuclear Power Station, used for the interiors of the Nunton Power Complex, is huge, so it really makes an impact on screen. Way back during The Dalek Invasion of Earth, I was impressed because when Ian and the Doctor found a flight of stairs to go up, the camera followed them… and just kept going! I’d become so used to the size of set the programme could build, and was ready for them to cut away. That same feeling is in place here today, when the Doctor and Dr. Carter rush after Sarah, and then engage in a fight on a gangway. Watching as Carter falls over the edge and plummets to his death below only helps to increase the scale.

It’s also inspiring some rather brilliant direction from Lennie Mayne, in his final work on the series. While the location is vast, and we’re able to get some stunning shots which really highlight how much space they have to play in this week, many of the individual areas of the power station are very cramped, filled high with machinery and equipment. Thus, they’re having to be clever with the placement of the camera when they’re taking many of the close up shots. Mayne has turned this into part of the serial’s style, and you notice that the shots are becoming more and more unusual as we focus on any character who’s been possessed by Eldrad.

Ah yes, Eldrad. I know enough about this story to know that - at some stage - the hand will grow into a crystalline blue woman, but I’m surprised it wasn’t the cliffhanger to this episode. I’m assuming it will come as the next cliffhanger, meaning that she spends less time being part of the plot than I’d expected. Instead, we’re left with the hand to entertain us for these 25 minutes. That’s not a complaint, mind, because it’s very well realised. There’s some shots where the CSO trickery is very evident (and one where you can tell the actor is being hidden away just behind the set), but then there’s other bits, like that first shot of the hand coming to life in the tupperware box, where I really can’t tell how it’s been done. I’m assuming that it’s CSO, the same as elsewhere, but it’s just done far better than I’m used to!

Aside from the effects and the location, I’m really rather fond of the characters we’ve got in this one, too. Just as with Giuliano and Marco in the last story, it feels like we’re being given added depth to the characters here. Many of them are scotched in with the briefest of lines, but it gives us just enough detail to fill in the rest of their story. I wondered, for example, what the relationship might be between Miss Jackson and Professor Watson: there’s enough of a hint between them to suggest that there’s a little bit of a workplace romance going on. And then, when things get dire, he’s sent everyone out of the building… and he phones his wife. It’s a beautiful exchange (where he even briefly speaks to his daughter), and while he never tells her that something serious is happening and that he might not come home that night, he tells her everything she needs to hear for a final conversation.

In The Writer’s Tale, during the planning of The Waters of Mars, Russell T Davies speaks a lot about how important the ‘messages from home’ are for the crew of Bowie Base One. He talks of the way they ground the story in reality, while at the same time helping to reaffirm just how remote the situation is. It has the same effect here, and it helps Watson to be ever more real. I do wonder if the dram is undercut somewhat by having the complex evacuated, then bringing the staff back in, only to evacuate it again: It’s difficult to take the threat seriously a second time (indeed, there was once a day at work when the fire alarm went off three times. By the end, we were genuinely unsure wether to bother going back inside again). But that one phone call, a brief scene of calm in an episode where a lot is happening, means that I care about Watson. I worry that he may end up becoming collateral damage before the story is out - and I feel sorry for his wife and daughter. Now that’s an example of good writing in a Doctor Who episode.

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

Day 453: The Hand of Fear, Episode One

Dear diary,

By the time The Hand of Fear was released on DVD in 2006, I was regularly picking the stories up on release day as I passed by Woolworths. As if I didn’t already know from any number of guidebooks about the series, this particular release bore a sticker on the front, proclaiming it as ‘Sarah Jane’s final classic story’. Now that I’ve reached it in the context of the marathon, it’s as though things have come around a bit… quick. Sarah Jane has been companion for longer than most companions (even - just - edging out Jo Grant’s three seasons), but her time in the TARDIS has felt rather short.

I think it’s because of the change in teams throughout her time. She spends her first season alongside Jon Pertwee, and while they worked brilliantly together, they didn’t share the same rapport that she and Tom Baker would later build up. That said, in her second season, I often felt that she was overshadowed by the presence of Harry in the TARDIS. It’s only really through the stories of Season Thirteen that she’s become the wonderful companion that I know and enjoy.

But what on Earth have they dressed her in for her final appearance?!?! Of course, I’ve always known of the ‘Andy Pandy’ costume from this story (although I had no idea that it was described as such in the episode itself!), but it’s not until you actually encounter it watching through like this that you realise just how out of place it really is. Lis Sladen talks in her autobiography of making Sarah’s dress sense more and more ‘out there’ the longer she travelled in the TARDIS (and she makes the same point in the commentary for this episode), but this is, I think, the first time I’ve ever noticed it so much. Oh, sure, there’s been a few questionable clothing choices over the past few seasons, but this is batting things into a whole other league.

Thankfully, it’s not holding Sladen back, and she’s turning in a hell of a performance for her final story. She’s always been rather good with her ‘possessed’ acting, and it’s nice to see her really giving it her all in her final story. She gives a wonderful ‘far off’ look when trying to be disconnected from events, and I’m completely sold by it. Seeing a companion taken over like this isn’t new by any stretch (a similar thing even happened to Sarah in the last story!), but I’m loving the performance here. It sets this possession out above the rest, and that’s always nice.

I’ve never noticed before just how contemporary-Earth-centric these early Tom Baker years are. I’d always thought of the programme in the 1970s as being almost entirely Earth-bound for Jon Pertwee’s tenure, before barely touching down here again once Baker stepped into the role. It’s actually proved to be far more delineated than that, with every season from about 1972 onwards featuring at least a couple of stories set in the ‘present’. Since the Fourth Doctor took over, we’ve had Robot, Terror of the Zygons, The Android Invasion, The Seeds of Doom and now this one - almost half of his stories have taken place in this period of history. Sarah’s departure will change that, and we’ll start seeing less adventures placed here through the rest of Baker’s run. Maybe losing his human companion cuts another tie to the planet? After all, we won’t have another one until Tegan shows up, and that’s a long way off from now.

That said, this has a different feel to all the other stories set in this period over the last few years. For the first time since The Sea Devils, the Doctor has touched down on modern-day Earth in a story which won’t feature UNIT, and unlike The Seeds of Doom, he’s not been called in as such, but he’s simply arrived here while trying to give Sarah a trip home. It’s ironic, then, that the TARDIS should touch down in that most Doctor Who of locations - a quarry. There was a time, back around Season Three when quarries had first started to become shorthand for ‘alien world’, that I mused on how well they worked. It’s still true, now, but the language of the programme means that I watch the Doctor and Sarah Jane walk through this landscape, and my mind instantly sets it on some aline world. It’s only once we’re out of here and off to the hospital that things start to feel as though we’re really down to Earth. I’m also surprised just how often quarries do appear as themselves in Doctor Who. It was clever when they first tried it during The Ambassadors of Death, but we’ve only recently seen one at the end of last season!

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

With the passing of Ray Cusick last year, it only felt right that I should speak a little bit in the Diary about him and his contribution to the story of Doctor Who. Sadly, given the recent passing of Christopher Barry, it’s becoming a more regular occurrence than I’d like.

I heard today that another one of those stalwarts from the early years - Derek Martinus - had passed away. Last month, I commented on the way that Christopher Barry had helmed to many important stories in the early years of the programme, and it has to be said that Martinus is the other side of that same coin. Between them, these two men directed the first three ‘post regeneration’ stories, and Martinus was also responsible for seeing out William Hartnell - taking the directorial helm of the first ever regeneration inThe Tenth Planet.

What strikes me, looking at the list of stories Derek Martinus had a hand in, is what an exciting period it’s been for them over the last few years. Galaxy 4 has seen an episode returned to the archives The Tenth Planet and The Ice Warriors have seen their missing episodes animated for DVD release (and Mission to the Unknown has been the subject of an unofficial ‘fan’ recon), while Spearhead From Space has been spectacularly cleaned up and released in High Definition on Blu Ray. I hope Derek got the chance to see this version of the story - and enjoy it in all it’s detail. Indeed, the only story he directed which hasn’t seen anything exciting or new happen with it lately is The Evil of the Daleks… but never say never, eh?

I’ve said it before, and I have the sad feeling that I’ll have to say it a few more times before this marathon experiment is over, but when you’re talking about a TV series that’s run for (over!) 50 Years, you’re going to find more and more of the key people connected to it passing on. We seem to be losing some especially big names at the moment, and I think Derek Martinus has to be hailed as one of the most important directors to ever work on the programme. It’s sad that I’ve no more of his episodes to come throughout the rest of the run on The 50 Year Diary, but I’m sure I’ll be popping in one of those fantastic adventures again before too long, once I’ve made my way to the end.

Day 452: The Masque of Mandragora, Episode Four

Dear diary,

I’m not sure what it is, but something about this story has completely failed to connect with me. I’ve spent three days banging on about how gorgeous the locations are, how great the sets look, and how lovely the costumes are, but I’m just sort of… watching the story, instead of connecting with it.

The one thing it has done for me is make a bit more sense of K9 and Company. No, no, I assure you I’m not entirely mad. I’ve always thought it strange that they should choose a cult of robed figures in masks for the adversaries in that tale, because they had no relation to the adventures Sarah had taken during her time aboard the TARDIS, but now I realise that she did encounter this kind of thing in Doctor Who. If anything, I’m a little saddened that they didn’t take the opportunity to bring back the Mandragora Helix for that story – there’s the perfect set up given in this episode, when the Doctor announces that the helix should be ready for another attempt on Earth at the end of the Twentieth Century. There was briefly a plan to bring it back during the second season of The Sarah Jane Adventures, but ultimately the story moved into a different direction.

I fear that I’m going to end up boring you a bit today, because I’m about to praise all the things that I’ve already drawn attention to in the story. Most noticeably, I want to comment on the style given to Sarah for the Masque Ball in this episode. She looks absolutely stunning - and it’s nice to see her given the opportunity to dress up and enjoy herself (even if she is worried for the Doctor throughout the party). It’s also quite nice to see the Doctor having a bit of a laugh throughout. The situation is dire, he’s not sure how to get out of it… but he’s still got time to put on his lion’s head mask and have a joke with Sarah. With the series seeming to grow darker and darker, it’s nice to see a few moments of light relief.

Otherwise… I’m really not sure what to make of this one. Speaking to various people this week, it looks like this may be something of a ‘marmite’ story – people seem to either really love it, or find it just a bit… ephemeral. I think, for me, it may just be burn out. I’ve been loving the pairing of the Doctor and Sarah Jane, but they’ve been together for a long time now, and maybe the time has come for a change of pace. The next story could be coming along at just the right time, then…

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

Day 451: The Masque of Mandragora, Episode Three

Dear diary,

It’s somewhat strange that it’s taken this long – fourteen seasons! – before anyone has brought up the question of how everyone the TARDIS travellers meet seem to speak fairly perfect English! It’s been the case right from the very start of the programme (the Tribe of Gum didn’t have brilliant sentence structure, but they were otherwise perfect BBC English), yet no one has ever thought to bring it up before. The Doctor’s assertion that it’s a ‘Time Lord gift’ which he shares with his companions doesn’t quite chime with the 21st century programme’s version of this skill (where it’s a function of the TARDIS), but I suppose you could argue that the Doctor shares it via his ship.

It’s also somewhat unusual that Sarah only thinks to bring it up once she’s under some kind of hypnotic control. Then again, I suppose that you may not initially think to ask the question when you’re out and about among the stars. When the TARDIS rocks up on Exxilon, or Metebilis III, or Skaro, you’re too busy being caught up in all the wonder (and all the running!) to wonder how you can understand all these different alien species. Arrive in Italy, only a few centuries before your own time, however, and it’s a more glaring anomaly.

I’m sorry to say that this story still just isn’t grabbing me in the way that I’d like it to. I don’t know what’s wrong with it, but I’m finding myself far more distracted by all the trappings of the sets, the locations, and the costumes, and I’m not being swept along with the story at all. That said, I really am distracted by all the of dressings in this story – I seem to be discussing it every day, but there really is some great work on display. After today’s episode, I watched a bit of the ‘making of’ special feature on the DVD, and was blown away by just how much work designer Barry Newbury puts in when he’s given a Doctor Who serial to work on. It was true of the Brain of Morbius, when he talks of giving thought to a whole new style of architecture for this alien world, and it’s just as evident here, when he talks of looking at paintings of the period and picking out specific details to use in his sets.

The effect of the temple being restored is also very well done. It’s a variant of the ‘Pepper’s Ghost’ trick, as far as I can tell, which has been used in theatre for decades, and was at its first peak during the Victorian period. It creates a lovely effect, and brings to life another beautiful set in the form of the temple itself, which is another example of great design. Because the effect is based on such an old technique, it’s simply being presented here as a matter of course, thrown into the background of the shots with Tom Baker. As such, it comes across as even more effective – they’re not drawing attention to it, it’s just something that’s happening.

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

Day 450: The Masque of Mandragora, Episode Two

Dear diary,

The best thing about this story really is the locations and sets. I’ve said it before more than once (and don’t worry, I’m sure I’ll say it again plenty of times, too!), but the BBC really do excel themselves when it comes to producing the period stories. Today, I’m fascinated to learn that the ruined temple we see in this episode was provided by the BBC in the form of expanded polystyrene (and, supposedly, the people of Portmerion were so keen on it they asked if it could stay!), because it looks so perfect. Admittedly, I had thought that it was lucky to find such a perfect location right where they needed it, but I never for a second suspected it was anything other than real.

I’m also very impressed to discover that the orange grove from yesterday’s episode was all rigged up by the production team, too, with the fruit attached to the trees via wires. I mean, I was surprised enough that they’d found the location, but I never suspected! Maybe I’m simply foolish?

But then, Portmerion itself is proving pretty perfect, even without the BBC props department helping out. The chase early in today’s episode gives us plenty of opportunity to look around, and after that I just couldn’t help myself - I had to take a look at the ‘Now and Then’ feature on the DVD. Portmerion is best known as the location for The Prisoner, so it’s not completely unknown to audiences of archive telly. While I do own that series on DVD, I’ve still not found the time to get round to watching it, and I’m only a few episodes in.

Therefore, I’m most impressed by just how… European the setting is - You could take a pretty good guess as to where we’re supposed to be this week, even if the Doctor didn’t keep reminding us. Certainly, watching this story is making me want to visit the place (it’s only a few hours up the road - worth a trip!), and that doesn’t often happen with the series.

Something else that doesn’t often happen is me commenting on the musical scores for stories. To be perfectly honest… I’m not usually all that aware of them. Maybe that’s just me being ignorant, but it’s rare that they really stand out for me. That’s a good thing, though! The music isn’t supposed to be big and blaring and in-your-face, it’s supposed to be there to underpin the scenes and help add to the mood and atmosphere. Today, it simply can’t be ignored, though. Sarah’s tied to an alter. Cultists in robes gather around her, chanting and preparing her for sacrifice. She’s even been changed into the traditional white robes for the occasion. The tension is building, she’s going to be killed any minute…

But Dudley Simpson has chosen to score the scene with - what I’ve described in my notes as being - ‘comedy parp-parp music’. I just can’t take it seriously. Simpson has been providing scores to the programme since as far back as Planet of Giants, but I don’t think I’ve ever been as put off by the music as I am in this story. It’s perhaps worrying, because this marks the start of an unbroken run for his composing work on the series, which will last right through to the end of Season Seventeen and The Horns of Nimon. I’m dearly hoping that this won’t be the start of me not liking his scores generally, as it could make the bulk of the Baker years a bit of a chore. Still, he’s been composer for 39 stories before this one, so I’m guessing it may just be an off day!

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

Day 449: The Masque of Mandragora, Episode One

Dear diary,

The Secondary Console Room has always been something of an anomaly as far as I’m concerned. When I think about the TARDIS in the classic series, it takes the form of the open, white, sterile space. Oh, sure, it goes through a fair few iterations over the years, but it always boil down to the same distinct template – the big white roundels and the large, hexagonal console in the centre. Once you reach the Eighth Doctor, things start to become a bit more flexible, and we have huge Jules Verne inspired cathedrals, or coral shells, or bright, orange monstrosities, but in the original series, there’s only one style of console room.

Except that there isn’t! I think it’s my lack of familiarity with this period that makes this room seem like such an anomaly for me (I don’t think I’ve ever watched any of the stories in which it appears, only odd clips of them like Sarah Jane’s farewell in the next tale). It’s also slightly strange to see how we end up with it, literally coming from a brief scene at the start of the episode where Sarah wanders the corridors of the ship and opens doors at random. It’s a lovely touch that earlier Doctors have their own effects scattered through the room (I can assume that the Third Doctor may have tried to jump-start the ship from here when in the earliest days of his exile, maybe in an attempt to bypass the Time Lord’s lock down), and I’m glad that we don’t spend too much time exploring the place before we’re caught up in the adventure.

And what an adventure to be caught up in! The TARDIS being sucked into the Helix is a beautiful effect (is it Mirrorlon, the same technique used for the Ice Warrior’s sonic weapons?), and then when the TARDIS rives at the bottom of the spiral, allowing the Doctor to step out into a mostly empty black void, it’s very effective. I’ve never seen this story before, but I have used some images from the production when doing design work before. There’s a lovely shot of the TARDIS against the CSO background which is perfect as an image of this era’s new prop: it seems obvious to me now that it was to be transplanted on another image for the episode, but I’d always assumed that the heart of the helix was a plain white void, which didn’t look very good! It’s always great when these kind of pre-conceptions of stories are overthrown, especially when they’re as good as this.

And then we’re off to 15th century Italy! I know that this story’s locations are filmed in and around Portmerion in Wales, but it’s easy enough to forget that fact when you’re watching the story, because it makes such a good stand in for Italy. We’ve not seen all that much of the town itself yet, mostly the surrounding areas, but they’re all uniformly lovely. Orange groves, and country lanes… I’m looking forward to watching the location work expand as the story goes on.

Ah, yes, the story. That’s the one thing which isn’t quite grabbing me yet. Due to the slightly odd nature of this episode, it feels almost like we get a false start with the Doctor and Sarah getting snared in the helix – when we cut to a hunt on horseback about ten minutes in, it feels like the opening scene of a new episode. But nothing in here yet feels very fresh or exciting. It’s portents and death, and there’s a sparkler floating around having hitched a ride in the TARDIS… I don’t know what it is, but something’s lacking for now. Still, it’s early days and we’re off to a good start.

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

Day 443: The Seeds of Doom, Episode Three

Dear diary,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Day 442: The Seeds of Doom, Episode Two

Dear diary,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Day 440: The Brain of Morbius, Episode Four

Dear diary,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Day 439: The Brain of Morbius, Episode Three

Dear diary,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Day 438: The Brain of Morbius, Episode Two

Dear diary,

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

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

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

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

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

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

Day 437: The Brain of Morbius, Episode One

Dear diary,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Day 436: The Android Invasion, Part Four

Dear diary,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Day 435: The Android Invasion, Episode Three

Dear diary,

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

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

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

Day 435: *The Town of No Return*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Day 434: The Android Invasion, Episode Two

Dear diary,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Day 433: The Android Invasion, Episode One

Dear diary,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Day 432: Pyramids of Mars, Episode Four

Dear diary,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Day 431: Pyramids of Mars, Episode Three

Dear diary,

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

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

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

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

SARAH
He was so concerned about his brother…

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

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

THE DOCTOR
…Human?

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

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

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

Day 430: Pyramids of Mars, Episode Two

Dear diary,

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

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

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

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

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

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

Day 429: Pyramids of Mars, Episode One

Dear diary,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Day 428: Planet of Evil, Episode Four

Dear diary,

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

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

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

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

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

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