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

Day 369: The Green Death, Episode One

Dear diary,

Something odd happened when I settled down to watch yesterday's episode. I'd spent the day bubbling with anticipation, and was excited to finally sit down and start Jo Grant's final story… until I remembered that I'd not yet finished Planet of the Daleks, and would have to wait until today to reach this one. I've spoken a lot recently of my growing sense of nostalgia towards the series, and I've suddenly found myself somewhat nostalgic for the early Pertwee years! It's funny - by the time the Doctor started to venture out into space more and leave UNIT behind, I was ready to get him away from Earth. Now I couldn't wait to get back there - I was with Jo, there was only one planet that I wanted to see.

This is one of the longest stretches without a UNIT story since Pertwee took over the part of the Doctor (and - although the future Brig turns up in one of them - adding almost a fortnight's worth of recovered 1960s episodes into the mix last month means it's even longer since I last saw the team), and I was really ready to get back to them. I was somewhat disappointed that we didn't get to see Jo and the Doctor returning home, though. After all the nice setting up during the last story that she was beginning to get a bit homesick, I was hoping that we'd see them arrive and follow that line of thought a little further.

Instead, we pick up some time later (and it really is left vague. It could be days, weeks, or even months since the events on Spiridon), and Jo has taken on a sudden passion for preserving the planet. In some ways, it feels perfectly natural that Jo should have such an interest in stopping pollution and saving the planet, but that she should feel this strongly about it all of a sudden… it feels a bit like it's come out of nowhere. We even reach a point where she tells the Brig that she'll resign from UNIT if that's the only way she can head to South Wales and support Professor Jones - where did she strike up such a fire from?

Still, it gives a great excuse for comedy when the Brig informs her that he's trying to send her to exactly that location, and that he'll give her a lift down if she cares that strongly about it! It's nice to see the two of them paired off like this, and it highlights just how far the Brig has come since his early days in UNIT - can you imagine the Season Seven Brigadier tolerating Jo's 'a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do… sir!'?

Once we've arrived at the Nut-hutch, the set up for Jo's departure is in full swing. I'd worried that after a romantic interest in the last story, any that would come in here may feel a bit too forced, or as though it's treading over old ground (though it is, at least, a reason to assume a large gap between the two stories), but it actually feels completely natural. Early on, Jo admits that the Professor reminds her of a younger Doctor, and then their first meeting (in which she bumbles around, destroying an experiment by leaving the door open and then clattering into things) is wonderfully reminiscent of her first meeting with the Doctor right back at the start of Season Eight. It's too neat to simply be a coincidence, so it's another little benefit for those of us watching through the programme in order.

We've also got the seeds of the Doctor's departure a year from now being seeded in, too. I'd completely forgotten that he takes a trip to Metebilis III in this story (When it was first mentioned in Carnival of Monsters, I was surprised because I thought this was the first we heard of the planet… and then promptly forgot all about this little excursion!), but it's great fun to see. In many ways it's simply obvious filler material, so bringing it back as the cause of the Doctor's 'death' suddenly gives it a weight that it wouldn't have had at the time. I've never seen Planet of the Spiders, but from what few clips I have seen, I don't think it looks anything like this planet, but I look forward to comparing the two when the time comes.

The only real disappointment… no Benton or Yates? Do they turn up later on in the story? it's lovely to have the Brig back, and it's great to be down on Earth again in the 'traditional' Pertwee format (and don't those opening scenes at the mine just feel so much like a Pertwee story?), but I was rather hoping for a proper UNIT reunion for Jo's big send off…

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

Day 368: Planet of the Daleks, Episode Six

Dear diary,

Crikey, this episode has been something of a roller coaster for the Daleks. For a start, they look brilliant. Certainly better than I can remember them looking for a very long time. There's some shots early on where they chase the Doctor and his Thal friends through the corridors of the city and they move so smoothly. They swing round corners and glide down the corridors - they look genuinely quite menacing during these moments!

But then we get to see repeated shots of them trying to break their way through the barricade by bumping in to it. Over and over again. They're not even backing up enough to take a good run (glide?) up to it, they're just moving back and forth a few inches as they nudge the barrier forward a bit, in the hope that they'll break through at some stage. Why don't they shoot their way through? Surely their fund can do some damage to the assorted junk in their path?

Oh, but the shots of the Dalek army in the cavern being flooded by the onslaught of molten ice! It looks fab as the waves crash through and knock the little Dalek models all over the place. Oh, sure, the dimensions of the models aren't quite right, and the way they're positioned means that the army doesn't look as impressive as it could, but who can fail to love the shot of the Dalek domes poking out from the setting ice? It looks great, and when we get nice long shots of them starting to come to life just a few minutes earlier, that looks pretty good, too!

Except they had to go and ruin it. The models are passable in a nice long shot, but then we get a close up of them as they work their way down a miniature corridor, and the wall is blasted out by the ice. This shot gives us a good clear look at all the wrong dimensions of the models and completely ruins the effect for me. It doesn't help that it moves mere moments after we've seen some full-size Dalek props reduced to smouldering husks, so the fact that a big chunk of wall smacking into one leaves it completely un-marked really irritates me.

There's a couple of instances where Daleks are shot by their own kind in this episode, and on both occasions we get to see smoke billowing from under the victim's dome. It looks great (I can' help myself, I love a good smoke effect), and I was glad when it happened for the second time that we could get a better close up for it.

Yet when the Dalek Supreme arrives on the planet all black and gold and taking control, the dome wobbles about horribly if it tries to turn around. Or move forward. Or speak. Basically, the dome on that particular prop looks a bit rubbish any time it's on screen, really.

So yes. Plenty of ups and downs for the pepper pots today, but that's ok, because I'm more interested today in our two regulars. I'm really finding myself softening to Pertwee as we move further and further through his era, and his speech at the end of todays episode where he asks the Thals to make sure they don't glorify war when they return to Sakro is perhaps my favourite moment yet. It's beautifully played in every line, and credit where credit is due, it's one of the best things that Terry Nation has ever written for the series.

And then there's Jo. Dear, dear, Jo. I said yesterday that they seemed to be setting her up for a departure with Latep in today's episode (and speculated that he would die. Well, a 50% success rate isn't that bad…), and we get what can only be described as a 'classic' companion departure scene, in which she's asked to stay behind (or, in this case, head to Skaro) with one of the story's guest cast.

But there's still another six weeks on Katy Manning's contract, so we get to watch a rather moving scene in which she politely says that she won't be leaving with this other character, but will instead be heading back to the TARDIS with the Doctor. Things aren't all about whizzing off into time and space some more, though. She tells Latep that she's got a world and a life of her own, and then tells the Doctor that Earth is the only planet she has any interest in visiting right now. Jo's getting home-sick, and she doesn't have all that long to wait before she's back there…

 a

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

Day 367: Planet of the Daleks, Episode Five

Dear diary,

Something that’s been troubling me a little throughout this story (‘Troubling’ is probably too strong, but you know what I mean) is how the jungle set can look so good… but not quite be perfect. It’s highlighted in today’s episode when the Doctor lures a pair of Daleks down into the molten ice. The whole scene (shot on location) is filled with smoke. It adds a real atmosphere to the image, and makes the location look that bit more alien. Smoke effects is what I’ve felt the jungle is lacking for some time now – when the Daleks fire on the ship in Episode Two, the smoke lingers for a minute and makes the set look that bit more real.

It’s not really a complaint, though, because on the whole I’m rather liking the design on display in this story. The jungle – lack of atmosphere aside – is nicely done, and while you never forget that it’s a set, you do get a real impression of size. I’m sure they’re just using a few small areas of the studio shot creatively from a number of different angles (maybe they move the odd plant from time to time), but I’m not spotting a lot of re-use. It really feels like they’re in a large jungle.

The downside to this is that when we arrive at Plain of Stones, it feels like the jungle ends and is replaced by a vast expanse of… well… nothing. We suddenly hit a barren rocky wilderness. It still looks quite nice, especially when we head out onto location (which – by rights – it shouldn’t. We’re in a quarry. It’s wet. It’s muddy. I wince every time we see a shot of Jon Pertwee’s shoes caked in mud and have flashbacks to the days of Cross Country at school in Decembers gone by…), but I’m not sure that I understand the geography of this planet. A tropical jungle… surrounding an ice volcano. Which could erupt at any time, but doesn’t seem to impact on the jungle. Not that it matters, because eventually, the jungle just stops, and then there’s nothing but mud for miles and miles around (seriously, I used to hate Cross Country. At one point, you had to make your way through a pig farm. By the time you’d hobbled back up the lane to the school for double French, you absolutely stunk…)

The design in the rest of the story looks pretty good, too. I’ve never been all that fond of the Doctor’s purple get-up for this tale. It’s always seemed that bit too garish for me, and I’ve never been able to understand quite why people were always clamouring for a Third Doctor action figure in this outfit. Seeing it in action, though, it looks really good, and I’ve fallen for it completely. It even matched the Spiridon’s furry purple coats! Speaking of which, it’s a lovely touch when Wester dies, that he loses his invisibility. It adds something extra to the culture, and it’s good to actually see this mysterious figure in an episode where he’s been back and forth in my mind – unable to decide whether he’s working for the Daleks, or against the Daleks, or a bit of both.

I’m also starting to think that if I didn’t know Jo was leaving us in the next story, I might be expecting her to nip off at the end of this one. She’s been growing closer and closer to Latep for a while now, and the moment she declares that she’s going with him today because he can’t go alone really feels like they’re setting them up to depart together. I can only assume he’ll be dead by the end of tomorrow’s episode.

 Day 366: Planet of the Daleks, Episode Four

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

Day 366: Planet of the Daleks, Episode Four

Dear diary,

I think the problem I’m having with this story is that because of the way Terry Nation writes (he’s very much writing this as an ‘adventure serial’), we’ve got episodes injected with false action and excitement. Today, for example, the Daleks get hold of the Thal’s map and discover where they’ve hidden a stash of explosives. Being sensible little pepperpots, they decide to venture into the jungle and dispose of the explosives. ‘It’s fine,’ says Dalek One (well, words to that effect, anyway), ‘we can just prime the detonators and leave them to explode here…’

Leaving aside the sheer irresponsibility of this move (have they checked with the Daleks still inside the city to make sure they’re not going to accidentally blow up a tunnel of molten ice?), the Daleks then trundle back off into the foliage to get a safe distance from the explosives. Enter Jo Grant - Dr Who’s plucky young assistant - who turns off the detonator on two of the three bombs… before she’s hit on the head by a falling rock and left unconscious as the timer counts down to an explosion!

We then cut away to catch up with the Doctor and his escape attempt up the ventilation shaft, before returning to find Jo waking up… just in time to move the timer and let it blow up some Daleks instead of her. It could be quite a good moment, but the whole thing just smacked of false terror - there’s no way that they’re going to blow Jo up, and at least if it came as a cliffhanger then we’d be able to suspend our belief a bit more. As it is, the whole thing comes across as pointless filler.

Still, it’s a minor complaint really, as I'm rather enjoying the story. Yes it's a bit of a naff runaround. Yet it's filled with as many clichéd Terry Nation ideas as it's possible to squeeze into one story. Yes it's seemingly forgotten any links to Frontier in Space (Even this far into the story, I was hoping for some kind of resolution - or at least a mention! - of the Daleks plans involving Earth and Draconia), but it's all a lot of fun.

And if worst comes to worst, at least the Daleks are preparing to unleash a deadly bacteria across the planet!

 a

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

Day 365: Planet of the Daleks, Episode Three

Dear diary,

Is it just me, or is the Daleks’ way of storing their frozen army horribly inefficient? Somewhere on this planet, they need to tuck away 10,000 Daleks, but there’s so much space between all of them! Surely there must be a more practical way of storing Daleks than this? Obviously they didn’t bother to check in with Davros (or anyone who’s had to package up a multitude of Dalek action figures when moving house).

More and more, this feels like typical Terry Nation stuff, and I’m still really enjoying it. I don’t think there’s anything in this episode that would feel out of place in one of the Hartnell Dalek stories. The crawl through the tunnels is reminiscent of The Daleks, as is a sequence in which the creatures disable the lift with the Doctor and his companions inside. There’s even a sequence of a Dalek cutting through a door while the Doctor searches desperately for an escape which is similar to that very first story, too. Add in a sequence where the Doctor and his (temporary) companion ambush a Dalek when it comes into their cell… actually, this is just a ‘best of’ package from The Daleks, isn’t it?

And yet, despite seeing it all before, I can’t help but really enjoy it. I knew where the story was going at every turn (I’ve been watching today on the train, so I’ve refrained from narrating it out-loud as I usually would were I watching alone), but that added to the fun of it all. There’s something really pleasant about having a story that’s so rooted in the older episodes. It feels somewhat like greeting old friends. I’m just surprised that the Thals - who’ve had that first Dalek serial handed down through the generations as legend - aren’t recognising the similarities!

The only downside is the Daleks themselves. I’ve always felt that they just don’t look right in colour during the classic series. In the 1960s, they’re sleek, and shiny. We can tell that they’re supposed to be made of metal, and the quality of the video hides a few of the imperfections. By the time you reach the colour era of the programme, it’s all too obvious to see the paint lines on the casings, and the places where they’ve been knocked around a bit being loaded on and off BBC props lorries.

It’s a pity, because the way they’re being directed in this story is very good. There’s been some fantastic shots - two Daleks flanking the Doctor as they escort him to the prison in yesterday’s episode. Standing guard at the city gates today, and later heading out into the jungle to dispose of the Thals explosives - and they’re only let down by the quality of the props. I know they couldn’t really stretch the budget to new props in every appearance (though I think I’m right in saying that this story was the first to have new Daleks constructed purely for TV use - as opposed to repurposing ones from the Peter Cushing films - since the very first one. Another connection to The Daleks!), but surely they could have performed a bit of routine Dalek maintenance?

 a

“Hello! Happy New Year. 2013 - surely this is the year to be a Doctor Who fan? Anyway, resolutions made (same as ever, I promise to visit the gym more. I'll go later. Or maybe tomorrow.), and it's time to settle down to watch the first episode of my marathon.”

Well would you look at that? December 31st, 2013. Have we all been the subject of a bit of TARDIS travel, or has this year disappeared especially quickly? 

And what a year it’s been! For a start, it was Doctor Who’s big old 50th Anniversary. At one point, that was the Holy Grail. The end-point for my marathon. 50 years of the world’s best science fiction programme watched at the pace of one episode a day, in order, from the very beginning. But then Matt Smith announced his departure from the series, and it meant I’d be stopping one episode short of the end of an era. More than that - I’d be stopping one episode short of the final adventure in the Doctor’s original regeneration cycle! 

So, it’s worth telling you (because I’m not sure that I have before), The 50 Year Diary will be running up to The Time of the Doctor. But oh! That’s a long way off from now! There’s a whole 2014 to get through before I reach Trenzalore, and there’s so much left for me to experience. 

I’m not gonna lie - I didn’t honestly think that I’d reach this point. I’m fickle, you see. Proper fickle. Yeah, sure, it sounded like a great idea to watch through all these stories in order and write about them for Doctor Who Online, but I’d be bored before the William Hartnell years had finished. For a start, he was on pretty much year round. And a chunk of them don’t even exist any more! Truth be told, I really did think that I’d bottle out of the experiment sometime around Marco Polo. On the good days, I thought I might make it as far as The Aztecs.

But look at us now! Right in the middle of Planet of the Daleks, and having sat through every episode that preceded them - sometimes twice (How wonderful that The Enemy of the World and The Web of Fear should crop up, but just too late for me to watch them the first time around...)! And you know what? I’d not have missed this journey for the world. 

I’ve always known that I love Doctor Who, but I didn’t realise just how much I loved it. Even in the dark days of The Dominators, I can’t help but enjoy this programme, and I’ve grown to really love writing my thoughts about each episode here in the Diary. It’s all because of you lot! Those of you reading now. Everyone has been incredibly kind about my blog taking over the DWO news page (apart from the one person who reacted badly to my dislike towards The Evil of the Daleks, who sent in a message to suggest they hire someone who actually knew what they were talking about), and I can’t believe the goodwill and support that you’ve all offered. 

Thank you very much. I can’t wait to share 2014, and the adventures of the next few Doctors with you. 

In celebration of the New Year, we’re offering 15% off the price of The 50 Year Diary - Volume One from Pageturner Publishing. Just enter the promo code DWO2014 in your cart to activate the discount, it’s valid until the end of January. The Kindle version of the book is also still available, directly from Amazon (UK / USA).

- - - -

You may have noticed that the Diary has been a little quiet over Christmas week. I’ve been taking a break from posting while I’ve been away visiting friends and family (also stuffing myself with turkey and tuning into the obligatory Christmas Special!), but I’ve stayed true to my mission - I’ve still been watching an episode every day to keep up. 

These entries have now all been added to Doctor Who Online under their relevant days, and you can catch up with them using the links below. 

Happy New Year!

Carnival of Monsters

One | Two | Three | Four

Frontier in Space

One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six

Planet of the Daleks

One | Two

a

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

Day 364: Planet of the Daleks, Episode Two

Dear diary,

If ever you needed an example of how watching through the series in order from the beginning impacts your reaction to it, today was the day to see it. It came as we watched a Dalek glide through a door and into a room where six other Daleks are stood waiting. It’s a simple scene. It’s stagey. The direction isn’t anything particularly out of the ordinary or special, but I immediately spat out my (metaphorical) drink as I found myself loudly exclaiming ‘Bloody hell! Look at all those Daleks!’

I know, I know, you’re doing the maths now. Six waiting Daleks plus one gliding around. That equals seven. It’s not really a huge number of the pepperpots, but coming after The Day of the Daleks, in which we had an Earth invasion force of three, and several 1960s stories where I grew used to the cardboard cutouts filling in the background of the shots, this is a veritable infestation of the creatures.

And as if that weren’t enough to excite me as a Doctor Who fan (and one who’s growing love for the Daleks has only come about as a result of watching them through in order - go back and track the evolution of my love if you fancy), we end the episode with a great cliffhanger: ‘Somewhere on this planet, there are 10,000 Daleks!’

Crikey, that’s an exciting thought. I don’t even have the faintest clue how they’re going to show us 10,000 Daleks (have they bought a job lot of the toys?), but just the prospect of it really makes be desperate to continue on with the story. Assuming that it’s pulled off well (and, being used to Doctor Who, the jury is still out), then it could be another big tick on the list of things that you want to see in a big Dalek story. More and more I wish we could have forgotten all about Day and moved right onto this one.

I’ve been very full of praise lately for Katy Manning. Rightly so - she’s being given plenty to sink her teeth into before bowing out of the series in the next story, and the production team seem to be getting their money’s worth by giving her long periods of episodes to herself lately. All this love for Jo, though, means that poor Pertwee is being a little overlooked.

But not today! He’s on fine form here, and it’s the first time in a while that we’ve had one of those iconic lines of dialogue (as ever, I’m using ‘iconic’ to mean a line that I know of having never seen the story, but often hear repeated);

THE DOCTOR
Courage isn’t just a matter of not being frightened, you know. It’s being afraid and doing what you have to anyway.

It’s a lovely moment, and it’s another chance to see this Doctor’s softer side. It’s also a rare opportunity to see him in a more vulnerable position, believing that Jo has been killed by Dalek scouts. The whole thing is beautifully played, especially the moment when the Doctor seems to really let it sink in that she’s ‘dead’. Listening to Jo’s tape recorded notes from Episode One, the camera lingers on Pertwee’s face. He tries to explain it to a Thal in the cell with him, firmly telling us that the Daleks ‘murdered’ her. It’s quite brutal to hear it phrased like this - for all the killing that the Daleks have done since 1963, I’ve never before thought of it as being ‘murder’.

As if that wasn’t a strong enough moment, we get a few seconds of silence before Katy Manning’s voice continues to play out from the tape recorder, and it’s actually heartbreaking. It’s almost a shame that actors don’t take weeks off from the series at this point, because it loses some of its impact cutting so quickly back to her. One things clear, though, we’re being set up for the prospect that Jo won’t be around forever…

a

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

Day 363: Planet of the Daleks, Episode One

Dear diary,

I thought that Frontier in Space was something of a nostalgic story, which pandered to my recent nostalgia for the 1960s era of Doctor Who. Frankly, it had nothing on this.

For a start, it's the return of Terry Nation to the series for the first time since Christmas 1965. It's funny to think that the last time we saw his work was for The Daleks' Master Plan, because in many ways the series is a completely different beast now, almost eight years on. Not that Terry is aware that things have changed much, though, because he brings with him a whole host of stock 'Terry Nation Story Ideas' which feel like they've been given the briefest of dust downs since he hung them up all that time ago.

For a start, we're back in a jungle! It feels like an age since we had a proper jungle, whereas when Terry was last around, it's the only environment the TARDIS seemed to land in. And - of course - Jo remarks that (all together) 'The things growing in this jungle seem more like animal than plant life…' (hooray!). Just in case we missed that point, it gets reiterated by a Thal a little bit later on in the episode.

And there's a point - it's the Thals! Back for the first time since The Daleks, which seems like an absolute age back (it was - for me it's been a whole year!), and just to refresh out memories it even gets a mention, along with Ian, Barbara, and Susan. And still, the Thals don't show up until 12 minutes into the episode. Until then, it's just the Doctor and Jo carrying the action, and the Doctor is in a coma for lots of that time!

We don't get a character called 'Tarrant', but we do have a 'Taron', so we're halfway there, at least!

With all of this crammed into these 23-and-a-half minutes, this episode could end up feeling like a bit of a dull re-hash of so many old ideas. but you know what? I've loved it. Every minute of it! The Three Doctors at the start of this season kicked me off thinking about how much I missed the early years of the show, and a trip back to the 1960s for the recently recovered The Enemy of the World and The Web of Fear just cemented that feeling of nostalgia, but it really feels like the programme itself is starting to reach a point where it can start to delve into its rich past and use ideas to tell new stories.

And I'm wondering how 'traditional' this episode would have felt at the time? For me it's easy to pick up all the trappings of a Terry Nation story because I've seen all his previous efforts within the last twelve months, but as I've said above, when Planet of the Daleks first aired, he'd been away from the series for seven-and-a-bit years. To put that in context, there's about as long between The Feast of Steven and this episode as there is between The Runaway Bride's first airing and now. Doesn't that just feel like a lifetime? In those seven-and-a-bit years, the programme has seen in two new Doctors, plenty of new companions and enemies, tonnes of new episodes… I wonder if at the time, this would have felt as nostalgic as it does to me now? Any memories of this one first time round?

In some ways, it feels like this would have been the right episode to reintroduce the Daleks with after their long absence, instead of Day. Sure it means that we wouldn't have gotten that brilliant reveal in yesterday's episode when the Master introduced us to his allies, but we'd get them back in a very 'retro' tale, and it seems somehow fitting. It even properly does the 'reveal the Daleks at the end of Episode One, even though their name is in the titles' thing that they didn't quite manage last season!

a

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

Day 362: Frontier in Space, Episode Six

Dear diary,

I think I'm right in saying that this was the only time in the history of 'classic' Doctor Who that the appearance of the Daleks was intended to be a surprise. Of course, everyone knew that they'd be back in the next story (It's not exactly hard to figure out, they're in the title, again), but that's all part of the clever deception - while everyone is busy getting excited for next week and the return of the Doctor's most famous foes, no one is expecting them to arrive today!

And what an entrance they make! The Master appears atop a cliff, looking down on his enemy (and isn't it very much a great thing to see in his final story? An image like this was first teased way back during the Doctor's nightmare hallucinations in The Mind of Evil. I know it wasn't intentional, but still, a great coincidence), before declaring that while he may be unarmed, he's not unaccompanied! The Daleks look great as they trundle into view silhouetted against the sky, and I'm almost sorry that I knew they'd be in this episode.

I didn't realise that they'd be in the episode so much, though. I mean, sure, all they really do is turn up, remind the Master that he'd better not fail them, and then bugger off to awaken their army somewhere, but they're revealed much earlier than I was expecting - I figured that they'd be turning up for the last thirty seconds in the cliffhanger!

Unfortunately, when the end of the episode does roll around… it's a bit of a disappointment, isn't it? The Doctor and his friends escape from (yet another) prison cell - that makes it two breakouts for Jo alone in this episode! - get into a bit of a kerfuffle with the Master and his Ogron dummies, and then they all go their separate ways. I don't know a great deal about the next story, but I don't think we see a return for the Draconians or any of our human characters from this story, which somewhat renders the last six episodes a bit of a waste of time, with lots of running around between prison cells and not a whole lot else.

The biggest shame, though, is that in all the commotion, the Master slips away un-noticed. Usually, this would be a good thing. Curses! Foiled again! Off he skulks, ready to team up with another alien menace and be a thorn in the Doctor's side. On this occasion, it's a shame that we don't get much of a departure for him, since it's the last time Roger Delgado will be appearing in the programme. Not long after this, he was killed in a car accident while filming abroad, and when the Master next turns up in the series it will be in a new form and against a new Doctor. If I can quote myself from the entry on Terror of the Autons, Episode One;

“It's confession time. I've never actually watched a full story featuring Rodger Delgardo's incarnation of the Master. I know, ok? I know. Everyone bangs on about how he's the best version of the character, and how he's so menacing and suave and wonderful, but for me he's simply in the wrong era.”

That was true. I had a couple of people message me to say that it was impossible that I could have been a Doctor Who fan for a decade without watching a single Delgado story, but my general distaste for this period in the programme's history meant that I'd never had any real desire to check his stories out. Over the course of the last few months, I've now caught up with every single one of his episodes, and it does have to be said that I can see why people love him so much.

He really is the perfect foil to Jon Pertwee's incarnation, and I think that's why I'm so saddened that they never got the chance to film that epic final story that Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks had planned out. A final tale in which this pair were seen fighting to the death before the Master saves the Doctor's skin (either on purpose or by accident - who can tell?!) would have been the perfect way to see Delgado leave the world of Doctor Who.

That said, there's something oddly fitting about the fact that he slips away without anyone really noticing. This incarnation of the Master has always been slippery and good at getting away, and it is nice to see that happen one final time before the end of the era. It also means that we're reaching something of a clean break for the programme once again. The Master has gone (both in this incarnation and from the series for some time), Jo will be leaving in just a couple of weeks, and the Doctor is approaching the end of his current incarnation. It's the right time to say goodbye to this phase of the programme.

But not just yet…

a

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

Day 361: Frontier in Space, Episode Five

Dear diary,

I try to avoid finding out too much about a story before watching it for the marathon, whether I’ve seen it before or not. I occasionally brush up on a few basic facts (usually by sending a message to Nick to say ‘am I right in thinking that…’) so that I have a vague idea what the hell I’m talking about in these entries, but I try to go in as unbiased as I possibly can.

It’s rare, then, that I hurry to the internet during the opening moments of an episode to check things out. Today was something of an exception, because I had to find out if the director had changed since the last episode. Right from the off, the direction here seems to be of a far higher standard, and I spent a good deal of time today really enjoying it. The camera moves about a lot more here – both in terms of what I’d loosely define as ‘sweeping shots’ and in making the various space ship sets look as though they’re being rocked about – and it creates a wholly more polished look. A particular highlight is the moment the Master demands that he be taken to the Draconian Emperor, and the camera pans in to him as two guns are pointed in his direction. The framing is fantastic, and it was this shot which drove me to do a quick Google check.

It transpires that it is still the work of the same director - Paul Bernard, in the last of his three contributions to the programme - but for some reason this episode has just felt far more attractive in its presentation. Even the flight deck of the stolen prison ship, which I singled out for ridicule yesterday, looks quite good here! It’s great, because it means that I can sit back and enjoy the story itself more than worrying about the effects of Kirby wires on the space walks, or the design of the sets.

As a result, I’ve enjoyed today’s episode a lot more than yesterday’s, but I still get the feeling that I should be liking it more than I am. There’s lots of ides in here still that really appeal to me, and I love that it’s very much the second half of the story we saw with the Doctor and Jo being held prisoner on Earth. The dynamic of the Draconian Emperor and his son is very similar to that of the Earth president and her second-hand-man, quite deliberately so.

The main difference, being on Draconia instead of Earth, is that we get to see lots of close ups of the Draconian make-up. It really is stunning, isn’t it? I know I spent most of Episode One drawing attention to how much I’d liked the designs, but I’m truly impressed by it. More and more, I’m becoming convinced that it’s the best alien prosthetics we’ve seen in the programme, and it really is up there with the very best that the new series has to offer.

As ever with a Malcolm Hulke script, the dialogue is absolutely brilliant, too. One laugh-out-loud moment follows the master’s speech about devoting his life to the preservation of law and order (‘are you feeling alright, old chap?’ the Doctor asks, leaning in over his soldier), but the real stand-out has to be the final scene, in which the Master tries to hypnotise Jo only to be met by a resistance of nursery rhymes. It’s quite childish, and a little bit silly, but sounds perfect coming from Katy Manning. Plus it means that – in his final story – we get a last chance to watch as Roger Delgado tells us that he is the Master, and that we will obey him…

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

Day 360: Frontier in Space, Episode Four

Dear Diary,

Back in the very early days of The 50 Year Diary, during Season One, I spent a lot of my entries saying things along the lines of 'this is another episode carried only by our four regulars, giving them plenty of opportunities to shine'. As the programme evolved and changed, episodes with the bare minimum of guest cast became fewer and fewer. There's one or two examples in the Troughton era, but for the most part it's a practice that died away with those first few years of the programme.

But here we are, in early 1973, and something like twelve minutes of today's episode features only Jon Pertwee, Katy Manning, and Roger Delgado. Everything from the Master's ship leaving the Lunar Prison up to the Draconians boarding towards the end is spent in the company of three regular cast members, and it's just like the old days.

You could almost get away with thinking of it as being a bit of a nostalgic treat in the programme's tenth year. Indeed, there's a lengthy section in which the Doctor recounts the events of The War Games Episode Ten and explains to Jo how he came to be exiled to Earth. Later still, he goes on to list the problems with Lethbridge-Stewart. It's a proper trip down memory lane.

And if Doctor Who can play to nostalgia from time to time… oh, go on then: this episode being mostly carried only by these three regulars, gives them plenty of opportunities to shine. All three are given some great dialogue, and a few minutes to take centre stage. For Pertwee, it's the aforementioned description of his trial (and his account of 'borrowing' the TARDIS in the first place). Manning gets to ton on at length with a monologue about being returned to UNIT, where she'll probably be court marshalled. Delgado gets to play the smooth Master again, sitting back with a book while he lets his prisoners chatter.

It's not all praise from me today, though. As great as it is to see the Master so relaxed, the flight deck of his spaceship is a terrible looking set. There's no charm or design in there at all, it's just very bland, and not very interesting to look at. One thing it does do is to reinforce how at home the character looked during The Time Monster - he needs the comfort of a high-backed chair! It's often been said that when working on Doctor Who, the design department always fared better with the historical stories. While that may be true to some extent, it's not often that I'm as put off by a set as this one.

They do succeed elsewhere, mind. There's a logo peppered throughout this episode (it may have been in earlier ones, too, but I haven't noticed) that simply screams 'Dalek'. A circle, which contains a single 'dot' at the top, and a series of lines underneath. The design looks like a Dalek eye and the neck rings. It could be accidental, but with this episode containing reference to the people the Master is working for… surely it's a subtle foreshadowing of the next tale?

I'm sad to report that I'm also less than impressed by the scenes of the Doctor climbing across the hull of the space ship. The wires are just that bit too visible, and once you've seen them, you can't un-see them. The whole sequence seems to only exist to A) kill time, and B) act as a set-piece for the episode (which makes the fact that it doesn't really work all the more annoying). The Doctor formulates his plan. We spend ages watching him make his way carefully to the flight deck…

…And then within a minute, he's back down in the prison and he's being held captive again. There's a fight with the Master thrown in for good measure, too.

It's nice to see three great actors given the chance to really prove themselves on screen with no other interruptions, but I fear that Frontier in Space just isn't grabbing my attention in the way that I really want it to…

a

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

Day 359: Frontier in Space, Episode Three

Dear diary,

One of the problems with doing this marathon now is that - even for stories like this one where I know relatively little about the plot - I do have a fair idea of what's going to be happening. I know, for example, that this is the last Roger Delgado story, and that therefore the Master will be turning up at some point. The fact that he didn't arrive in Episode One means that we've got a Colony in Space situation, where he'll turn up half way through pretending to be someone he's not.

It means that I've spent this episode wondering when he'll appear. We're introduced at one point to the Lunar Penal Colony's governor, and I wondered for a moment if it may turn out to be our favourite nasty Time Lord. When this turned out not to be the case but a few minutes later we're given build up to the introduction of a new character coming to take the Doctor and Jo away… well, there wasn't much of a surprise for me.

And yet, the whole scene is written, directed, and played as though it should be a surprise. 'The Commissioner, Madam…' a secretary announces, before Delgado strides into the room wearing another elaborate costume (though quite a nice one). I'm wondering - how much of a surprise was it first time around, when the master turned up in a story like this? Obviously, Season Eight doesn't really leave much guesswork needed (I wonder who the evil brains behind the plan could be this week…?), but in stories like this one, or Colony in Space, was it in any way surprising to have the Master show up?

For the first time in this marathon (and partly inspired by the spoilerific iTunes descriptions for The Enemy of the World last week), I've been moved to take a look at the Radio Times billings for this story. I've only looked at the first three - in case I spoil myself for the rest of the tale - but they don't really leave much to the imagination. Take, for example, the listings for today's episode;

“Imprisoned on the Moon, the Doctor plans his escape. Immediately, his life is endangered by treachery from within. Meanwhile, an old enemy reappears in a new role.”

Coming fresh from watching the episode, this seems to give away loads. It tells us that the Doctor will be sent to a Moon Prison. It tells us that his escape will be impeded by someone else working from the inside, and it does hint at someone like the Master coming back. Actually, though, I think it's vague enough to not really spoil the episode. As soon as the Doctor and his new friend entered the airlock, I deduced that the cliffhanger would be the air being drained out from it (I didn't see the empty air canisters coming, though. I figured they would be the get-out clause tomorrow…), so it's pretty standard Doctor Who fare.

More annoying is that the listings go on to list “The Master…………Roger Delgado” in the credits for the day! They really didn't want to keep his return a surprise, did they? I'm interested to know, though, do any of my readers recall being surprised by him turning up at all? Not necessarily for this story, but at any point during this era? It would be nice to know how it felt the first time around…

(And, incidentally, a very Merry Christmas to all of you at home!)

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

Day 358: Frontier in Space, Episode Two

I’ve praised before the way that the Pertwee stories seem to exist in their own very distinct ‘future’ that remains consistent from tale to tale (similarly, the Troughton stories take place in their own self-contained future, too). Frontier in Space keeps this trend up – even going so far as to reference previous events (The Doctor explains to Jo that Solos and the events of The Mutants came at the very end of Earth’s empire, while the period we’re visiting this time around comes at the very start).

It seems silly, but this kind of consistency really does appeal to me. It even means that I can be a bit more lenient with the story than I might otherwise have been. What I should be saying at this point is ‘the future looks an awful lot like a hideous 1970s building’ (or, more accurately, ‘the future looks a lot like the architecture from the University of East Anglia’), but actually, I’m impressed that it’s in keeping with the kind of less-than-attractive buildings we had in Day of the Daleks.

And we’ve got plenty of opportunities to get a good look at the buildings, as large chunks of this episode are given over to typically-Pertwee chases and fights, up-and-down flights of concrete stairs and across open walkways. At one point, we even get to see him have a fight in the gardens of the Draconian embassy – where he’s up against some of the most incompetent guards we’ve ever seen in the series. Even UNIT could take on this lot!

It really does hammer home the fact that this story spends a lot of time ferrying the Doctor and Jo from prison cell to prison cell. Yesterday saw them locked up twice, today they’re shuttled from one to another to another… No onder we have to have these scenes of them running around outside – they need the excuse to stretch their legs from time to time!

As ever, it sounds like I’m complaining, whereas I’m actually rather enjoying things with this story. I love the idea that someone is playing both Earth and Draconia, and setting them against each other, and I really love the idea that the Doctor and Jo have arrived at just the wrong moment, leaving them under suspicion from both sides of the rising conflict. I’m guessing that it turns out to be the Master who’s pulling the strings (possibly in turn working for the Daleks? I know they turn up at some point in the final episode, so I’d imagine it’s one of those ‘aha! Look who the real brains fo the operation are!’), and I sort of like the idea that he may be operating somewhere in the background. This story marks Roger Delgado’s final contribution to the series, so it would be nice to see him bow out with a more audacious plan than usual.

It may be hitting harder simply because I know I’m little over a fortnight away from her departure, but once again it’s the relationship between the Doctor and Jo which serves as the real highlight of this episode for me. The opening scene in their prison cell sums up Jo for me. She paces the cell, coming up with all these clever plans to escape and get back to the TARDIS, while the Doctor simply sits back and makes the occasional quip.

Katy Manning turns in another fab performance while she plans to burst out of the prison, take control of the situation and force their captors to return them to Earth before the Doctor reminds her that they’re ‘already heading for Earth’. As the episode continues, the pair carry on shining. I particularly love the Doctor’s description of a Mind Probe (‘They’re only a sort of computer with extra knobs on’), and his description of how he got away from similar questioning before (‘They had to let me go eventually. They ran out of Mind Probes…’). I’ve found myself completely won over by this TARDIS team, and despite my love for the Brigadier, removing him (and the rest of UNIT) from the equation and letting the Doctor and Jo shine on their own has been one of the best moves in the series for some time…

a

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

Day 357: Frontier in Space, Episode One

Dear diary,

It’s not something I say a lot at the moment… but I’ve really been looking forward to this one. Frontier in Space is another one of those Doctor Who black spots for me, where I only know a few very scant details. I know that it features the Draconians. I know that it’s Roger Delgado’s final hurrah as the Master. I know that it ends with some Daleks turning up and leading neatly into the next story. That’s all I’ve got.

But I’m excited by the very thought of it. A twelve-part (in some ways) epic featuring the Daleks (for half of it) for the first time since The Daleks’ Master Plan. I think it appeals to me now, so soon after musing about my sudden nostalgia for the older stories.

It even feels a bit like a 1960s story right from the word ‘go’, with some lovely shots of model spaceships hanging in space, before the TARDIS arrives on board and the Doctor steps out to explore with his companion. They get to look around a bit in private before someone points a gun at them and they find themselves separated from the Police Box. From the off, the episode caught my attention, and it didn’t let it go easily.

It helps that there’s quite a lot visually to draw my attention in, too. The model spaceships really are very well done (all I seem to do at the moment is point out what a great job the model-builders are doing for the programme, but it’s true! Their work deserves to be pointed out every week), some of the sets look fantastic – I’m thinking specifically of the cargo hold where the TARDIS materialises, there’s a great sense of scale to it, especially in some later shots where the familiar blue box is positioned far in the background and it feels like it’s miles away!

But everyone knows what I’m going to be drawing attention to – the Draconian make up. Jon Pertwee used to tell an anecdote that during the recording of this story, he sat down with one of the Draconian actors for a conversation, and that by the end he’d completely forgotten that there was a person underneath all that. I’ve always been a little sceptical of the claim, and when we get our first look at one of the creatures staring out from a screen I was completely unconvinced.

Then we get a lengthy scene in which a Draconian holds a conversation with the Earth President and I was sold. Not only is it a great design, but it really has been applied expertly. It looks stunning even in the close ups, and I almost couldn’t believe just how well it worked. It’s a design that I’m surprised we’ve not seen again in the modern series, and I’d certainly love to see the new Doctor coming face-to-face with the creatures if we could make them look half as good now as they do here!

I think the real stamp of approval came from my friend Emma, watching the episode with me. It was her first exposure to ‘classic’ Doctor Who, and I wasn’t entirely sure if Frontier in Space would be a good first impression to the series. Knowing so little about it, I worried that it could swing either way. ‘Don’t worry,’ she assured me, ‘I watch enough original Star Trek to know what to expect….’

It should have put my mind at ease, really. I’d recently given her a list of DVDs from which to pick my Christmas present, all of them from pre-1968. She ended up buying four titles from the list – all of them ones which she wanted to see. Ah, but, I explained, Star Trek had a budget per episode that was probably about the same as the one Doctor Who had for a full year. I went into typical Doctor Who fan mode – automatically preparing for the worst reaction.

Emma was broadly quiet as we watched, but when I expressed surprise at just how good the Draconian make-up looked, she admitted that it was very impressive, though she stopped short of saying it was better than Star Trek! The real proof of the quality came as the cliffhanger sting echoed around the room and she asked if we could move right on to the next episode.

There’s several other things in my notes that I just haven’t had a chance to draw attention to. From the first shot of the TARDIS almost colliding with the ship in space (the way it fades in on the screen is stunning - right up there with the best CGI effects we get in the new series), the return of everyone’s favourite default ‘space’ font (you know the one), a surprise reappearance of the Drashigs (and there I thought they’d only ever appeared during Carnival of Monsters!), Ogrons arriving on the scene (no complications)… I could go on for a while. I’ll save it for now, though, as I’m sure I’ll have plenty to say over the rest of the week, but it’s a good start for a story I know so little about…

a

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

Day 356: Carnival of Monsters, Episode Four

Dear diary,

I’m somewhat fascinated by the fact that we make it – broadly speaking – to the final episode before the Doctor and Jo meet up with a large chunk of the guest cast for this story. It takes a real skill to tell a Doctor Who tale in this style, with two distinctly different stories running in parallel, and yet keep me interested in both halves. Right back when I started on this story, I was thinking that the cliff hanger to Episode One would be the Doctor and Jo encountering the Drashigs in the marsh, while Episode Two would conclude with them leaving the Mini Scope, and Episode Three would be the start of the attack on our alien world.

In my mind, I remembered the story being a straight split down the middle – with the first half seeing the Doctor and Jo inside the Scope, while the latter half saw them outside it, stopping the attacking Drashigs. I’d completely forgotten that the crew of the SS Bernice were present right to the end of the tale, or that the attack on the city was so… well…

I’ve been very fond of Carnival of Monsters this far. There’s a lot to love. That said, the ending does come as a bit of a let down. We’ve spent so long building up the plan to let the Drashigs loose on the city and use this as a way to engineer an overthrow of political regime that when it comes and it lasts about three minutes… Oh maybe I’m just being grumpy. The Drashigs still look fantastic here – though more like puppets than at any other point of the story – and there’s some really great CSO work on display again as they mill around the city.

It also provides an opportunity for Vorg to redeem himself somewhat, even though he’s not an out-and-out villain. You almost get the impression that in the modern series, you’d have him popping up from time to time as something of a lovable rogue. There was something of a return for the character – or at least the concept of the character – in the form of his son, Vorgenson, popping up in the Doctor Who Live arena tour a few years ago, where the concept of the Mini Scope provided a great excuse for the stage to be invaded by a parade of monsters.

For me, though, the biggest success of this story is growing to love Robert Holmes. I’ve been fond of him since his first appearance in this marathon (my average ratings for his stories have been generally quite high - 7 for The Krotons, 8 for Spearhead From Space, even Terror of the Autons came in a smidge above 'average' at 5.25. The only one that let the side down a little was The Space Pirates with 4.66), but this is the first time that I’ve really felt as though I understand all of the things people love about Holmes’ writing.

I’ve also started to see what people mean when they say that Vorg and Shirna are a good stand in for the Doctor and his companion – there’s a moment here where he gets Shirna to put her finger on an exposed metal part of the Doctor’s machine to check if it’s the ‘live’ part. It’s a scene that I could imagine playing out with the Second Doctor and Jamie, or even the Third Doctor and Jo. It’s good to see this kind of dynamic cropping in, though it just reinforces my desire to see this pair return again!

 Day 355: Carnival of Monsters, Episode Three

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

Day 355: Carnival of Monsters, Episode Three

Dear diary,

It’s always the sign of a good episode if you reach the cliffhanger and you’re surprised that 23-and-a-half minutes are up. It usually signals that I’ve been so caught up in the events on screen and completely absorbed myself in the world. I think a lot of the cause for this really does need to be laid at the door of Robert Holmes.

I’ve said before that I can see with each passing Holmes script just why he’s considered to be such a fantastic writer of Doctor Who. Both Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat have sung his praises before now, and back in the day Terrance Dicks and Eric Sawad were both huge advocates of the man. And yet, I’ve never really understood it. His stories have always been quite good, but they’ve always felt like just A. N. Other episode of Who.

It’s another example of why watching through the series in order is such a fantastic way to experience the programme. You can chart the evolution of his writing from the early scripts in Season Six through to now, and you can see his trademark styles developing. One of the things people always seem to bring up is the ‘Robert Holmes Double Act’, and it’s well in evidence here. You’ve obviously got Vorg and Shirna playing nicely off each other – I’ve seen it said more than once that they’re a great metaphor for the Doctor and his companion, but I’m not sure that I completely agree with that – and our group of aliens plotting to overthrow the government and sharing a similar chemistry.

We’ve also got a great selection of writing for the Doctor and Jo in this story. More and more I’ve been drawing attention to the way that the pair interact, and you really do get the sense that this is a team who’ve been together for some time – and they have! By this point, Jo has been the Doctor’s regular companion for a couple of years. She seems to attract the best lines, too. Yesterday was another personal favourite, after the heat is ramped up during the attack on the Scope and the Doctor asks her to try getting up. ‘I can’t,’ she responds, ‘I’m only half cooked!’

Today their friendship is shown best while they’re hiding once more on the ship. Jo’s leg being spotted, she indicates to the Doctor that he should keep quiet and stay behind. It’s quite simple hand gestures – it wouldn’t take a genius in mime to figure out what she’s saying to him – but it conveys how close they’ve become. I’m so pleased, because I was worried I may not warm to Jo (Terror of the Autons wasn’t the most auspicious start for her), but as we approach the end of her adventures, I’m becoming very aware of how much I’m going to miss her personality.

Another thing that’s quite interesting – coming to this story so soon after watching The Enemy of the World - is Barry Letts’ direction. Just as with his use of back projection in that tale, we’re seeing him go all out with the use of special effects and various technology in this story. I’ve been tracking the ups-and-downs of his CSO use for a little while (today is as much a mixed bag as any other episode: the miniature Doctor staggering from the Scope during the cliff-hanger looks great, but Vorg’s hand holding back the Drashigs is less effective), but we’re really seeing the benefit of the model work in this tale.

To put it bluntly – the Drashigs look bloody stunning. They really are a bit of a silly design when you stop to think about them (the eyes especially make them look a bit ‘cuter’ than I think was intended), but they look so effective throughout this episode. The way one crawls off through the marshes (one of the best uses of CSO – not just in this story but in this era of the programme) is flawless, and the shots of them bursting through the walls of the Scope and later the ship are just as brilliant. There’s a special feature on the revised release of this story which shows some of the behind-the-scenes work with the puppets and it’s surprising that they come across so well – several of the unused takes are a lot less effective! I’m also very fond of the way that we get close ups of the creatures’ bodies as they move – the contracting bodies are so reminiscent of a caterpillar and an effective way of showing us their travels without the need to overlay them into another shot.

It’s becoming something of a tradition with the Pertwee stories of late, but I’m going to have to draw attention to the fantastic explosions in the marsh scenes, too. The effects team in this era really know what they’re doing! It also marks another step in the evolution of the Sonic Screwdriver – we saw the Doctor using it to detonate landmines in The Sea Devils, but here it’s used to ignite the marsh gasses, and adds another function to its growing list. We’re starting to really blur the lines now, between what the Sonic was originally designed for, and what we know it as from the latter half of the 1970s and beyond.

One last thing, which comes as a nice result of watching these stories in order. The Doctor tells Jo that he had ‘a great deal to do’ with getting the Mini Scopes banned as they were an insult to sentient life. He explains that while the Time Lords don’t interfere as a rule, he kicked up so much of a fuss that they gave in and took action. They muse that the machines were called in and destroyed – but that this one must have slipped through the net. It’s incredibly tempting to think that even though his exile has been lifted and the Time Lords have set him free, they may have still steered him in this direction to sort out this one last rogue machine…

Day 354: Carnival of Monsters, Episode Two

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

Day 354: Carnival of Monsters, Episode Two

Dear diary,

I can remember when I first bought Carnival of Monsters on DVD. When I first started collecting the range, instead of picking up the most recent release to keep up-to-date, I’d venture into the BBC Shop and choose one at random from the shelf, based mainly on how good the cover looked. This story was – I think – the only time that I’d ever gone out with a story specifically in mind to buy. I knew from an advert in the back of a Doctor Who Magazine that it was available, and pictures of Vorg and a Drashig in a book (Possibly ‘The Legend’?) looked very much appealing.

Since then, I’ve seen the story a few times – probably more than any other Pertwee adventure – and yet I can’t remember what happens. I was watching Episode One yesterday remembering that they end up wandering around inside the Min-Scope (more on that in a minute) and then were attacked by Drashigs but that’s about as far as my memory goes. I’m pretty sure that the creatures end up breaking out of the machine and going on a bit of a rampage around the main square of this alien planet, but I’m a bit worried that it won’t fill two whole episodes! It’s strange that even stories I really enjoy from this era and I know I’ve seen more than once can still end up being black spots in my Doctor Who knowledge.

There’s no wonder that I’ve seen it so many times, though, because there’s a lot to love in here, isn’t there? Yesterday, I praised the setting of the ship and just how well the Third Doctor fits into it. Today I’m captivated by the insides of the Mini-Scope. I can remember the design of this set being something of a fascination for me when I first saw the story, and it’s easy to see why. The whole thing has a scale that really impresses and the style of it is quite unlike anything else that the programme ever gives us. There’s part of me that wants to say it looks a bit like the kind of set I could imagine the 1960s giving us… but I’m not sure that’s really true. The same can be said for the latter half of the 1970s – it wouldn’t fit there, either.

And it’s strange how well this incarnation of the Doctor fits in here, too. It sounds silly, but I think it’s simply because he’s wearing a colourful jacket and it blends him in nicely with the surroundings. I’ve spent so long thinking of the Third Doctor as so Earth-based and establishment, it’s nice to see him somewhere a little out of his comfort zone… but where he still feels very much at home. By that same token, I’m interested to see him squaring up to the aliens later in the story (I’ve another half-memory of the Doctor breaking out of the scope and growing to normal size, complete with trademark ‘Jon Pertwee Knee Bend’), because I’m imagining a dynamic similar to the one he has with the superiors at UNIT.

But it’s not the sets that are impressing me the most with this one – it’s the monsters. A few years ago, when Character Options released a three-pack of Third Doctor monsters, one of the creatures included was a plastic Drashig. Not only that, it served as a glove puppet. I always thought it was a slightly odd choice of toy for them to produce, because I’d never thought of the Drashigs as being a particularly well-known or well-loved monster. Actually, they’re brilliant! They look fantastic when they’re bursting up out of the marshes, and the ‘roar’ is genuinely scary. I’m hoping that the effect holds out through the rest of the story, because I’m really impressed!

 a

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

Day 353: Carnival of Monsters, Episode One

Dear diary,

It really does feel like a culture shock suddenly coming back to the Pertwee era after a couple of weeks in black and white. And it’s just the right time to come back – because we’re returning more to the style of those 1960s stories, with the Doctor and his companion arrive at some new destination in the TARDIS and set off to explore.

I’m surprised that it feels so odd watching the ship arrive in the cargo hold of the SS Bernice, because the last few seasons have been far less ‘UNIT orientated’ than I’d expected, and the Third Doctor being off-Earth isn’t as alien a-concept as I’d imagined. Still, there’s something exciting about seeing the familiar shape of the blue box materialise; it’s still rare for this point in the programme’s run.

As is a trip into history! We visited Atlantis in the closing few episodes of the last season, but the Third Doctor hasn’t really spent a lot of time on pre-1970s (or 80’s, take your pick) Earth yet. I’m glad he’s ended up where he has, though, because it looks very nice. The Third Doctor really suits this kind of 1920s, upper-class lifestyle, and it’s great to see him brushing up against it. Extra points for him almost blowing Jo’s cover story by refuting the fact that he’s not travelled very much!

I’m also really rather liking the script we’re being given. More and more, I’m understanding why people hold up Robert Holmes as one of the truly great Doctor Who writers. Here, I’m enjoying the way he’s sending up the programme itself in the dialogue – ‘Roll up! Roll Up! See the monster show!’ – and in amusing little scenes like Jo’s over-reaction that there’s something alive in the cargo hold with them… only to discover that it’s a cage of chickens. I love it when Doctor Who can make me laugh out loud, and this was a brilliant example.

Elsewhere… I’m a bit up-and-down with my reaction to this episode. My first note of the day was to comment on the CSO fringing early on (where it seems to have been used simply to add in a sky behind some character’s heads), but then the rest of my page comments on how good the CSO effects for today are. They’re not flawless (The boat on the open waves doesn’t quite work, but it’s close enough to not matter so much…), but shots of the dinosaur seen through an open doorway are very well realised.

Similarly, I’ve made lots of notes about the design of our latest alien culture, commenting that the style has been nicely developed to tie a thread through the sets and the costumes, and making it feel like a very real world. The set itself is quite interesting, and there’s lots of shots that really make the most of it. But then I switch tone and complain that the masks and the make up are a bit below-par in places.

The two notes that I enjoy the most, though, are both related to loose story arcs. There's the Sonic Screwdriver arc, which I've been following for much of the year, obviously. Here, we're told that the Sonic only works on 'electronic locks' (something that's been alluded to in the modern series, too: most recently being a fun point in The Day of the Doctor), and when the Doctor tries to open up the mysterious hatch in the ship's floor, he suggests that they need a 'magnetic core extractor', and it's happy to have one in the TARDIS *.

But we also see the first mention of 'Metebilis III', which the Doctor describes as 'the famous blue planet'. I've never really thought of there being an arc as such with this - although I'm aware that he'll make a quick recce of the world before this season is out - but it's great to see it being seeded in this early, though I'm sure it wasn't intended as foreshadowing of the Doctor's demise at the time! I've seen lots of talk recently - especially given Matt Smith's final episode - of the way in which the modern series foreshadows the departure of the Doctor long before it happens, but it's not a new idea! It's been going on since at least 1973…

*As a side note, wouldn't it have made the Daleks' invasion of Earth much easier if they'd thought to bring an industrial, planet-sized version of this technology? That's why they're always getting beaten by the Doctor - they just don't think things through…

 a

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

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

Dear diary,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 a

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

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

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

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

So! With apologies for the delay…

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

Dear diary,

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

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

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

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

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

 a

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

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

Dear diary,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 a

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

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

Dear diary,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 a

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

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

Dear diary,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 a

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

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

Dear diary,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 a

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

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

Dear diary,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 a

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

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

Dear diary,

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

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

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

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

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

 a

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

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

Dear diary,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 a

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

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

Dear diary,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Day 342: The Enemy of the World, Episode Two

Dear diary,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dear diary,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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