Missing 1965 episode ‘Mission to the Unknown’ is authentically brought to life in unique project, authentically recreated by students, graduates and staff from the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan).

The project, known as Sci-fi in a Week, saw a large university cross-disciplinary team remake the lost episode in just five days of rehearsals and filming. This episode is unusual in that it was the only single episode story in the entire 26-year original series run, and also because it is the only story not to feature the regular cast including the Doctor himself who was played at the time by William Hartnell.

‘Mission to the Unknown’ is one of a large number of missing Doctor Who episodes. Unlike some that have been returned to the BBC, this one is likely to stay lost forever as it was never sold or distributed overseas. But, thanks to UCLan’s efforts, it has now been brought to life again in full 1960s glory.

The 25-minute episode, which was originally written as an introduction to the 12-part story ‘The Daleks' Master Plan’, featured Edward de Souza as Space Security Agent Marc Cory and his efforts to warn Earth of the Dalek’s latest plot. Audio recordings from the episode exist and have informed the development of the UCLan version but no original footage is known to have survived.

UCLan Pro Vice-Chancellor (Digital and Creative Industries) Dr Andrew Ireland directed and produced the episode after being given special permission from the BBC and the Terry Nation Estate, which holds the rights to the Daleks. Nicholas Briggs, who has been the voice of the Daleks on Doctor Who since the series returned in 2005, lent his support to the project by voicing the Daleks for the special UCLan episode. 

Dr Ireland said:

"I’m a huge Doctor Who fan and this episode in particular has always held an air of mystique for me because it experimented with the notion of the Daleks carrying their own storyline without the Doctor present. We kept it as close to the original as we possibly could, so everything from the props and costumes to the acting style, pace and camera techniques are designed to be very 1960s. It was filmed to simulate the low-resolution, black and white look of the era and we’ve been able to use the audio from the original recording to inform stage directions and the mood of the episode.”

The whole show has been created by UCLan students, graduates and staff, with help from Accrington and Rossendale College pupils who were in charge of make-up and prosthetics. It means that students on courses including acting, fashion and TV and media production gain hands-on experience of creating a drama from scratch and are able to compare techniques from more than 50 years ago with modern day drama production.

Dr Ireland added:

“It’s a cracking script and remaking it proved to be an exciting challenge and learning experience for all concerned. We often talk about the theory of historical television production techniques, but this project meant the students lived the high-pressured reality of it! We will give the BBC a copy of the episode and hopefully one day it may become available for people to see. Who knows? To achieve what we have in the time we had is a massive achievement and I want to thank everyone involved for all their efforts.”

To make the programme, the UCLan team had to make four sets; a futuristic conference room, a jungle, a rocket ship, and the Dalek Control Room, which was filmed as a miniature set, as well as creating all the props and costumes. It involved four speaking parts plus three Daleks with seven other actors playing aliens.

The cast and crew were given a treat mid-week when Peter Purves, who played the Doctor’s companion in 1965, and original cast-member Edward de Souza visited the set to see how things were progressing and take part in a special question and answer panel.

Peter said:

“This is an absolutely wonderful project, even more so as this episode was a one-off introduction to the massive 12 part ‘Dalek Master Plan’. I can remember at the time that we (That is me and Bill Hartnell) were a bit miffed not to be included in any way at all, but actually it was a nice week off in the end. I am intrigued to see what has been done and hope it could be a precursor to more reconstructions in the future."

UCLan already has strong links with Doctor Who through acting graduate Mandip Gill who currently plays the Doctor’s companion in the series alongside Jodie Whittaker as the first ever female Doctor.

Mandip said:

“I am really excited to not only see this lost episode finally, but to see what the team has created in just five days of rehearsals and filming. I am very proud of UCLan, it gave me a lot and I am thrilled to see it also give back a lost part of sci-fi history. Who knows where it could end up!”

The UCLan team treated the BBC as the client for the project and that set a high professional bar for the cast and crew to aspire to.

Peter Purves has shared some images [pictured in the right-hand column] from the production on his Twitter account, and, as you can see from our comparison, the attention to detail is incredible!

[Source: UCLan]

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

Day 128: The Savages, Episode Four

Dear diary,

Susan and David fell in love, sharing special moments in the heat of a Dalek conquest. Ian and Barbara spent almost two years trying to get back home, and finally managed it in a fully-functional Dalek time machine. Vicki remained in ancient Troy to convince her love that she hadn't betrayed him.

Katarina sacrificed herself to give her friends a chance at escape. Brett Vyon was wrongly shot down in cold blood by his own sister in the pursuit of justice, and she then met her fate when brought up against the might of the Daleks' Time Destructor.

Steven Taylor… was pretty much booted off the TARDIS when the Doctor saw an opportunity to get rid of him. Ah. Something's not right, there. When I started this story, I said that one of the two things I knew about it was that Steven departed in Episode Four. Had I not known that, though, and had just been watching through blindly… I don't think I'd have known this was his final tale. There's nothing wrong with the reasons for his departure: The Savages have seen enough from him to want him as their leader, and the Doctor concurs. But it comes from nowhere, and looking at the tele snaps, Steven himself even looks confused by the way things are unfolding.

Every time a companion has left the series so far (or, at least, in the case of the 'regular' companions, for which there;s no debate over), I've praised how well it's been handled. There's always plenty of little hints in the story that the time has come, and when we reach the end it only feels natural that they should be on the wrong side of the TARDIS doors when it departs. What this story needed was a few instances of Steven musing that there was a 'better way' to rule this planet, and a solution that would allow the two peoples of the world to live in peace.

We needed a few more moments of his imparting wisdom to the Savages, really stepping up and showing them that he knew what he was doing. As it is, we know he'll probably make a pretty good job of things, because we've been following his journey for some time now, but they've only known him for a few days! It's a shame to see the age of 'sudden departures' coming into play here (and even more prominently in the next story), knowing that it will stretch out across a good deal more companion exits in the future.

Before listening to this episode, I heard a Peter Purves interview online. I think it had been cobbled together from a number of sources, but it was pretty well done, and I certainly enjoyed it. In the interview, Peter made a statement that I've heard him say on a number of occasions before now - that he'd like the Doctor to return to the world of the Savages, and find that Steven has become a total despot. The more I think about it, the more I really like the idea, and I think it could work. It's almost needed as a counter balance to the sudden departure - Steven just doesn't know what he's doing, so he makes things worse. I'd love to hear something like this… maybe Peter needs to pitch the idea to Big Finish?

I'll speak about this episode as a whole in a moment, but first I want to just take a moment to think over how fantastic Steven has been in the series. For years and years, now, I've always simply listed Ian as being my favourite First Doctor companion. Having done his stories in order, followed by Stevens, though, I think it's fair to say that my allegiance has switched. I think it has something to do with the length of time that both characters have stayed with the TARDIS. By the end of Ian and Barbara's time in the series, I was just sick of them. I'd stopped enjoying their adventures, and I think it had a negative effect on the Second Series for me.

Steven has stuck around for just about half as long as those two did, and he leaves now with me wanting to see a bit more from him. I'm not really ready for him to go. Even if it's just another story or two, to round out the season, I'm keen to have more from him. That, I think, is the secret. Get the companion out before i tire of them. A similar thing happened with Amy Pond - while I was never overly keen on her from the beginning, by the time that Season Seven rolled around I'd just had enough. I didn't care about the character. Now that we've embarked on this second half of the series, with Janna-Louise lighting up the screen every week, it feels fresh and new. Fantastic.

On the whole, I think The Savages has been something of a surprise. It's never been a story that people often speak about, but rather just lump it in as part of the 'missing' episodes. It hasn't got the reputation of something like Marco Polo or The Web of Fear to pull it out from the crowd. Having just had a look at the DWM 'Mighty 200' poll from 2009, in which readers were asked to rate all the stories up to that point, The Savages came in at #162. Out of 200! Even Love & Monsters came in nine places higher, and a large proportion of fandom seems to hate that story!

I have to wonder if it simply is a case that people just don't know about this story. That's pretty much the boat I was in, knowing it was there at the end of Season Three, but not really knowing what it was about. In many ways, it's Doctor Who by numbers: and there's lots of similarities to other tales throughout (I've compared it to bits of The Keys of Marinus, The Space Museum, The Celestial Toymaker, and The Gunfighters over the last few days), and there's bits of it that will crop up so many times in the future of the programme (mostly the look of the TARDIS stood in the quarry) that it feels a bit like we've seen it all before… but everything here is done really very well!

I'm so desperately keen to give this episode an '8'. I've really enjoyed it on the whole, and the scene of people trashing the lab must have looked fantastic, but I just can't bring myself to do it. Letting Steven go so suddenly and with no warning is too unforgivable. I'll be lowering the score a little, but moving The Savages right up my list of 'stories I'd love to see recovered soon please'. Seems like a fair trade-off to me.

7/10 

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

Day 127: The Savages, Episode Three

Dear diary,

You can sort of tell that we’re reaching the tail-end of William Hartnell’s time in the role, now. In the first couple of years, ‘holiday spotting’ was something that each character went through for maybe two episodes a season. Usually, it was a case of seeing which regular had the least screen-time, and spent it away from the others. Now, the Doctor is taking more and more time away from the screen. He is in this episode, but he doesn’t really do a whole lot more than groan a bit.

I made a similar point during The Gunfighters, that the Doctor seemed to be carrying less and less of the action – and obviously The Celestial Toymaker sees him invisible for a large chunk of the time. There’s a real sense of the Doctor (and Hartnell) starting to slow up, which is a real shame. After the heights he’s hit at points recently (I’m thinking mostly of how fantastic he looks during some of The Time Meddler and Masterplan) I’m sad to see him being whittled down.

It means that we’ve got today, as in The Celestial Toymaker, a chance to think about replacing him. There we had the suggestion that he may come back as a different actor, here it’s seeing how another actor may take on the part, while still playing it in the style of Hartnell himself. Frederick Jaeger does a great job of impersonating the Doctor: I was stood giggling to myself for a while as it happened. It really is spot-on as impressions go, and it works quite well. It’s an interesting idea for the transference, though are we to assume that this doesn’t happen when they transfer the Savages? It’s only because the Doctor is a time traveller, or at least a ‘higher’ life form?

Fun as it is to see here on this occasion, I can’t imagine anyone playing the part as Hartnell’s Doctor for any sustained period of time. It’s a very good impression, but it’s just not him. The biggest shame is that, after today, we’ve only got another thirteen episodes before he leaves, so I want to soak up as much Hartnell as I can before then – to misquote the Tenth Doctor, I don’t want him to go!

Still, Hartnell not being in the episode much means that Peter Purves and Jackie Lane are left to carry the majority of the episode. The Wife in Space blog once made a point that they ‘should have called the show Ian’. At this stage, they might as well be calling it Steven. It wouldn't last all that long (I know he's off in the next episode, even if this story has yet to signpost it!), but it's good enough, 'cos I'm still really liking Steven as a companion.

I was worrying yesterday that things were about to take a sharp downturn, with not enough plot to sustain the remaining 50-minute running time of the story. Thankfully, that's not yet happened, and it's been averted by clever use of… Episode Three Syndrome!?! I'm sure I've spoken about this before, but I always think that three episodes is the optimum length for most of 20th-century Doctor Who. There's more than a few of the four-part stories that could stand to lose about an episode's worth of material from the latter half.

I tend to call it 'Episode Three Syndrome' - that feeling that you need to fill twenty-five minutes of screen time before the climax, so you mostly have the characters running up and down corridors, getting captured and escaping, and ending the episode in more-or-less the same position that they started in.

Here, all of that happens. Steven and Dodo are pursued by the guards all the way to the cave homes of the Savages, who help to shelter them, and lead them down a tunnel in an attempt to hide. They're followed all the way, though, until a guard has them cornered… and they escape! They hurry back to the city to free the Doctor, who is still begin held in the lab. They retrieve him, take him out into the corridor, where they're then gassed and are under threat from a deadly gas.

Most of this could probably have come at the start of Episode Four in a (very) condensed form: Steven and Dodo are helped by a Savage to enter the city, they rescue the Doctor, but then get gassed. It really works, though. It allows us to see more of the Savages as a people and helps to give them more depth. It's also a good thing that the tele snaps make their caves look impressive. We've seen Christopher barry directing in caves before, and he's always done a good job of it, but this looks much better than I'm used to.

And then all the stuff in the corridor at the end looks fantastic, too. I've already praised the design of this corridor in previous entries, but it looks great with the smoke billowing down it. The scene is then enhanced by William Hartnell's performance. I know I've said all he really does is stumble around and groan a lot, but looking at the tele snaps… how un-nerving does he look? There's one particular shot (It's the fourth one from the end of page 65 in the new DWM special, for anyone following along at home), where he's stood between Steven and Dodo, and he's completely out of it.

It almost looks as though he's had a stroke, and it's a state that we've never seen the Doctor in before. It'd unsettling, and really helps to sell the threat of the transference to us. Forget the Daleks, this is what you should be scared of. Anything that can do this to the Doctor is not good…

7/10 

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

Day 126: The Savages, Episode Two

Dear diary,

Worryingly, I’m about to compare this story to The Space Museum. Yes! I can feel your collective shudder as you read that. What I mean is that there’s several elements common to both of these stories. Not particularly in-depth ones, but a few all the same. The main thing is that you’ve a group of ‘leaders’ (The Moroks/The Elders) and a group of people ready to rise up against them (The Xerons/The Savages). Were Vicki here, she’d have incited a rebellion by now. I’m guessing that’s going to be Steven or Dodo’s role before too long.

Then there’s the Doctor being strapped down and prepared for an experiment. In The Space Museum, it works as a threat because we’ve already seen the outcome – the Doctor and his friends frozen in the glass display cases. Here, the threat comes from having just watched the experiment performed on Nanina, and having seen the after-effects of the experiment on Wylda, who’s left to ‘recover’ outside the city.

There's also the fact that there's no easily identifiable 'monsters' in either of these two stories. In both cases, we're very much presented with a side of 'good' and 'bad', but there's no rubber suits on display, and no monster-of-the-week to latch onto. In some ways, it feels like this could be a historical story - there just happens to be a laboratory of advanced equipment and some light guns dropped in.

Thankfully, I’m enjoying this story more than I did The Space Museum. Today is a bit of a step down from yesterday (but then we’ve yet to have two 9/10 days in a row in this marathon, so it doesn’t come as a massive surprise), but it’s still kept me interested.

One of the things that I’m really enjoying is the look of this tale. Regular readers will know that I tend to experience the missing episodes by listening to the narrated soundtracks (recons tend to let my mind wander too much), so often my idea of what a story looks like is based on any surviving episodes, half-remembered photos from the tales, or simply what my head decides to come up with. The Myth Makers, for example was entirely in my mind, with the exception of the horse, which I can remember from plenty of promo images.

This time around, though, I’m supplementing the soundtracks by having a look through the recent First Doctor tele-snap special from the guys at DWM. I’m not sticking slavishly to following along the images in time with the soundtrack, it’s more of a case where I listen to the episode and have a glance over them. Occasionally, I've nipped over to the BBC's Doctor Who website, where they're available at a larger size.

And some of them are gorgeous! That corridor down to the lab is stunning (and there’s plenty of photos of it, too. I keep waiting for one to show it up as being awful, but it hasn’t happened yet. Hooray!). The design of the savages is pretty great, too. They’re one of those images from Doctor Who that I was always aware of but didn’t really know anything about them. When the story began, I figured that they were the Elders. Here they are, though, and they look fantastic. Bizarre, yes. Unsettling, perhaps. But great!

(Actually, in some ways, I'm a bit saddened that they aren't the Elders. In my mind, these strange, ancient men were savages who lived on a barren planet - most of the photos show them in the shrubbery - and that the story was going to involve them. Now I've experienced half the tale, I really love the idea of these people tracking the Doctor across time and space using primitive technology! Ah well.)

The tele-snaps also show plenty of the location filming from Doctor Who’s first alien quarry planet. From what we can see, it looks pretty impressive, and it actually works! It's on display better in the first episode than it is here today, but I'm really taken aback by it - Doctor Who's quarry planets are the stuff comedians have joked about for years, but they've nailed it on the first attempt!

The images don’t really give much of an indication of how the piece will have been directed, but thinking back over Chris Barry’s previous work, I can’t remember being floored by it. I’m choosing to imagine it as directed by Douggie Camfield instead – his camera work in those corridors would be gorgeous! That's not to say that Christopher Barry wouldn't have done a great job with it - but since I've got the free-reign to imagine…!

My worry now is where the story may go from here. It’s been quite a strong start, and the cliffhanger is pretty good as well (it’s always of interest when the Doctor is incapacitated like this, and separated from his companions – and, therefore, from help!). The danger is that rebellion seems the next logical step for the story, but I don’t know wether that’ll be enough to fill the next 50 minutes. The Space Museum didn’t really hold a great deal of interest for me once the rebellion started, so I’m concerned for the future of this one…

7/10 

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

Day 125: The Savages, Episode One

Dear diary,

The recently released Doctor Who Magazine special, which reprints a number of First Doctor-era teles naps (which I’m using to supplement the narrated soundtrack for this story) features an introduction for this story by Jonathan Morris, which describes The Savages as having 'the dubious distinction of being the lest-known Doctor Who story’. You know what? He’s not wrong.

There’s several eras of Doctor Who with which I’m not all that familiar. I can rattle off the order of stories pretty well for the most part, but Seasons Fifteen and Seventeen often get a bit muddled in my mind, for example. Ditto the latter few bits of the Hartnell era. I know now that it runs Savages / War Machines / Smugglers / Tenth Planet, but for a long time, this one and The Smugglers were pretty interchangeable in my mind. They both begin with ‘S’, they come at the tail end of the First Doctor’s tenure, and they don’t exist at all. Easily forgotten.

Add to that the fact that I don’t really know anything about this story - it features some people in heavy ‘old age’ make up, and Steven departs, that’s all I could tell you – and it doesn’t really shoot very high on my list of most anticipated stories. Which is a shame, really, because this first episode is brilliant!

I love it when this happens. I’ve sat down to listen to the first episode, not really knowing what to expect from the story, and I’ve been gripped from the word ‘go’. There’s a lot of the feeling of a Season One story in here – the Doctor and his companions arrive on a strange alien world which may not be where they think it is. The Doctor goes to explore (a concept that I praised quite a lot during An Unearthly Child and The Daleks), before they’re captured by the natives.

Once inside their city, the trio are treated like royalty. In many ways, it put me in mind of Morpheton from The Keys of Marinus, and despite what you might be thinking… that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Enough time has passed since then for me to quite enjoy it feeling similar in tone.

Crucially, though, there’s an added extra level to the proceedings here. The Elders of this civilisation aren’t just reacting to the arrival of the Doctor and his companions – they’ve been actively waiting for it: Plotting the TARDIS’ journey across time and space, and predicting his arrival (Interesting, since the ship until now has seemed fairly random in its landings. Is there a greater pattern to them that we perhaps can’t see?). It even leads to a great title being given to the Doctor - ‘You are known to us as the Traveller From Beyond Time’ – which helps to mythologise him even more to these people. It’s an interesting twist in the format, and one which really helped to drag me in pretty quick. I’ll be interested to see where they’re going with this, and if we discover any more about the way they’ve followed the Doctor’s adventures up to now (maybe they can pick up BBC transmissions, and his arrival was signposted by that week’s Radio Times?)

Steven and Dodo are paired away from the Doctor again, here. Surely they must be the companion team that spend the least amount of time actually with the Doctor? They’re relatively close-knit during The Ark, but spend only about ten minutes of The Celestial Toymaker together, and not a great deal more in The Gunfighters. Here, they’ve been separated as soon as we’re done with the cliffhanger reprise, and only briefly reunited later on.

It’s probably a good thing, then that they get plenty to do anyway. It’s through this pair that we first get our real exposure to the titular savages, and its via their tour of the city that we really get to see that there’s something sinister going on that’s neatly tucked away behind all this gloss and happiness. The best way I could think of describing it when Peter Purves’ narration talks of a guard slipping out of a concealed door was the ‘Utilidors’ at Disneyland – a hidden network of tunnels and staff areas tucked away from prying eyes for the use of the staff and accessed through secret doors dotted right across the park.

I’m hoping that the rest of the story continues in this vein – the Hartnell tale that I – probably – know the least about, and it could turn out to be the surprise hit of the run!

9/10 

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

Day 124: The O.K. Corral (The Gunfighters, Episode Four)

Dear diary,

The big draw of this episode, of course, was always going to be the gunfight. I don't know all that much about the 'Wild' West, but I know enough to understand that in a Western film, the O.K. Corral is associated with a big fight. I also understand enough about Doctor Who in this period to know that it'll either be a triumph or a real letdown.

Thankfully, it comes out as the former. It doesn't hurt that it's all been done on film, and therefor instantly looks better than it could have done in Riverside studios. The real star of the gunfight surely has to be Doc Holliday, who really comes into his own here. Throughout the story, he's been used as a kind of comic relief. From pulling the Doctor's tooth in Episode One, through to being 'held up' by Dodo in yesterday's episode, he's never really carried too much of a threat.

And yet we keep having characters turn up to seek revenge against him for being a cold killer. The story opens with the Clantons out to get him, and Johnny Ringo joins in at the halfway point. We've seen the Doc kill before now and he spent some time at the start of the tale manipulating people into thinking that our Doctor was him, so that people could shoot first and he'd slip away scott-free.

Here, though, we finally get to see some of his true personality. During the gunfight, he's cooler than Johnny Ringo! We even get to see that demonstrated when he kills the man. The whole sequence is well played, and really tense - it's everything that you'd expect from a Western gunfight. It's almost a shame that the Doctor doesn't keep Holliday's 'Wanted' poster, though. I like the idea that he'd have kept it hung up in the TARDIS somewhere.

Speaking of the Doctor, I've yet to mention just how good he looks in this story. His costume has always been about right for this era, but it's surprising how much the addition of a stetson and a Sheriff's badge makes it look spot-on. It could have been designed especially for this story and it wouldn't look out of place. It's also surprising how comfortable the Doctor looks in the Old West. There's a moment in the Sheriff's office where he's leaning against a pillar and he looks more cool and relaxed than I think we've ever seen him.

On the whole, it's fair to say that this story easily defies its long-standing reputation as 'The Worst Doctor Who Story Ever'. With the exception of Episode Two (which may have just been an off-day for me), I've been hooked right the way through. There's been a perfect mix of comedy and drama, and it really does surprise me that it took them until last year's A Town Called Mercy to return to this type of setting - it suits the programme so well! It's the kind of place I can imagine the series going in the 1980's very easily, and I'm a bit saddened that it never happened!

Perhaps most notably, though, this is the last time in the classic run that the series uses individual titles for each episode! I have to admit that I've never really thought all that much of them: it was just something that the programme did for the first couple of years, and then dropped out of doing. Having actually watched all these episodes like this… I've realised how much I like having the individual titles! It adds something fun to the end of the episodes, and I'm going to be missing those 'Next Episode' captions.

But for today, we do have a 'Next Episode' caption, so for the last ('official') time…

Next Episode: Dr. Who and the Savages

Next Episode: Dr. Who and the Savages 

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

Day 123: Johnny Ringo (The Gunfighters, Episode Three)

Dear diary,

One of the things that often seems to be cited for people disliking The Gunfighters is the singing narration. I can't say it's really been bothering me too much (if anything, it adds a certain amount of character, and certainly makes the story stand out!), but today's episode is starting to try my patience with the idea - there's an awful lot of recapping everything we've just watched.

This episode is also home to the best use of the singing narration, though. It comes once we've seen Charlie the barman shot, and the narration plays out over a shot of his lifeless body slumped across the bar. The camera pulls back slowly from the image, toward the top of the stairs. It really leaves Charlie's death to linger, in a way that many in the series don't.

His death, along with that of Warren at the end, and one of Doc Holliday's 'old friends' off screen really paint a picture of the Wild West being a dangerous place - just as dangerous as any alien planet that the TARDIS might land on. It's great to see this, and I have to admit that I'm enjoying the period more than I thought I would - I've never been the biggest fan of Westerns (there's nothing wrong with them, I've just never been all that keen), but this one is really drawing me in.

It helps, I think, that the sets are so nice. I think I'm right in saying that this was the first time a Western of this scale was mounted as a fully studio-bound production in the UK, but I don't think you can tell. The style of the piece certainly feels like a stereotypical Western, and all the right boxes are being ticked. The only thing I could take issue with is that the hotel the Doc, Kate, and Dodo stay at has a corridor set that's near identical to one from a Fawlty Towers story. That doesn't half lower the tension.

Praise also has to be given to the man this episode takes its name from - Johnny Ringo. He's, again, fairly stereotypical as a 'bad' cowboy, dressed head-to-toe in black, strolling into the Last Chance Saloon and lighting his cigarette over one of the lamps. He says very few words to begin with, but it's enough to leave Charlie quivering in his presence… and then he shoots him dead anyway.

He's arrived in the tale at just the right moment, in time to perk things up for me a bit when things were in danger of dragging on. He brings with him a new backstory for Kate, and a new angle towards the various vendettas against Doc Holliday. The next episode's title gives a good indication as to what's coming, but I must confess that, as has often been the case with historicals of late, I've not got much knowledge of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Frankly, anything could happen and I'd be none the wiser.

Next Episode: The O.K. Corral

Next Episode: The O.K. Corral 

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

Day 122: Don't Shoot the Pianist (The Gunfighters, Episode Two)

Dear diary,

I think The Gunfighters is going to be one of those odd ones where I don't quite know what to make of it. Yesterday's episode was pretty good, and I enjoyed it, but today… I just couldn't really get into it. In the end, I watched the first 15 minutes a bit half-heartedly, went away for an hour or so before dragging myself back to finish the episode off. I don't know what happened, but it did the trick - I was really caught up in the last ten minutes of the story!

There's still an awful lot to like about all of this - Peter Purves is still on top form playing up the comedy in the situation. His American accent may not be great, but it's fun enough to listen to, and it's a darn sight better than many of the others that we've got on display. It's a shame that Dodo isn't being given much to do, though. She spends most of this episode locked up in her hotel room asking questions to further the plot quicker.

Actually, while I've briefly mentioned it… why have they got hotel rooms? The TARDIS is parked just up the street, and at the point yesterday that they decided to book them there was nothing preventing them from returning to the ship. It also came before the Doctor decided that this could be something of a holiday, so it's not as though they'd made an active choice to stay outside the ship. Not that it really matters, of course, but it just seems like an odd excuse to give Dodo her hiding place.

I'm growing to quite like the guest cast in all this, too. Doc Holliday was good enough yesterday during the scene where he pulled the Doctor's tooth (are Time Lord teeth just like human ones? I guess they must be…), but he continues to be great here. Praise especially to the moment he comes down the stairs of the Last Chance Saloon, admits that he's the Doc, and shoots a cowboy. It's moments like that one that helped to bring me back into it toward the end of the episode.

Wyatt Earp is making less of an impression on me (and it doesn't help that every time he turns up on screen, I can't help but wonder why his 'Alien Attax' card is so much more common than the others. I must have about ten of him!), but he's providing a nice sounding board for Hartnell. There's some great dialogue for the Doctor again today ('People keep giving me guns, and I do wish they wouldn't!'), and Hartnell gets to pull a priceless facial expression over the closing credits.

For now, I'm willing to say that I still disagree with the 'worst story ever' moniker (really, Jeremy? Worse that The Space Museum? Really?), but I'm hoping that the second half is as engaging as the latter part of today's episode - I don't want this to be one of those tales that becomes a struggle to enjoy.

Next Episode: Johnny Ringo

Next Episode: Johnny Ringo 

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

Day 121: A Holiday for the Doctor (The Gunfighters, Episode One)

Dear diary,

“To the pain that is a toothache,
the Doctor's not immune,
Now there'll be blood upon the sawdust,
at the Last Chance Saloon”

Ah, The Gunfighters. The worst Doctor Who story of all time. That's the common thinking, isn't it? The story was pretty much declared as the worst in the mid-70s (based on low viewing figures, I believe) and that label has kind of stuck over the years. As with much of Season Three, I've never seen it, so I'll be making my mind up as I go along over the next few days.

It has to be said, if we're basing things on this first episode alone, we're far from scraping rock bottom. We're firmly back in comedy territory now, and it works. It's hard to believe that this is the same show that only a handful of episodes back gave us something dark like The Massacre - we've swung wildly in another direction here.

There's humour to be found almost from the off, with Steven and Dodo thrilled by where they've landed. It's nice to see that, actually, as it's become rare of late. Often, the format this year has been 'Where are we Doctor? Oh really? Let's get on with the adventure, then!'. The reaction here puts me in mind of Barbara's happiness at meeting Marco Polo, or finding herself in an Aztec temple - it helps to make the companions seem real.

Dodo's pretty quick to go an raid the TARDIS wardrobe again (though Steven's gone for something pretty outlandish today, too), and it seems more-and-more as though that's her gimmick. She models the outfits available to the discerning time/space traveller. It seems an odd thing to say, but I like that they actively have to go and change once they realise where they are - it, again, makes it feel like they're exploring rather than just being dumped down somewhere and heading off to take part in the story.

In the End of the Line documentary on this DVD, Peter Purves comments that he “hated [The Gunfighters] so much” when they were making it (though he's changed his mind since then). It seems strange, because he's on fine form here. Steven tries so hard to fit in as a rough, tough cowboy, but he's constantly undermined when he trips over his spurs, or the step to the Saloon. Purves is given a chance to be really quite funny here, and that's nice to see.

The same can be said for Jackie Lane - this might be the best we've seen from her so far. I think it's fair to say that Dodo is even more useless than you remember while playing the Toymaker's games in The Celestial Toymaker, so it's nice to see her given more of a chance to shine here. The song that Steven and Dodo perform at the end of the episode (one of the things people often complain about in relation to the story) is fantastically fun, and the pair are working really well together.

Hartnell's being given plenty of comedy here, too, and it's fun to watch him during his encounter at the dentist. It's not been all that long since I spent a few days dealing with a dreadful toothache, so I can quite easily sympathise with the Doctor's pain. My notes for the episode are filled with little bits from that dentist scene that I could quote at you, but let's just say that I really enjoyed it.

One quote I can't let pass without mention though is his comment to Steven and Dodo in regards to their cover stories: “You can't walk in to a Western town and say you're from Outer Space!” - Love it.

Next Episode: Don't Shoot the Pianist

Next Episode: Don't Shoot the Pianist 

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

Day 120: The Final Test (The Celestial Toymaker, Episode Four)

Dear diary,

Well! How stunning! The shot of the TARDIS atop the pedestal, all lit from behind by fierce beams of lights, the electrified floor that glimmered beneath a thin layer of dry ice, the jagged triangles formed of a dark, black quartz, with numbers set into them… That's surely the best that anything in Doctor Who has looked up to now!

Hm? Sorry, what? No, no. That's definitely what those 'TARDIS hopscotch' scenes looked like. They did. Promise. You must be thinking of something else. Yeah, that's it.

…Oh, alright. I'll admit it. I cheated. At the time of writing… I've not watched The Final Test. No, I've not given up on the experiment. The Celestial Toymaker hasn't beaten me into submission. The truth of the matter is that I came home today, got ready to cue up the episode and then… well… I didn't. I did the washing up instead. With the soundtrack plugged in. I listened to it, instead. Don't worry, I'm going to go and have a look at the episode in a moment, but I wanted to see how it fared without my being influenced by the visuals, before I actually saw them.

I enjoyed it more than I did the previous episode, but I wonder if that's down to me forcing myself to imagine the most fantastic set I possibly could for today. In many ways, there's nothing different in today's episode compared to anything from the last three. The escape from the Toymaker's realm was quite well done, but it came a bit out of nowhere, and almost seemed a little bit… easy for my liking.

Still, I've found plenty to enjoy in the episode. Cyril really is good fun, and there are mannerisms in his voice that remind me somewhat of Patrick Troughton as the Doctor. Elsewhere, the music throughout the story has been quite good, and it's no exception here.

But now comes the hard part. The Lost in Time DVD is cued up in the drive, and it's time to see what this episode actually looked like. I'll be back in a bit…

(You can imagine some kind of musical interlude here, if you like. Or just a fade to black before I return)

I'm somewhat intrigued. My intention was to watch a few key bits from the episode - a bit of the hopscotch game, a little of the Doctor and the Toymaker in the Trilogic room and the ending of the episode - just enough to give me a fair idea of how the episode looked. Thing is… I ended up watching it all! The full 25 minutes! And you know what the weirdest thing is? I think seeing it has improved my score by at least a couple of marks…

Let's get the negative out of the way first. It really does look pretty cheap. The hopscotch game certainly isn't as grand on screen as it was in my head, but even so, it's better than I remembered it being. For a start, there were actual raised platforms. In my head, I'd convinced myself that the episode itself featured just triangles marked out on the floor in tape. Perhaps the worst room has to be the one the Doctor has been stuck in all this time. The Dolls House is pretty grand (and much larger than I'd imagined! I assumed that they dolls grew to human size, but I get the impression from this that they must have always been so!), but the room is very bare. The tiny screen set into the wall is a particular disappointment - especially after the large back-projections seen back in The Daleks' Master Plan.

But then there's several things that are improved by seeing the episode for real. The performances of Michael Gough as the Toymaker, and Peter Stephens as Cyril are fantastic - they're really the things that drew me into the episode and kept me watching for the full running time. I mused the other day that I didn't really get the fascination with bringing the Toymaker back to the series in later years, but the chance to pit Michael Gough against another Doctor is pretty tempting.

If you'd told me a few days ago that I'd end up doing one episode of The Celestial Toymaker twice in one evening, I'd have assumed that I'd be calling it quits with the experiment, the blog, and Doctor Who as a whole. I'm stunned.

(It was looking like a 5/10 based solely on the audio)

Next Episode: A Holiday for the Doctor

Next Episode: A Holiday for the Doctor 

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

Day 119: The Dancing Floor (The Celestial Toymaker, Episode Three)

Dear diary,

What on Earth must Dodo think she's walked in to? She took to the Ark and the Monoids and the idea of time/space travel pretty easily (I think she was mostly distracted by the TARDIS wardrobe), but now… The Celestial Toymaker is quite unlike anything that the programme has ever attempted before, and it's an odd introduction for her to life in the TARDIS so early in her journey.

In some ways, this seems to be Season Three's 'sideways' story (in the same way that The Edge of Destruction wasn't really a futuristic story, and the first episode of The Space Museum was an interesting idea in stepping sideways in time, before it became a tedious, cardigan-eating bore), but even when you think of it as being in the same bed as those two stories, it's something of a curiosity.

The first two episodes have just about skirted by on leaving me baffled by the time the end credits rolled. They weren't the most accomplished episodes in Doctor Who history, but they were just about passable. Eventually though - and really, that means 'today' - it wears a bit thin. It has helped that, because I'm not watching a recon, I can imagine these episodes looking however I want to. My only frame of reference is a dimly-remembered few bits of the fourth episode, but I've somewhat pushed those to the back of my mind while listening. Indeed, now I'm not sure how much of my memory of that episode is me remembering and how much is me making it up in my head.

The other thing that I keep coming back to (and you'll have to forgive me for bringing this up a third day running, but frankly I'm too bemused by this story to really write a great deal more) is that it could be a really dark and sinister piece. Between yesterday's episode and today's, I re-watched The End of the Line on the DVD for The Gunfighters. It's a documentary about the production of Doctor Who's Third Season (and, really, one of the best in the entire range - I've seen it three or four times already this year, and I'd not be surprised to find myself sticking it back on once I've finished with the season), and it goes into the rather torturous gestation of this tale.

The short version is that because this season saw the production team in a state of turbulence (three different producers and a few different script editors before the year is out), this story somewhat fell through the cracks, caught between two teams with very different ideas. It's the first script to be written by Brian Hayles, and a story is told in the documentary is that, having gotten about half-way through, Hayles called the production team and told them he didn't think he could continue with the script - because he was scaring himself writing it. Donald Tosh goes on to talk of how the story originally was all to do with playing with people's minds and manipulating them: and there's still a few elements of that in here.

It's clearest in Episode One, when Steven sees images of himself displayed on a screen. The Doctor tells him it's only displaying the images to him, and that it's drawing them from Steven's own mind. It would perhaps be interesting - and especially from a budget-saving point of view - to have the guest characters in this story drawn from Steven's mind, too. So we could have a Dhravin appear at one point, or a Dalek. Even a Monoid. That might be interesting enough. Imagine Steven and Dodo entering the Dancing Floor to find a group of Daleks sat there, guarding the TARDIS and dancing around. I'm sure Terry Nation would have vetoed it, but it's an interesting thought.

Then there's the idea that the contestants Steven and Dodo actually are playing against are people like them - who've become trapped here in the Toymaker's realm and are now playing for their freedom. It's an interesting idea, and while it starts to get explored here (with Steven and Dodo debating what they actually are). it never goes quite far enough for my liking.

The Toymaker himself is growing in potential for a character, too. There's a point here when he could be very sinister: telling two of his 'dolls' that if they fail him, he will break them. He demonstrates by smashing a plate, but it would be so much more effective had he broken another failed pawn.

And tomorrow, I move back into the world of the existing episode, so any opportunity to imagine how good this could look will be out the window, and I'll get a real eye-opener to the world of the Toymaker…

Next Episode: The Final Test

Next Episode: The Final Test 

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

Day 118: The Hall of Dolls (The Celestial Toymaker, Episode Two)

Dear diary,

This isn't, perhaps, going to be a popular statement… but I can see why The Celestial Toymaker spent so long being considered as one of the greats. Oi! Come back! Don't close the tab! Hear me out!

In the days when you can't see the story, or hear it (heck, even the novelisation wasn't released until June 1986, a little over twenty years from broadcast), this must have sounded brilliant. Take this episode, for example. If I were to describe it to you as Steven and Dodo having to choose the right chair, by using dolls to test them out, but six of the chairs have horrible consequences…

Oh, all right. It still sounds naff. But it shouldn't, because there's some quite creepy moments in here. One of the dolls gets cut clean in half when it's placed on a chair. Another is electrocuted as Dodo throws it up onto the chair. It doesn't sound great when you can hear it on the soundtrack, and it probably didn't look great to watch, but the idea of it… that's pretty solid.

Otherwise, I'm still not sure what to make of this story. This particular episode is usually the one that people hold up as being appalling because of the use of the 'n-word'. Obviously, it's not something that's comfortable to have in here, but it's a fact of the matter that it appeared this way at the time, 47 years ago, and that we've moved on from it. A friend made a good point the other day, though. Were this episode to be returned to the BBC's archives, what would they do about it? On the soundtrack it's covered by Purves' narration (indeed, I didn't even realise until later on that it had been spoken over), but the episode itself may not have that option. I'm guessing that the Restoration Team would just cover it cleverly in some way.

But setting that aside, I think I'm still more baffled by this story than I am actively bored by it. Today's episode was listened to while I did the washing up, and I spent most of the time wondering what on Earth they were thinking by making a story like this. It's really unlike anything that we've seen in the series, and it's not something that we'll ever really see again.

And then I got to thinking about the fact that people are always so keen to bring the Celestial Toymaker back. He's in one of the novels, a few of the Big Finish audios (played, superbly, by David Bailie. If you've not heard his performance then you really need to. Off to the Big Finish website with you!), the first of the Eighth Doctor's DWM comic strips. There was even a planned return to the programme in the 1980s (again, available from Big Finish now).

I couldn't get my head around why people were so keen to bring him back, but I think it is simply the fact that the idea behind him is a solid one. He's a God. A powerful God who gets terribly bored and draws people like the Doctor to his realm to entertain him. Done well (and this story perhaps isn't the best example of that), he could be a very good character.

And so we move to Episode Three. I'm still a little surprised by my own reaction to the story - as I said yesterday, I'd been dreading this one. Tomorrow's my last opportunity to picture the Toymaker's realm entirely in my mind as opposed to what I can see in the surviving final part, so hopefully it'll give me plenty of imagery that can only work well away from this serial's budget…

Next Episode: The Dancing Floor

Next Episode: The Dancing Floor 

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

Day 117: The Celestial Toyroom (The Celestial Toymaker, Episode One)

Dear diary,

Ohh, I've been dreading this one. So far (with the occasional blip here or there), Season Three has been doing pretty well. The boredom that had started to seep in with Season Two has dissipated, and I'm really enjoying the programme at the moment. But then there's The Celestial Toymaker. For a long long time, this story had a golden reputation. People would fall over themselves to take credit for it.

But then the fourth episode was found.

Overnight, people changed their stories to pin the credit on somebody else. Anybody else. As long as it wasn't them. I'm guessing you can understand why I've not been too keen to reach this one. Thing is, though, I've not seen the fourth episode. I know some of the various criticisms that get levelled at it, but I've yet to witness them first-hand. And it actually seems to be doing the trick.

By the time this episode ended, by which time I'd expected to be sobbing and wondering if it was too late to drop out of this diary, I was more intrigued than anything else. I'm not sure I've actually got a clue what's really going on (it didn't help that the moment the rules of Steven and Dodo's game were announced happened to coincide with me reaching the self-service till in Asda), but I think I've enjoyed it.

One of the things that gets said a lot about the fourth episode is that the story simply looks cheap. Here, again, is the benefit of listening to this one as an audio - I don't know! It could look great! There's a moment in this one, where the Toymaker tells the Doctor and his companions that they can go back to the TARDIS if they want. Peter Purves' narration then explains a screen showing them hundreds of TARDISes.

That's how he described it, yet my mind automatically went for lots and lots of police boxes revolving around them. We already know that they're in an octagonal room with no features, so what if the walls of the room are suddenly lined with facsimiles of the ship? In my mind, that scene looked great.

They seem to be trying to inject a lot of tension into this story, too. Early on, the Doctor warns Steven and Dodo that nothing here is 'just for fun', and we later find out that the Doctor has visited the Toymaker's realm before. We're told that he didn't stay long enough on that occasion to play any of the games, but it's interesting to find a place like this that the Doctor actively knows of - and a place that he's scared of. It really helps to sell the threat to us, and isn't something we've seen before.

Even the ending of the episode sounds quite sinister, with the lights dimming, claps of thunder, and the clowns being reduced to lifeless mannequins which then shrink back down to the size of dolls. The narration describes Dodo as shuddering as she leaves the room, and in my mind at least, it's a pretty creepy scene.

Ah, Dodo. She really is just a companion, now, There's no attempt to suggest that she's new to all this TARDIS travel stuff. Right at the start of the episode (or to be more exact, at the very end of the last episode), she emerges from the wardrobe again, thrilled with her latest discovery. It's 'fab', apparently. When they think they've arrived in an empty place, she's keen to move on to somewhere more exciting. It really is a shame that she's not being given more of a character so far.

Still, it's a much better start than I'd feared to this story - even if it is all in my head so far. Here's hoping things don't go too awry before the last episode rolls around!

Next Episode: The Hall of Dolls

Next Episode: The Hall of Dolls 

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

Day 116: The Bomb (The Ark, Episode Four)

Dear diary,

After everything I said yesterday, the Monoids actually look really good here! The scenes where they emerge from the jungle on Refusis and attack the others is fantastic. Yes, they're a slightly silly idea, and yes they don't quite work as well as they might have hoped, but I'm completely won around. It'd be interesting to see a modern take on them. Has anyone drawn up any designs for a re-imagined Monoid?

I find that this is another one of those episodes where I'm left with very little to say. Over the last three days, I've praised the direction, the design, the story… and all of that's waiting to be talked up again here. Stories like this are tricky, because you really don't quite know what to talk about without repeating yourself. A lot.

It's fair to say that the story suffers one of its few less successful effects here, when the Monoids leave the Ark and head for the planet. The shot of the shuttles leaving the ship is plagued by some very obvious wires, but I think it's a case of falling back on my old argument - the original broadcast wouldn't have been on a screen as big as this, or with a picture as clear as this.

There's a wonderful special feature on The Ark DVD, during which Peter Purves talks about the way that the programme would have been seen back in 1966. They show the image on a tiny TV set, and with the contrast up high - just as it would have been when first shown. The shot they use is the opening scene, where the Monoid turns to the camera and it's our first introduction to this world. It looks great. I wonder if I can play with the settings on the Mac and watch an episode in a worse quality than the DVD affords, just to see how it might have looked? That would be an interesting experiment for maybe an episode that's not particularly well regarded.

On the whole, I've rather enjoyed The Ark. It's not a particularly stand-out story in the way some others the season might be, but there's a lot in there to be praised, and I'm surprised it's not considered more popular. I don wonder, though, if it may work a little better were it given the Mission to the Unknown treatment: splitting it apart. Would the story be given any more impact if they had their two episodes dealing with Dodo's cold, left as we see here, and then headed off to another story. They could even move on and do the Celestial Toymaker story - the final few minutes of today's episode would tag onto the end of Episode Two quite well.

Then, having spent four weeks away, they could return to the Ark, and Dodo could still do her whole 'Oh, look! They've completed the statue! Do you remember, last time we were here, they said it would take 700 years…' and play the story out just the same. It might be nice to see the story given a bit more space to breathe like that, and give the real impression that time has passed for the Ark, by making time pass for us. I guess that can jut be one of those 'what ifs'.

Next Episode: The Celestial Toyroom

Next Episode: The Celestial Toyroom 

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

Day 115: The Return (The Ark, Episode Three)

Dear diary,

I've mentioned before that Season Three is something of a weak point in my early Doctor Who knowledge. I've not seen much of it before, and only really know the overall 'gimmicks' of the stories. The cliffhanger for yesterday, for example, is the main thing I know about this story. It's telling that today we've touched down on the planet Refusis 2, and I didn't know we were going to! I thought the whole story took place on the Ark, and reached the planet right at the very end, in time for the Guardians to take their place on the new world.

It was a bit exciting, then, when the Doctor, Dodo, a Monoid and his personal slave were bearded into a shuttle and sent down to scout out the planet first. What would they find? Arid desert? Beautiful countryside? A quarry? A studio set? Oh, of course. It's a jungle. Full of invisible creatures. Didn't we do this not all that long ago?

I think what frustrates me is that I know they can do a good jungle set on the show in this era. Heck, I quite liked the one we got in The Chase, but then it was bettered by The Daleks' Master Plan and the first two episodes of this story. Yes, it's a lovely design again, but… I want to see something new! Doctor Who has always been very good at re-using its good ideas over and over, but it doesn't really work when it comes so quickly in succession like this.

Still, there's a lot to like in this episode. Imison as director continues to impress - there's several 'effects' shots in this instalment and they're all pulled off very well. From the magically appearing food, through to the invisible creatures moving around, and the explosion of the capsule at the end, there's a lot to enjoy and it's really helping push this story along. It's the first time, I think, that we've had so many effects like this all in one episode, and just as par-for-the-course. It really makes The Ark stick out from the stories we've had leading up to it.

There's also still a number of design choices being made in this episode that I'm really liking. Quite aside from the jungle itself, and the sets for the Ark, which are still just as nice (though we see less of the scope, now), I really love the capsule that the Doctor and co use to descend to the planet. I love the way the door opens, with the wall folding away and the seat overturning to form steps - though you'd need to be careful if you were the one sitting there. I wonder how many accidents those things have caused over the centuries?

Oh, alright then. I'm going to have to discuss the Monoids properly at some point, aren't I? They've never been the most well-regarded creatures in Doctor Who history, and I think it's fair to say that they're not the greatest design on show in this story. That said, I do sort-of like them, and they look better in some shots here than they have before. I've often thought it strange to build an entire monster around the idea that you could make the eyes move by wiggling your tongue around a bit, but it does work on some occasions.

The voices are something of a let-down, though, Having had them evolve from speechless beings into this, I don't know what I was expecting. We seem to have ended up with 'generic evil alien' voices, not all that far removed from Mechanoids or Daleks. I am keen on the way that Monoid One keeps gesticulating, though. It's almost a throwback to the way they communicated before, and that works quite well.

Mind you, the less said about the 'Security Kitchen' the better…

Next Episode: The Bomb

Next Episode: The Bomb 

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

Day 114: The Plague (The Ark, Episode Two)

Dear diary,

The Ark really is one of the best stories that we've had so far, design-wise. Everything about this spaceship has been really well thought-through, from the look of the place to the way that the characters interact with each other. It's only a small (and very silly) thing, but there's a moment where one of the Guardians addresses the rest of his people, and there's one off to the side - barely in shot - translating to sign language for the benefit of the Monoids. There's really no need to have someone specifically doing this, but it really does help to make the world seem far more real.

And then there's the design of the sets, too. Back during The Daleks' Master Plan, the existence of a surviving episode left me stunned at the sheer size of their council chamber. The same can be said of the main hall seen in this story - you really get a sense of the scale of this ship. It doesn't hurt that Imison is still proving to be one of the best directors we've had on the show, and his high-angled shots really make the most of the space.

It's frustrating, then, when things aren't done so well in this episode. There's a moment when a Guardian looks down that the Doctor on a video monitor, and the case around the screen looks like it's been thrown together in ten minutes out of MDF. I know that's more or less the way that most of Classic Doctor Who was made, but it sticks out like a sore thumb in an episode that's otherwise very well realised.

Perhaps even more of a problem for me is the Monoid's form of transport. The buggies appear to be scenery carts from the BBC (I'm willing to bet that they are), and they take me right out of the story every time they appear. There's a lovely moment early on, where a dead Monoid is taken on a funeral precision, carried through the gathered crowds to be jettisoned into space. It's far more moving than the death of a Monoid has any right to be, but then when they load him onto the back of the truck, it all falls apart.

At the end of the story, when the Doctor and his friends are taken back to the TARDIS rising on one, Hartnell looks as though he's off to the boarding gate at Gatwick. I'd not be at all surprised if he didn't turn up in tomorrow's episode… That said, how good does he look when Face Timing with the Guardian? He does it better than a few of the other actors in this story…

When people talk about The Ark, the thing that usually comes up pretty quick in the conversation is this mid-way cliffhanger. That's the unique selling point of this story - the Doctor and his friends turn up, cause a problem, save the day, leave… and then they come back again. That's the thing that everyone knows about this tale. It's almost a shame that I'm coming to it knowing that we're only half-way through, as I'd be keen to know what my reaction might be if I didn't know what was happening.

Especially since - and this isn't something that often seems to get said - the reveal of the cliffhanger is bloody brilliant. Seriously, I think it may be the best reveal that we've ever had in the series. The TARDIS rematerialises (having departed in a gorgeous shot that contains a Monoid! There's some gorgeous spilt-screen work in there), the Doctor and his friends look around, and then the cliffhanger is that the statue has been completed. That's it. They've arrived back on the Ark, and it's 700 years later. The 'Next Episode' caption comes up and everything.

It's only after that's all happened that we get the slow pan up the statue to reveal it's got the head of a Monoid. It's almost like you're let down by a naff cliffhanger, and then they hit you with that one! Bam! Oh, it's very clever, and it really works.

And it's set up very cleverly, too. What we get beforehand is the final scene of a Hartnell story. They all say goodbye. They sum up the resolution to us, wish those staying behind well and then depart for the next story. It might as well be the final scene of The Web Planet (but with less jumping around). It really takes what you expect from the series and turns it on its head.

Mind you, why do they instantly assume they're back on the Ark when they arrive? They've been in so many jungles lately that it shouldn't come as much of a shock! And, for that matter, why do they head back up to the main area instead of getting back in the ship and trying again? Dodo says it herself - 'it's only been a few seconds' - yet she still wanders around calling 'we're back!' as she looks for people. Strange.

Next Episode: The Return

Next Episode: The Return 

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

Day 113: The Steel Sky (The Ark, Episode One)

Dear diary,

It still feels weird to do an episode that's not been narrated by Peter Purves. I'm almost wondering if I can hire him so sit next to me on the couch and narrate the existing episodes while I watch them. I might look into that.

That said, it's nice to be back to a visual episode for today (and, indeed, for the rest of this story). Even better, it's a very visual episode! It's gorgeous! Right from the very start, as we see a lizard, followed by a bird and then a shot of a Moniod… That's striking. It's almost as if they knew this episode would survive, and decided to make full use of the fact that you can see it by really putting the effort in.

The direction continues to be of a consistent standard throughout the episode - from the tracking shot which stops just as the TARDIS materialises, to a range of high-angled shots. Director Michael Imison even manages to make the Moniods look good when the Doctor and friends come out of the caves and find themselves surrounded.

Ah, yes. The Doctor's 'friends'. I know it's early days yet, but I don't really know what to make of Dodo. On the plus side, she brings out the best in Steven - I'm greatly enjoying his exasperation with her, for example - but on the other… I've spent a lot of time so far in this marathon praising the way that companions are treated on the whole. The introductions of the last two 'major' companions (Vicki and Steven) have both been chances to reestablish the programme, and bring new viewers up to speed before we launch off on another adventure.

Dodo, though, right from her slightly odd arrival in yesterday's episode just seems to be thrust into things a bit too fast. It's almost as though they don't want to waste time in setting up this new character, so they're just getting all the early character beats out of the way as quickly as they can, before they move on with the story. Yesterday, we had the very quick introduction to her ('Hello! I'm Dodo! My full name is Dorethea, I'm an orphan, I live with my aunt, but she hates me, so I won't be missed. I might be from Manchester, but I've yet to decide on that…'), and an attempt to try and set up the show again ('this is a time machine. We can go anywhere in space, too. Don't know how to steer it though, so you may never get home. Off we go!). Today, she's already rooting through the TARDIS wardrobe and keen to explore. It's all just a bit too quick for me.

I'm hoping that it'll eventually settle down (The War Machines is the only Dodo story I've seen in full, and it was so long ago that I can't remember much about it…), but for now… no. Not sitting right with me at all. Still, that said, I do love the idea of her emerging from the TARDIS with a cold. It's a different idea, and it's lovely to see how it impacts on the plot. I wonder if these days they'd describe the TARDIS as having some kind of 'cure-all' filter inside it, to stop you from bringing back all manner of diseases from your travels through history? I know enough about The Ark to know where it's going in this story, but it's by far the best thing about Dodo so far.

I'm hoping that the direction continues to be of this standard moving forward, because it's the best thing about the story so far. I'm just enjoying the novel feeling of moving onto another moving episode! It's not something I've been able to do for a while, now…

Next Episode: The Plague

Next Episode: The Plague 

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

Day 112: Bell of Doom (The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve, Part Four)

Dear diary,

I was really not looking forward to this one. Having found the thing I enjoyed most about The Massacre was the whole subplot about the Doctor and the Abbot looking alike, I really worried that there wouldn't be anything in part four to hold my attention. Thankfully, this episode really brings everything together nicely, and I was captivated by it.

Early on, Steven returns to meet with Anne, and solemnly tells her that his friend is dead. He admits that he doesn't know what to do, and that if he can't find the Doctor's TARDIS key, then he won't be able to make it out of Paris. It's another chance for Peter Purves to shine (there are several in this episode), and it's interesting to see a companion in this predicament.

Towards the end of The Daleks' Master Plan, when Hartnell took a week off, Steven and Sara found themselves stranded, not knowing where the Doctor was. There, they were filled with optimism, and knew that he had to be out there somewhere, probably in the middle of the Dalek's plans. Here, though, Steven is convinced that he's actually seen the Doctor's body, and that he's got no hope. It's a brave thing to do with the programme, and one which we don't often see.

But then the Doctor appears, and all is well! Hooray! Except… where has the Doctor been all this time? He chastises Steven for not being at the tavern when he got back there, and says that the curfew is responsible for a lot of the mess they're in, but… Does he ever actually tell us what he's been up to? Has he just been wandering the streets of Paris for a few episodes?

The actual plot of the massacre itself has been of more interest to me here, too. Throughout the story, I've somewhat struggled to keep abreast of who's on which side, and which one is meant to be trying to massacre the other. Here, it's spelled out nice and clearly. The Queen Mother has given the order, and everyone of the opposing religion is to be killed at daybreak. Simple. The Doctor ten gives us a brief run-down of the events once we're safely back to the TARDIS, and suddenly I'm back up to speed again.

Indeed, it's these final TARDIS scenes that really sell the episode. I've praised Steven as a character in the past because he's not afraid to speak his mind and stand up to the Doctor. Never is this more in evidence than here, when he riles against him for sending Anne Chaplet home, even though it meant sending her to death. It's a beautifully written scene and Purves plays it with perfection again. All the more effective is the way that having told the Doctor he intends to get off the ship at their next stop, he barely says one more word to him before leaving. It's powerful stuff.

I'm only hoping that it gets picked up on in the next story. I've been impressed on more than one occasion with the series so far, when they pick up on big character moments like this even as we move to a new story, and it feels like a moment that really does deserve to have lasting effects. It was an argument like this from Barbara back in The Edge of Destruction that set the Doctor off on a route to becoming a new man, and it would be nice to see this moment continue pushing the Doctor down the right path.

The scene is then lifted even higher by Hartnell's monologue, straddling Steven's departure. He tells the boy that he stands by his decision, and that there is a chance - however slim - that Anne may have survived. Having then watched Steven storm out, the Doctor muses that everyone leaves him in the end. He thinks of Susan, and Vicki, before commenting that Ian and Barbara were all too eager to get back to their own time and place.

It then marks the first occasion in a while where the Doctor has really spoken of his own world, when he considers that it may be time to return. It's a very moving moment for the Doctor, and Hartnell is perhaps the best he's ever been. Much gets said in this story about the way he plays the Abbot in such a different manner to the Doctor - without the little gestures and the flubbed lines. People don't often seem to talk about this moment, where he gets everything spot on, and really sells it to us.

And then… Dodo! It feels silly, but I'd never realised the Anne Chaplet / Dodo Chaplet link had been made so explicitly in the programme itself. I always thought that it was left as a bit of a subliminal hint that everything might have been ok in the end for Anne. Unfortunately, the scene itself isn't perhaps the best introduction to a character - it's serves more as a four-minute info-dump than anything else, checking off everything we need to know (and then some) before heading back out to the stars.

The series has been a very dark place of late, with plenty of death and destruction. I've enjoyed it as a direction for the programme, but I'm looking forward to having Dodo here, and seeing the series head for a slightly less morbid place once more…

(By the way: There's a story that says Ian and Barbara were supposed to appear in this episode, watching the TARDIS as it departs across Wimbledon Common. Sadly, it never happened. How brilliant would it have been, though? I know I was sick of them by the end, but a brief snippet of them here and now would simply be marvellous…)

Next Episode: The Steel Sky

Next Episode: The Steel Sky 

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

Day 111: Priest of Death (The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve, Episode Three)

Dear diary,

Well… I hope that the Abbot isn't the Doctor in disguise, because if he is then the history of Doctor Who must have flowed very differently to the way I've always understood it, with Hartnell's Doctor killed here and his corpse left out on the streets of Paris.

Yes, this subplot is still the thing that's interesting me the most about this story, and I'm a little sad to see the back of it here in Episode Three, meaning that I'll need to find something new to latch onto for the final part of the tale. Throughout this episode, the entire storyline is expertly woven into the tale - you only need to look at the moment the Abbot's death is announced to see that.

Steven has just assured us again that the Abbot really is the Doctor in disguise, and announces that he's 'certain' of that fact now that he's seen the man up close… at which point we're told that he's been murdered outside his home. Steven is horrified (and Peter Purves turns in a great performance - he really is very good when he's having to portray anger), and rushes out to see for himself.

It's another one of those times that I extol the virtue of experiencing these missing episodes in the form of the narrated soundtracks - because the sight of this man laying dead on the street with the face of the Doctor was far more striking in my mind that it would have been on screen. Just to compare, I did stick on the last few minutes of the Loose Cannon recon when I got home (I've been listening to today's episode on a walk around the supermarket. The death of the Abbot was announced just as I picked up some lamb for tea. Lovely.), and while it's perfectly good enough, it really did very little for me.

What's also interesting in this episode is Steven's faith in the Doctor. Early on, while trying to convince Anne to go back to the Abbot's home, he tells her that if the Abbot is the Doctor, then she has nothing to fear - the Doctor will make sure that no harm will come to her. It's interesting when you consider that his two most recent additions to the TARDIS (Katarina and Sara, and if you want to be really picky, then Brett, too) have both met their demise while under the Doctor's care. I've never been more convinced that Anne is destined for death.

Otherwise… I'm afraid I have to admit that I'm still just not into this story. I'm sorry. I'm trying, really I am, but I'm just not connecting with it. I've been so looking forward to Lucarotti's return to the TARDIS, but whereas his previous tales were painted on a broad canvas that was easy enough to follow, I just feel like I'm losing track of who's who and which side they're fighting on. And have France now gone to war with Spain or not? Yesterday I thought they had, but today they seem to not be…

Next Episode: Bell of Doom

Next Episode: Bell of Doom 

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

Day 110: The Sea Beggar (The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve, Episode Two)

Dear Diary,

I think I’ve said it before, but some days of The 50 Year Diary are easier than others. Sometimes, as I hit ‘pause’ on the music player (usually while the end credits are playing out), I’ve got a list of notes that fills a full side of my notepad, and the hard part is trying to decide which notes to pick up on, and discuss during my entry. More than once, I’ve started to talk about something before realising that it’s probably only of interest to me, deleted it, and taken a different direction for that day’s entry.

Other days… are just difficult. Today is one of those ‘difficult’ days. The problem is that there’s nothing really all that wrong with this episode – it’s perfectly fine as an episode of Doctor Who and all, it just hasn’t really grabbed me all that much. I’ve come away with only about four notes from this episode, and some of those are just bits of dialogue that I’ve liked.

Yesterday, I complained that I didn’t really know this period of history, and mused that it could be one of the problems I was having trying to connect with the story. The problem is… I’m loathe to look into it too much. A quick scan of the top paragraph on Wikipedia tells the that it took place in the late sixteenth century, and that’s where I stopped reading. It’s going to sound odd, but I don’t want any spoilers! Spoilers from a story (made and broadcast 48 years ago) about a historical even that happened several centuries ago!

I can already surmise that The Massacre isn’t going to have a happy ending. Just look at the title to know that! I don’t want to know the exact details, though, because I want to experience it as a part of the tale. This means, though, that I’m still wading through it not quite knowing the significance of events. There’s a few moments where characters say things that (judging by the performance) are obviously important contextually, but I don’t really get them. Ho hum.

Still, there’s plenty of interest coming in the form of the ‘is he or isn’t he the Doctor’ plot line. I thought it was quite clearly a case of the Abbot just happening to be a double of our lead character, but actually there seems to be more to it than that. When Steven first speculates that it could be the Doctor, passing himself off as an official for some reason (he wasn’t around to see the Doctor’s role in The Reign of Terror, but I’m imagining the Abbot as wearing the same feathery hat. Just because. I like that hat), the entire sub plot takes a very different turn.

Even more interesting is that other characters state definitively that it isn’t the Doctor. It can’t be him, because the Abbot has been an important figure in their lives for longer than the Doctor and Steven have been in France… but then they’ve only recently actually met the Abbot in person. Maybe this man is the Doctor in disguise?

The Doctor himself doesn’t actually appear in this episode (well, he might, if the Abbot really is the Doctor undertaking some clever ruse, but we’ve not been made privy to that yet), which only serves to make the whole thing even more of a mystery. It’s this that I’m enjoying the most at the moment, also I’m hoping it continues being built up as a key element of the plot. I’m half-wondering if the next episode might be this one told again, but from the point-of-view of the Doctor, before they reunite again at the end of the story…

And that’s the key thing. I’m interested to move on. I’m actively looking forward to tomorrow’s episode. It’s not like some of the stories we’ve gone through, where I’ve really not been all that bothered about the next episode. It’s just that – for now – The Massacre is just sort of there. Nothing wrong with it, but nothing particularly great about it either. Here’s hoping that things pick up from here on out!

(Are we placing bets on whether the Doctor is the Abbot, by the way? Don’t tell me if you know – avoiding spoilers there, too! – but for now I’m thinking… I’m thinking that it would be great if he were the Abbot, but I don’t think he is. I think.)

Next Episode: Priest of Death

Next Episode: Priest of Death 

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

Day 109: War of God (The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve, Episode One)

Dear diary,

“I wish I understood what's going on!” wails Steven about two-thirds of the way into this episode. Truth be told, I did wonder if he was just speaking aloud what was on my mind.

I've been looking forward to reaching The Massacre since… ooh, about three minutes after I finished The Aztecs. During the first season, John Lucarotti's scripts were fantastic, and really sold the idea of the pure historicals to me. While it's often said that this story was rewritten almost wholly by Donald Tosh, I was still hoping for the kind of richness in the setting that we got with visits to Cathay and South America.

In this area, the episode doesn't disappoint. The whole thing is steeped with atmosphere, even though my only frame of reference was a half-remembered image of the Doctor and Steven sat in a tavern. That said, the episode takes place in very few sets, and I can quite believe that they're the kinds of sets the Doctor Who team would have been very good at producing.

Where things fall a little flat for me, though, is in the denseness of the setting. As has been the case more and more with the historical stories since Season One, I'm finding myself in settings that I'm not familiar with. Most of the time, I'm able to bluff myself through the story to some extent, and in some cases I'm even sure that I actually learn something from Doctor Who. Sydney Newman would be so pleased!

Here, though, I genuinely didn't have any context for the setting until Steven be can to vocalise my confusion. I knew this story was set in France, and from the title I'd figured that it wasn't likely to be a light-hearted romp, but then I didn't have much else to go on. The story itself doesn't try to reassure either - the Doctor and Steven's first appearance comes as the enter a tavern, where we've already a scene in progress. I did briefly wonder if I'd managed to switch the soundtrack into 'shuffle' again.

What is nice about this story is the way that Steven and the Doctor get on during their initial scene together. This is the only story from the classic run to feature the Doctor alone with just a single male companion, and so it's a dynamic that feels very fresh. It doesn't last long before the Doctor is off to explore and Steven is caught up in trouble, but it's nice for a while. It's also clear that some time has passed since the end of the previous story, as the tone between the pair is far happier than it was when we left them yesterday.

The cliffhanger - the Abbot turning around and looking exactly like the Doctor - perhaps loses some if its imp ace by being heard on audio rather than witnessed on screen, but it's still quite a striking moment. It helps that Hartnell changes the tone of his voice for the part, too, so that he's almost, but not quite the man we know. The Massacre isn't a story that I know well, so I'm unsure if we'll get more Doctor-on-Doctor action as we had in The Chase (though if we do, because this is a soundtrack I'll be able to have Hartnell playing both roles all the time!), but it could be interesting to see…

Next Episode: The Sea Beggar

Next Episode: The Sea Beggar 

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

Day 108: The Destruction of Time (The Daleks' Master Plan, Episode Twelve)

Dear diary,

Whether you choose to look at this as one big story, or several little ones connected by a common thread, there's no denying that the last twelve episodes have seen an awful lot of death and darkness.

Sara's demise under the influence of the time destructor is one of those moments from this story that everyone sort of knows about. It's fairly common knowledge that she cops it before this story is out, and for the most part people know how she goes. That doesn't do justice, though, to just how effective the death is. She dies because she's gone back for the Doctor. I'd always assumed that she was captured by the Daleks and tried to escape or something, not that she was behind by choice.

And the basic knowledge that I had of the death didn't hold a candle to just how nasty it actually is. I mean, sure, I knew that she was aged to death, but when you're actually in the thick of it and listening to it happen… then it becomes genuinely horrific. The worst bit comes afterwards, when the narration describes Steven approaching her lifeless body, before a gust of wind brushes the hair and skin away from it, scattering them around in the dirt. It's a truly ignoble end for Sara, and perhaps a moment that I'd love to see recovered and put back in the archive.

Elsewhere, though… This episode always had an awful lot to live up to. This Dalek plot has been building up - either as the main story or in the background somewhere - for a full seventeen episodes, ever since Mission to the Unknown. It's a far grander scheme than we've seen the Daleks attempt before (and, with the debatable exemption of some 21-sf century stories), bigger than we'll ever see again. The problem is that after all that time, nearly three weeks for me, and a full four-and-a-half months on screen back in the 1960s… I'm not quite sure I can work out the Daleks' plan.

I'm sure that it made sense at some point during the story. After all, most of the plot has revolved around the Daleks trying to get back the Terranium so that they can get their Time Destructor up and running. But then alongside this, they've brought together delegates from a number of galaxies so that they can wipe them out and seize control of said galaxies.

So… what's the point of building a machine that will power through time very quickly and ruin those places? Have I missed something? As I say, at some point during the story, I'm sure it all made sense - I've never had cause to question the story before now - but I've completely lost it at the very end here.

One of the things that I did enjoy in this final instalment was the final end of Mavic Chen. I said yesterday that I hope he didn't die here, because nothing could top the shock of his fake death in the last episode. He does die, though, and while it's true that it really isn't as effective as his last one, there is still merit to having him back again. For a start, he's clearly gone completely mad. Proper bonkers. It's great to see the way that the Daleks play him and lead him right through to the right moment, before they simply exterminate him like any other person. It's fun to listen to Kevin Stoney ramping it up in the mad stakes, too.

On the whole, while I've enjoyed the episode, I don't think it quite fulfils the role of being the final part to an epic such as this one.

Speaking of which… just what is The Daleks' Master Plan? I've been saying for a week now that it feels like several separate stories, and I stand by that. I think in my mind now, I'll be thinking of it as;

Mission to the Unknown
A 1 Episode prequel (as it standard thinking).

The Daleks' Master Plan
6 Episodes. In which the Daleks' plan to take over the universe, but the Doctor and his chums steal the core of their machine and leave them in a bit of a pickle.

Revenge of the Monk
4 Episodes. The Doctor, Steven, and Sara bumble around in time a bit, getting arrested in the 1960s, and visiting Hollywood. They then realise that they're being followed by another time machine, and get caught up with the Meddling Monk. The Daleks then turn up to demand their Terranium back.

The Mutation of Time
A 2 Episode Coda to the entire arc, which sees the Daleks defeated and an end to the threats posed by their galactic conquest plans.

Does anyone else have a way of thinking about this story which isn't as a 12-parter? The thought of breaking it up seems a little like heresy, but it just seems right!

Next Episode: War of God

Next Episode: War of God 

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

Day 107: The Abandoned Planet (The Daleks' Master Plan, Episode Eleven)

Dear diary,

Within a minute of Mavic Chen arriving back on Kembel and reporting to the Dalek Supreme, proudly boasting about the return of the Terranium, the Dalek asks him a - very sensible - question, which I can't quite believe Chen hasn't yet thought to ask himself: 'Are you sure it is the real core?'.

It's a valid point, if you think about it. Right back in Coronas of the Sun, the Doctor managed a bait-and-switch, with he and his companions handing over a replica so perfect that it was only when the Time Destructor failed to operate that the Daleks realised something was amiss. On this occasion, the Doctor has dropped the core into Chen's hands and darted off back into the pyramid to make his escape… and Chen didn't even question it. I was almost willing it to be fake again, just because I quite like the idea of the Doctor managing to keep fooling Chen and the Daleks time and time again with the same trick.

And so, here we are. Via the police station and 1920s Hollywood, a cricket match, a volcano world, Christmas and New Year's eve, Ancient Egypt and all, we're back on Kembel for the big final showdown. Except, we're not quite. Not yet. The Doctor's gone AWOL (Hartnell on Holiday again?) and most of the episode is spent moving the pieces into place for the big finale tomorrow. I'm guessing (?) that the delegates from the Galactic Council will be returning with their armies to wipe out the Daleks, while the Doctor slips away quietly, unseen. I'm just hoping that it's spectacular. It certainly deserves to be.

So, here we are. Eleven episodes into (debatably) one of Doctor Who's longest ever stories. Eleven whole days I've been withering on about this tale. And in all that time, I've not once managed to muse on the identities of to delegates. I thought that was going to come up early on! 'Which Delegate is which' is one of those questions that crops up in several forms in Who fandom, and I thought I was going to be able to make my own opinion. I was all set to give my great idea to the world, my version of who's who.

But as it transpires, the Delegates aren't really all that important, are they? We witness their first meeting right back during Mission to the Unknown, where they gather together and agree to do some evil things. We then watch them thump the desk a bit during a council meeting, and run around trying to point the finger of blame at each other when things start to go wrong. In today's episode, they get a bit ratty with Chen again and then find themselves locked in a cell.

I wonder if it's because I'm listening to the story via audio. My entire notion of what the delegates look like comes from the Mission animation and the surviving Day of Armageddon. I know what they look like for the most part (my favourite is 'Christmas tree'. It's a shame he doesn't turn up in the Christmas episode, really), and that's enough. The one with the raspy voice in this episode is in my head as the chap with the cracked face. One of the others is 'pebble guy'.

Unfortunately, that means I've nothing witty or new to say about them, or the way in which we can identify them. Sorry. Thought I'd better bring that up, in case you read through all my thoughts and figured I was just ignoring it. Mind you, I sort of am.

That said, I must confess a real love for Mavic Chen. The moment when his spaceship explodes really did take me by surprise. I think I may have actually gasped out loud. I listened to today's entry while I was painting a wall (it's spring - not that you'd know it to look outside - and time to freshen the place up!), and that was the moment I physically stopped and took it in. I thought it was a terribly sudden way to get rid of the character, but a fantastic one, and very in-keeping with the dark tone the series has been developing.

And then, like all good panto villains, he turns up again! Wielding a gun and making threats. Of course! I hope he doesn't die in tomorrow's episode, because it's never going to have the impact that this moment did.

Next Episode: The Destruction of Time

Next Episode: The Destruction of Time 

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

Day 106: Escape Switch (The Daleks' Master Plan, Episode Ten)

Dear diary,

“Everyone loves Magical Chen, agreed to work as the Daleks' lackey and then, got caught in a chase for the Teranium case, flying though time, it's all such a crime…”

What? I love a good Billy Fluff, me, and the moment when he refers to one of their enemies as 'Magic Chen' instantly set of a verse of the 'Magical Trevor' song in my head. Truth be told, it's still going round there, now, and I'll be a bit disappointed if I don't hear a Dalek singing it by the end of the next episode.

Oh, all right. I should have known that returning to an episode that really exists in the archives would turn things back around for me. I mused yesterday that Douglas Camfield's direction of the fight scenes between the Daleks and the Egyptians would probably be a highlight, and I think that this episode proves that completely.

It has to be said - and this must be an effect of moving into this period where there's more and more missing episodes - when the titles faded away and I saw an actual image of the Pharaoh's treasures, it took me back a bit! It's been a while since I saw a moving episode that wasn't animated (well, a 'while'. Four days. It feels like longer. I blame all that time we wasted mucking around on the volcano world), so something just struck me as odd about it here. Trust me, by the time I finish Season Four, I'll have forgotten that Doctor Who isn't a radio series.

This is probably a good point to mention the way that I tackle the missing episodes, as it's something I get asked about fairly often. I always listen to them now as the narrated soundtracks, or occasionally as an animation (as in the case of Mission to the Unknown or The Feast of Steven). People often ask why I'm not following along with a recon of some sort and the answer is, simply, that I just can't get into them. Oh, believe me, I've tried!

Some of them are fantastic, certainly, and it's the way that I watched Marco Polo, but I find that they just put me off a bit. Truth be told, when I was headed towards this season, the thought of having to sit and watch that many reckons was almost enough to nix the whole diary. I considered hiding in a wardrobe until the Jon Pertwee years landed and missing episodes were a thing of the past. But the narrated soundtracks, I've found myself getting really hooked on (A real U-turn - I couldn't bear the one I listened to for The Roof of the World back in January).

But enough about narrated soundtracks and reconstructed episodes - we can see this one properly! It moves and everything! And - oh - is it just me or does Douggie get better every time? There's a shot in this episode where the Sun morphs into a reflection on a Dalek dome, and I couldn't quite believe what I'd just watched. It. Was. Stunning.

It also means that we get to see the gorgeous shots of the Daleks gliding through the half-constructed Pyramids. It's hard to refrain from using the word 'stunning' here, too. I've said it before, and I've little doubt that I'll say it again before the 60s are out, but this version of the Dalek prop is perhaps my favourite. They just look so good.

And as the bad guys, they're still coming across better here than at any other point we've seen them so far. Remember back in The Daleks, when I complained that the final battle essentially boiled down to them being overthrown by a handful of Thals in leather trousers? That wouldn't happen to this bunch. This lot are set upon by a hoard of Egyptian slaves, and the Daleks just plough though them, exterminating en masse.

Yesterday, I complained that I'd rather have had an Egypt story told on its own terms, away from this story arc about the Daleks and Mavic Chen. As it is, having been though this episode now, too, I think I've had a perfectly good story. Two episodes feels about the right length for this tale - though I can still see how they might get four from it, with the Daleks and the Monk only turning up half-way - and I've really enjoyed it. The ending seems to imply that the Monk is out of the way now, and with the Doctor headed back to Kembel to finish up the story from way back when, so I'll be sad to see him leave. It's been great to have him back again, and he's been far better served in this Egypt portion of the tale than he was by the leftovers from The Chase.

I can't let this episode pass without mentioning the discovery of the film prints. This one, along with the print for Counter Plot were the ones that infamously turned up in the basement of a church (Mormon or others, depending on which version of the story you're being told). The rediscovery of missing episodes is a fascinating topic, and I love the tales of where things were found - this has to be my favourite of the bunch. It's just so, so, surreal. Perfect for this story, then!

Next Episode: The Abandoned Planet

Next Episode: The Abandoned Planet 

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

Day 105: Golden Death (The Daleks' Master Plan, Episode Nine)

Dear diary,

It's tricky, this one. On the one hand, I love the idea of a Doctor Who story set in ancient Egypt, and especially in this era of the programme. On the other… it feels a shame to see it thrown in to this part of this story, where they just seem to be filling time before getting back to the main plot. I've been championing the idea of this being more than one story for a while now, and I wonder if I'd have preferred a 'straight' Egypt story for an episode or two before the Daleks et al turn up on the sand.

That said, there is a lot in this episode that I like, and that I think really works. The idea that the TARDIS is taken into the pyramid as one of the pharaoh's treasures for the afterlife is very much the kind of thing that would have happened back in Season One. Indeed, lots of elements away from the Dalek-based story are the kind of things I'd expect to see in what I'm starting to consider as a 'traditional' Doctor Who story.

There's a scene in which Steven and Barbara are interrogated by a sinister marshall of the soldiers, and they protest their innocence strongly, claiming that they have no interest whatsoever in the treasure being gathered for the tomb. 'Even the old man?' they're asked, being told that he was examining the 'blue box' very carefully. The entire exchange might as well have been Ian and Barbara being put in the spotlight.

I could even go as far as to say that I'd be interested to see this story spread across a few episodes in ancient Egypt, in which the Monk turns up at the end of the first part! The idea of a showdown between the Doctor and the Monk certainly appeals to me, and after I felt yesterday's confrontation was wasted, today's seems to be back on form. The Monk works as a really interesting adversary to the Doctor - the first time that we've seen an equal to him, and the Monk is painted as such.

It's great to watch how bumbling he can be, but then he's filled with a truly sinister streak, where I'm not quite sure what he's going to do next or why. He seems intent on bringing revenge on the Doctor - and he's determined to make sure it happens. There's a school of thought that says the Monk ends up becoming the Master, and, (though it's not an idea I subscribe to)I can see where it may come from. If you take this desire for revenge and keep twisting the dial up, up, up… yeah, I can see the link.

And yet for all that I protest that I'd love to see a pure, Egyptian, historical, or a rematch of The Time Meddler set on the plains and around the Great Pyramids, the Daleks turning up is just wonderful. It's terribly Doctor Who - an extremely surreal juxtaposition as the Daleks massacre the Egyptian slaves. It's so bizarre, I almost wondered if I might be dreaming it. Done right (and directed by Camfield, I'd imagine it is!), that could be a really spectacular moment for the Daleks.

Elsewhere, we've got the Monk being recruited to the Dalek's cause as he tries to save his own skin, and there's some great fun to be had watching him squirm and apologise before Mavic Chen, who has a semblance of his former dignified imposing self back the second the Monk arrives before him. We've seen him just as writing and apologetic toward the Daleks in recent episodes, so it's nice to see the tables turned back for him - albeit briefly.

I won't even go into much detail on the Doctor breaking into the Monk's TARDIS (again) and messing around with the settings. It's really become his signature move when dealing with the man, and you think after the last time he'd have thought to lock the door one he'd hidden his TARDIS away!

Next Episode: Escape Switch

Next Episode: Escape Switch 

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

Day 104: Volcano (The Daleks' Master Plan, Episode Eight)

Dear diary,

Sometimes, there's so much useless Doctor Who knowledge buzzing around in my head that I simply ignore bits of it. I file it away in a cabinet marked 'you'll probably never need to know this' and go on thinking about something else. The nice effect this has is that elements of Doctor Who surprise me, when they probably really shouldn't.

Take today's episode, for example. It's the return of the Meddling Monk! Now, I knew - somewhere in the back of my mind - that the Monk returned in this story. I'm sure I knew that. Heck, the BBC's official 50th Anniversary website has an entry for the Monk in which he's surrounded by Volcanoes! Yet still, I didn't manage to piece it together until almost the last moment.

When this episode opens, the TARDIS is being pursued through the vortex by another time vessel. Steven speculates that it has to be the Daleks, and the Doctor thinks that he's probably right about that. Meanwhile, we keep cutting back to Kembel, where the Daleks are preparing to send a time machine out to hunt for them. It wasn't until the Daleks were ready to leave the planet that I suddenly realised that it couldn't be them chasing the TARDIS, and it all fell into place!

Aside from that nice surprise, this episode is a bit lackluster. It feels like a number of left over ideas from The Chase being added in to help pad out the story a little further. What if the TARDIS were to materialise in the middle of a cricket match? What if it turns up on New Year's Eve, during the countdown? It can't just be fleeting materialisations (and what happened to the ship needing twelve minutes to take off again?), so we get a showdown between the Doctor and the Monk, but rather than the great back-and-forth we saw between them last series, it just dissolves into a bit of laughing, and then we find that the Doctor has been trapped here.

Even then, it only takes the Doctor a matter of minutes to fix the problem and get them back on their way again. To be honest, the whole episode feels like padding before we can get onto the really interesting stuff.

Where things do still fall into place for me is when we spend time with the Daleks on Kembel. These are still the ruthless creatures I've grown used to this season, and they're by far the best thing about this episode. That they allow one of the delegates to die for them as proof that he is truly devoted to his cause is sinister enough. The fact that he survives the experiment - so they exterminate him anyway, just because they were expecting a death - is even worse. These Daleks are unlike any we've had before, and they're a fantastic breed of the creatures.

To tell the truth, though, I think things need to get back to Kembel full-time. While I still believe this tale could be seen as more than one story, it feels like its flagging a little in the middle here - they don't really know what to do with the characters before we head back in for the final showdown. I'm hoping that the final four episodes are where we bring things back into focus…

Next Episode: Golden Death

Next Episode: Golden Death 

 Day 103: The Feast of Steven (The Daleks' Master Plan, Episode Seven)

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

Day 103: The Feast of Steven (The Daleks' Master Plan, Episode Seven)

Dear diary,

*clears throat * IT'S CHRIIIISSSTTTTMMMAAAAASSSSSSSS! What? It's tradition, isn't it? No? Oh hush, it's my blog. And it's Christmas! Spread the cheer! And isn't it nice of the weather to keep the winter feeling going right the way through until now, just so it would feel more like Christmas. Yeah, let's enjoy the snow as I crank up the heating and mutter 'Bah Humbug' under my breath…

But look! Hooray! Santa has been! And what's that he's left for me under the tree? (By 'under the tree', I mean 'on the computer'. I did suggest getting the Christmas tree back out, but Ellie wasn't having any of it.) It's a copy of The Feast of Steven that's been animated! That's right, I've been enjoying today's special Christmas episode in the form of Adamsbullock's version.

It's another very different style of animation, quite far removed from what I've seen for either The Reign of Terror or Mission to the Unknown. Far more stylised, and with a much simpler tone to it. Outside the police station, for example, the background is painted in with only a few tones and a couple of windows. And yet, it works really well! I don't know if I'd be able to do the entire Daleks' Master Plan in this style, but for the slightly bizarre Christmas episode, it's absolutely perfect.

Truth be told, by the end I'd grown quite accustomed to the animated Hartnell. It's going to be a bit of a shock to go back to the real, human version. Maybe for the next few audio episodes I'll imagine everyone else as real, with this version of Hartnell alongside them. It'll keep me amused at least!

As for the episode itself… it's a bit of a game of two halves really. All the stuff at the police station was great fun, and I really rather enjoyed that. I seem to recall reading somewhere that the original intention was to have the cast of Z Cars take the roles of the police officers, which would have been great fun and really helped add to the Christmas feel - plus, it has to be said, the idea of Brian Blessed squaring up to Hartnell excites me far more than it should!

There's plenty of comedy in this section of the episode, and it's played nicely: lots of fun banter between the policemen as they wait outside the TARDIS, and especially after the Doctor has stepped outside for the very first time. Then there's the business with the man inside the station ('haven't I seen your face before? Of course! The marketplace at Jaffa!') and Steven coming to take the Doctor away by pretending that he's a bit mad.

Yeah, the first section of the episode is great fun, and I really enjoyed it. But then we arrive in Hollywood and… oh dear. It's a good job I didn't listen to this episode as part of the narrated soundtrack with my headphones in. Whoever was in charge of sound for this segment should be shot. It's so noisy! Every character is shouting, and they're all doing it at once! There were moments when I couldn't understand what was actually being said.

(Incidentally, I did scroll through the audio once I'd finished watching the animation, just in case it had been made better on the narrated soundtrack. One section of screeching was more than enough for me, so I didn't push it any further.)

Something I did wonder about, and it's happened a few times over the last few episodes, is Sara's name. Which way do people tend to pronounce it? I've always said it as 'Sa-ra', as does the Doctor here, and as it's clearly written. Peter Purves (both in the episodes and on the narration) seems to refer to her as 'Sarah' more commonly. Which do people tend to go for? Is 'Sara' the majority vote?

Now, I mused yesterday that things felt like they were building to the end of a six-part story and getting ready to move off onto a new adventure, but that I'd need to watch through more before coming to a decision on that one. Well, I think I've already reached one. The Feast of Steven is not the seventh episode of a twelve-part serial called The Daleks' Master Plan. Frankly, it's not! The only link we have to that story is the Doctor double checking that they still have the terrarium core, to which Sara replies 'Oh, I'd forgotten about the Daleks.'

That's less of a link than the Steven Moffat era has between stories that are a part of the story arc! The six episodes from The Nightmare Begins to Coronas of the Sun are definitely a story, and the episodes that follow this one may be a follow-up to that story, but from where I'm standing now, somewhere around the middle-point, this certainly feels like an individual one-episode story all on its own. I'll review this situation once I finish the next five episodes, but it's looking likely that I'll think of them as separate stories from now on. The campaign to change it starts here!

Next Episode: Volcano

Manufacturer: Big Finish Productions

Written By: Simon Guerrier

RRP: £8.99

Release Date: 30th November 2011

Reviewed by: Matthew Davis for Doctor Who Online

Review Posted: 23rd November 2011

The Doctor is dead. Steven Taylor and Oliver Harper are on the run. Trapped on the planetoid Grace Alone, they arrived to face the fate which had been haunting them since Oliver joined the TARDIS crew in 1960s London. Greeting them were the massacred bodies of the planetoid’s crew, and the perpetrators of the deed; an alien race known as the Vardans. Steven has felt recently, that when travelling with the Doctor he is living on “borrowed time”. Time is very quickly running out, and not everyone will escape it alive.

The First Wave is the conclusion to, and the strongest entry in the Oliver Harper trilogy.

The story itself works nicely for the format. It is not over complicated but it has a wonderfully tense and reflective feel. The theme of the story is most certainly about borrowed time, and how this has become a part of Steven Taylor’s character throughout the trilogy. His reflections on those he has lost when travelling with the Doctor, and cool resignation that he is next in the firing line are played superbly by Peter Purves who carries this play almost single handed with another fantastic interpretation of the First Doctor.

That is not to discredit the performance of Tom Allen as Oliver, who has grown on me throughout the course of the trilogy. There is something unapologetically heroic about Oliver towards the play’s conclusion, and Allen, particularly in the closing scene plays him beautifully.

The inclusion of returning villian, the Vardans, has thankfully not been shoe horned in for nostalgia’s sake. Their presence makes perfect sense and works to the story’s advantage, particularly in the final sequence.

Simon Guerrier’s writing is on top form. The play is written more as a two handed drama, with flashbacks and flash forwards narrated by Purves and Allen. This approach works very well, and the sense of foreboding about the inevitable fate of Oliver is clear and present but not so much that the conclusion lacks an emotional impact.

The closing scene is too good to spoil, suffice to say it is unexpected, original and done very well indeed. 

The only real criticism I could give is that the character of Oliver has gone before he had more time to really flesh out. I could see more stories with Oliver Harper, as the character had begun to grow, and his back story was strong enough to merit more exploration of his character but sadly it seems it was not to be.

With sterling direction by Lisa Bowerman, The First Wave is an excellent conclusion to what has been an intriguing trilogy for the Companion Chronicles.