a

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

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

Dear diary,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 a

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

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

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

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

So! With apologies for the delay…

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

Dear diary,

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

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

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

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

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

 a

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

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

Dear diary,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 a

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

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

Dear diary,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 a

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

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

Dear diary,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 a

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

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

Dear diary,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 a

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

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

Dear diary,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 a

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

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

Dear diary,

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

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

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

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

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

 a

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

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

Dear diary,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 a

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

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

Dear diary,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Day 342: The Enemy of the World, Episode Two

Dear diary,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dear diary,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Day 216: The Wheel in Space, Episode Six

Dear diary,

This is the part of the story where I should be complaining that, after all that, we get a total invasion of about eight Cybermen. And six of those don't even make it into the Wheel. You know what, though? I don't care! I've really enjoyed the ride for this story, and even the lack of Cyberman turning up as a really big invasion fleet isn't enough to dampen my spirits.

Being able to watch this Episode means that we get a chance to watch plenty of special effects. Indeed, I think this is the most obviously 'effects laden' episode we've seen since about as far back as The Ark. Oh sure things like The Web of Fear has it's web effect in the surviving episode, and The Underwater Menace has fish people bobbing about, but today we've got meteorites hurtling towards the Wheel! Jamie and Zoe making their way across space to the Silver Carrier! The crew of the Wheel blowing up the meteorites while our heroes dodge them… and that's all in the opening few minutes!

As the episode progresses we've got the Cybermen effects (the hypnotising thing we've already seen in Episode Three) and the Doctor electrocuting one of his foes, causing it to crumple up on the floor in a heap. You've then got the Cybermen's back up heading across to the Wheel, marching through space like a cold, unstoppable force!

Hm? Sorry? Oh, all right, then. Fine. Yes, the Cybermen heading over to the Wheel isn't the greatest of effects that the show has ever done, and I'll admit that it did let the ending down a little for me. Quite apart from the fact that they'd almost become transparent by the time they'd approached the Wheel, the Cyberman at the front insisted on walking along flapping his arms like a bird. It doesn't make for the most threatening thing we've ever seen them do. It's a shame, really, because a few seconds later he's trying to force open the doors to the loading bay, and that does work! It looks really effective! You can't have it all, I suppose.

The other effects in the episode - on the whole - are pretty good. The opening few scenes with Jamie and Zoe outside in space did put me in mind of a 1950's B-movie, but they did the job, and they didn't leave me disappointed - always a plus. We're now heading back to a period with a great many more surviving episodes (thanks to the animated release of The Invasion, I've only got five more episodes that I can't sit and watch from the rest of the decade), so I'm looking forward to keeping a tab on the effects in the series. Part of the fun in the early days was seeing how the team's confidence would build up, until they tried to do something that was just beyond their abilities.

I'm also pretty impressed with the design of the Wheel itself. I've been able to see it via the tele snaps right the way through the story, but today we get an especially good look at sections of it. The actual station itself, spinning in space, is as good as any ship ever designed for the programme, and it's nice to see some blueprints (of a sort) for it. As for the inside, the thing that really caught my attention was the bank of lava lamps! I shouldn't find them all that fascinating - I've got one in my flat, even! - by they do look fab in black and white, don't they? It doesn't hurt that they're much larger than your standard lava lamp, so they move in a slightly different way, too. I'm not at all sorry to admit that every scene they decorated the background of had me focussing largely on them as opposed to the Cybermen in front!

With the closing moments of the story, Zoe has slipped aboard the TARDIS and we're off into the third phase of the Second Doctor's era. I wasn't keen on her as a character when this story began, but I've warmed to her as the episodes have gone by (I think that's the intention, too. She's become more likeable and human as the story has progressed). I'm sure all her character will be stripped away over the next fortnight, but I'm looking forward to her joining the crew all the same.

Her first test as companion? Settle in and watch a repeat of The Evil of the Daleks. I've always found it odd that they wrote the repeat of a serial into the series itself, but even more odd, it's the story that introduces the previous companion! That must have been a bit jarring back in the day. I've always thought it might be better if they'd shown The Power of the Daleks instead - remind viewers of how the Second Doctor began. Actually, though, having watched through the series in this manner, I can see the logic behind choosing this one. It's got Jamie in, for a start, and Victoria is still fresh enough in the minds of the audience to make sense. Ben and Polly are our companions in Power, and they left the series a whole year ago - they're old news!

I had debated doing the serial again, to see if my opinion might have changed, but to be honest, I'm not thrilled by the prospect. I even considered spending tomorrow reading the Target novel of The Evil of the Daleks so I could at least claim that I'd tried. In the end, though, I'm keen to press forward with the series, so I'll be moving straight on to the next story, and trying something a little bit different…

(And no, I'm not going to bring up the Doctor's 'sexual air supply'…)

a 

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

Day 215: The Wheel in Space, Episode Five

Dear diary,

Aha, now we’re starting to see Zoe coming in as the new companion, and she gets to share a cliffhanger with Jamie, moving through space towards the Silver Carrier. It’s an odd sort of cliffhanger to lead into the final episode – the Cybermen aren’t the focus of the threat but it’s much more about the impending shower of meteorites. That’s sort of true of The Wheel in Space as a whole, though: the Cybermen are there just to be the token monsters. Even the Cybermats are only there to help further the plot.

I’m quite fond of the way that everything we’ve seen so far – Jamie sabotaging the Wheel’s laser (which would have been the first point-of-call for the Cybermats anyway), the destruction of the bernalium supplies, the two crew members heading over to the Rocket… it’s all simply been happening as a way to get the Cybermen onto the Wheel itself. The crew are now of little importance and can be disposed of, but up to now, everything has been calculated.

The only problem? I’m not entirely sure that I buy the Cybermen’s motives. The Doctor claims that they desire the ‘mineral wealth of Earth’… but is that true? What use would the Cybermen have with Earth’s minerals? I guess he could simply be speaking poetically, and what he really means is that they simply want the Earth itself (that’s their goal in The Moonbase, after all, which is set sometime not too far from now), but I’m still not sure. It’s a shame, because everything else is really working for me, but my favourite baddies are just a bit redundant here.

What’s lovely though is that by relegating the monsters to more background roles, we’re given plenty of chance for the rest of the characters to shine. Jamie and Zoe get to share a lovely scene here, in which he reassures her that they’ll come up with some way out of all this mess and she confesses that she’s not too sure. It’s very reminiscent of a similar scene with Victoria from the last story, but on this occasion it’s being held with someone who doesn’t know the Doctor’s way of doing things.

It’s lovely when Zoe wonders what’s left for her after all this trouble has passed. The Doctor has broadened her horizons somewhat, and taught her that a blind reliance on logic isn’t always the right thing to have. It feels like a theme that commonly runs through the modern version of the series – the Doctor takes people and makes them better. I know that Zoe is likely to just slump into generic companion mode before too long, but it’s nice to think that there could be a real journey for her character, and that travelling in the company of Jamie and the Doctor really could be beneficial to her.

The big thing to mention with today’s episode surely has to be that it’s the last time I’ll be using the work of John Cura during this marathon. He continued telesnapping up to somewhere around The Mind Robber, but we’re about to enter a period of surviving episodes the likes of which we’ve not seen in months. I don’t think there’s any debate that fans of archive British television owe an awful lot to John Cura – without him, we’d have an awful lot less to look at from these early stories of Doctor Who, for a start!

Regular readers of The 50 Year Diary will be well aware that I’m not a fan of reconstructions, but I do tend to flick through Cura’s telesnaps either as I listen to the soundtracks, or afterwards before I write up my entry. Since the first load of snaps I used for Marco Polo, I’ve been through a fair few of them. It's a really novel idea for a business - capturing images directly from the TV and selling them to the people involved in a time before any kind of domestic video recording was thinkable at a reasonable price.

Without the work of Cura, moving through all these missing episodes would have been a lot more of a chore - it's lovely to picture the stories in my head and then get home and find out how close I was to the actual truth. After 216 days of the diary, I've become pretty well attuned to the look of 1960s Doctor Who, and it's lovely to have a series of photographs to refer to.

Cura's work has also been used on reckons for The Avengers, and is a way to see missing parts of many other archive programmes of which I'd consider myself a fan, so now is the perfect time to say thank you to John - for the foresight he displayed and the joy that he's managed to bring to millions by preserving these lost classics.

a 

a  a

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

Day 214: The Wheel in Space, Episode Four

Dear diary,

This is quickly becoming another one of those stories where I really wish that I didn’t know what’s coming up. I know that Zoe becomes our new companion, because I’ve seen bits of Season Six. It’s not obvious, though, while watching this story. There’s plenty of candidates here that could go on to be the ‘new girl in the TARDIS’ – Gemma, for instance – and Zoe isn’t the most obvious of those they could choose from.

There’s a point towards the end of the episode, when things have started kicking off, where Zoe asks if she can be of any help. ‘No,’ is the rather abrupt response. She tries to protest, deciding that there must be something that she can do. Still no. It serves as another chance to show that Zoe isn’t really all that liked by her colleagues on the Wheel, but it also makes her look a little useless as a potential companion. At least she’s trying.

There’s more examples in this episode of that background detail that I’ve been enjoying all along, and it’s fleshing Zoe out nicely. We get something of an explanation for her being the way she is when she complains that her brain has been ‘pumped full of figures’ and we hear the kind of training that she’s received being described as ‘brainwashing’. It seems in some ways as though Whittaker is trying to draw a direct comparison between Zoe and the Cybermen – she keeps being referred to as ‘emotionless’ and all this talk of brainwashing comes at around the same time they start to notice the Cybermen hypnotising other members of the crew.

And then you’ve got that cliffhanger, in which the Doctor and Jamie go down into the loading bay and discover the crates used to bring the Cybermen across from the Silver Carrier. Surely this would be a great opportunity for Zoe to join them in their explorations? Really highlight her as being the one best suited to be a part of this team? On the plus side, the cliffhanger is the one that I’ve been expecting, in some form, since Episode One – the Doctor and Jamie turn around to see a Cyberman! Dun, dun, dunnn…!

Actually, though, it’s done very well. It helps that we’ve had to wait for this one, meaning that the Doctor isn’t confronting the Cybermen directly until the last third of the story. It’s been a bit of a slow burner so far (which might go some way to explaining why several people have been commenting on how boring they find this story to be), but that’s really working for me: we’ve been dropped into this world, and we’ve watched on as the Cybermen have mounted their (slow) invasion.

I think my only real complaint with the Cybermen on this occasion is that there’s only two of them. Part of the reason The Tomb of the Cybermen looked so impressive is because when they thaw out, there’s loads of the silver giants stood around. They tower over the archaeologists and form a very credible threat. Here, there’s only the two of them and they’re doing all the legwork. From time to time, they check in with the Cyberplanner, but then it’s all up to them. Where are the rest of them? I’m hoping that this pair is just the advance party, and that the creatures will be turning up en masse before the story is over, but coming at the end of the season, I can’t say that my hopes are high…

One thing I did want to draw attention to is a quick exchange of dialogue between the Doctor and Gemma. It’s only brief, but when I heard it I was holding the door for someone on my way out of a building, looking like a loon because I was smiling my head off. It’s a lovely exchange because it perfectly highlights the background texture that I keep banging on about in this story. The Doctor tries to attract Gemma’s attention by calling her ‘Miss Corwin’ and she replies that it’s actually ‘Mrs’. When the Doctor apologises, she explains that her husband died three years ago in the asteroid belt. It’s only a little exchange, and I’m sure that it’s not going to have any massive significance later on in the story (were this the modern series, I’d possibly expect one of the Cybermen to be revealed as her husband post-conversion), but it gives her character a bit of depth and background that you don’t always get when the crews of these bases are simply sketched in before being bumped off by the monster of the week.

The same is true of our commander today. We’ve had plenty of stubborn base leaders turning up in the series since The Tenth Planet, so it initially struck me as odd that the Doctor would be so confused by the presence of such a person in command on the Wheel. Actually, though, we’re watching him go through some kind of a breakdown as the story progresses. It’s another reason that a slower-paced story can be beneficial – we’ve seen him at the helm of this space station when he’s in his right mind, making decisions and giving orders, so it makes a real impact when things start to go off the rails for him. There’s a sharp change between his reaction to Bill Duggan being found with a dead body and talking of metal rodents, to later releasing the Doctor and Jamie from their guard – it’s not something he’d have been doing twenty minutes earlier.

We’re at the point of the story now where we can start to see some real pay off. Having gone through all this build up, everything is in place for an explosive finale to the season. We’ve got the Cybermen on the Wheel, Cybermats in tow, and the focus should now be shifting to the climax. It’s been a promising start, and it’s looking increasingly as though Season Five could be going out with a real bang!

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

Day 213: The Wheel in Space, Episode Three

Dear diary,

Stupidly, I'd forgotten that the start of today's episode would give us a chance to actually watch the cliffhanger for Episode Two - there I was pouring over the telesnaps! Yesterday, I praised the fact that we'd not had a full Cyberman reveal yet, but having actually watched the cliffhanger now, it's pretty clear just what is inside the eggs before it bursts out. To be honest, though, I think it works even better! It's still not quite a full reveal, but it's still very unusual - both for the series and for the Cybermen, and I think that the sheer oddity of the whole sequence would have kept talk in the playground rife all week long.

Now that the Cybermen have properly hatched (what? it's as good-a term as any!), we get to see plenty of them in today's episode: and don't they look fab? It's not a massive change in design to the one that we've been used to since The Moonbase, but it looks really effective here. We get a couple of shots with a pair of Cybermen sat facing their computer banks, and every time we cut back to it, I seem to find myself smiling. It just looks so good. Admittedly, it's not quite as effective once the shot starts to move in on one of the creatures, but it's not long before we're back to the better angle.

Director Tristan de Vere Cole didn't helm any other Doctor Who stories, so there's nothing else that we can compare him against, but based on his work here, I get the feeling that The Wheel in Space might have looked pretty good throughout. The standout moment in today's episode has to be the Doctor idly musing that while his memory has been lost, there's still something floating around at the back of his mind. 'Some warning,' he mumbles, 'some menace…'. The close up of his face then fades into that of a Cyberman accepting orders at the computer terminal - it's simple but very effective, and not something that we often get in the series.

It's not just a pair of silver giants turning up for the action today, though. They've brought the Cybermats back with them, and I'm still finding myself utterly entranced by them. As I said during The Tomb of the Cybermen, I've always somewhat written off the Cybermats as being a bit rubbish, but they're actually a pretty effective 'monster'. There's a shot late in this episode where four of the creatures surround a man, all advancing on him as their tails wag… and it looks really good! I'd not go so far as to say that it was scary, but it's certainly a great moment in the story, and does help to up the creatures in my estimations.

We've also got the first appearance in the series of the Cyberplanner, although it's not described as such. It looks pretty effective when it appears full-screen against a black background, issuing orders to the more conventional Cybermen. Also - it has a voice I can understand. I don't know if it's just me being out of practice with the Cybermen (it's been a little while since they last turned up - certainly it's the longest stretch we've had without them since they first appeared), but when they started giving out instructions to the two crew members during the episode's cliffhanger, I didn't have a clue what was going on.

The Cybermen aren't the only cold, emotionless, logical creatures to play a big part in this story - we've still got Zoe hanging around on the Wheel. I have to admit that I am warming to her today, but much of that seems to be the rather sweet way that she doesn't realise the Doctor and Jamie gently teasing her. Maybe it's simply that she's got a pretty thick skin: some of the comments made about her earlier in the episode (directly to her face) would certainly be constituted as workplace bullying. Just some of the ways she's described today are 'all brain and no heart', 'just like a robot', and 'a proper little brainchild'. Compared to this, Jamie's tease that she's 'a right wee space detective' seems quite innocent (although it has led to the theme song from Captain Zep, Space Detective playing round in my head on a loop ever since).

While the Doctor seems initially hostile towards Zoe, he soon warms to her. I think he's sizing her up as a possible replacement for Victoria - letting her work out the answers for herself wherever possible and leading her in the right direction by suggesting that there may be more to the solution than simply analysing the facts. This episode is home to another of Troughton's famous lines - his 'logic' speech to Zoe. I think Jamie is starting to come around to the idea of her, too, as he seems to be thawing out a little as the episode goes on.

It's nice to see that - even with the Doctor now awake - Jamie is given plenty to do in this story. He's mistaken as being a saboteur when he vandalises the Wheel's laser (admittedly, it doesn't look great when someone walks in on you purposely putting your only form of defence out of order!), and he's quick to help the Doctor along with his investigations, which are all conducted from his hospital bed. I think we're starting to see the early stages of the team most people declare to be the 'best' of the Troughton line-ups, and it's nice to think that we're headed in the right direction…

a 

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

Day 212: The Wheel in Space, Episode Two

Dear diary,

Something that I’ve seen complained about quite a lot in relation to The Wheel in Space is the idea that the Cybermen in the story are ‘hatched from eggs’. Admittedly, it’s a pretty fair description of what happens in the closing moments of this episode, but what the complaints fail to mention is just how effective it is as a cliffhanger.

Over the last two episodes, we’ve seen several of these eggs (the narration calls them ‘spheres’, but ‘egg’ just sounds better) float across the void of space and attach themselves to the side of the Wheel. We’ve watched the crew try to piece together all the various odd things that are happening to their systems, while we know that it’s being caused by the presence of these eggs. Now we find out that they’re not just some odd space phenomena – they’ve got Cybermen inside them!

Even more effective is that the cliffhanger still isn’t your run-of-the-mill ‘Cyberman bursts through a doorway!’, or ‘The Doctor and his companions turn around to see… a Cyberman!’. It’s left to you to recognise the fist of a Cyberman sticking out from the recently powered-up egg (there’s a sentence you don’t write every day), and then we’ll get the full reveal – I’d imagine – in the next episode. It’s nice, because it’s allowing the threat to build, and I’m less concerned about them spending the entire story stood around looking menacing, which is what I’d been expecting.

I think it’s always a good testament to the quality of a particular episode if you can remove the Doctor from the action (Patrick Troughton doesn’t appear at all in today’s instalment, and the unconscious Doctor is played by a stand-in) and still remain just as interested n the events unfolding on screen. Jamie is left to carry much of the action, heading out to explore the Wheel in the company of our new companion, Zoe. It’s interesting how much of a contrast they’re going for with Zoe, swapping out Victorian companion for a girl from the near-future, with an intellect that could square up to that of the Doctor.

What’s odd is that I don’t especially like Zoe, yet, and I’m not all that sure that you’re supposed to. She’s presented as treating things in a cool, logical manner and not really showing a great deal of personality. When asked to covertly keep an eye on Jamie as she gives him the grand tour, she declares that it could be ‘interesting’ as a project, and when another crew-member expresses fascination at the fact that some of the plant on the Wheel have travelled all the way from Venus, she chimes in to give the exact distance in several different measurements. I think Jamie sums it up best when he dryly responds: ‘Oh. I was dying to know that…’

The entire location of the Wheel feels very fleshed out – certainly more so than that of some other bases we’ve seen throughout this season. Yesterday i complained that none of the crew really stood out of the crowd for me, but today you get the impression of a history to these characters and a string of previous interactions in both their professional and private lives. This feels like a very real world, and I think that’s what’s drawing me in and keeping me interested. There’s discussion of people back on Earth who feel that the space programme should be suspended (although no further context is given) and they spot something is amiss with Jamie because he leaves his water – something that’s in short supply out in space. It all helps to make it feel like the TARDIS has landed our heroes into a place that’s been going for some time, and you get the impression that it’ll keep on going, long after they’ve left (assuming the Cybermen don’t totally wipe them out, that is).

Today’s entry can’t go by without mentioning two new naming additions to the series. Firstly, Jamie is given a middle name – Robert – when he identifies himself to Gemma. Secondly, and probably more importantly from the point of view of the series as whole, we get the first instance of the Doctor being given the alias ‘John Smith’. It’s a name Jamie takes from the side of some medical equipment, and it’s not fooling anyone from the start, but it’s a name that’s going to stick, and is still in use right up to the current series.

I’m almost sorry that we’re likely to move into a regular ‘base-under-siege’ tale from now on, in which the Cybermen attack the Wheel, as I’m enjoying all the build up. I’m hoping that the rich background that’s being painted here is going to hold firm throughout the rest of the story, as it would be lovely to see Season Five (and the format of Season Five) going out on a high. It’s certainly a good strong start…

a 

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

Day 211: The Wheel in Space, Episode One

Dear diary,

I’ve always thought that had I been both a fan of Doctor Who and working in a high position on the programme during the original run, I’d have spent half my time renting out viewing rooms in TV Centre and watching all the old episodes on a loop. Well, until they destroy them all, anyway. It seems I’m not the only one to have such a mindset, though, because David Whittaker has obviously written today’s episode fresh from a viewing of The Dead Planet, Episode One of The Daleks.

The whole episode is filled with elements that make up the first 25 minutes of that Dalek tale – there’s something wrong with the TARDIS’ fluid link (though, this time, there really is something wrong – the Doctor’s not just making it up), and the ship is unable to leave this strange, seemingly dead location until they can find some more mercury to get things working again. When the ship first starts to go wrong, the Doctor instructs Jamie to check the ‘fault indicator’, which is clearly a component of the earlier fault locator, if not the same device entirely. He describes it as being ‘over there on the left’, which you could interpret as Jamie being sent off to the same room that featured in several of the early Hartnell adventures.

We’ve even got a scene in which Jamie is bamboozled by a ‘futuristic’ food machine, which splits out his desired meal in the form of a small cube. The scene plays almost identically to the one in The Dead Planet, and I’d not be surprised to hear Ian make the same ‘I’ve heard of a square meal’ joke as Jamie does here (though he didn’t at the time).

Perhaps the biggest thing that makes this feel like the earlier adventure, though, is just how long we spend in the company of just the Doctor and Jamie. Oh, sure, there’s a Servo Robot waddling around in the background, but really our only focus for at least the first fifteen minutes of the story is our two regulars. We get a recap of Victoria’s departure, and on this occasion they mention the TARDIS’ unusual take off at the end of the previous story – it was omitted from the end of the Fury From the Deep narration (possibly to let the story go out with the emotion of Victoria’s departure) – and then we’re into that old classic of the Doctor and his companion exploring their new surroundings without encountering any of the guest cast.

It’s almost becoming a tradition now that the Doctor and Jamie get an episode to themselves before they encounter their next companion, but it’s another one of those great opportunities to see the pair shine together on screen. It gives the pair a chance to breathe, and makes Victoria’s departure from the programme all the more poignant. It’s not simply a case of one out, one in, but rather a bit of a break before they meet someone else that they’d enjoy spending their time with. The only problem this gives me is that I’d love a full story of just the Doctor and Jamie from start to finish, and you’d think that this would be the time to have one – fresh from their loss but not quite ready yet to make a new friend.

When the guest cast does finally arrive on the scene, the narration gives us a full run down of every member we see, and I have to confess that I rather lost track of them all by the end. I’m sure they’ll each develop their own distinct personalities before the end of the story, but for now I’m just labelling them ‘generic base crew’. It’s a slow start to the new story, but I’m cautiously optimistic. If nothing else, it’s nice to see that the Cybermen haven’t been introduced as the end-of-episode cliffhanger, but we’re left guessing for that little bit longer. In contrast to Fury From the Deep, this feels fresh and different, and that can only be a good thing.

a 

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

Day 210: Fury From the Deep, Episode Six

Dear diary,

'I was fond of her too,' the Doctor snaps at Jamie in the closing moments of this story, as the pair watch Victoria's departure from the TARDIS. Sadly, I'm not entirely sure that it's a sentiment that I can echo. For me, Victoria has really been the first of the companions that's not made any real impact on me. It's a shame, really, because Deborah Watling has turned in some nice performances, and Victoria has been part of some lovely scenes (and some really fab stories), but whereas with Steven, or Polly, I didn’t want to say goodbye... I'm not going to miss Victoria - I just don't really think I'll notice that she's gone.

That said, her departure is handled better in the last half of this episode than it has been for the rest of the story. Having gone through a few episodes with Victoria complaining about the state of their lives, things get somewhat toned down now, and we get a chance for her to actually stop and think about her decision, without having to make it in the middle of an adventure. The Doctor asks her if she really wants to leave, then offers to stay one more night, just to give her a chance to sleep on it. We then get that beautiful scene with Jamie and Victoria out on the balcony - it's possibly the best performance that we've had from either companion as they sadly discuss what's to come.

I think it helps that following this, much of the departure is then handled wordlessly. The narration on the soundtrack describes them as saying their goodbyes, before the Doctor and Jamie paddle back over to the TARDIS (it's back out in the middle of the ocean, now, as in Episode One, but during Episode Three it's described as having been 'conveniently washed up on the shore'. Has the ship just been going in and out with the tide while we've been off fighting sentient seaweed?) and have their discussion in the console room. It's lovely to be left not knowing what their final words to each other were: it feels far more romantic than actually watching in on them.

It's probably fitting that in the story introducing the Sonic Screwdriver to the series, the creature is defeated by noise, or as the Doctor more accurately puts it, 'sonic vibrations'. It's clear that his Sonic will play a vital role in the denouement… except it doesn't. A tape recording of Victoria's screams saves the day. In a way, I guess it's quite nice that she gets to be a vital part of the Doctor's life one last time, but it does feel odd. I'm going to go out on a limb and chalk this up as another one of those instances that makes the Doctor think more work is required to make the device all the more functional.

Overall, I've been really disappointed by Fury From the Deep. I don't think it helps that it's another one of those stories which has a reputation for being one of those big, Doctor Who 'classics'. There's an awful lot to love in here, and if you wanted to sum up the Troughton era in a single story, this would probably be the one to do it. As I've said before, though, it's just too close to everything around it to really stand out of the tide. The more that the story has gone on, the more I've been picking out similarities to other stories and trying to decide which version is better. Admittedly, Fury From the Deep wins out in a few cases, but not always. There's so many bits of the story that put me in mind of The Macra Terror (today's addition to the list is the Doctor and his friends staying behind after the adventure to enjoy a celebration with the guest characters), a story which I rated very highly - it's just made me want to listen to that one again!

Still, we now enter the third and final phase of the Second Doctor's era, with the introduction of Zoe. And to top it off? It's the return of my favourite monsters - the Cybermen. Unlike this story, I'm not really sure how fans rate The Wheel in Space, so maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised?

a 

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

Day 209: Fury From the Deep, Episode Five

Dear diary,

Quite a few times since Troughton took over the role, I've commented that certain scenes (or, in some cases, certain episodes) feel less like Doctor Who and more like anything else that was on television at around the same time. We've had one or two stories that wouldn't feel out of place in the more surreal parts of The Avengers, or Adam Adamant Lives!, for example.

What's really happening is that the programme is evolving. People always talk about the shift to colour and the grounding of the Third Doctor to contemporary Earth as though it's some huge sea change that occurs once the 1970s hit. Actually, ever since The War Machines at the tail-end of Season Three, we've been spending more and more time on modern-day (or close enough) Earth. Jamie and Victoria comment on it at the start of this very story: since the start of the programme's Fourth Season, there's been no end of tales set within 100 years either side of the broadcast date - ranging from The Tenth Planet twenty years ahead in the 1980s, to The Faceless Ones and The Web of Fear taking place during the year they're made (or thereabouts…). Even stories like The Enemy of the World can't be all that far into the future.

We just didn't really get things like this during the First Doctor's time at the TARDIS controls. Our history was usually further flung than the 1920s and we spent much more time out on distant worlds than we do now. It's this that causes the series to feel more like everything else that's being shown - because it's changing to fit the same format as many of these other programmes. I've made no secret of the fact that I'm not especially looking forward to reaching the Third Doctor's era, but I'm surprised that it's all being fed in this early, and I'm wondering just how much of a change it's going to feel when the time does roll around for the Doctor's exile to Earth…

One of the benefits of the programme starting to feel more and more like all these other shows is that - from time to time - you can use the others to give context to an episode of Doctor Who. Today's episode sees first Robson (with Victoria as his captive), and then the Doctor and Jamie taking a helicopter out to the drilling platforms where they can confront the Weed. All the shots of the platforms were filmed at the Red Sands Fort in the Thames Estuary, a sea defense built to fire on enemy aircrafts fairly late into World War Two.

By the 1960s, with the various sea forts abandoned, many were adopted as homes for pirate radio stations, and Red Sands became home to Radio 390. This setting formed the backdrop for one of the very last episodes of Danger Man in 1965, and I've watched it this evening to get a feel for the location, since it looks like it'll be playing a key part in the resolution of our current story! It's an odd change of pace to be watching something like Danger Man - shot on film, and containing an entire story in an hour-long episode, it's got a very different feel to Doctor Who: to sum it up, it's slicker.

The episode - Not So Jolly Rodger - is set almost entirely out on the Red Sands Fort, which gives plenty of opportunity to see the place showcased. It's a crying shame that we don't get to see more of it in the surviving tele snaps for Fury From the Deep, because it looks like a stunning location to set a story. Silhouetted against the clear blue sky while the sea lashes at the thick trunks that hold the forts above the waves, it's incredibly remote, and as 'alien' as you could possibly want. The tele snap of one tower covered with foam and weed is sadly not the best quality image - it could have made a very striking impression if it's our first shot of the towers in the story. Sadly, I imagine that they don't get shown off quite as well in Doctor Who as they do in Danger Man - the way the two shows were produced would have seen to that. It's worth tracking the episode down, though, just to get an idea of how brilliant it may have looked.

(Fittingly, the design of the Red Sands Fort was adapted in 1955 to be used for the very first off-shore drilling platform in the North Sea - so the location is pretty accurate!)

I still can't shake the feeling that this story would be rating a lot better with me if I were seeing it divorced from everything else around it. Today, we can add the two helicopters to the list of things cropping up this season (I was very impressed with the appearance of one during Enemy of the World, but it feels like old hat now!), plus the usual bouts of foam, possession, and Victoria whinging. I'm spending more time tying up plot developments to other recent stories than I am actually enjoying this one.

It's a shame, because it's perhaps easier to see in this episode, more than the first four, just how dark this story is. I've already mentioned just how scary some of the surviving clips are, but today's cliffhanger, with Robson almost swallowed in the foam as he announces that 'we've been waiting' for the Doctor could go down as one of the most unnerving things we've had in the show for a long time. Again, sadly, the tele snap doesn't do it any favours, laving the impression that it's either terrifying or hilarious.

There's plenty of great dialogue on show, too, that really helps to heighten the situation. My favourite has to be the Doctor's grim warning to Jamie - 'we're already in the lion's den. What we've got to concentrate on is keeping our heads out of it's mouth.' Much is being made, too, of the Doctor's lack of certainty with the situation. He's usually got a plan tucked up his sleeve, but today he's completely stumped. He spends while staring off into space as he thinks through the situation, then grimly declares that he simply doesn't know what to do. It's unsettling, and I really wish I could enjoy the story more than I am. Fury From the Deep is almost certainly a tale that could benefit hugely from a re-watch (re-listen) once the marathon is over…

a 

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

Day 208: Fury From the Deep, Episode Four

Dear diary,

Crikey, once Victoria has decided that she's had enough, she's really not going to let it go, is she? Having decided yesterday that she's sick of constantly being in trouble, she really labours the point here today, bringing it up on more than one occasion with both the Doctor and Jamie. In some ways, it's almost like she's completely lost faith in what they're doing - when Jamie reassures her that the Doctor will come up with something to save the day (after all, that's what he does in every story!) Victoria whines that she's not so certain, and then panics when the Doctor admits that he hasn't quite worked out what's going on yet.

My biggest issue with all this, though, is more the way that Victoria has been treated in the long-term. I've mentioned a couple of times how her character seems to swing back and forth between loving life in time and space and being less than certain the this life is for her. Wouldn't this feel so much better if she'd always been so unsure of things. I'll readily admit that I'd be complaining endlessly in these diary entries if she simply whinged on like this every week, but it would make her complete giving up here work just that little bit better.

However, I did suddenly wonder today if there might be an outside influence to her sudden departure. I'll need to hear the next two episodes before I can make a definitive statement, but I wonder if it's possible to add another footnote to my Great Intelligence timeline that makes her actions here seem to be a little less… sudden. We know that there's a small piece of the Intelligence in her mind left over from their trip to Tibet earlier in the season, and we know that she'll later be drawn back to the country, plagued by visions of her late father (I know this means treating the fan-made spin off Downtime as canon, but I've been doing so all along, and I've seen that more times than I've seen some official Doctor Who stories!).

Is it possible that the Great Intelligence, having survived the end of The Web of Fear and retreated back into space is calling on Victoria here, trying to separate her from the Doctor and Jamie so that she can become a pawn in his larger game? Although no date is given on screen for this story, fandom tends to assume sometime in the mid-1970s (indeed, this world tallies with some of the technology seen in the UNIT stories), which would be fitting - the Intelligence could draw Victoria into leaving the relative safety of the TARDIS and staying behind on Earth, ready to carry out his bidding during the 1980s and 90s. It's a stretch, I'll admit, but I think it could just about work. As I say, I'll need to hear the last third of the story before I can officially adopt this sequence of events in my mind, but I like it for now, at least!

If there's anything good to come from Victoria's sudden lack of ease with the lifestyle she's been leading of late, it's that we get a chance to see Jamie reaffirmed as perfect for life with the Doctor. The way that the Doctor teases him into heading down into the stats with him is fantastic ('you wouldn't let me go down by myself, would you?', he asks, somewhat sadly. 'Well,' Jamie replies, having to think for a moment, before reluctantly giving in: 'no…'), and there's then something brilliant about the pair exploring in the darkness with gas masks on. Right back when Frazer Hines joined in The Highlanders, I mused that it was strange to have a companion be so interlinked with a Doctor (Tegan comes close, though), but when you see this pair in action, almost two years on from all that… it's perfectly clear why they stuck together.

The other great thing about the pair exploring down in the system of the rigs - it survives! Well, sort of. Today, I popped in the Lost in Time DVD so that I could watch the surviving clips from this story - sometimes they work as a handy visual shorthand to keep in mind while listening. Among the assortment of clips was one of the Doctor and Jamie being scared by the seaweed creature, and it has to be said - it looks great. In some ways, I could simply write off the creature as playing to another stereotype of the Troughton era (the thing lives in the BBC's foam machine for goodness sake!) and add it to my list of things that feel tired in this story, but actually, it's bloody creepy.

There's another shot amongst the surviving clips of Van Lutyens being attacked and - for want of a better word - consumed by the weed creature, and it's actually terrifying. For what amounts to a lump of seaweed thrashing about in some foam, it's surprisingly effective. It also provides a chance to see Mr Oak and Mr Quill's attack of Maggie from the other day: another one of those scenes that's actually very un-nerving. It's so unusual, and the way the shot cuts back and forth from mouth to mouth, as the men stare wildly and stretch their jaws to breaking point…

I really do think that, watched in isolation, Fury From the Deep could absolutely deserve the high reputation that it's often given. I think had it survived for us to see then it would be far and away one of the greatest tales we'd had. Sadly, going by the soundtrack and the tele snaps (even with these few surviving bits and bobs) it still just isn't quite giving me enough…

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

Day 207: Fury From the Deep, Episode Three

Dear diary,

It would appear that Debbie Watling has handed in her four-weeks notice between the last episode and this one, as Victoria's tone has suddenly shifted from being one of hating the thought of living in a place like this, to hating the throughout of continuing her travels with the Doctor. 'Why are we always in trouble?' she asks, and when the Doctor suggests that it's all part of the fun, she huffs that she's tired of being scared out of her wits.

Also interesting to note is the way that, having been set on the path of departing the TARDIS, Victoria is suddenly being given more to do as a companion than she has been for a long time. Over the last 30-odd episodes, she's swung wildly from being a bit useless and feeble to being a vital member of the team. Now, she seems to have turned into Liz Shaw, assisting the Doctor in his experiments on the seaweed, and even explaining them to Jamie.

Later on, she's responsible for picking a lock with a hair-pin (I'll assume the Doctor doesn't use his newly-created Sonic because it's still in the early stages of development. We've only seen it used to actually take out screws, and it would take an age to remove the door in that way. Maybe it needs some refinement before he can actually use it against locks?), while her friends watch on. It's like - out of nowhere - she's becoming indispensable again.

Elsewhere, the story is doing its best to be as creepy as possible. There's a brilliant moment, having seen off the weed from one attack, when we're reminded that there are hundreds of vents it could attack from, and now that it's inside the shafts, it has direct access to every one. I complained yesterday that this story seems to be something of a 'Best of Season Five' collection, but at least this feels like a slightly different threat - we're used to having proper, obvious monsters attacking, as opposed to a mass of something infecting the system.

Perhaps the most effective moment of the episode, though (and, truth be told, the story so far) is the cliffhanger, in which Maggie stares out across the sea, telling Robson that he will obey, and then walking, slowly, until she vanishes under the waves. It's incredibly un-nerving, and not something that you could imagine the modern series showing, for fear of kids playing copy-cat on a family trip to the beach. It's one of those moments that I've often in the past described as not really being Doctor Who, but things like this are starting to become quite routine for the series - the sudden, striking image. Long after I've forgotten everything else in this episode (and let's be honest, at least half of it has already started to fade from memory, half an hour on), this cliffhanger is going to linger. The tele snaps make it look fab, and it's rocketing up my list of 'things I'd love to see. Rest assured, the score of today's episode is raised simply by these final few minutes.

There's not really a great deal else to say on Fury From the Deep for now. Those odd few moments aside, it's still just feeling a bit 'run of the mill', and that's a shame, as it's not that there's anything wrong with this story - it's just that it's come at the wrong time. Had we seen this story at the end of Season Four, I'm sure I'd be singing its praises now, but having to follow on from so many other stories in the same mould, it's struggling to leave any real impression on me.

6/10 

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

Day 206: Fury From the Deep, Episode Two

Dear diary,

There are times that I really wish I were coming to the 'classic' series as a complete novice, without all that 'fan baggage' which means I know, for instance, that Fury From the Deep is the last story to feature Victoria. Or that it's the only story of the 1960s that uses one title to cover all its episodes without beginning with 'the'. Or, and this is the big one for today's episode, that the enemy is a big, writing mass of seaweed.

Imagine coming to this story completely free of all that knowledge. Watching the series from the start and not having a clue what was to happen at any given time. No idea that this is Victoria's last appearance (and there's no indication at this stage in the narrative that it might be - indeed she makes a point in today's episode of letting everyone know how much she wouldn't like living in a place like this!) and crucially, not knowing what all this seaweed has to do with anything.

When Victoria is explaining the attack she suffered in yesterday's episode, she describes the creature as being 'all covered in seaweed', hinting that there could be something hidden away underneath. It's heavily implied that she's been imagining it (although we know she hasn't). The entire setting of the story is based around a place mining gas, and then there's that ominous heartbeat echoing through the pipes…

There was a moment today when even I wondered if the Macra might be behind all this. It wouldn't be completely out of the blue - the Yeti have just joined the Cybermen and the Daleks in the ranks of 'creatures the Doctor has fought more than once', and all the trappings are certainly in place for it to be just such a showdown. Having remembered that they're not the villains in question, I was a little disappointed (I love Macra, even if there are no such things), but I love the thought of hearing this story thinking that they really could be controlling things on the rigs behind the scenes.

My main problem with Fury From the Deep, though, was summed up best by Nick Mellish in a conversation we had earlier this afternoon - “Like much of Season 5, works slightly better when listened to in isolation (i.e. not with the other Season 5 stories).” There's lots going on which, really, I should be lapping up, but we've seen it all before. Even worse - we've seen it all before this season. This is the kind of fatigue that I'd worried about when approaching Season Five (I knew from the start that this was likely to be the hardest of the 1960s seasons), though I guess I should be thankful that it hasn't set in until the penultimate story of the year.

June Murphy turns in a great performance as Maggie Harris, and plays the possession by the seaweed at just the right level of creepiness… but we've already seen people brainwashed by the enemy plenty of times this season, most prominently in the two Yeti tales, in which it's a key plot point. Robson is a perfectly good leader of the base, determined to keep to his own programme in the face of mounting evidence that it's the wrong decision… but he's not given the same amount of character that Clent had during The Ice Warriors.

In yesterday's episode, we had mysterious gloved hands creeping into shot to tamper with vital things, but the same thing was used for at least half of The Web of Fear, and it's only been a few days since I watched that one! Stretching back a little further to the end of Season Four, all those parallels that point toward the Macra are just as valid - this is an example of Doctor Who doing things very well, but things that it just does too often. Frankly, it feels like I've already watched this episode several times over…

a 

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

Day 205: Fury From the Deep, Episode One

Dear diary,

I can easily take Victoria’s complaint that the TARDIS is always landing them on Earth - since she joined the team at the end of the last season, they’ve only visited two alien planets, and only one of those was the result of the TARDIS taking them there. What’s harder to buy is Jamie’s assertion that they always end up in England - is he forgetting their trip to Australia and Europe two stories ago? And the trip to Tibet earlier in the season? And where was the glacier in The Ice Warriors? In my mind it’s somewhere other than the UK, but I’m not sure if it was ever actually stated on screen…

The only explanation I can think of is that our three friends here have spent plenty of time having adventures that we haven’t seen. Certainly, the way they joke and play on the beach at the start of this story (in a scene hugely reminiscent of the opening to The Enemy of the World) gives the impression of a group of people that are very comfortable and happy together, while the stories that we’ve seen with them haven’t spread out over a great deal of time. It feels like an age since stories like Marco Polo or The Romans, when the TARDIS crew would spend months on end hanging out in a particular time or place.

What’s also pretty fun is the way that our regulars arrive in this location - with the TARDIS materialising in mid-air, and then gently coming to rest on the ocean waves. ‘The TARDIS is quite capable of floating,’ the Doctor explains, though it has to be said that it’s a bit unusual as an idea. The soundtrack makes the whole scene seem a little muddled, with the sound of the ship’s engines taking a really long time to dies down, but their row to the shore in a little boat taking only a matter of seconds. Still, it’s something a bit different, which is always good.

As for the story itself… it’s another one of these tales that’s very much at home being produced in this era. I’m always put in mind of Gary Russell’s comment in the Second Time Around feature on The Dominators DVD - North Sea gas was everywhere in the news in this era, and here’s a story that brings the Doctor’s adventures right into your home. I’ve always thought of the seaweed creature as being a bit of an odd choice for a Doctor Who monster, though actually it’s the kind of thing that the programme does very well - taking something perfectly ordinary and turning it into something that should be feared. I think this is most in evidence when Maggie Harris throws some out on her patio, and it begins to write and pulse: small clumps of the stuff like this will be littered all over when kids visit the beach, and it too could start to move…

Of course, the big thing to note about today’s episode? It’s the first appearance of the Sonic Screwdriver! Hooray! I’ve been counting down to this one for some time now (and tracking the Doctor’s train of thought as he starts to develop the device), and I’m pleased to say that this is everything that I could possibly want from its first use in the show. It’s not being used to break the Doctor and his companions out of a cell, or to shoot energy beams at an alien, or hold open a heavy stone door - this Sonic Screwdriver does exactly what it says on the tin - it’s used to unscrew the front of a little box with soundwaves.

I like the idea that the Doctor has been developing this for a little while throughout Season Five (there’s another reason to imagine some unseen adventures for this trio - it gives him more time to work), and even though he claims here that the Sonic ‘never fails’, he’s clearly quite new to the tool, and Jamie obviously hasn’t seen it before (‘Neat, isn’t it?’, the Doctor adds). We’ll be seeing plenty more of the device over the next few years (well, the next few decades), but it’s nice to see it here in an extremely basic form - a ‘mark one’ of all the Sonics to come…

a 

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

Day 204: The Web of Fear, Episode Six

Dear diary,

It was always clear that this episode would feature some kind of defeat for the Great Intelligence, but it wasn't clear what form it would take. I half expected it to come down to the same as in the first Yeti tale, and we'd simply watch on as the Doctor disappeared down into the tunnels, where all we could hear would be his strangled cries. It worked well once, but I was dreading it a second time.

Thankfully, it's more interesting than a simple defeat - and you've got the Doctor berating Jamie for interrupting a plan that would have seen the creature fought off for good. It's not often that we get this kind of extra layer to the end of a story, and it really does help with the idea that the Intelligence is something a bit more sinister than your average Doctor Who baddie.

It makes me wonder if things are being set up for the proposed third Yeti story (which, I believe, was to be called The Laird of McCrimmon, and feature the departure of Jamie from the series). It's an interesting idea, preparing the viewers (and the characters) for an impending rematch, and that feels pretty different - the show doesn't often hint toward its own future in this way.

Indeed, the only recent example that I can think of is The Evil of the Daleks at the end of Season Four - but there's more connections to that story than just the hint of a survival for the monsters. I mused yesterday that the Doctor taking control of a Yeti was reminiscent of his control over the humanised Daleks in that earlier story, but isn't his plan almost the same, too?

Here, he's crossed some wires on the bad guy's super machine, so that it will do the opposite of what's intended. In The Evil of the Daleks, he switches around their machine so it makes more human Daleks, and they can rebel. It's not a problem, as such, but in a story I've enjoyed as much as The Web of Fear, it's a shame to see so many similarities to a (relatively) recent tale.

Also a shame… Do we ever find out just who was the Intelligence's pawn throughout the first few episodes? Was it always Arnold, or is that just since he went in to the fungus? Did I miss a bit? I was hoping for some big reveal that just didn't really come.

It's tempting to say 'I'd love to have The Web of Fear back in the archives, but I don't know if that's true. The first episode looks beautiful, but the story works so well on audio, that I think there's others is rather see. But in all? A success! It's no wonder that this is considered to be one of Doctor Who's all time classics - and so is the next story. Here's hoping things keep up like this!

7/10 

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

Day 203: The Web of Fear, Episode Five

Dear diary,

Back at the start of the month, when I was making my way through The Abominable Snowmen, I commented that I couldn’t quite get my head around the way that the Great Intelligence’s two 1960s stories joined up with the ones we’ve had this year in Series Seven. I started to put together a timeline (you can read the first four bullet points of it HERE), but I needed to wait for this story to come along before I could finish things up.

Thankfully, a lot of what we’ve had from the Intelligence during The Web of Fear corresponds to what I was hoping we’d get, so I don’t need to alter my timeline all that much to make it work. So, that said, I’ll be keeping the first four points the same as they were, and carrying it on as follows…

5) The Doctor defeats the Intelligence in Tibet, and Professor Travers takes some of the robotic equipment (including a complete Yeti) back with him to London. His success in this area wins him a small amount of notoriety, and the money he makes goes towards funding a new passion - electronics. By the mid-1930s, the money is drying up, so Travers sells his yeti to a friend, Who places it in his museum.

6) At the same time, the Intelligence has been forced back out onto the Asteral plane. Padmasambavah has now succumbed to his old age and died, leaving the creature without a form. From the Asteral Plane, the Intelligence is able to monitor the Doctor’s travels through time and space*, and so sets an intricate trap to catch him, and drain his mind of all it’s experiences*. As he does this, Travers is able to reactivate a Yeti control sphere, giving the Intelligence a closer presence to his creatures.

7) The events of The Web of Fear take place, and end… however they do in the next episode. I mean, obviously the Intelligence is defeated, but I don’t know how, yet. Following this, he retreats back to the Astral Plane, but keeps in contact with several minds ('I have many other human hands at my command', he tells the Doctor, here). One of those minds is Professor Travers, who at some point in the 1970s is drawn back to Det Sen Monastery, where he is kept alive beyond his years.

8) In the early 1980s, Victoria herself is brought back to Tibet, following visions of her father. The Intelligence takes control of her mind, giving her the instructions needed to create New World University, and formulating a plan to seize control of the planet via the emerging internet over the next fifteen years. At the same time, Ms Kislet is taken from her parents, and the Intelligence begins ‘whispering in her ear’, formulating different plans.

9) The New World University plan falls apart, partly because the internet isn’t yet widespread enough to take control globally (WOTAN would be disappointed), and partly because of a timely intervention from the Brigadier and Sarah Jane Smith. After this, he abandons the Yeti, as they’re not so vital to his current operations, and he’s gotten better at using humans for his dirty work. By 2013, he’s back to using the web as a way to take control, harvesting human minds via the wi-fi.

10) A plan which, once again gets stopped because of the Doctor’s intervention ('You thwarted me at every turn' he tells our hero in The Name of the Doctor). Now, yes, I know that the Intelligence in today’s episode claims that he doesn’t want to trap the Doctor for revenge (he calls it a very human emotion), but let’s face it, by the time The Name of the Doctor rolls around, the Intelligence is pretty darn vengeful. Having discovered the location of the Doctor’s grave, the Intelligence again plans to take control of the Doctor’s mind. Somehow.

11) When they arrive at the tomb, though, we’re introduced to the Doctor’s time stream - an the Intelligence realises that he can cause the Doctor an enormous amount of hurt by throwing himself into it. Sure, it’ll die in the process, but the Doctor (and his companions) have foiled his plans so many times now, that the sacrifice is worth it, just to know the Doctor is in that kind of pain.

And then it’s all over. No more Intelligence, and Clara has to run around the Doctor’s past adventures in hundreds of different forms, saving the day without anyone knowing. Somewhere, I’m tempted to believe that the Intelligence impersonates the Doctor during the Shalka incident, just because it tidies everything up, but I might be pushing it to include that somewhere, too.

I think everything ties together quite nicely, or at least nicely enough for me. I’ll probably review things when I reach Series Seven again (well over a year from now!), but it keeps things neat in my head for now, at least.

As for the episode itself? I’m still really enjoying the experience of being swept along with this one, but I’m starting to feel like it’s time to draw to some kind of resolution (that’s not a complaint - we’re at the end of Episode Five, things are about to come to a close). I then spent a while, as the Doctor controlled both a Sphere and later a full-blown Yeti trying to recall why it felt so familiar, before realising that he does a very similar thing with the Daleks at the end of Season Four. Here’s hoping that the final episode sees The Web of Fear going out on a real high - a story like this certainly deserves to!

*I’m going to assume that the Intelligence is only able to monitor the Second Doctor’s adventures, probably in the order that we’ve been seeing them (I guess he’s had more than two excursions between Tibet and now, we’ve just not been privy to them), otherwise he’d be trying to trap one of the later Doctors, who would have even more experience.

a 

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

Day 202: The Web of Fear, Episode Four

Dear diary,

That sense of paranoia just keeps on growing in this episode - literally everyone is falling under suspicion at one point or another. Today’s suspects are mainly Chorley (absent here, but possibly off in the tunnels and up to no good), The Doctor (he’s always going to be under suspicion), Evans (Who’s acting stranger and stranger by the scene - there’s something up with him, even if he isn’t either working for the Intelligence, or an operative of Torchwood), and Travers, Who actually gets to turn up in the final scene, all possessed.

What’s quite nice is that I’m still trying to piece this all together - even though poor Travers is a pawn of the Intelligence now, has that been the case all along? Surely it wasn’t him steering the Yeti into position all this time? I’m expecting that things will be brought to a head in the next episode, so we’ll possibly be getting some answers pretty soon, just in time for the big climax.

I’m also rather pleased that having worked my way this far into the story, suddenly there’s a lot more of Downtime that makes sense to me. I said during The Abominable Snowmen that I’d never understood vast parts of the spin-off, but that story didn’t really help to put things straight for me. Here, with the Yeti figurines being used more as homing beacons than anything else, things are starting to slot into place more, and it’s all helping to form the rest of my big ‘Great Intelligence Timeline’, which I started in the entry for The Abominable Snowmen Episode Four, and will be continuing in tomorrow’s update.

It’s strange to see the Doctor bringing the Colonel up-to-speed on the TARDIS as quickly as this, as I’d always assumed that he didn’t find out all that much about it until the Third Doctor came to work for him - specifically, I’m thinking of The Three Doctors being the Brig’s first look inside the ship. Here, though, he’s willing to accept the Doctor’s description of his ‘craft’ at face value, telling one of his soldiers that he ‘doesn’t intend to leave any escape route unexplored’ no matter how ‘screwy’ it might seem!

Lines of comic relief like this have been peppered throughout the story so far, and they’re really helping to walk the line of this story being just the right balance of light and dark. So far, smiles have been raised by the description of the Yeti coming from Outer Space (How did they get here? Through the post!) and Evans stopping to pick up a chocolate bar from a conveniently-placed vending machine. In a story where things could be getting very sinister and brutal, they’re helping to keep things at least a bit jollier.

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

The main problem I had with the scene was the use of music - its Space Adventure! That’s the Cybermen theme, not the Yeti! Have to admit (shamefully) that it did actually put me off a little for a few minutes. Sadly, though, it’s also the last time we’ll be hearing Space Adventure in Doctor Who, it’s retired after this use, I believe. A shame, as I think it’s always going to be one of my favourite pieces of music used in the series. Brilliantly, it was played as part of the Doctor Who Prom last week - and didn't it just sound wonderful?

a 

a  Day 201: The Web of Fear, Episode Three

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

Day 201: The Web of Fear, Episode Three

Dear diary,

I really love it when the Doctor has an extended circle of friends. In the new series, I've always liked it when we find ourselves back on present-day Earth, and the Doctor meets up with Jackie, or Micky. The Stolen Earth is like heaven for me - all those friends he's made across the last four years, together! Brilliant stuff. More recently, we've got the Paternoster Row gang - a 'family' for the Eleventh Doctor. I don't doubt that when the Twelfth Doctor takes over next year, he'll get an extended group of friends for himself.

There's something about it that just feels so much more real than simply meeting friends, travelling with them for a bit, then dropping them off to never return. The Web of Fear marks the very first time that we get a returning 'good' character to the programme (as opposed to Daleks or Cybermen or whatever) in the form of Professor Travers. It's being played really nicely - there's an argument between Travers and Jamie early on in the tale, before Victoria realises who he is, and the Doctor catches up with him today like he's an old friend.

And as if that weren't enough, this story also marks the first appearance of perhaps the most famous of the Doctor's many recurring friends - in the form of the Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart. Now, I know he wasn't considered as a long-running character at this point, but there's still something really brilliant about his first appearance being from a time before he became 'the Brigadier'. Fittingly, the man we're presented with here isn't quite the one we'll come to know and love over the years, but there's certainly elements in there that shine through, and as a Doctor Who fan, Nick Courtney's voice is so embedded in my mind that you can fail to recognise him the second he begins speaking.

Interestingly, he's played as something of a 'grey' character here, and we're not entirely sure that we're supposed to trust him. Certainly, if you pointed him out to a viewer watching in 1968 and told them that this man would become the Doctor's best friend through several incarnations, they'd think you were mad. Just as in yesterday's episode, tensions in the base are rising, and everyone is starting to suspect everyone else. What's great about this is that we're invited to join in with all this, and to start trying to work out just who is in league with the Yeti.

Certainly, for a while, it's supposed to be Lethbridge-Stewart himself (you have no idea how hard it is not to just call him 'the Brigadier'). When he first turns up, both the soldiers and Victoria wonder about where he might have come from - no one was expecting him, after all. It's pointed out that Evans didn't mention any other survivors of the ammunitions attack (where the Colonel claims to have come from), and the Doctor muses that he just appeared out of nowhere. As if to court the suspicion a little further, the Colonel himself even comments that the soldiers know more about the Doctor than they do about him, and that they still don't really know all that much about the Doctor…

Then you've got Evans, too, or 'our man from Torchwood' as I'm still insisting to think about it. There's something shifty going on with him, and I'm not entirely sure what it is just yet. Jamie seems to think that it's as simple as the man being a coward, looking to escape at any opportunity, but I'm not sure it's so simple. Having made up his mind to escape while he can, Evans is later found skulking around the tunnels, and every excuse he makes sounds just a little too forced.

Or maybe it's Chorley, the only reporter who's been allowed in to monitor the situation? He's been a thorn in everyone's side since the very first episode, and here he's seen talking to Victoria about the TARDIS, before locking her and the Doctor in a room and making his escape. Again, there's a suggestion that he might simply be too much of a coward to be stuck in this atmosphere any longer, but that might seem too obvious!

To put it bluntly, I'm not sure who is working with the Intelligence - and I like that! It's keeping me guessing (and second guessing) at every turn, and that's really helping to keep me engaged with the story. Something else that's keeping me involved is the stations that we're caught in - I'm off to London again this afternoon with Ellie, and the routes we need to take will pass us through Monument, Covent Garden, St Pauls… all these places that just don't seem to be all that safe right now! I'll keep an eye out for fungus…

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

Day 200: The Web of Fear, Episode Two

Dear diary,

In some ways, this episode is absolutely made to be listened to as just the audio. Not only does the claustrophobia of the dark Underground tunnels really lend itself to being heard through headphones, but the script is almost written as if it were a radio play. 'Let's just hope they're not on the Circle Line!' one soldier exclaims, watching as the fungus moves along that very tunnel. Cut from this to Jamie and Evans, who instantly find a Tube map and declare themselves to be walking right down… the Central Line. Of course. We get another example a few minutes later, where we've just been told that Jamie is headed for Monument station, and we cut back to the soldiers discovering that the fungus is about to arrive at… Monument. (And just in case we needed the point underlined, the action then shifts back to Jamie, who emerges from a tunnel and loudly proclaims 'here we are! Monument!').

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

I think it's probably a testament to how much I'm enjoying this one that it was fifteen minutes or more before I noticed the complete absence of the Doctor from the story. It's been a while since I stopped tracking the cast's holidays (though for the record, Jamie and Victoria took a week off during The Enemy of the World that was nicely glossed over), but they're rarely as well done as this. Much of the story becomes about the absence of the Doctor. We're constantly reassured that he hasn't been killed in the explosion - because it didn't go off properly - but we're left to wonder exactly what has happened to him.

And in that absence, the suspicion is allowed to turn on him. It's Anne Travers who first makes the suggestion that the Doctor might be the one behind the Yeti - pointing out the odd coincidence that the Doctor, Jamie, and Victoria have all turned up on both occasions that the Yeti have been involved with her father's life. She dismisses this suggestion very quickly (though I'm hoping there's still some lingering doubt in her mind - it provides a nice bit of drama), but later on the idea resurfaces from some of the soldiers, who realise that the fungus has only just started moving again, after three weeks of inactivity, when the Doctor shows up on the scene.

It all helps to add to that sense of tension that's really at the heart of this story. We're in such a closed, confined space that it's only a matter of time before this kind of suspicion is going to arise from people. It's almost the same as the small group of characters we get in Midnight: trapped in a small space, with terror closing in around you, of course you're going to start turning on each other. In this instance, the soldiers have someone else that they can project their fear onto in this mysterious 'Doctor' who no one has actually seen, and just happened to be around when the explosive attack failed. Coming so soon after an episode in which the bad guy is the Doctor's double, it's nice to see this kind of atmosphere.

And it's nice to see the return to that old favourite, the base-under-siege story, being done so well. It's effectively the same kind of situation we've had in some form throughout the Fifth Season, from The Tomb of the Cybermen to The Ice Warriors, and even this story's predecessor, The Abominable Snowmen, but the change of setting really helps to amp up the tension.

When we're trapped in Det Sen Monastery, there's the vast rolling mountains outside to help expand the setting and give you room to breathe. The ice tombs on Telos has that handy lobby area where the Doctor and the guest cast could retreat to in order to catch their breath and plot their next move. So much of The Ice Warriors took place out on the open ice plains, and even when we were trapped inside, it was in a nice, high-tech environment, where they had the technology to end it all if need be (though not necessarily in the way that they'd like).

But trapped down in the London Underground is a totally different story. They've got several ways out… but they can see the enemy creeping along them in the form of the fungus. They know which weapons they need to defeat the Yeti… but their deliveries keep getting attacked and destroyed. It's the best atmosphere we've had for one of these stories, so it's a great one to kick back into them with.

One thing I did wonder, though: they find Evans wandering around the tunnel all on his own (singing a song). He claims to be one of the ammunitions drivers, and has a rank, but makes a point (twice) of pointing out that he's not one of Knight's men, and claims to be lost trying to find his way back from the Yeti attack. I don't know where the character is going for the rest of the story, but in my mind, I've decided that he's not a driver at all, but rather an agent for Torchwood, trying to keep an eye on exactly what's happening down here - robot Yeti could be good for Queen and country, after all!

 

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

Day 199: The Web of Fear, Episode One

Dear diary,

Hooray! It's the welcome return of Douglas Camfield to the director's chair! It feels like an absolute age since we last had some of his work on the series (it is: the last Doctor Who he directed was The Daleks' Master Plan, which finished broadcast just over two years before this story began), and he's managed to completely by-pass the entirety of Innes Lloyd's time on the show. Over the course of Seasons Four and Five so far, I've often had Camfield's style in mind when listening to the soundtracks, but it's lovely to see his return to the series actually surviving in the archives.

And what a return it is! The direction of this episode is, to but it bluntly, stunning. It has the feel of an old 1930s film, and the use of both candles in the museum and shadows in the Underground really help to sell the effect. It's miles ahead of the stuff seen in The Enemy of the World Episode Three (our last surviving episode), and had me completely gripped.

The style is spot on for me right from the opening of the episode, with the shots of the Doctor and his friends caught in the TARDIS console room as it spins out of control. I'll admit, it's tricky to watch the way the Doctor and Victoria cling to each other as they write about on the floor and grunt a lot without something of a raised eyebrow, but the whole scene is filed with a real sense of tension, which isn't always easy. The crowning moment has to be when Jamie finally manages to find the right switch on the TARDIs console and get the doors to close - and the camera returns to a proper position as the doors shut. It's such a simple thing, but it really works.

Cut to the inside of Silverstein's museum and right into the face of a Yeti! It's so abrupt that it really strikes you, and had I not known that the creatures would be making their return in this story (I'm a Doctor Who fan, of course know the Yeti are back in this one, but just in case I didn't, there's a handy trailer at the end of The Enemy of the World, in which the Doctor directly address you and warns you that these Yeti are scarier than the last lot we encountered), I'd have been absolutely flawed by it. I'm one of the few people who actually quite likes the appearance of the creatures in The Abominable Snowmen, but even I'll admit that they're not the most terrifying thing we've ever had in the series. The use of angles and lighting here really sells the effect of the dormant one here, before we get the switchover to the newer, more powerful version that we'll be dealing with for the next few days.

It's strange to have the reveal of the Yeti come so early on into the adventure - indeed we know that the Yeti are involved long before the TARDIS has arrived on Earth - but it means that we get a very different type of episode once again. It's not about the Doctor and his companions getting caught in a base under attack from the monsters (well, not yet, anyway), but about the anticipation of our heroes discovering what we already know. The scene where the Doctor hides beneath the Underground platform, peering round to see the new-and-improved Yeti is fantastic, and a great chance for Troughton to pull one of his trademark faces.

Ah, yes, the Underground stations. It's a well-known anecdote about this story that having been given a cost for filming on the Underground, the BBC decided instead to build their own replica sets so convincing that they ended up being reprimanded by London Transport. I can't say I fully believe the story, but seeing what they've managed to build here… well, I guess there could have been cause for concern! They're fantastic, and it's hard to believe that most of this episode isn't shot out on location. The details are absolutely spot on, and the tunnels in particular are gorgeous. Indeed, my only complaint (having been in Covent Garden's Underground station just last week) is that it's in too good of a condition!

There's loads that I could rave about for this episode (my notes are overloaded with things!), but I'll hold off for now - there's still another five instalments to go, so there'll be plenty of time to discuss all the other aspects that make this so good. The Web of Fear is another one of those Season Five stories with a very high reputation, and I've not really fallen in step with the common feeling towards some of them so far - here's hoping that this one can buck the trend. If it carries on like this, I'd say there's a pretty good chance of that happening!

10/10