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

Day 265: Doctor Who and the Silurians, Episode One

Dear diary,

I can't tell you how much I love the fact that the Doctor and the Brigadier aren't the best of friends. They get off to a bit of a ropey start right back in The Web of Fear, where we're actually led to suspect that Lethbridge-Stewart might be under the controlled of the Great Intelligence, but by the time he shows up again for The Invasion, the Doctor greets him as an old friend, and he's pleased to see him. Even during one of his few lucid moments in the hospital during the last story, he seems quite pleased to set eyes on the man again.

Of course, before Spearhead From Space is out, the Doctor has tried to flee from the planet leaving the Brigadier in a bit of a mess with a mystery continuing to build. By the end of the story, they seem to be on pretty good terms, but here it's back to not seeing eye-to-eye. It all starts right at the beginning of the episode, with the Doctor seeming to resent being summoned off to a meeting when he's in the middle of patching up his new wheels. Eventually, it's manifested in an argument between the pair over the dismissal of the Doctor's evidence, and it all makes for quite good drama.

I've always thought of the Doctor and the Brigadier as being great friends - mostly because that's how they react to each other during the 1980s, and it's a period of the programme I'm much more familiar with. It's great to see them butting heads here, and it feels quite daring. I'm not entirely sure whose side I'm on, since I've seen the Doctor's evidence, so I'm willing to believe him, but I can see the Brigadier's stance!

The Doctor only seems to enjoy UNIT when it suits him. As I've said, he hates the idea of being pulled away from a last afternoon doing up the car, and when Dr Meredith asks if he's with the organisation, the Doctor answers 'yes, depressing, isn't it?' Conversely, when he's refused access to a patient he wants to study, he's quite happy to wave his credentials around, claiming that being a member of UNIT gives him the authority to do exactly as he wants.

It's only five episode in, but already it's a very different portrayal of the Doctor to the one I've grown used to with Troughton. Whereas he'd charm his way into places or simply sneak in when everyone was looking the other way, it's much more this Doctor's style to make demands and simply do whatever the hell he wants to. I think it's this personality that's often rubbed me up the wrong way in the past, but it's working quite well here, and it's all adding to this sense of tension he feels at slotting into this new role.

The big disappointment about today's episode has to be the fact that we're back to studio videotape. Having really enjoyed the experience of an all-film and location story in Spearhead From Space, opening here in some studio-based caves was just crushing. It was probably less of an issue following this journey from the Spearhead DVD release; though it would have still looked markedly different, it would likely have been less of a shift.

As it is, I'm left with the look I most commonly associate with the Pertwee era. Despite the stunning work of the Restoration Team over the years, some of these episodes aren't the best quality sources to work from. There's a specific look to the stories of the early 1970s, and this one captures it perfectly.

Still, I can't complain too much, because things are whizzing along at a great pace. One of the things that's always put me off Season Seven (and the reason that Spearhead is the only story from this year that I've tried to experience before) is the fact that it's mostly made up of seven-part stories. I've said on many occasions before that I think three episodes is about perfect most of the time, so the thought of three consecutive seven-parters has always seemed more than a little daunting.

But here, its as though they don't have enough time to get in everything they want. There's several places where we cut hurriedly from one scene to another, allowing for a fair chunk of time to pass in between. It's most noticeable at the cliffhanger, when the Doctor moves very suddenly from considering the unusual description of claw marks in the coroner's report on a dead worker to being halfway down a ladder into the cave. If the story can hold a pace like this throughout the next six episodes, it'll keep me very happy indeed!