Manufacturer: BBC Worldwide Consumer Products

Manufacturer: BBC Worldwide Consumer Products

Written By: Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis, Malcolm Hulke and Terrance Dicks, Robert Sloman, Christopher H. Bidmead, Robert Holmes, Pip and Jane Baker, Matthew Jacobs, Russell T. Davies

RRP: £61.27

Release Date: 24th June 2013

Reviewed By: Doctor Who Online

Review Posted: 18th July 2013

“The Time Lords have this little trick. It’s sort of a way of cheating death. Except, it means I’m gonna change.” - The Ninth Doctor, The Parting Of The Ways

This beautifully-packaged and limited edition coffee table book-styled collectors’ album is every Doctor Who fan’s dream possession.

Individually numbered and boasting six DVDs with over 1000 minutes of Doctor Who footage, it brings together every Doctor’s regeneration episode: from the first Doctor, exhausted from battling the Cyberman, to Jon Pertwee’s Third Doctor suffering from radiation unleashed by the Great One (a giant spider); and from the spectacular transformation of the Ninth Doctor to David Tennant’s emotional farewell as the Tenth.

The album is adorned with superb photography from across the era and features detailed and informative accounts of every regeneration. And if that wasn’t enough, new to DVD is The Tenth Planet featuring the Doctor’s first regeneration – beautifully restored with the missing fourth episode now brought to life with stunning animation. Utilising the original soundtrack, off-screen photographs and a short surviving sequence of the Doctor’s regeneration the episode has been now reconstructed in animated form, incorporating the restored version of the surviving sequence.

* * *
As a special release to celebrate Doctor Who’s 50th anniversary, the Regeneration Box-set may seem something of an odd choice. While it highlights the process which has allowed the show to survive for all this time, it also means that the Doctor’s aren’t all given a fair crack of the whip. Patrick Troughton’s Second Doctor bows out at the end of the 10-part epic The War Games, while Colin Baker and the Sixth Doctor are relegated to just two short scenes - hardly the best example of his Doctor - and Matt Smith only gets the final few minutes of The End of Time while we wait for his impending departure from the programme. 

Six of the nine stories presented here (The War Games, Planet Of The Spiders, Logopolis, The Caves of Androzani, Time and the Rani, and The TV Movie) have previously seen release as stand-alone DVDs, each packed with a bumper crop of special features, all of which have been removed for this release, allowing the stories to be spread across fewer discs. Bad Wolf / The Parting Of The Ways and The End of Time have also seen prior release in a couple of different forms.  

The versions of these stories used for the set are the same as those seen in their last DVD release, meaning that The Caves of Androzani and The TV Movie are both the higher-quality prints previously seen as part of the Revisitations box sets, as opposed to their earlier release.

For many fans whose interest has been raised by this release, though, it’s not those later regenerations that they’re keen to see again - it’s the very first one, in the form of The Tenth Planet, available here for the first time on DVD, complete with animated Episode Four, several months before it’s standalone release in November. The restoration of the three surviving episodes is up to the high standard that we’ve come to expect from the Restoration Team’s work, presenting the story in the best quality that could be hoped for.  

 Episode Four, newly animated to complete the story, builds on the success of the team’s earlier efforts on The Reign of Terror, and rectifies some of the complaints that the earlier release generated. Here, the shots chosen are far closer in style to the surviving episodes, and while there is still the occasional extreme close up of a character, it’s a device used far less on this occasion. The atmosphere of the story holds firm throughout this new version, and it’s a great way to experience this story as close to ‘complete’ as possible. You can see some examples from the animation in the sidebar to the right. 

With all nine stories spread across just six discs, there’s some unusual choices of how to split them, meaning that picture quality on the stories can be compromised in some instances. Disc One is home to the entirety of The Tenth Planet, alongside the first half of The War Games, with that story’s remaining episodes given Disc Two all to themselves. Planet of the Spiders occupies Disc Three while Disc Four holds Logopolis and The Caves of Androzani. Time and the Rani sits alongside The TV Movie for Disc Five, with the two new series stories - Bad Wolf / The Parting of the Ways and The End of Time filling up Disc Six. 

The discs are housed in a gorgeous presentation book, giving each of the Doctors their own double page spread, alongside information about both that specific incarnation and the story that represents them in the set. The book really is a work of art, and certainly one of the nicest pieces of 50th anniversary merchandise produced this year. It will no doubt take pride of place on many fan’s shelves before November hits. You can see some examples of pages for the First, Fourth, and Ninth Doctors throughout this review.

In all, the Regeneration Box-set achieves its aims - it provides a lovely collectable (each set is a numbered limited edition), and serves as a great introduction to the older Doctors on DVD. While many fans of the series are likely already own at least some of the stories contained within, this set would make a brilliant gift for a casual fan, or someone looking to take their first steps into the classic series.

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

Day 198: The Enemy of the World, Episode Six

Dear diary,

It's nice to see that there are themes in this episode which tie together nicely with things from way back at the beginning of the story. I've praised on a couple of occasions that the Doctor doesn't simply side against Salamander because he doesn't have all the facts needed to make a decision as to who is good and who is evil - and this comes back to haunt us now with the revelation that Kent was part of the plan to take these scientists and shut them all underground in the first place.

The Doctor claims to have known all along that what kent really wanted wasn't justice, but power (and perhaps that's why he's been so keen to talk of the differences between the two sides) but I have to admit that I didn't see it coming. Maybe it's because I've grown used to the way the series works at this point (the humans are the good guys, while we're supposed to fear/oppose the Daleks/Cyberemn/Yeti), that I didn't think they'd go in for something as intricate as we've seen in this story?

It's lovely, though, because it adds a whole other layer to the tale. I have to admit that I've not enjoyed it quite as much as my friend Graham did (though I can see why he likes it so much), but it's certainly on my list to listen to again once I've finished The 50 Year Diary. Knowing what's coming in the latter half of the tale may bring out elements of the beginning that were lost on me first time around - it's a very clever story, and certainly my favourite non-Power of the Daleks story from Whitaker.

I'm so very glad to see that Salamander's destruction is dealt with in such an interesting way - yesterday I commented that it wouldn't be right for the story to see him simply being assassinated, and we get something very different to the norm here. I twigged what was happening the second that the narration described 'the Doctor, stepping out onto the beach, looking worse for wear', and loved Salamander's comment that the Doctor had done such a good job impersonating him, that he wanted to repay the favour.

There's a single tele snap which shows Troughton on screen twice - in both roles - and it looks fantastic. So well done, and it's bizarre how much the two characters can look at once so identical and so different. It's a real shame that the third episode is the only one which we can still watch from this story, as it doesn't give the best first impression of Barry Letts' in the series - whereas tele snaps of the other areas in this tale really make his work look fantastic. I know we get some more from him during his time as producer in the 1970s, so this is a nice introduction in many ways.

We also get Innes Lloyd going out from the producer role on a high. The Enemy of the World isn't his best story by any account, but it's very much an example of him turning in something pretty darn brilliant. My highest rated story of this marathon so far (The Tomb of the Cybermen) is typically the only one not to be produced by Lloyd since The Celestial Toymaker (though he did commission it), and my lowest rated story (The Highlanders) also came from his tenure, but on the whole, my average score for his era has been higher than that of his two predecessors in the role.

People always talk about Verity Lambert as being the 1960s Doctor Who producer - she was the one who oversaw the beginnings of the programme, after all, casting Hartnell (along with all those early companions) and getting things off to a pretty darn brilliant start, but for me it's Innes Lloyd who strikes a bigger chord. He's responsible for bringing in the changeover from one actor to another in the part of the Doctor (John Wiles had planned something different for The Celestial Toymaker, before passing it over to Lloyd, but his version would have been very difficult to do again and again over the following fifty years), the casting of Patrick Troughton, and the development of the Doctor into the character that we all know and love, all this time later. Many of the actors who've played the part since (including Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, and most recently Matt Smith) have pointed to the Patrick Troughton mould of the Doctor as what they had in mind when finding their own feet in the series - and Lloyd has to be allowed to take some credit for that.

Verity Lambert may have been the producer who introduced the Daleks into the series, but it's Innes Lloyd who oversees them leaving the programme (at least temporarily), and filling that void with a succession of other creatures. All this time later, the Cybermen are still thought of as one of the programme's biggest monsters, and the Ice Warriors don't fall all that far behind, either. The Yeti, considering that they only act as a big monster for two stories in Season Five, are also very fondly remembered.

There's a real danger that I'm simply going to end up writing something of a love letter to the Lloyd era of the programme, here, but it's not often that I've seen people really praise the man. Sure, plenty of his stories get flagged up as being fan favourites, but I don't think I've ever really seen anyone discussing him, so I'd like to raise a big glass to him at the programme's 50th anniversary and say 'thank you'. Thank you for steering the show so brilliantly over the course of two hugely important years. Thank you for ensuring its long-term survival. Thank you for Patrick Troughton - the time I've spent with the Second Doctor so far has proven to me that he's more than a valid choice of 'favourite Doctor'. But most of all? Thank you for all the adventures.

7/10  

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

Day 197: The Enemy of the World, Episode Five

Dear diary,

'Don't challenge me, Harriet Jones!', the Tenth Doctor spits at the Prime Minister in The Christmas Invasion, following her destruction of the fleeing Syxorax ship. 'I could bring down your government with a single word!' As it happens, it took his six words to ensure Harriet Jones' downfall, but its one of those stunning moments, those huge times when the Doctor proves why he doesn't need to carry weapons - the Doctor's skill is in using words to save the day.

Later in the Tenth Doctor's tenure, he is mocked by Davros for the way that he takes people and turns them into his weapons, and I think that The Enemy of the World is possibly the first time that we've actually seen this version of the Doctor in action. Our hero hasn't really done anything much in this story - he frolicked about in the ocean a bit in Episode One, before impersonating Slamander to get them out of a tight spot. Since then, he's mostly been swept along with the tide of the story, being forced into continuing his impersonation for the greater good.

I've praised the way that the Doctor in this story has stood up and questioned the way that he should just be expected to turn up and identify the differing sides of 'good' and 'evil' with no evidence, and now that he's gotten some he's started to operate in that way that - these days - we'd consider so very 'Doctor'. This entire episode is about people starting to question Salamander. We're seeing it out on the surface, with Bruce slowly coming round to the rebel way of thinking - the Doctor is pleased to find enough doubt in the man's mind to keep questioning his leader. There's also dissent in the ranks below ground, with Swan actively forcing Salamander to take him to the surface after he's discovered evidence of his own against this man he's trusted.

It's lovely to see these little parallels between two Doctors travelling 40 years apart, and it doesn't stop at the Doctor simply using words and questions to try and save the day: there's a lovely moment in Episode Four, when the Doctor is being pressured to pose as his double, and get close enough to kill the man. The Doctor announces that he'll expose Salamander, ruin him and have him arrested - but he refuses to be his executioner. A real line is drawn under this point today, when the Doctor takes a gun and hands it back to their captor. The Doctor doesn't need a weapon like this, and he thinks so little of him that he has no quibble about giving one away to a supposed enemy.

Today has given me an answer to one of my questions from yesterday's episode - yes, Salamander is the 'power behind the throne' for two of the zones, and simply looking to expand. I'm still somewhat in the dark, though, as to his exact reasons for keeping a group of people locked away underground. During his argument with Swan, he announces that he wants these people to inherit the Earth, but it's difficult to tell if this is just bluster and excuses to try and get out of the tricky situation he's found himself in.

What we do get confirmed is that these people under the ground are the source of Salamander's control over the volcano from Episode Two (and we also get told that there have been earthquakes caused at his command, too). I'm still not sure on the exact process, but I'm pleased to see that there's at least another chance that this technology might yet be adapted into that seen in The Moonbase - it's all tying together!

With only one episode to go, I'm not sure what I want to happen with Salamander. I'm determined that I don't want him simply assassinated - while that may be a fitting end to a story revolving around a dictator, it feels like it goes against the grain of the message here about weapons not being as black-and-white as you might think. I'm hoping we'll get a few more loose ends tied up as well, as I really want to love this story!

a 

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

Day 196: The Enemy of the World, Episode Four

Dear diary,

One of the things that I really enjoy about listening to these soundtracks, as opposed to watching reckons or anything like that, is that all the stories are directed in whichever way my brain chooses. The first episode of The Enemy of the World was all fast cutting and action packed, like a modern summer blockbuster. Today's has swung in a completely different direction - it's all gone very film noir in my head, with hints of German expressionism.

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 forges 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. It really helped to draw me right in, in a way that only scenes in The Macra Terror came close to doing. Listening to the soundtrack as I walked across a sunny park could have helped to dissipate the tension somewhat, but all of that seemed to just melt away, and I was caught up in Salamander's world.

However, I'm starting to feel a bit lost with it all. The first couple of episodes seemed to imply that this world was made up of several different zones, all with their own leader, and that Salamander was simply an individual, looking to seize control of the world. Now, though, it's all very much being played as Salamander already being in control of the entire planet, pulling the strings from behind the scenes.

He has leaders killed and swapped for others at his own whim, everyone fears his wrath and they all seem to approach him for advice. Am I to assume that he only controls the Central European Zone, and the Australasia Zone? These are the only two that we've seen so far - is he simply looking to expand his empire to cover all the other zones? (Actually, while I'm at it, how many 'zones' do we think there are? I'd imagine there must be a 'Western European Zone' and a 'North American Zone'… Is there a 'Soviet Zone'?)

It was while I was busy musing about all this, and trying to pin-point exactly who Salamander is supposed to be that we get another shock reveal - he's hailed as the saviour of another group of people, who are all trapped deep underground, living in fear of a devastating nuclear war, which Salamander tells them is still raging up on the surface of the planet! Talk about a sudden twist! Am I to assume that there was a war (or at least a strong possibility of a war, like the Cold War at its height)? Salamander is clearly keeping these people locked away for some reason (and he refuses to take them to the surface, where they would discover the truth), so this spins the story off in an interesting new direction for the last third.

a 

a  a

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

Day 195: The Enemy of the World, Episode Three

Dear diary,

Excitingly, not only does today’s episode survive in the archives, but it’s also the first time that Doctor Who has been broadcast in High Definition!

Oh, all right then. It’s not technically HD. This is, however, the first time that the series was made and broadcast as a 625-line picture (or 576i by today’s standard - feel that definition!). It sounds like quite a small thing, but it is a big increase on the 405-line image that has been the standard of the series (and, indeed, all BBC transmissions to this point). The switchover comes as part of a move towards something far bigger, though – bringing colour to BBC1. We’re still a little way off from that change, but it’s nice to see the journey beginning.

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?

I’m not being entirely fair, here. The episode does feature the images of volcanoes erupting again, but the majority of this episode is far more low-key and scaled back than the last two have been. It’s a pity in many ways, because I’ve been looking forward to seeing some of this story – the telesnaps for the last couple of days have made things look very unique, and I was keen to see Barry Letts’ directorial style in action.

It’s not a complete disaster, though, because having an episode that’s far more intimate than the last few means that we get another chance to really appreciate the performances of both our regulars and the guest cast. Perhaps the greatest guest performance has to be Patrick Troughton’s turn as Salamander. I know he’s not really a ‘guest’ as such, but he is giving a very different performance here, and as with Hartnell in The Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve, it’s pretty easy to forget that you’re watching the same chap that you’ve known over the last however-many stories.

There’s a lovely moment at the start of Episode Two, after The Doctor has pretended to be Salamander, and he reverts back to the man we love. He gives a little cough after Bruce has left the room, and although it’s a small thing, it really does feel so much like the Doctor, it instantly reminds you who we’re really watching. His turn as Salamander really is a brilliant one, and the character’s nasty side just keeps oozing out. Today we get the lovely moment when he kills one of his top men for failing in his mission. Having reassured the man that there will be other ways to complete the task, he watches as he falls dead to the ground, and dryly issues a final sentence to him; ‘One chance, my friend. I said one chance…’

It’s a good episode for him in character as the Doctor, too, and we get another of those lines that’s very well known among fans – ‘Sad, really, isn't it? People spend all their time making nice things and then other people come along and break them.’ It’s a lovely line, and it works nicely in context. It also serves to nicely highlight the differences between his two performances, so it’s nice to see him in action as both for one episode, at least.

The one thing that I did have to wonder about was the Doctor’s slight disbelief that Salamander could have found a way to harness the ‘natural forces’ of the Earth and cause the volcano to erupt on cue. He describes it as ‘a little difficult to believe, but not impossible’. Wouldn’t it essentially be the same technology used in the Gravitron machine from last season? Maybe the Doctor’s just a little skeptical that Salamander could have developed a way of doing this in the era we’re currently visiting? The About Time books place The Enemy of the World as being somewhere around 2030, which would work nicely with The Moonbase coming about forty years later. I don’t know where this is all going (I’m not even entirely sure that Salamander is able to control things like the volcanoes, but the implication certainly seems to be so, and I don’t think I’d put anything past him. Brujo), but I’m hoping the end of the story leaves it open as a possibility that the Moonbase technology can be developed from here – it ties things together nicely.

a  a

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

Day 194: The Enemy of the World, Episode Two

Dear diary,

There's a lovely line early on in this episode which, to some extent, sums up why I think I'm enjoying it. Asked to help in the fight against Salamander, the Doctor muses that there are two very clear sides, but goes on to wonder which one is the force for good, and which is the force for evil. He then further questions wether it's his place to get involved in events.

I think I'm loving the fact that things aren't quite so black-and-white in this tale as they have been lately. This is the first time we've had a story without a real, definable 'monster' since The Underwater Menace, and even that had fish people bobbing about. Much as I'm loving the series at this stage, and enjoying the parade of Yeti (Jetty? No, Yeti.), Cybermen, Ice Warriors, and Daleks, it is nice to have a story a bit like this, and it can't help but put me in mind somewhat of the Hartnell era of the programme - where enemies could be just as human as you or I.

There's obvious parallels to be made with The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve, what with our lead actor inhabiting two roles for this story, and once again it works surprisingly well. There came a point toward the end of today's episode where 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. Quite a lot of scorn can be poured onto the accent being used here (Indeed, while Graham loves this story above all others, he admitted that he enjoyed it a lot more once he'd gotten past the voice), but I really enjoy it! I've spent today quoting 'Allo Bruce! What are you doing here, eh?' at Ellie every time she enters the room. It hasn't gone down well.

It's nice to see that the voice being somewhat comical doesn't take away from the character though. During The Massacre I praised the way that such a cruel character being played by the man we usually associate with safety in the programme really helped to make him stand out as a bad guy, and the same is true here. As is typical of late, it's the brilliant dialogue that is key, really helping to sell the threat that Salamander poses - we get plenty of brief references to the way that he has control over people (there's a lovely moment when he's referred to as a sorcerer, but it's done via the Mexican word. It's not until some scenes later that we find out the true meaning of it, and from the man himself), and the fact that he always gets what he wants. I also have to praise the line that tells us Salamander talks to many people. But some, only once. It's beautifully crafted, and really helps to amp up the fact that we should fear this double of our usually comical Doctor.

It makes his actions at the end of the tale, in which he plots to replace one of his people with another and explains that there will be a 'suspicious death' all the more powerful. There's even suggestions that Salamander himself is responsible for the volcanic eruption here (which would tie in nicely with the description of 'sorcerer', though I'm sure there's a non-magic explanation on the way). He's an arch-manipulator, and by the time the closing credits kick in, we're not left in any doubt as to which is the side of good, and which is the side the Doctor and his friends need to be fighting against.

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

Day 193: The Enemy of the World, Episode One

Dear diary,

Shortly before Christmas of last year, my friend Graham embarked on a similar quest to the one that I’m now on – watching all of Doctor Who in order. Whereas I’m doing it at a real snail’s pace of one episode a day, Graham went for the opposite way of doing things, and watched them all as quickly as he possibly could. There was a point where he went through the entirety of Leela’s stay in the TARDIS and the Key to Time in the space of about three days. That’ll take me months to go through. Months!

It did, however, lead to a fun situation where every time I saw Graham, I’d get to ask which story he was up to, and then quiz him for his thoughts (though a fan of the series, there were large chunks he’d not seen before the marathon). One day in particular we got together and before I could even ask what story he was watching, he announced that he’d got a new favourite tale. I knew he’d been on something mid-Season-Four when we’d last spoke, so I went for the obvious one: The Tomb of the Cybermen. Nope, that was good, but it wasn’t it. Fair enough. Evil of the Daleks? Another no. Web of Fear? Blank looks every time. No, Graham explained, his new favourite story was The Enemy of the World.

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. It’s that one story from the Fifth Season where they don’t do ‘Base Under Siege’, and Troughton plays a Mexican bad guy. That’s pretty much all I could tell you. The sad fact is that The Enemy of the World is one of those stories that people just forget about. Even now, it’s sat at about number 188 in our poll – not bad (and just out of the bottom 50), but not really all that great, either.

Incidentally, I checked with Graham again this week – he’s finished the marathon now, including Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures - and The Enemy of the World is still his favourite story. He puts part of the success down to the fact that it’s very different to what came around it, and part down to the fact that they get Jamie into a tight black outfit.

So I didn’t really know what to make of this one. Graham’s absolute love for it seemed to be a good sign, while fandom’s complete apathy towards it didn’t bode all that well. Thankfully, I’ve found myself agreeing far more with Graham than with fandom (he’ll be glad to hear that – I think he’s been on tenterhooks waiting to see what I thought), I absolutely loved today’s episode.

It probably doesn’t hurt that we’ve arrived in some slightly sunnier climes: there’s a moment when the Doctor jokes that he and his companions have been away for a while suggesting that they’ve been ‘on ice’. Terribly apt, considering our last sixteen episodes have all taken place in or around very cold places! The soundtrack opens with us being told of the TARDIS’ arrival on a beach, amongst ‘golden, sun-kissed sand dunes’. How nice! Listening to it as I walked to the shops on a nice sunny afternoon probably helped a little, too.

We get a nice few minutes of the Doctor and his friends playing about on the beach (it’s in his suggestion that Jamie should go look for some buckets and spades that you can really see where Matt Smith has taken his inspiration from this incarnation – there’s a real child-like glee to being here), but then it’s right down to business. By the time we hit the eight minute mark, our TARDIS team has been chased down the beach by hovercraft-driving gunmen, and spirited off over the ocean in a helicopter! By the time that they’d reached Astrid’s house and were again set upon by gunmen, I was fairly sure that we’d be somewhere around the end of the episode… but there’s still another ten minutes to go! You certainly can’t accuse this episode of padding things out, and I’m not sure I can remember the last time that we had such an action packed twenty-five minutes in the series.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this episode also marks the first involvement that Barry Letts has with Doctor Who, coming in as director for the story. It’s quite fitting that his first instalment to the series involves an action-packed chase with hovercrafts and helicopters (both of which will become staples in the series under Letts’ producership, but which make their first appearances here). 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 telesnaps make the scene look just as epic as I’d hoped. My only complaint, I think, is that the beach doesn’t look quite as lovely and sunny as described.

You’ll probably have picked up by now on the fact that I’m babbling a bit. It tends to happen when I’ve really enjoyed a story and my notes become full of nice things to say. I’ve not even touched on the story (I’m sure there’ll be plenty of time to do that in the next few days) or the guest characters, but I run the risk of just babbling on for the rest of the entry in praise of things.

It’s led to something of a deliberation over what I’d be rating this episode. My first thought, immediately after the episode ended was a solid ‘9/10’, but then I started thinking: there was nothing I could fault with the episode, and I had really loved it. Surely that deserved top marks? The problem I had was that it took so long for me to give a perfect score, and this would be the third in the space of a month. You know what, though? I’ve enjoyed Innes Lloyd’s era so much, that it’s the perfect way to start of his final story as producer, and since I really can’t fault this one…

a 

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

Day 192: The Ice Warriors, Episode Six

Dear diary,

Long-term readers of The 50 Year Diary will know that I like to keep a track on the Doctor's development of the Sonic Screwdriver. Every now and then, you get a moment in a story which - with hindsight - could be leading the the creation of our favourite Time Lord get-out tool. We've seen the Doctor using sound waves to open locks before now via his recorder, but today is the moment that I think he starts putting two and two together, and gets to work on the sonic.

There's a lovely moment when the Doctor is trying to disrupt the Ice Warrior's weapon so that he can turn it on them. Sat on the floor, coated in cables, the Doctor tries to explain his plan to Victoria - 'The gun seems to work on the basis that sound waves produce reverbs in the objects in their path'. Obviously, this is a pretty good description of what the Sonic Screwdriver does at its most basic level (I'm still thinking of it more as a handy lock-picking device than the all-purpose tool we get in the more recent adventures), and I'd not be surprised if it's thinking about the Ice Warrior's weapon that starts the Doctor really thinking about creating his trusty friend.

In A Christmas Carol, the Doctor tells Kazran that he stayed in his bedroom inventing a new type of screwdriver, and we know from the Series Six DVDs that the Doctor has a number of adventures while his companions are sleeping. I'd not be surprised if he's going to be spending the next few nights shut in his TARDIS bedroom developing said screwdriver. I've not seen Fury From the Deep (where we'll be seeing the device for the first time), but I'm hoping that it's going to tie in nicely.

Anyway! Episode Six provides me with one last chance to praise how heartless these Ice Warrior chaps can be. My notes are full of scribbles about the way their acting ('surrender, or I will blow up your base') and the way they interact with the 'good guys' in the story. 'You'll live to regret this', one is told, to which he replies, coldly, 'At least I will live to regret it'. Perhaps my favourite moment has to be Vaaga establishing which members of the base's crew he needs to keep around to successfully free his ship. 'What are your qualifications for existence?' he asks Clent. I might adopt that question for people I come into contact with!

I've also not really mentioned the simply fantastic guest performances that we've had across these last six episodes. I did initially worry that I'd not be able to look at Perter Sallis in the part of Penley without picturing Wallace and Gromit (in the event, though there's the occasional line where Wallace's tones are instantly recognisable, I found myself thinking much more of Last of the Summer Wine), but he turns in a brilliant appearance. Equally, Peter Barkworth gives us one of the programme's finest performances, and it's especially evident here in the final moments of the episode.

One other thing that I've not mentioned, but I've been meaning to for a while, if the relationship between Jamie and Victoria. We all know that Jamie is completely smitten for her (indeed, he sets off to rescue her from fates unknown in The Evil of the Daleks having only seen one picture of her that he thinks is beautiful), but I'm wondering now… does Victoria have a romantic soft-spot for the highlander, too?

'There is a vague risk that it will kill everybody. Clent and Penley included…' the Doctor admits to her as he prepares the sonic weapon for its first attack. 'AND JAMIE?!?' Victoria replies (in a moment that put me instantly in mind of Watling's cameo from Dimensions in Time), obviously desperately worried for the boy. The pair of them have spent most of The Ice Warriors desperate to get back to or save each other, and they seem to be more focussed on their fellow companion than on the Doctor.

Maybe it's simply that they know the Doctor well enough to know he'll take care of himself - especially in this tale where he's more commanding than we've seen from this incarnation before. It's reasonable to argue that they could have something of an older brother/younger sister relationship, and they both feel a strong sense to care for each other. Or it's possible that there's love in the air. What do we think? Are Jamie and Victoria an item?

a 

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

Day 191: The Ice Warriors, Episode Five

Dear diary,

It has to be said that the design of this story is really 1960s in some places. It's evident right through the look of the Ice Warriors' ship, from the little TV screens in the walls to the large circle motifs that are dotted all around. It must have been in fashion when they left Mars.

Perhaps even more obviously, though, you've got the costumes of the base personnel. They're some of the most 'out-there' costumes that we've had in the series so far, and they're certainly not dull! In my mind, the bits that show up as white here are probably all different garish colours (probably denoting rank. For some reason in my mind, Clent's outfit is a bright blue and the female technicians are all orange), with those black patterns stretched across them. I'm assuming it's so that when they're out on the glacier, amongst the snow, they can be easily spotted. Well, that's my reasoning for it, anyway.

I'm also impressed by the headsets they wear when operating the computer - strange visor-like things which come up and over the head, forming a kind of 'shield' in front of their eyes. It's a typically 1960s science-fiction idea (although it's not been stated on screen wether they display data to the wearer, or if they just act as a shield, possibly to negate the effects of staring at this 'advanced' computer for so long each day), but it doesn't seem to sour of place in a world where we have things on the horizon such as Google GLΛSS. If anything, they just look like an oddly stylish version of that same invention!

One of the things that I'm finding myself really enjoying in this story (actually, it's probably the thing that I'm enjoying the most, currently) is just how much Patrick Troughton has become the Doctor that I think of as the second Doctor. His character has been there right since his very first episode, but we've watched it develop and evolve since his run-in with the Daleks on Vulcan. Here, there's a priceless moment as he enters the Ice Warriors' ship, having been let out of their air lock for satisfactorily answering questions. 'Thank you very much. Very civil of you,' he says, striding into the ship, before he looks up at the sheer size of an Ice Warrior, and turns to hurriedly leave with an 'Oh my lord!'

Equally, there's something about the idea of the Doctor using a stink bomb in an attempt to escape from the ship that feels so right for this incarnation. it put me in mind of the Tenth Doctor's escape from a Pyrovile through the use of a little yellow water pistol, and I think there's a very clear through-line between these two events. Here, it feels like the kind of thing I can see the Doctor doing in one of the TV Comic stories, with a finger pointed toward the top of the panel as he explains that the stink bomb may well be deadly to an alien.

Oh, and also, how cosy does it look when the Doctor (in his over-sized furry coat) gives a big cuddle to Victoria (in her little cloak with the fur collar)? You just want to cuddle up with them and enjoy the sensation!

a 

a  a

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

Day 190: The Ice Warriors, Episode Four

Dear diary,

I’ve just realised that I’ve not done my cheer for alternative ways of doing the titles in this story! It’s been a little while since we had something a bit different from the norm, and I guess that, technically, I should have been titling the last few entries as ‘The 50 Year Diary, Day XX, The Ice Warriors, ONE’. While I quite enjoy it when we have occasional different looks to the episode titles, it really doesn’t look right for the programme. Maybe it’s because I got so used to the standard look during the Hartnell era?

Something that I have mentioned already for this story is just how great the Ice Warriors themselves look, but having an actual moving episode to watch them in makes it worth mentioning again. They’re fantastic, aren’t they? I’ve never noticed before all the little movements they make of their heads when speaking, but it really does add something to the characters. Equally, I’d never spotted how flexible their arms are. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know how weird that sounds, but I think I’ve become so used to the action figure of the Ice Warriors that I’d assumed their arms were made of a kind of hard carapace like their body armour. In many ways, I'd never realised just how lizard-like they are in this story. I've always thought of the creatures as being a type of lizard (it's the scales, and the hissing voice which seems to suggest a forked tongue) but I'd never realised that they were actually played as such.

It’s also worth noting just how well the direction here is serving them. There’s lots of tight close-ups on the faces, which really allows us a good look at the make up design (though it does also reveal that the lips don’t look quite right when the creatures are talking, sadly). We also get a lot of close ups on the armour itself, which shows that off rather nicely, too. I think I quite liked Derek Martinus’ direction of The Tenth Planet, too, so perhaps it shouldn’t come as any great surprise to me to see him doing well here.

One thing about the Ice Warriors that I have to confess I’m less than impressed by is (what I’ve called in my notes) ‘Big Head Warrior’. The Ice Warrior with the especially large head is an image I know from images taken during this story’s recording, and it’s never looked quite right to me. I’d always assumed that there must be a reason in-story that this one particular Warrior had such a different outfit… but I don’t think there is one. Certainly, I’ve not noticed any reason being mentioned.

It's not the only thing from The Ice Warriors that I know quite well from the photos of the story. I've previously mentioned the images of the Ice Warrior towering over Victoria in the store room, but here we've got a scene which was captured perhaps one of the most iconic photographs from this era of the programme - Victoria being chased through the ice cave by the (Big Head) Ice Warrior. I'm still stunned that the DVD cover to the story doesn't have the image on there (though it is still a gorgeous design - one of the best that the range has ever had, I think.)

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

Day 189: The Ice Warriors, Episode Three

Dear diary,

There’s something quite nice about how ruthless these Ice Warriors seem to be. Creating a trap for the base personnel, we’re told that if they come looking for Victoria, the Ice Warriors can destroy them. If they don’t come looking for her, then they can deduce that there aren’t enough humans to pose a resistance to their plans.

Only… what is their plan? I think I’ve missed something here. Ice Warrior A (I love their voices, but it’s almost impossible to pick out individual names with the quality of the soundtrack on this recon) is found frozen in the glacier, having been trapped there since the last ice age. He resolves to find and thaw out the rest of his kind, as their ship crashed there. He kidnaps Victoria and forces her to show him how he was revived.

They then take the technology, locate his comrades, and wakes them up… so that they can build a trap for the humans. I think I must have missed a line of dialogue somewhere, where we find out what this lot have against us.

And yet, it doesn't really matter. Much as I'm not entirely sure what's actually going on, and as much as the two missing instalments have dented my early enthusiasm for the story, I'm still enjoying it. I think it's fair to say that this is the first time that I've really appreciated just how much animating the missing parts of the story will be of a benefit to the tale - hopefully they'll help bridge this period of the story better than the recon has.

Yes, I'm sorry to say that today still hasn't endeared me to the ides of the recon. To begin with, I tried to listen to it as though it were just a soundtrack (I placed the macbook nearby while I did the washing up, so I could sort of see the story playing out of the corner of my eye, but I was really just listening to it), the problem with this, though, is that without the linking narration, half the time I just didn't have a clue what was happening when the dialogue wasn't around to fill the void. In the end, I resorted to actually watching it again, but by then I'd already given up a bit.

It seems to be that - as ever - it's Patrick Troughton that's carrying me through this one. As usual, he's been given plenty of great dialogue to speak ('He's a scientist and a bit inclined to have his head in the cloud. You know the type…' he says of Penley. 'I certainly do!' comes the reply from our favourite time-travelling Scot). There's another moment when the Doctor makes a big deal out of the importance of being passed a pencil, which left me grinning like a loon.

It's not just confined to the Doctor, either. I don't know if it's just me, but it really does seem over the last few series, there's been a real increase in how much of the dialogue I'm jotting down in my notes. Highlights from today include a discussion of humanity and its reliance on machinery ('Robotised Human. Fully extinct.') and the description that Clent doesn't need personnel - he needs a mirror.

Still, I'm glad to be moving back into actual moving episodes again tomorrow. I think doing these two episodes as reckons may have hindered my enjoyment somewhat, so I'm hoping Episodes Four through Six can really revive the promise that the first did. If nothing else, I'm keen to re-watch this story at some point in the future with the animated episodes - so it must be doing something right…

a 

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

Day 188: The Ice Warriors, Episode Two

Dear diary,

Oh, I agonised over how best to experience this episode. Earlier in the year, I picked up all the narrated soundtracks in bulk – most of them are available from the AudioGo website as (extremely reasonably priced!) downloads. The couple that I couldn’t get as downloads were collected together as part of ‘The Lost TV Episodes’ collection Volume 5. At the time, The Ice Warriors was scheduled for release on DVD in around April time, so I didn’t bother picking up the soundtrack for that one.

And then… I completely forgot about it! The DVD release date was shifted back to later in the year, and I didn’t even think to pick up the soundtrack. Today, then, when it came to scrolling through my iTunes looking for the episode, I was thoroughly confused before I realised what I’d done. A search online told me that The Ice Warriors is one of the few soundtracks that you can’t pick up via a legal download, and it’s only available on CD. Panic!

For a while, I seriously considered using the recon from the VHS. I’d ripped it to a disc when copying my video anyway, so it was already sat in the DVD drive of the Mac. The problem? It condensed both Episode Two and Episode Three into the space of about 20 minutes. I know I cheated by skipping Episode Four of The Highlanders in favour of the Target reading, but it felt like a step too far to actually put the two episodes together here – after all, the whole idea of The 50 Year Diary was to do one episode a day, every day.

Thankfully, a panicked request on Facebook revealed that a friend had a copy of the Loose Cannon reconstruction for these two episodes, and since he lived close, I was welcome to pop round and borrow it. My thoughts on recons have been pretty clear throughout the course of this marathon – loved the one for Marco Polo, but by the time I’d reach3ed the Crusade, I couldn’t bear the thought of them. I’ve come to the conclusion that I much prefer the soundtracks. Still, needs must and all that!

Now, let’s get this out of the way first, and then I can talk about the episode itself: I’ve not changed my mind on the recons. There’s plenty in this one that looks pretty good (the moving snow on scenes outside was a lovely touch, for example), but I find that my mind wanders just that little bit too much when I’m watching them. I’ll be using a recon for tomorrow’s episode again, but I think I’ll be sticking to the soundtracks for the rest of this season’s missing parts.

As for the episode itself, I think it was a bit of a comedown from yesterday’s instalment. I don’t know how much of my more muted reaction came from being put off by the recon, or how much was a result of my expectations being raised by my enjoyment of the first episode, but it just didn’t strike a chord with me in the same way.

It does have to be said, though, that the design of the Ice Warrior is gorgeous. It’s no wonder that they didn’t alter them radically when bringing them back to the series this year, because they’ve pretty much got it spot on right from the word ‘go’. There’s some shots of the creature in here which I’m fairly certain were taken from The Seeds of Death, but there’s also still images that show how great they’ve always looked. The voices, too, are fantastic from the very start, wit that great hissing sound to them. The images of the Warrior towering over Victoria in the storeroom are ones that really embedded themselves in my mind as a teenager when I first saw them, so I'm glad to see that their height really is effective in the story, too. It’s also nice to see a creature that’s remained so similar across all these years.

The Seeds of Death is the only ‘classic’ Ice Warrior story that I’ve ever seen, and that was a good few years ago. It was surprising to me, then, when Cold War made such a reference to the creatures being a kind of Cyborg, with a fully mechanical ‘suit’ of armour. I’m thrilled to see that, actually, it’s always been a part of the creatures, right back to this story. Yesterday, the Doctor mused that there was some kind of electrical apparatus frozen in the ice with the Warrior, and today he tells the scientists ‘'This headpiece is no warrior's tin hat! It's a highly developed space helmet!’

I’m also really enjoying that, for at least a little while, the Ice Warrior isn’t the main danger to the Doctor, or the crew of this story’s base-under-siege. The threat comes from the idea that there could be a kind of alien spaceship buried somewhere in the glacier, and that the Ioniser could accidentally ignite its fuel supplies, causing one almighty explosion. I’m hoping that this strand of the story won’t be forgotten as the story progresses (especially now that more Warriors have been located), though I’m fairly willing to bet that using the Ioniser against either the Warriors or the ship will end up forming a vital part of the tale’s resolution…

I’m really looking forward to the release of this one on DVD – I think there’s a very good story in here, and I look forward to a chance of watching it without the distraction of the recon…

a 

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

Day 187: The Ice Warriors, Episode One

Dear diary,

In what’s probably a historic moment, this is the last time that I’ll need to dust off an old VHS tape to enjoy a story, since The Ice Warriors won’t be released for another couple of months on DVD (Technically, I did the ‘dusting off’ weeks ago. I copied the VHS over to a disc, since I don’t have a TV in Cardiff – let alone a VHS player!). The biggest shame about this is that I won’t be able to see episodes two and three recreated with animation, but the DVD range has been good to me with timings this year, so I can’t really complain.

The Ice Warriors is another of those stories that I don’t really know all that much about. I can probably deduce the villains of the piece from the title alone, but that’s about all I’ve got. Oh, and that they find one of those titular creatures frozen in the ice. There you go, that’s the extent of my knowledge. That’s a good thing, though! I came to The Abominable Snowmen knowing how highly some fans rated it, knowing about the monastery, and the Yeti, and the Intelligence. I think knowing so much how I was meant to enjoy it ruined the story a little for me. I loved this episode, though! I mean, really loved it. I don’t know what I was expecting (and that’s the point, really) but this wasn’t it.

The first thing that really struck me… it’s an age before the TARDIS turns up, isn’t it? Before that, we’ve got plenty of establishing shots of the ice (with appropriately un-nerving music accompanying. It’s almost like they’re making up for the lack of it in the last story), a good look at the set up of the control room, complete with exposition to bring us up to speed, and the discovery of the ‘warrior’ in the ice. It’s not often that we spend quite so long in a story’s setting before the Doctor arrives.

When he does turn up, though, they don’t waste time. We’ve got the TARDIS turning up on its side (it’s almost strange that we’ve managed to make it to mid-Season Five before this happens), and a chance for Troughton and Hines to really engage with some great physical comedy. The Doctor stands on Jamie’s head, and then Jamie kneels on the Doctors hand. It’s an opportunity for some more close-ups of Troughton pulling faces, but here it’s being used light-heartedly as opposed to for the effect of terror yesterday. It’s almost like the programme is reassuring us that the Doctor is all right.

And isn’t he just?! Within seconds of entering the control room of the base, he’s following its leader around, repeating the numbers as they’re read from the machines. The Doctor’s worked it out in no time ('In two minutes thirty-eight seconds, you're going to have an almighty explosion!’), and then taking control of the situation, giving orders to the workers in an attempt to save them all. Clent – the base’s leader – is of course left to stand around shouting after the Doctor, telling him he cant do this, or mustn’t do that. It’s a role we’ve had present in this type of story since The Tenth Planet, but it feels so right when this attitude directed at the Second Doctor.

Over the course of this season, we really are seeing Troughton’s Doctor evolving even further into the man that we know from the later stories. He’s almost entirely dispensed with his bumbling routine once inside the base, as the stakes are too high – it’s right down to action. His charm still shines through, though, when the commander still won’t believe his calculations, and the Doctor suggests they run it through the computer to check. ‘2 minutes, 37 seconds’, the machine calculates, to which the Doctor replies, ‘Ah. I was a second out. We can’t all be perfect…’

While I’m on the subject of the Doctor, he looks just right in that big furry coat, doesn’t he? I didn’t really get a chance to look at it properly in the surviving episode of The Abominable Snowmen, but I really like it here. No wonder it’s so synonymous with this incarnation. How come we’ve not had the action figure with coat, yet?

I’m really pleased by my reaction to this one, and I’m hoping the story can hold my attention throughout – it could be one of those wonderful treats, where a story I don’t really know much about turns out to be fantastic!

a 

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

Day 186: The Abominable Snowmen, Episode Six

Dear diary,

This final episode of the story has made me even more convinced that my new timeline for the Great Intelligence might just work. There's a point where we're told Padmasambhava had slaved for around 200 years to build the robot Yeti and 'all the other wonderful machines'. Yeah, yeah, I know it's meant to be referring to the Control Spheres and the little Yeti playing pieces, but in my mind now, he also build a machine that allowed the Great Intelligence to possess the snow, thus setting him off on his course to London and Doctor Simeon. What do you mean 'grasping at straws'?

Sadly, though, trying to fit the Great Intelligence's appearances together in a coherent timeline has been the thing I've enjoyed most about The Abominable Snowmen. It's a real shame, but I just couldn't seem to get into it. I think - and I've said this about the story before - that it's one which would fare better with me if I could actually watch it. The tele snaps give the impression of it looking very dark and mysterious, with some wide open locations (they look nice enough in the surviving episode) and some interesting performances.

In other ways, the story is almost designed for audio, with the beeping spheres, the dark ominous voices and it's digetic soundtrack. There's a lot in there which you can very easily imagine Big Finish doing in a release, and they're experts at making Doctor Who for an audio medium.

This final episode, especially, is ripe for listening to through headphones (and probably the perfect example of why so many people think the series would work best on autumn evenings, when the nights have drawn in and there's leaves blowing around outside). The final confrontation between the Doctor and Padmasambhava is extremely effective, as the Doctor warns his companions to trust him, before heading out of the room, and almost immediately issuing a bloodcurdling scream.

It's rare that we see the Doctor in such a situation - he's not always one step ahead of the game, but he is the one who usually comes up with a plan and reassures us that everything is going to be all right. In the same way that the TARDIS is automatically our 'safe' place at the start and end of each tale (even the Doctor uses it here, when trying to convince Victoria that she's safe), the Doctor is the man who makes things all right. With the exemption of that early-Season-Three period in which he seemed to lose at the end of every story, the Doctor is the one that you can feel safe with. To hear him in such pain and terror… that's chilling.

And yet, in spite of several really brilliant moments like this in the final episode, and throughout the story, The Abominable Snowmen just hasn't really grabbed me. Throughout, people have mused to me that it's a favourite of theirs, but the one thing that seems to come up time and time again is that The Web of Fear does the Yeti story better. I'm hoping I'll think so too in a few weeks time…

a 

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

Day 185: The Abominable Snowmen, Episode Five

Dear diary,

The more I look at the tele snaps for this story, the more I think the Yeti look brilliant. They just do! There's a shot early on in this episode where three of the beasts make their way across the courtyard of the monastery, and it just looks brilliant. What with the Cybermen in the last story and the Ice Warriors coming up in the next one, there's certainly a lot of tall monsters around in this season.

I'm also finding that I like the idea of the Yeti being controlled by the small models more and more, too. Though I've never seen The Abominable Snowmen before, I have seen Downtime more than once (for my sins, though I still think it would have been great adapted into a Sarah Jane Adventures story - imagine Yeti stomping their way up Bannerman Road!), and I'd never quite understood the point of the little wooden Yeti that's so key to the plot there.

Actually, there's quite a lot about Downtime that's confused me over the years, and I think that might be one of the resins I've never really managed to get my head around the Great Intelligence. For some reason, my mind goes all over the place in Downtime, and gets confused about Victoria looking for her dead father in Det Sen Monastery, where she encounters the long-dead Travers (who's played by Watling's real-life dad… see how I manage to confuse myself?), and then there's some stuff about the Yeti invasion of London, which is still to come for me in the marathon…

As if that wasn't bad enough, I'm still struggling to tie up the Great Intelligence we see here with the one from The Snowmen, The Bells of St. John, and The Name of the Doctor. Piecing together what I've gotten from this story and what I vaguely recall from the last series of Who, this is what I think the Intelligence's timeline is like. Anyone care to point me in the right direction? I've made a bit of a guess in relation to how the Intelligence came to Earth, so bear with me…

1) The Great Intelligence is a formless entity that floats around the stars. It may or may not be (depending on how you class the books) a being left over from a previous universe. While it's very intelligent, it longs to have a physical form.

2) While it's floating around, wondering how to gain a physical body, he encounters Padmasamabhava's mind on the Astral Plane, somewhere around the 17th Century. Using the monk's mind, he is drawn to Earth but cannot materialise. He intends to replace humanity with Ice People (that's his plan in The Snowmen, I think…), and so possesses some snow in the Himalayas, and directed it to London (Britain is a great empire at this point - you want to take over the world? London is a good place to start…).

3) The snow is then made into a snowman by the young Simeon, who grows up under the Intelligences guidance. The Doctor manages to defeat the Intelligence, dropping a big hint about the London Underground (while also seeming to not realise who the Intelligence is) and then muses that it will learn to live without a host body.

4) Upon defeat, the Intelligence draws back to the Astral Plane, where he's still in contact with Padmasamabhava, and has kept the monk alive for centuries. He starts work on a new plan which will allow him to take the form of a load of foam. Y'know, just 'cos. He then builds robot Yeti to protect his pyramids - the means through which his new form can enter the world.

Now, I've not seen The Web of Fear yet, but I think I can more-or-less guess where things go from here (broadly speaking, anyway). I don't want to make some massive assumptions and look like a complete fool if I'm wrong, though, so we'll pick this timeline up in a couple of weeks when the Intelligence makes a comeback. It's taking some thinking, but I'm pretty sure I've got it worked out nicely, now, and it makes sense!

The problem is, while I quite like the grand idea of it (and if things go the way I think during The Web of Fear, there's suddenly more justification for the Great Intelligence committing suicide to destroy the Doctor at the end of the most recent series), I'm still just not all that involved in The Abominable Snowmen as a whole. Ho hum, one more episode to go, and I'm expecting lots of Yeti action, so that could be good!

a 

a  a

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

Day 184: The Abominable Snowmen, Episode Four

Dear diary,

I'm wondering if the lack of incidental music in this story might be one of the things that's putting me off it? So much of the tale is confined to just the soundtrack and it sounds very bare without any musical cues to help set the tone. There's nothing wrong with the sound effects we are getting (the sound of the Yeti control spheres beeping away is perfect for listening to through headphones) but it's all just feeling a bit… empty.

The one place that they have worked quite well is in the sounds of the 'Himalayan' mountain sides. Today has seen me in the unusual position of listening to the story in more-or-less the same setting it was filmed in. I heard today's episode on a train headed up towards the Brecans. While it's still a little more south than the filming took place, the landscape is broadly similar, and it really did help set the scene when I could gaze out the window at various peaks and valleys, keeping my eyes peeled for the slightest hint of a Yeti claw. I didn't see any sadly. The soundtrack accompanying these images was a rather nice experience, so I suppose I can't complain too much.

Otherwise, though, much of this episode has been made for me simply by giving the Doctor and Jamie some time to bounce off each other again. As the pair of them watch over a rock at a Yeti guarding the TARDIS, our companion asks, 'have you got a plan, Doctor?' 'Yes I have,' he replies, 'I'm going to bung a rock at it'. I know of this quote, but I couldn't have told you it came from this story or this moment, so I was left to simply laugh out loud at it (other passengers in the carriage thought I was having a fit, I suspect). There's a later moment when Jamie struggles to hold onto a control sphere as it makes its way back to the chest cavity of the dormant Yeti, and the Doctor has to impose himself between the sphere and the beast. Since the episode's missing, we can't actually see exactly how the scene played out, but I've little doubt that it would have been absolutely brilliant with Troughton's skill for physical comedy. The tele snaps for this moment aren't too revealing - there's a good chance that it could have looked either terrifying or hilarious. We'd need the moving imaged to find out.

What the tele snaps are clear on, at least for me, is that these Yeti really do work as monsters. I've mentioned already their reputation for being 'cute', but there's a shot of one striding across the monastery, with the monks pointing spears up at it where I'm completely sold on the idea. For a start, the creature is huge, and when it's striding at the pace it appears to be here, there's no denying just how well they work.

Elsewhere, the Great Intelligence is finally gaining some kind of physical embodiment… in the form of that Troughton classic: foam. I've always thought of this as being something that crops up a lot in the Troughton era (and it will!) so it seems strange that we've only just had our first proper appearance from the foam machine in the series. I will admit that I had to listen to this section twice, because I'd sort of lost track of things, but I'm hoping things will be cleared up as I watch on.

I did, however, really enjoy the story of the Holy Ghanta being given to a 'stranger' for safe keeping when the monastery was in a time of danger. Victoria's subsequent piecing of the facts together to explain that the stranger and the Doctor are one and the same is lovely, too. I'd like to imagine that this was one of those adventures that the Doctor has while his companions are asleep (there's several scenes on the Series Six DVD in this vein). The implication is that it takes place a long time ago for the Doctor, but I think I prefer to imagine it being an early-Season Four version of the Second Doctor, having an adventure while Ben, Polly, and Jamie are asleep in the TARDIS somewhere.

On the whole, though, there's still something about The Abominable Snowmen that just sin't sitting right with me. I know it's got quite a good reputation, and there's a lot of mementoes I'm really enjoying, but it's just not for me. Scanning through the tele snaps we've got here, I can't help but feel that I'd enjoy it more if I could actually watch it…

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

Day 183: The Abominable Snowmen, Episode Three

Dear diary,

Somewhere in my mass of notes for The Tomb of the Cybermen, I made a remark that it was a slight twist on the base-under-siege format, as the 'heroes' and the 'villains' were both inside the base, and it was more about trying to stop them from getting to a certain part of the base, or using a certain type of equipment. When the first episode of this tale told us that the Yeti had been getting more aggressive and heading closer and closer to the monastery, I thought we were in for a more run-of-the-mill adventure, with the bad guys attacking the base.

So the presence here of the Yeti being controlled from within the monastery is a welcome surprise. As I said yesterday, I know who is behind it all, but not how he operates, and I didn't realise he was going to be actively inside the building. It does make me wonder quite why the Great Intelligence would be brining the Yeti closer and closer to the place he (or, at least, his mouthpiece) is hiding in, though…

I'm also trying to piece together the Great Intelligence's timeline. In The Snowmen (How did I not figure out the surprise appearance until well into the episode - given that title?), the Doctor comments that the Intelligence will learn to operate without a physical form. This was in the late Victorian period - thirty or forty years before this tale is set. I thought, what with the disembodied voice and all, that we'd be seeing just that: the Great Intelligence working without a body. Don't get me wrong, I didn't actually expect it to match up perfectly with a story made forty-odd years later, but I did think that these event would have been taken into account when writing that Christmas special.

As it is… I'm not completely sure. It feels like a massive step backwards for the Intelligence. Yes, the robot Yeti are quite impressive and the control spheres are pretty cool, but they're nowhere near as advanced as the sentient snow he'd been using decades ago. Is it just because he's weak? Equally, were told here that the Intelligence will finally be able to gain physical form, and end its wanderings in space… I know it could have been floating around the stars ever since the Doctor destroyed it's previous host body, but the wording here imp lies a long period of not having any kind of physical form.

These things would probably bother me less if I hadn't seen the Christmas episode so recently (well, last Christmas), and they're only minor niggles for now. I'm also very aware that I'm only half way through The Abominable Snowmen at this point, and things may tie up neater towards the end. Hopefully.

I'm not all about complaining today, though, because Victoria's being given plenty to do again! Hooray! She's been a bit of a yo-yo so far, flitting between simply being there to scream ('Jamiiiiieeeeee!') and being a good companion - for much of today's episode she's firmly in the latter camp. 'Aren't you a little bit curious?' she asks when trying to find her way to the inner sanctum, and she's later warned off being too inquisitive. When she finds out that the Doctor and Jamie have gone off to hunt a Yeti, she's really not pleased to be left behind. We're a far cry from the feeble prisoner of the Daleks we had a couple of stories ago, and I'm very pleased to see that she does have potential…

a 

a  a

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

Day 182: The Abominable Snowmen, Episode Two

Dear diary,

As much as I've been enjoying listening to the soundtracks over the last couple of months (it's become a way of life, and having an episode on during my walk home each day has become something of a routine), it really does help when there's an actual, surviving episode to go on. I think I was rather spoiled by having all of The Tomb of the Cybermen to watch, so it felt like a bit of a step backwards to have little to base yesterday's episode on than tele snaps and location photos.

I've found myself far more drawn to this episode of the story than I did yesterday. In part, it's possibly because there's a bit more going on today than we had yesterday, but it doesn't hurt that if we do encounter a less interesting part of the story, it's got some lovely direction to fall back on. This is Gerald Blake's first time directing on Doctor Who (and he won't be back until The Invasion of Time!), but he's off to a great start, really injecting the story with some atmosphere.

The dark corridors of the monastery really are the perfect setting for a Doctor Who tale, and the rest of the building holds up in its design, too. There's a section of narration on the soundtrack to Episode One where Frazer Hines describes the Doctor looking up at a large statue of a Buddah, and I vaguely pictured something of a manageable size… but there really is a massive statue at the back of one set!

Equally, the location footage looks great. The story gets a lot of stick for using the mountains of North Wales as a stand in for the Himalayas and while, no, it doesn't quite work, I'm ready to admit that it gives it a good shot, and it certainly looks impressive enough anyway. I seem to say this a lot as the shoe continues to broaden out into more varied (and lengthier) location shooting, but it really does have a feel of being completely unlike any other place we've seen before in the series. Mind you, doesn't Victoria say something about footprints in the snow in the first episode?

And then you've got the Yeti themselves. Often called out for being quite cute (which, yes, they are) they still come across as pretty impressive here. The cliffhanger reprise gives us a chance to see one of them lumbering into the cave towards Jamie and Victoria, and it looks as good as I could have hoped it might from picturing it yesterday. Admittedly, they look a little less imposing when they stand around outside the monastery and watch their friend be trapped, but they still look quite good. It's a pity that we've never had that action figure of them - I'd snap one up.

The Yeti's spheres are pretty impressive, too, perhaps even more so than the creatures themselves. We get to see a couple of instances of them moving here without any apparent outside help, and it works well both times. I'm not sure if it's more impressive to see that it actually can move through the thick mud (K9 would wince at the idea!) or the shot of it rolling along the edge of the Buddah statue, at some speed. I'm guessing the story would see more of this going on in the later (missing) episodes, so I'm glad we get to see at least a few brief snippets of it happening in the part that survives: at least it shows me that they could do it well!

Because I've been a fan for several years, I'm more than well aware that the omnipresent voice echoing through the inner sanctum of the monastery is that of the Great Intelligence, but it doesn't take anything away from it - it genuinely is quite imposing. 'Do not be afraid,' it booms at one point, when it's hard to be anything else! Having just gone through the most recent series of Doctor Who, I keep expecting Richard E Gran't face to appear in the smoke from the candles at some point. Maybe as an anniversary treat, they could have him re-dub all of the Great Intelligence's lines?

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

Day 181: The Abominable Snowmen, Episode One

Dear diary,

I think it's more than fair to say that whatever had to follow The Tomb of the Cybermen for me was going to have a tough job to keep me impressed, and I'm sorry to say that the first episode of The Abominable Snowmen has left me rather flat. To tell the truth, I think it really is as simple as me being disappointed that it isn't another episode of Tomb, because there's plenty here that would be right up my street in any other circumstance.

There's two areas of the story's setting that should particularly appeal to me. The fact that it all takes place in-and-around a remote monastery in the Himalayan mountains means that I've got an instant hook - take a Google Image search of these monasteries, there's some beautiful examples of them. They're just the right setting for a Doctor Who story, and especially suited to a base under siege tale - there's no one else for miles and miles around. I'm listening to today's episode on audio, so I've been picturing a desolate mountainside shrouded in snow and fog, though I fear tomorrow's episode may not tie in with that, if the location photos are anything to go by!

Quite aside from the location of the story, it's set in a period of history that really interests me - that late 1920s/early 1930s period where there were still areas of the Earth, to be explored. Oh, don't get me wrong, I know that we've still not been into the very depths of some rain forests, or to the peaks of every mountain, and the bottom of the sea leaves us with a vast area to explore, but this period in time is the dying days of the stereotypical 'explorer' image, when you can still sail out to sea and discover a new island which a satellite would have located in seconds today.

Then there's the idea of hinting for the Yeti. I've never really known where I stand on the idea of the Abominable Snowman. I don't think I believe in its existence, or if I do then I think it's probably just a type of rare monkey, and nowhere near as mystical as people think. But I love the idea of those early 20th century explorers going out to look for the creature, and the suggestion that the Doctor is from a newspaper, and there to sabotage the mission for a 'cheap headline' is great - and very in keeping with the era.

We've also got an opening scene that I really should absolutely love - it takes time to show us the Doctor, Jamie and Victoria all hanging around in the TARDIS and having fun together. It feels like an age since we've been able to spend some time inside the ship with our regular cast (I have to admit that I didn't really notice it fading out, but I think The Chase was probably the last time that we really had anything quite like this. Possibly I could cite the opening to The Moonbase where they joke about the Doctor over-shooting Mars).

It's not all fun and games, though, and there's plenty of drama to be found once the Doctor is inside the monastery and being held prisoner by the monks. It's always of interest when the Doctor is separated from his friends and left alone with no allies, and in a setting quite unlike any we've had in the series before, it's always nice to have something new. Jamie and Victoria's exploration of the Yeti cave isn't of as much interest to me, though, and I'm sorry to say I zoned out a little during this (Victoria's screaming soon snapped me back to attention, though!).

Here's hoping that the chance to watch tomorrow's episode will allow me to pull this story out from the previous one's shadow, and set me on a better course for the rest of the tale…

a 

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

Day 180: The Tomb of the Cybermen, Episode Four

Dear diary,

It seems strange, standing at this end of the story and looking back, that I ever considered it may not hold up. I’d worried that having found a fondness for other stories which I’d never really considered before, The Tomb of the Cybermen - ostensibly my ‘favourite’ Doctor Who tale - and suddenly find it underwhelming. Almost ten years of it being my favourite could be washed away in these four days.

What’s actually happened is quite the opposite – I’ve completely rediscovered my love for the story as though seeing it again for the very first time. It possibly helps that this is the first time since The War Machines, way back at the end of Season Three, that I’ve actually had a full story to watch. It could help that I’m already looking more favourably on this one than some of the stories I’ve never seen but haven’t heard great things about. Or it could be that, quite simply, The Tomb of the Cybermen is one of the all-time greats. Certainly, I’ve met a number of people over the years who have either cited it as their favourite, too, or at least considered that it’s a good contender for a favourite story to have.

Right the way through, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by just how much I’ve been loving this one – by the time Episode One had finished, any worries I had were gone, and I was left just enjoying things. Each episode has given me something new to love, and the fourth is no exception to this – I’d always thought of Toberman’s partial-conversion into Cyberman as having no real merit, but it works really well and is key to the story. His fight with the Cybercontroller here is much better than any of the fights in the last episode, and the final shot of him, staring down against the Controller as they each push on opposite sides of the door is fantastic. Are they just planning to leave the body there, though? I realise it must be a pretty long trip back to Earth, but surely they must be able to take him home? At least throw a sheet over the corpse or something!

I’ve focussed so much in this story on the developing relationship between the Doctor and Victoria (though it feels like they’ve been travelling for a while now. The About Time series speculates that there could be unseen adventures between her entrance to the TARDIS in Episode One and the arrival on Telos – and there’s plenty in the story which I think can support that), but I’ve barely mentioned Jamie’s role in events.

It’s far from being a secret that I love the pairing of the Doctor and his Highland friend, and there’s so much of a spark between them in this story that I can’t let it pass without mention. The ‘hand holding’ in Episode One is always singled out for praise, but brilliant as it is, there’s a number of other moments in The Tomb of the Cybermen that I think showcase the pair better. Episode Three sees the Doctor making a pun about the Cybermat’s metal brains being overloaded (‘You could say they’ve had a total metal breakdown’) and Jamie's reaction to his terrible pun. Today we get Jamie tying the door of the revitaliser machine, before the Cybercontroller breaks through the door (‘Jamie, remind me to give you a lesson in tying knots sometimes…’), and his realisation of what’s happened to Toberman: the boy is learning from his travels.

Something that often gets talked about in this story is the death of a Cyberman here, where the chest unit bubbles as foam rises up and overflows. It’s cited as an example of Doctor Who going too far and being too violent, and I can almost see that. It’s certainly more horrific than we might usually get at this time. For me, though, what made it scary was the way the Cyberman grabs at his chest throughout, almost as though trying to force his circuitry back inside. That’s the really gruesome part, but it works. Equally, there’s a scene where Jamie fires a gun point blank into a Cyberman’s face as it climbs from the hatch. Smoke comes pouring out of the mouth as it stumbles back down into the tomb. It’s a striking image.

For a long, long time, The Tomb of the Cybermen was the fabled ‘Holy Grail’ of missing Doctor Who tales, and the general consensus is that when it showed up in 1992, it wasn’t as good as everyone hoped it might be. For me, though, it’s damn near perfect, and I’m pleased to say that it’s still coming out top for me.

I’m hoping that it might be a good sign – I’ve been slightly dreading Season Five. It’s mostly missing, and it relies heavily on the Base-Under-Siege and Monster-of-the-Week formats, I’d been fearing that I might find it repetitive. Hopefully, though, if things continue to live up to the quality of The Tomb of the Cybermen, we could be on to a real winner…

a 

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

Day 179: The Tomb of the Cybermen, Episode Three

Dear diary,

Simply because The Tomb of the Cybermen was my first exposure to the creatures, I’ve always thought of these as being the ‘default’ model. It’s this design that I think of when people talk about Cybermen, and the style of speaking here is the one I most readily associate with them, too. It’s pleasing, then, to be enjoying them so much again now. There’s something about the voices especially that really is creepier than we’ve had before (as much as I loved the ones in The Tenth Planet), and it helps that some of their dialogue is so blunt.

Yesterday’s episode ends with the Cybercontroller telling the archaeological party ‘You belong to us. You will be like us’, and there’s a moment here when Jamie tells a Cyberman that he’s a human – he’s not the same as them, and the reply is simply ‘You will be’. The idea of being converted into a Cyberman has been present ever since their first appearance, but this is the first time it’s really being played as a threat. In The Tenth Planet, it’s almost an offer, but here it’s a terrifying experience, and something that you really don’t want to happen. In promoting Nightmare in Silver, Neil Gaiman commented that he’d been watching the 1960s stories and wanted to make the Cybermen scary again – it’s hard not to see what he means about the terror.

This episode, perhaps more than any we’ve had for a while, relies on a number of big special effects. I remember back during The Ark, I commented that the effects were just being dropped in easily, wheres before they’d have been the showpiece for the entire 25 minutes. Here, they’re just part of the routine, and the programme thinks nothing of showing the effect of a Cyber-gun against a wall (the awesome power of which lends weight to the cliff-hanger, when the same gun is fired in the Doctor’s direction).

Perhaps the biggest effects surprise for me, though, is the Cybermats. I have to admit, as much as I love The Tomb of the Cybermen, I’ve never been all that fond of the Cybermen’s pets. I’ve seen this story several times over the years, but in mind mind the Cybermats didn’t work and looked rubbish… but they’re great! I’d not remembered that the tails wag, which really helps to sell the effect, and I was surprised just how similar this version is to the ones who appear in Closing Time - I’d not seen this story since that one aired.

Just because I love the story doesn’t mean I’m completely blind to some of its faults, though. While there’s plenty of great effects in here, and the Cybermen get used in a way that makes them look great (there’s a show of one trying to hold the hatch to their tomb open, and you really get a sense of the strength involved), I’m willing to admit that it doesn’t all work. Just like the previous two episode of this story, I’ve written absolutely loads of notes, but this time around there are several about things that aren’t great.

There’s a fight early on between the archaeologists and the Cybermen which becomes a bit of a muddle, and it’s home to the shot of Toberman being hurled through the air by a Cyberman. It’s a lovely idea, but sadly the kirby wires are just far too visible, which somewhat lessens the effect. Similarly, a later shot of the Cybermen stumbling around in the aftermath of some smoke bombs doesn’t look all that spectacular.

All of that can be forgotten, though, because this episode is home to one of my favourite scenes in all of Doctor Who, when the Doctor and Victoria share a conversation in the dead of night, as everyone sleeps huddled in corners of the tomb’s lobby. I think it’s fair to say that I’ve not been all that impressed with Victoria so far on the whole, but these few minutes, shot in close-ups of Patrick Troughton and Deborah Watling as they just get the chance to act together really sells me on her. It’s a beautiful moment, and another one of those scenes that shows emotion didn’t creep in with the advent of 21st century Doctor Who.

I hate quoting long passages from the episode when I’m writing about them, but the Doctor’s words about remembering his lost family are so emotive, that I just have to post them again here;

Oh yes, I can when I want to. And that's the point, really.
I have to really want to, to bring them back in front of my eyes. The
rest of the time they… they sleep in my mind and I forget. And so will
you. Oh yes, you will. You'll find there's so much else to think about.
To remember. Our lives are different to anybody else's. That's the
exciting thing, that nobody in the universe can do what we're doing.

I’d not be surprised if that’s another one of those moments that really sold me on the idea of Patrick Troughton as being the Doctor – it’s simply wonderful

a 

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

Day 178: The Tomb of the Cybermen, Episode Two

Dear diary,

I can distinctly recall purchasing The Tomb of the Cybermen on DVD for the very first time. I'd been something of a Doctor Who fan since the autumn of 2003, but only dipping in and out, picking up one or two titles on VHS from the library as and when I felt compelled to. Then, one day in the summer of 2004, in what was then the BBC Shop in Norwich, I purchased my first two Doctor Who DVDs. There was this one, and Resurrection of the Daleks. None of the stories I'd rented had featured either of the programme's top two monsters, so I thought that it would be a pretty good place to start.

And you know what? I loved them. I'm sure I'll talk more about Resurrection next year sometime, when we reach the right placement for the tale, but I can recall just being blown away by Tomb, right from the off.

Looking at this episode today, and viewing it for the first time in the context of all the stories that have gone before it, I don't think it's impossible to see just why this one is so loved by fans. In several ways, it's the perfect representation of the Second Doctor's era, and I think it's fair to say that Troughton is on the absolute top of his game. Everything his Doctor does so well is showcased in these 24 minutes, from letting slip that he knows more than people realise ('Your colleague has very strong hands,' he tells Kaftan, shortly after they discover that the fuel pumps on the rocket have been tampered with. He continues: 'Enough to do a great deal of damage if let loose in the wrong place…'), to subtly controlling the room (switching levers to make sure that the hatch to the tomb will open), and making quips when the bad guys get it wrong.

There's something about his look here, too - the way his hair sits, and the way his costume looks underneath his recently-added cape - that just screams 'Second Doctor' to me. The Tomb of the Cybermen was recorded at the very end of Doctor Who's fourth production block, and it's clear that by this stage, both Troughton and the programme makers have settled on exactly what this new version of the character should be. Placed in the surroundings of such a fantastic story, it's no wonder that I took the Second Doctor to heart and made him my favourite.

That said, you do have to wonder why the Doctor does some of the things that he does in this story. During The Evil of the Daleks, I mentioned that we were seeing the first real attempts of the Doctor to manipulate the people around him (the First Doctor did this too, especially in the early days, but this is the first time we see him doing it with just the right word or action here or there, as opposed to actively misleading people into doing what he wants, as we see in stories like The Daleks), and he seems to be doing the same kind of thing here… but then almost instantly wishing that he hadn't.

In yesterday's episode, he discovers that the Cybermen are buried somewhere inside this cliff-face, and that the archaeological team can't get the door open… so he shows them how to get in. They then can't figure out how to get the machinery working… so he gives them the answer, before adding that they really shouldn't. Today, he helps them open the hatch, before spending plenty of time talking about it being a bad idea, and hoping that nothing will go wrong. Is he just a bit confused? Maybe it's the low temperatures?

It's good to see Victoria being given a bit more of a personality here, too. There's a moment early on when the Cybermen's gun trap fires and she lets out a little scream, but after that she's a much more assertive person than we've seen before. When the professor advises the women to stay behind, she actively tells him that she's coming along wether he likes it or not, and she's not afraid to step in and deal with Kaftan once the Doctor has highlighted her as a threat, even going as far as to hold the woman at gunpoint. This is much more like it, and I think I can go along with a version of Victoria that behaves more like this.

Elsewhere, I feel as though I need to praise the set design a little bit more today. The design of the tombs is simply stunning, and one of my favourite sets from Doctor Who's long history. You should have heard my cry of joy when the design cropped up again for Nightmare in Silver a couple of months ago. Everything about the tomb itself, especially the scale - which I think is best captured by an on-set photograph of director Morris Barry stood in front of the construction - is simply gorgeous, and I love it.

Back in 2005, with the programme back on TV and my friends suddenly deciding to take an interest, they asked to watch one of the old ones so they could see what it was like. Of course I plumped for showing them this! It’s my favourite story. Having sat through half the first episode with one friend complaining about the lack of colour (I shouldn't have been surprised - a few years earlier he'd walked out of a cinema screening of Van Helsing, because the first few minutes are black and white) and the other about the slow pace, I skipped ahead to show them the final few scenes of this episode, with the Cybermen being unfrozen from their winter sleep.

And they couldn't stop laughing. They thought it was hilarious. I was mortified - one of my favourite moments of Doctor Who and my friends couldn't stop talking about how rubbish it looked. I've always secretly thought that they were wrong (I say secretly, I tell them they're wrong, every time I visit home), but you know what? Watching it again now in the context of all these other episodes? I know they're wrong! Because it does look bloody fantastic!

The ice 'melting' from the tomb, the blurry shapes moving around inside before splitting open the casing and climbing down the ladders at the sides… it is a great moment, and it's an example of the show pulling off an effect pretty well. I'll admit, I don't like the way they start to break out of the tomb, and then are instantly frozen again (complete with a thick layer of ice - get your money's worth from the visual effects department) only to re-emerge, but everything else here is great. There's not all that many Cybermen, but when they're swarming around the cave it looks like masses of them. It's a great bit of directing from Barry.

Although, I will concede that the About Time book for this era is right - it would seem that the Cybercontroller has spent the last five centuries squatting in a cupboard. Ah.

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

Day 177: The Tomb of the Cybermen, Episode One

Dear diary,

This is it! This is the big one! For the best part of the last decade, I've always cited The Tomb of the Cybermen as being my absolute favourite TV Doctor Who story. I credit this serial with making the Cybermen my favourite monsters, and Patrick Troughton my favourite Doctor. It's almost the template I have in mind for what Doctor Who is supposed to be. The bad thing about all this is that I've been dreading hitting it in The 50 Year Diary. It's always been my favourite when I'm comparing it to odd stories here and there, but how's it going to stand up in context? What am I going to make of it, now that I've discovered other gems like The War Machines and The Macra Terror? Essentially, is The Tomb of the Cybermen going to turn out to be really a little bit rubbish?

Thankfully, the answer to that question is no. Of course it's not going to all fall apart now that I've watched 160-something other episodes that immediately preceded it. The Tomb of the Cybermen is my favourite story for a reason, and it's holding its own very nicely here. You'll forgive me if I'm a little more forgiving of the story than I might otherwise be, but there's not an awful lot that needs to be overlooked - the full-body versions of the Cyberman image don't look half as good as the head-and-shoulders version that we're all far more familiar with, it's true, and it seems silly that there's a table and chairs waiting handily in the lobby to their tomb, yes. But you know what? Everything else here is fantastic, so I don't care!

I think it's probably telling that I've written more notes about this episode than I think I have about any other in the marathon so far. I usually get about six episodes on a single sheet of paper, but I've used a side and a half for this one. There's just so much that I wanted to note down, and so much that I could talk about that it felt silly not to. It probably helps that this is the first full Troughton story that I'll be able to watch (indeed, it's the only full Troughton story from his first two seasons in the role), which means that there's little visual things I can pick up on more than I've been able to lately.

So where to start? The introduction of a new companion has often been used as a way to reintroduce the concept of Doctor Who to an audience who may be joining for the first time, and it's strange to note that this is the first time that the re-establishment happens in the first story of the season - we pan into the image of the Police Box, and then cut to inside (the first time we've seen it since The Moonbase, which feels like an absolute age ago), where the Doctor explains that it's his home, and has been for some time. Victoria is then introduced to the concept of time travel, and the idea that they can travel anywhere in time and space. The aspect of not being able to control where they go gets glossed over on this occasion, though Jamie does ask the Doctor for a smooth landing.

It's another one of those moments that shows how much the Doctor and Jamie have become best friends since they first met, and even aside from the argument they had during the last story, they really are becoming inseparable. There's little wonder that they travel together until someone else forces them apart - I imagine the pair would still be out there somewhere if they could be. Troughton and Hines simply bounce from each other, from the way the hold hands (and then quickly stop) as they enter the tomb, to the Doctor's tease that the Highlander's skirt is a bit short. It makes this phase of the programme so much fun, and I really can't get enough of the pair.

Victoria, it has to be said, still isn't really giving me much to love, though. Deborah Watling is doing a good job, and again it has to be said how beautiful she looks as she stands in the TARDIS at the beginning, but the character is a bit of a generic Doctor Who girl. She wanders into the Cybermen's 'revitalising' machine, where the bad guy locks her in, and then she's flustered when she gets out. There's a moan to the Doctor about wanting to just leave, and a constant feeling of unease. I get that it's her very first TARDIS trip, but this is the side of the character we saw plenty of in The Evil of the Daleks, and the fact that I can't remember much about what else she does in my favourite story probably speaks absolute volumes.

Although I've only got tele-snaps to compare it to for the most part of the last season, this story seems to be set on a far vaster scale than I'm used to from the series. I seem to find myself saying this a lot every time we get to a surviving episode (it was true of The War Machines, and The Faceless Ones, and the tele-snaps for The Smugglers made it look pretty large scale, too), but we really are on a new level here. There's a shot early on as we look down past Toberman's legs to the rest of the archeological expedition below, and it makes the place look so grand that it almost throws you. It does have to be said that I'm not sure it always works as an alien world (there's another shot which makes it look like a group of people inappropriately dressed for a day that the beach), but it sets the story apart and really gives the start of the new season a glossy feel.

I could just go on and on about this episode and all the things that are right with it, but I'd start to bore you before too long, and there's another three episodes to fill with praise yet, so I think I'll call it a day here. Suffice to say that my favourite story hasn't let me down, and I'm tremendously pleased by that.

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

Day 176: The Evil of the Daleks, Episode Seven

Dear diary,

I spent a fair bit of time during The Faceless Ones talking about the way Samantha Briggs was being set up as a companion, with a proper back story that served to show off all the aspects of her character – she was plucky, inquisitive, unafraid to dive right in to potential danger (she’d come all the way down from Liverpool, too, you know) and there was a real connection between her and Jamie. She was so very clearly the new companion… right up until the end of the story, at which point she wasn’t.

I’ve then spent plenty of time in this story actively waiting for the chance to show Victoria being signposted as the companion… but she isn’t, until the latter half of today’s episode – six after she was introduced. Victoria has come across as just a bit of a damsel in distress, and although much of the story has revolved around her (or, at least, around Jamie’s attempts to rescue her), she hasn’t really made much of an impact on me. Certainly, I couldn’t tell you very much about her character at all, whereas Sam Briggs was fully rounded by the time she kissed our highlander goodbye.

It’s surprising, then, that her being accepted onto the TARDIS as the new companion carries as much weight as it does. I’d forgotten that her father died during the course of this story, so his sacrifice to save the Doctor came as a pleasant surprise, and it was very movingly done. ‘You’ve just saved my life,’ the Doctor tells him. ‘It’s a good life to save,’ Waterfield replies, before asking the Doctor to look after Victoria for him. Jamie later muses that they can’t just leave Victoria (alone on Skaro, with her father and her best friend dead? I should think not!) and the Doctor confirms that she’s leaving with them. It’s a lovely moment, and oddly emotional, considering my lack of attachment to her up to now.

It’s odd to think that this is it (barring the odd cameo) for the Daleks until quite some way into the Third Doctor's era. They'll be absent from the series for the next five years, and absent from The 50 Year Diary for the next five months, rather fittingly returning for me just around the time of Doctor Who's 50th Anniversary. It was at this point Terry Nation started to really look at selling the Daleks as their own series, and this is probably the more logical placement for Daleks: The Destroyers to sit, but it felt like 'the final end' was a good point to leave the creatures on for now.

I wonder, though, what it would have been like if the Daleks hadn't turned up again to face off against Jon Pertwee? It's definitely true to say that without them, the programme wouldn't have gotten out of the First Season (possibly not even that first 13-episode commission), but by this point in time, it really has picked up it's own following, and losing the Daleks here and now possibly shows that they're not really needed for Doctor Who any more. Imagine a world in which the return of the Daleks, those pepper pot creatures from the 1960s were being revived for the new series as a slightly more obscure monster, in the same way the Macra and the Ice Warriors have been in recent years!

On the whole, I'm sad to say, The Evil of the Daleks hasn't been the barn-storming end to the Fourth Season that I was hoping for. The story's reputation within fandom has always been very high, but it really hasn't delivered for me. Lots of very nice moments, but it's felt like the Daleks leaving the series with more of a whimper than a bang, a real shame. I'm almost tempted to read the Target novel at the end of Series Five (when this serial was repeated on television) to see if I can improve my opinion on it - worth doing?

Aside from that, and The Highlanders, Season Four has been very strong. I've really loved it. I worries so much about these 'middle' seasons of the 1960s, since there was just so much missing, but it wasn't until after I'd finished with today's episode that I realised - we've not had a complete story all season! THat's about to be changed, with the release of The Tenth Planet and The Moonbase with animated episodes, but for me, every single story has been supplemented with the soundtracks. I think it's a testament to the season that it's managed to make such a great impression with so little visual material to go on.

But forget all that! We move onwards, and into Season Five! Not only that, it's my first complete Troughton story, and it's the classic tale I've always considered my favourite Doctor Who story. Little bit excited? You bet I am!

a

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

Day 175: The Evil of the Daleks, Episode Six

Dear diary,

It’s very clear that we’ve got Roy Skelton on Dalek duties in this episode, isn’t it? At times, it sounds like Zippy’s gotten hold of a ring modulator! If anything, it actively helps to story – as if these child-like Daleks weren’t already unnerving enough, they’re speaking in the voice of a beloved children’s character. Fantastic stuff.

That whole opening scene, with the Daleks continuing to play their games with the Doctor, is absolutely brilliant, taking the great ending to the last episode and taking it even further. There’s something very unusual about the way that the Daleks slowly drawl the Doctor’s words back at him (though we get ‘Traaaaiiiiinnnn’ and ‘Dizzzzyyyyy’, I’m a little sorry that they didn’t attempt to copy ‘Roundabout’. I’ll have to make up for it by saying the word in a Dalek voice to myself for the rest of the day. Or to strangers on the street. Why not? Roundaboooouuuttttt…). The scene seems to keep getting creepier and creepier, until it’s drawn to a close when the Daleks ominously state ‘we must go now’. It’s said in a way that wouldn’t be out of place coming from a spooky child in a horror film, and really works.

I was starting to think that’s I’d never have a nice word to say about The Evil of the Daleks, so I’m really leased to find that things are more to my taste now. I was hoping that the shift over to Skaro would be a turning point for the story, and it seems that it has more or less coincided with this, so I’m happy. And it’s the first time that we’ve seen the Doctor travel back to an alien planet we’ve already been to! We’ve seen him return places before (He’d been to Dido in The Rescue, for example), but this is the first time that we’ve seen both of the trips to the planet (Hm? You what? Oh, all right then. Yeah yeah, we visited Kembel on two separate occasions in The Daleks' Master Plan. I'll give you that one, but as that was all part of one big adventure - spread across several different stories! - I'm discounting it. This is the first time we've seen him return to an alien planet in a completely different context.)

Years of being a Doctor Who fan means that I know full well how the sets look for this episode, with the stark black and white angles, and the Dalek Emperor sat in the corner, plugged into the city (the narration on the soundtrack nicely describes it as sitting at the centre of its ‘web’), but I can’t help picturing the stark, metal corridors of the original Dalek story – without the visuals to this episode, my mind has automatically gone back to what I consider to be the ‘default’ design.

There’s something quite brilliant about the Doctor facing up to the Dalek Emperor, who towers over him. He’s cool and confident, musing that he’d always wondered if the pair would ever meet. It put me instantly in mind of a similar scene, in which the Ninth Doctor steps out of the TARDIS and confronts another Dalek Emperor. In another similarity between this and The Parting of the Ways, the Doctor seems to issue spoilers for us, when he tells the Emperor that he’ll have a revolution on his hands pretty soon, once the new ‘humanised’ Daleks start to ask questions.

The main issue I have with all of this - and the reveal that while the Doctor thought he was isolating this ‘Human Factor’, he was actually helping to discover a ‘Dalek Factor’ – is that I’m not sure I care. Much as I love Alpha, Beta, and Omega, I’ve said before that I wasn’t really paying too much attention to the experiments that the Doctor was being forced to do, so it doesn’t feel like some massive shock revelation here. I’m hoping that won’t matter too much as we move into the final episode, which I already know is the much fabled ‘Final End’ of the Daleks (at least during the 1960s).

a

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

Day 174: The Evil of the Daleks, Episode Five

Dear diary,

My favourite Beatles Album (Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band) was released in June 1967, while The Evil of the Daleks was being broadcast (between Episodes Two and Three, to be precise), and watching through the series in order, it's easy to draw some comparisons between the evolution of both the band, and Doctor Who's greatest foes. Although it's not as black and white as I'm about to paint it, I've always thought of the Beatles as being split into their early, very '1960s' stuff, and their later more abstract music.

Similarly, The Daleks have evolved since their earliest days in the series, and I think it's fair to say that they can be divided into the early stuff where they're just 'evil' pepper pots, who come along and invade/kill/shout a lot - essentially, every William Hartnell Dalek story. Or to put it another way, every Dalek story that Terry Nation had a real hand in - and the later Daleks who are more experimental: the two Whittaker stories.

They've not really had a massive presence in this story so far, and I don't think I'd have missed them had they not arrived until this episode in the narrative. Now that the story is shifting its focus back onto them, though, we're given that more abstract kind of Dalek scene that Whittaker is so good at - the episode closes on three Daleks playing a game. It sounds so simple, but it would have been unthinkable for the series to do something like this two years ago. Even the 'comedy' Daleks in The Chase ultimately get restored to shouting 'exterminate!' a lot and chase the Doctor and his companions.

This is the kind of cliffhanger that I've been waiting for from this story - one which takes the Daleks and does something interesting with them. Even when Power of the Daleks was left to show us a group of Daleks amassing an army, they did it on such a scale as to make a real impact. Cliffhangers like the one we had yesterday (two Daleks approach Jamie! Oh no!) just don't pack a punch any more, whereas this kind of thing is fantastic.

I think it's fair to say that the store has a whole has turned around a bit for me today - certainly I've been far more receptive to it. It helps that after several episodes in which we watch people move from 'A' to 'B' to 'C' and back again, things seem to be reaching a kind of point now. The idea of identifying the 'Human Factor' was introduced back in Episode Two, but it feels like so long since then that it had almost become irrelevant in my mind (Of course, it's the whole point of everything that has happened in Episodes Three, Four, and Five, but to my disconnected mind, I couldn't care less).

It might just be because I'm feeling more generous towards the episode, but I've picked up on a lot more sparkling dialogue today than in the rest of the story - it's the first time that I've written quite this many notes for a few days' There's obviously Troughton's speech about being a professor of a wide academy (of which human nature is merely a part), which has seeped into being one of those quotes you often see associated with the Doctor. There's also his discussion about the human emotions and how useful they can be, and his sheer delight when the Daleks push him around the room on a spiny chair. It's another thing I just can't imaging Hartnell's Doctor doing: for all his giggling and light-hearted moments, I can't imagine him being pushed around on a chair by a group of Daleks. Something about that image doesn't seem right in the way that picturing Troughton doing it does.

Perhaps my favourite dialogue from today's episode comes from the Doctor and Jamie's argument. I praised the earlier one they had in which the Doctor tricked Jamie into doing what he needed, but that one was partly play acting, at least on the Doctor's part. Today's argument is real, and you can tell from the way it's played. It's much lower-key than the earlier example, and it feels far more real. In many ways, it's reminiscent of the final scene of The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve, and there's a number of beats in both those arguments that are the same.

I didn't know that the Doctor and Jamie ever had a discussion like this - I always thought they spent all three years together as the absolute best of friends, with never a cross word between them, so it's brilliant to see that there's more to their relationship than all that, and to know that Jamie is capable of being fleshed out in such a way. 'Look, I'm telling you this - we're done, you and me. You're too callous for me,' Jamie tells his friend, and it ties in nicely with my thoughts about the Doctor being seen to manipulate his friend earlier in the story. As always, it's a little thing, but it really works.

I'm hoping that the goodwill I've built up over this episode is a good sign, and with another two to go I may yet figure out why this story is held in such high regard. It's good to know that we're three characters shorter now, as I have to confess I was starting to get a bit lost as to who was who. Now that we've got Daleks acting very differently, and the story seemingly headed somewhere, things are looking up…

a 

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

Day 173: The Evil of the Daleks, Episode Four

Dear diary,

How do you type that noise you make when you suck air in through your teeth? I’m genuinely not sure how to type this one today. All I’ve got written in my notes is ‘Jamie fights Kemel for the first five minutes’. After that, there just wasn’t really anything else that I felt compelled to write about. I’m so disappointed – this was supposed to be the great one! The big send off for the Daleks!

I think the thing that annoyed me the most was the cliffhanger. I spent every episode of The Power of the Daleks absolutely singing the praises of the episode endings. Every singe one felt new and fresh, taking the Daleks and making them scary in a way completely unlike anything we’d ever seen from them. Today’s cliffhanger involves Jamie reaching a door, while two Daleks trundle up behind him, guns at the ready.

At the end of Doctor Who’s fourth year, this just doesn’t hold up as a Dalek cliffhanger. We’ve seen them approaching people ready to kill in various forms ever since the fifth episode - and there we only see the plunger and Barbara from the Daleks point-of-view. Take away the thrill of not knowing what this strange thing could be, it’s still framed more interestingly than this one, at least judging from the tele snaps.

I think I was just expecting there to me a bit more to The Evil of the Daleks. Now, I’m not completely in the Dark, I know that at some stage the action will switch to Skaro, and we get a big destruction of the pepperpots, with (so I hear) pretty good integration of model work and studio footage – not that I can actually see it…. I know we’ve got a huge Dalek Emperor on the way, and I can only assume that this is what sets this story on such a high pedestal. It’s just that… I thought from reputation that we’d be getting a brilliant story from start to finish. Ah well, you can’t win them all, I guess.

I’ve always been more intrigued by the proposed notion of a Daleks vs Cybermen story from the 1960s. I know we eventually got one during the Tenth Doctor’s era, but there’s something about the idea of the 1960s versions of these creatures dueling it out that really appeals to me, and I can’t help but feel that I’d be enjoying it more than I currently am this one. I don’t think it’s helping that I know The Tomb of the Cybermen is coming up, and I’ve always thought of it as my favourite Doctor Who story, so this one just feels like a bit of an obstacle in my way!

Hm? Sorry? What do you mean you can feel a tenuous link on the way? I don’t know what you’re talking about.

…Knowing that this story was on the way, with its big old Dalek Emperor, I decided to pick up my (slightly battered) copy of The Dalek Chronicles on my last trip home. It’s a 1994 Doctor Who Magazine special, which reprints all of the Dalek comic strips from TV Century 21, in order from the start. I managed to grab a copy on Ebay years and years ago, but I’ve never actually read it. Always meant to, just don’t think I ever found the time. I’ve been reading it in chunks alongside this story, and I’m somewhat dismayed to find that I’m enjoying it more than The Evil of the Daleks.

I’d imagine that a number of people reading The 50 Year Diary will have at least a vague idea of what these comics are, but for the uninitiated: Tv Century 21 was a comic produced in the 1960s, and for 104 issues they ran a single-page comic titled The Daleks. It told the story of the Dalek’s creation on Skaro – there’s no Davros, but they’re still created by a scientist, and there’s still a great big war – and then follows them as they spread out across the stars. They fight the Mechanoids a bit, too. The final strip in the series ends with the Emperor Dalek declaring that the Daleks will conquer Earth, which leads quite neatly into the second of the Peter Cushing Dalek films, and tellingly, the later strips see the design of the creatures morph to look more like their movie counterparts.

I think it’s probably fair to say that it’s not any great literary feat, and it doesn’t stand up to a great deal of scrutiny, but taken at face value as a weekly adventure strip featuring the Daleks, it’s really rather good. It has the feel of a comic strip from The Eagle (perhaps unsurprisingly, as the first artist on the strip, Richard E Jennings, had contributed to The Eagle for a long time, and Eric Eden who filled in for a few issues in the middle of the run had worked on Dan Dare), full of that wonderful breed of what we tend to call ‘retro futurism’ these days. The design of the Daleks’ city is fantastic, and there’s plenty of little touches to the strip that can’t help to make me smile.

Quite early on in the story, only about five or six issues in, a spacecraft lands on Skaro for the first time, and the Daleks plot to capture it. The thing that I enjoy about it is the way they hide themselves to prepare their attack: the emperor orders the Magnetic Sand to be switched on, and it covers the city in a perfect disguise. It’s the kind of fantastic futuristic thing that you’d expect to find in a children’s ‘space’ comic of the age, as is the invention of things like the ‘Astrodalek’ later on in the story (A Dalek with his eyestalk plugged into the end of an enormous telescope), and the Daleks’ flying Hover Discs, which have become quite iconic withing Doctor Who - there’s even a new Dalek toy set available now that comes with one.

The strip is mostly written by David Whittaker, but it’s far more traditional than some of the things he tries with the Daleks on TV. That doesn’t mean that things are rendered to being dull, though, as it has a kind of simplistic charm to the story. Whittaker even still takes old favourite ideas from Terry Nation and does something new and different with them – there’s a wonderful moment on the planet Alvega with some living plants (haven’t seen any of those in a while!). While it could be reduced to being a rubbish retread of the kind of things we’ve seen in stories from The Keys Of Marinus, to The Chase and The Daleks’ Master Plan, Whittaker depicts the plants as plotting against the Daleks, and there’s a fantastic panel at the end of one strip where the plants have worked their way inside a Dalek’s casing and grown out, bursting out from every seam. It’s a bizarre image, and it looks stunning. Pleasingly, it’s given plenty of room to breathe.

The first three strips, and a few from later in the run (once Ron Turner had taken over art duties for the latter half of the run, a style which, sadly, down’t appeal to me half as much as the earlier one does), have recently been reprinted in the Doctor Who Magazine Dalek spacial, reprinted from the original art which makes them look gorgeous – certainly much better than the versions in my 19-year-old version! Here’s hoping that they’ll see a full reprint in the near future, because the series as a whole is certainly worth a read, if only to see an alternate (and much more 1950s/60s sci fi) version of the Daleks’ early years…

I think I’ll be giving the strip as a whole an 8/10 – wish I could say the same for The Evil of the Daleks!

a 

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

Day 172: The Evil of the Daleks, Episode Three

Dear diary,

Oh dear. I think I've taken the same kind of issue with this story that I did back with The Highlanders - I've decided early on that I'm simply not impressed and now that's all my mind can focus on. Things are even worse here, though, because I'm going in with the pre-defined notion of this being a real classic that can do no wrong…

Whereas actually it's just a bit of a plodding bore that can do no… well… anything, really. Seriously, we're almost 75 minutes into The Evil of the Daleks, and very little has happened. The TARDIS is stolen. The Doctor and Jamie are kidnapped and taken back to 1866. Turns out the Daleks are there, and they want the Doctor to perform experiments on his young friend. Oh, and now there's a Turkish man in a fez and a series of elaborate traps for Jamie to get through so that the Doctor can actually undertake these steps.

Really, though? Really? This story was voted top 18 in the last big fandom poll? (I've yet to see how it's faring in our own large-scale poll of Doctor Who episodes, so I don't know if it's retaining its position, or if it's following its previous form and slipping down the table.)

Oh, all right. It's not all bad. Certainly, it's not reached the point where I'm dreading the throughout of having to go on and start looking for an alternative way of finishing the story (Hello, The Highlanders, again). I think the only thing that's keeping me going at this stage is the promise that things are going to get better. I don't often seem to agree with received fan wisdom, but they can't have been this wrong for so long, surely? The Evil of the Daleks is going to become fantastic any minute now, yeah?

There's one or two little pockets of things peppered throughout the story that are keeping my interest up, and today's thing of interest has to be Patrick Troughton and Frazer Hines. Again. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know I've praised them to the high heavens plenty over the course of Season Four, but they really are something special, aren't they? Today, we get to watch (hear) them having a blazing row, and it's enough to make the ones the earliest Doctor used to have with Barbara look like a minor play fight.

And then, it's all revealed to be a part of the Doctor's plan - a way of tricking his companion into taking part in the experiment, so that they have a chance further down the line. People often single the Seventh Doctor out as the arch manipulator, but this is a perfect example of it being used much earlier on in the programme's run. I've commented before that this incarnation is very good at dropping the right word or the right action at just the right moment to get the results he wants, but it's never used better than this.

Aside from that scene, which comes fairly late on in the episode, I'm afraid that things just aren't grabbing me. I was going to be rating this one a little lower than I have, but that scene alone is so good that it deserves to bring the score up just a little bit…

a 

a

It’s been almost three weeks since we launched our 50th Anniversary Poll, giving you the chance to rate the Doctor’s televised adventures, in an attempt to find fan’s number one story. 

In 2009, Doctor Who Magazine’s ‘Mighty 200’ poll rated The Caves of Androzani to be the number one story of all time, with the following story - The Twin Dilemma - consigned to last place. It’s been great to watch entries coming in over the last few weeks, and we’re somewhat pleased to say that neither of those stories occupy the position they did in the last poll, so there’s still everything to play for! 

Don’t forget that it’s not too late to get your votes in - you’ll find a link to download the survey form at the bottom of this post. All you need to do is rank the stories that you’ve seen between ‘1’ (terrible!) and ’10’ (the best of the best!) and email them to us at 50yearpoll@drwho-online.co.uk .

To give you something of a hint as to where things currently stand, here’s a story from each Doctor, along with it’s current placement in the chart (there’s a total of 239 positions), and it’s current average score. The scores alter slightly every time a new entry arrives in our inbox, so these tales could well end up in different places by the time the final votes are in! 

The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve 153    (63.58%)

The Space Pirates         236    (41.95%)

The Time Warrior         50    (77.45%) 

The Armageddon Factor         200    (57.36%) 

Earthshock                 23    (82.50%)

Vengeance on Varos         125    (67.67)

Ghost Light                  81    (71.96)

The TV Movie                  142   (65.22%)

Father’s Day                  68      (73.67%)

Smith and Jones          117   (68.35%)

The Name of the Doctor          12   (84.19%) 

The survey is available in several different formats, which you can get hold of at the bottom of this post. There’s an interactive PDF, which you can fill in using Adobe Acrobat, or if you’re a Mac user, you can fill it in using Preview. 

You can also print out the survey form, write on manually, and then scan or photograph to send us your scores. Don’t worry - it doesn’t have to be printed in colour if you want to save your printer inks! 

Finally, both pages are available as JPGs, so you can open them up in Photoshop, Microsoft Paint, or any other image editor, and add your scores that way. 

As long as we can clearly read the scores you’re giving to each story, and they’re on the survey form, that’s absolutely fine. Please don’t just list them in the body of your email, though!

Once you’ve filled in your form, you’ll need to email it to us at 50yearpoll@drwho-online.co.uk before 31st July 2013. We’ll be analysing the results throughout August, and we’ll announce them in early September. 

Will there be a new favourite Doctor Who story in time for the programme’s 50th Anniversary? There’s only one way to find out - get voting!

DOWNLOAD THE PDF VOTING FORM

(Link opens up a dropbox window, please select the 'download' button in the

top right-hand corner)

DOWNLOAD THE JPG VOTING FORM - PAGE ONE and PAGE TWO

[Source: Doctor Who Online]

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

Day 171: The Evil of the Daleks, Episode Two

Dear diary,

I've often thought that if (when) I ever got my hands on a time machine, I'd quite like to visit Victorian England. Couldn't tell you why it's the top of my list, but I've always been fascinated by it. Even at school, the Victorian era was one of my favourites in history lessons. In many ways, I've always thought of Doctor Who being particularly suited to the era, too, and it seems many other's agree with me - several parts of the most recent season have been set there, and it's not been uncommon for the Doctor to visit in the past.

It's odd, then, to think that this episode marks the first time that we've actually seen this era in the series (yes, yes, pedants, the scene on the Marie Celeste during The Chase is technically set in Victorian times, but it was way out at sea, and might as well have been set in any generic past if it wasn't for the joke at the end, so I'm disqualifying it), almost five years in. Oh, and it's done beautifully. It's said a lot, but the BBC design department really do make a stunning job of this period, and this episode is no exception. Maxtible's drawing room has to be the crowning achievement, as it looks simply brilliant, and it's nice to have an episode from the story surviving so that we can really appreciate it.

Speaking of which, it's bloody lovely to see a Dalek again! We've had them in the series quite recently to welcome the new Doctor to the series, and I watched The Destroyers not all that long ago, but thanks to the gaps in the archives (and the lack of production of The Destroyers…) this is the first time I've actually seen a Dalek on screen, moving and everything, since The Daleks' Master Plan, and that feels like a lifetime ago. Technically, it was for the Doctor.

It's nice to see that the Daleks here are the same kind of manipulative ones seen in Power of the Daleks, and the cruel, terrifying version that we had in Master Plan, too. Yesterday's episode ended rather nicely with a Dalek screaming at Kennedy to identify himself (though it wasn't as good a cliffhanger as they had pretty consistently in their last tale), and then the resolution to that ending today? The Dalek exterminates him as soon as we're done with the reprise. Then it disappears, and Waterfield has something of a breakdown as he realises he'll have to dispose of the body. The Daleks really are at their best when their callous, and Whittaker knows exactly how to use them in the right way.

All that said, I'm sorry to say that the story still isn't really capturing me. I've seen this episode before (a long, long, time ago on a bored Sunday-afternoon viewing of the Lost in Time collection), and remembered it being pretty good, but this time around it still feels as if I'm waiting for things to get going. As ever, there's a lot to like, but it just don't seem to be doing very much. Maybe I'm being put off by the fact that people say it's one of the stone-cold 'classics' of Doctor Who, and my expectations are just set a little bit too high?

We do get our first introduction of Victoria in this episode though, as a captive of the Daleks, who seem obsessed with her weight. They're holding her prisoner as leverage with Waterfield, so that he'll help capture the Doctor and force him to conduct some experiments on Jamie. I complained yesterday that the plan to get the Doctor to the antiques shop was a bit round the houses… but now it makes even less sense! Surely it would have been quicker to knock the Doctor and Jamie out at Gatwick, transport them to 1886, tie Jamie up in the lab and force the Doctor to get to work under Dalek guard? Why all the messing about?

Victoria herself comes across as less obviously a companion as Sam Briggs did in the last story (heck, even Mollie seems to be a more likely candidate to step aboard the TARDIS at this point!), but it does have to be said that Debbie Watling does look beautiful in her first scenes. I've not seen much of Victoria's tenure outside of The Tomb of the Cybermen (as Deborah herself says on one of the DVD special features about this era - there's nothing left of there time on the show, really), so I'm hoping she'll blossom once she's out from under the Daleks' watchful eye-stalks.

a