Plot summary

The Doctor becomes an old man when he enters a high-tech attraction at a cosmic resort that’s been targeted by reptilian gangsters.

Notable for:

• First story to feature the new John Nathan-Turner era title sequence and Peter Howell’s new arrangement of the Doctor Who theme

• First story produced by John Nathan-Turner, who would produce Doctor Who until 1989

• K9 is written out of most of the serial when a wave knocks him into the sea in the opening scene — a deliberately undignified exit, as Nathan-Turner was keen to reduce K9’s prominence

• Tom Baker and Lalla Ward’s relationship was at a nadir during production, making for a difficult atmosphere on set

• Director Lovett Bickford’s approach pushed the serial significantly over budget, and he was never asked to direct Doctor Who again

• The opening sequence on Brighton Beach was the first Doctor Who location filming to use a brand-new, steadicam-style camera rig

• The baby Pangol seen at the end of the story was played by Alys, daughter of production manager Anji Smith

• Viewership ranged from 5.9 million (Part 1) down to 4.5 million (Part 4)

Pete commentary:

• This is it—the JNT era begins with The Leisure Hive. You have to think back to how cool and unexpected it must have been to tune into Doctor Who and instead of the time tunnel, you’re greeted with the stars rushing at you and the neon logo and Peter Howell’s synthesized version of the theme. It definitely sets a tone: we’re back, we’re all-new, and we’re ready for the ’80s.

• The JNT era is distinct in many ways, and much of the style begins here:

  • The soundtracks were modernized with more ’80s synth (bye, Dudley Simpson). The Leisure Hive’s music wasn’t done by Paddy Kingsland, but you can feel it’s more in that style.

  • Everyone’s outfits got more costume-y, and the Doctor acquires question marks on parts of his clothing, something that would feature until the end of the program in 1989.

  • The stories veered more toward hard sci-fi, influenced largely by script editor Christopher Bidmead (RIP)

• There are many long mood-setting shots of the exterior of the Hive. It honestly feels like padding, particularly early on when you don’t have much to go on (the war, the dying Argolins, etc.).

• Those shots contribute to a really slow pace early on, with the extremely long pan along Brighton Beach. That scene is at least memorable, with the Doctor and Romana showing some good banter early on (“Well I can’t get everything right”).

• Why does K-9 literally blow up when he touches sea water? His lack of seawater resistance is a really silly way to write him out of the story. It’s surprising John Leeson didn’t walk again, given how he was written out of his first story back.

• The story is ostensibly a parody and parable at the same time. It’s satirizing declining tourism (something the UK was experiencing in the late ’70s, apparently) as well as the mafia (Foamasi is an anagram of mafiosa, the lodges are similar to families). But it’s also a cautionary tale about nuclear war, with Argolis devastated and the Argolin society on its last legs. What is this story supposed to be about? It can’t seem to decide.

• Then there’s the magic box of the tachyon chamber. Putting aside how random it is that a dying race has somehow achieved some kind of scientific breakthrough, it’s never fully explained what this thing is supposed to do. They imply that the Argolins have leveraged it to essentially clone members of their race, which is how Pangol came to be. But then why ban more clones for 20 years? Isn’t it pretty urgent that you solve your sterility problem?

• There’s also the idea of using the chamber as a rejuvenator—a fountain of youth. And it works! But only with the help of Romana, apparently. So tachyonics alone can’t achieve this, but with some aspect of Time Lord science applied, it can. Does that mean it can only do this one time, while the Doctor and Romana are there? Does leaving the Randomizer have any significance (i.e. it can do this as long as the Randomizer stays there)? And wouldn’t “the whole course of natural evolution throughout the universe” be affected, to quote the Inquisitor from Trial?

• Also, why does it take a human (Hardin) to make the breakthrough if it’s the Argolins who have put all their scientific eggs in the tachyonics basket?

• Also, the Randomizer somehow being a factor here is clearly an excuse to get rid of it. (In the novel, it gets smashed when the Doctor drops it.) Kudos to JNT, though, for making the decision to get rid of it. We don’t need a device to make the TARDIS unreliable, and the Doctor’s point about not wanting to live forever in fear of some bad guy chasing him is well taken.

• Baker’s “old guy” makeup is actually quite good. He never quite acts old in a way that’s convincing, and I don’t think the script gives him much opportunity. It would have been good to give him a cane or walking stick, or emphasize that he’s losing his memory. There’s more of this in the novel.

• The twist in episode 4 that all the Pangol duplicates are really the Doctor is kind of cool, but you have to think—how did that happen? And how did the rejuvenation take place at the same time? Yes, the Doctor was in the chamber, but he wasn’t wearing Pangol’s clothes, and the chamber looks so small—why didn’t Pangol just take a minute to get the Doctor out of there?

• I must say, I like the design of the Argolins. I could have done with a bit more variation in their costumes, but the hair, the makeup, and the little marbles that fall off when they start to die—all very original.

• I like the subplot of having the Foamasi be a bit two-dimensional as the “mystery” bad guy: that there’s a criminal faction and a government team dispatched to deal with them. And, structurally, I like that the story tries to get you to focus on the monster when the real bad buy (Pangol) is front and center. I just don’t think it does enough work to make me care about either.

• Very strange that the TARDIS doesn’t translate the Foamasi language.

Four Questions to Doomsday - Pete

1. Why did the Randomizer take us here? Now that we’re halfway through, the Randomizer felt the need to confront something—the end of its journey. It ends where JNT begins. Whatever you think about his decisions, they are deliberate, so I take the message here to be that living intentionally is perhaps the best course anyone can take.
   
   Also, both The Leisure Hive and The Greatest Show in the Galaxy feature public-facing performances that mask something darker beneath. Plus the Doctor becomes a part of both shows, which never quite turns out well.

2. What if the evil plot had succeeded? Thinking about Pangol’s evil plot: He recreates himself, over and over, and raises a new Argolin army. Argolis has no resources, though, so where does his army get equipment? He’s going to need money, partners, etc. I don’t think it would be a good idea to declare war on the Foamasi on day 1, as he seems to intend to here. More likely, the last remaining Argolins are wiped out pretty quickly once he starts to rattle his saber.

3. Where’s the Clara splinter? She deletes the Foamasi language from the TARDIS’s memory banks so the Doctor doesn’t put things together too early and miss his chance to get into the tachyon chamber to rejuvenate/duplicate himself.

4. Dalek, Ogron, Professor Hayter, Viscount Banger, Fixed Point in Time, Lady Cassandra, or Zarbi? This is a Hayter, but it’s also a Fixed Point in Time because of how notable the story is. Fixed Hayter in Time.

Subscribe now

Chris commentary:

• I don’t have to imagine how new and weird the starfield intro, new theme etc. was – I was there! This is the first story where I have a distinct memory of watching with my dad, of both of us being surprised by the new theme, slightly disappointed by the no time tunnel but on board with the starfield – no McCoy-like reaction here! – and of him laughing at the opening Brighton Beach shot …

• … which gets a bad rap. Think Monty Python! Those overly long intros concluding with the “It’s …” man is the comedy vein they’re going for here. And it works if the show has been off the BBC for the whole summer.

• Definitely remember K9 being done dirty. Why does it seem like Romana messes up the whole TARDIS crew here?

• Let’s talk Buck Rogers

• I sort of remember the horror of the Doctor being “torn apart,” but I REALLY remember the Doctor getting old. Terrifying! And I vaguely remember being disappointed when they hit the reset button on that …

• Let’s compare to the other major old Doctor stories, both in new Who, both no doubt influenced by this – the Master Trilogy and Time of the Doctor. I love it every time the show does it. More old Doctor please!

• The novelization is so much better, very much trying to be Douglas Adams in the first few chapters.

• DNA’s fingerprints seem like they’re all over this, despite his total lack of involvement. Largely because HHGTG the TV show was being filmed at the same time by the BBC, also using the Radiophonic Workshop …

• For this reason, I told myself that “Pangol” has a last name “Actic-Gargleblaster” and it totally stuck.

• Interesting that Tom Baker has aged in real life now in a completely different direction … all the hair going up rather than down!

• One unforgivably long scene, though, repeated twice – the shuttle docking. JNT was said to have edited a lot out to make this thing feel pacy, so why did that pointless model shot make the cut?

Four Questions to Doomsday - Chris

1. Why did the Randomizer take us here? Is it contemplating suicide? “There’s been enough Randomizing on this job” – perhaps it’s going on strike? Perhaps it wants more leisure time, to go to Centers of Leisure, to a circus, to a Hive – does the PTO randomizer need more PTO? Is it signalling that it is now “breaking free” of the TARDIS halfway through our adventure, and its choices are going to be even more wilful? Or is it just taking me directly to the most emotionally resonant stories of my childhood?

2. What if the evil plot had succeeded? Then Pangol unleashes an army across the cosmos … and it seems like Gallifrey might actually take notice of this aggressive tachyonic technology, despite being an “obscure planet.” They’d simply speed up the Argolin metabolism as soon as their invasion fleets left, and all the Pangols would go all Sarah Kingdom …

3. Where’s the Clara splinter? Time Lady Clara is putting the Doctor through regeneration therapy, starting to ease him into leaving this body, by means of tachyonic images (he’s not actually that old)

4. Dalek, Ogron, Professor Hayter, Viscount Banger, Fixed Point in Time, Lady Cassandra, or Zarbi? I’m not even hating, I don’t need a Fixed Point despite my nostalgia – this looks amazing (new burgundy outfit! The Argolin! Quantel ftw!) but the script has significant flaws. It’s a Cassandra all the way, and she’s really milking her death scene with little droppings appearing from the top of her paper-thin skin.

Plot Summary

The Doctor and Ace visit the once-legendary Psychic Circus only to find a trio of toxic fans have turned it into a quirky nightmare.

Notable for:

• Originally planned as a three-parter before the producers asked for it to be expanded to four episodes.

• BBC asbestos problems shut down studios, so the serial was rescued by filming the circus tent material in a real tent set up at BBC Elstree, after location work at Warmwell Quarry in Dorset.

• Whizz Kid was a deliberate spoof of obsessive Doctor Who fans, including his complaint that the Psychic Circus “isn’t what it used to be,” which was a pointed joke about fandom moaning that the show had declined.

• Ian Reddington invented many of the Chief Clown’s mannerisms himself, and the robot clowns’ masks were based on a cast of his face.

• Sophie Aldred really was afraid of clowns.

• This was intended to be Season 25’s second serial, but the season was rearranged so Silver Nemesis could air on Doctor Who’s exact 25th anniversary.

• It contains the only appearance of the TARDIS interior in Season 25, and it is also the last televised story where the Seventh Doctor wears the lighter cream coat.

• The rap number in the Psychic Circus was the first original song commissioned for Doctor Who since The King’s Demons in 1983.

• Part Four pulled 6.6 million viewers, the highest audience of Sylvester McCoy’s TV era.

• Jessica Martin’s Mags became popular enough to come back in later audio stories, and Martin later returned to televised Doctor Who in Voyage of the Damned, voicing Queen Elizabeth II.

Pete commentary:

• The Greatest Show in the Galaxy is an interesting story. For all the characters and mystery within it, it’s actually very simple: The once-great Psychic Circus is on its last legs because it’s been hijacked by powerful gods who demand to be entertained, murdering anyone who displeases them.

• The metaphor is apt, and clearly intentional to some degree: A legendary piece of IP is coasting on its reputation, but the fundamental problem is that it’s been captured by its most toxic (and frankly stupid) fans, so it dwindles in output and creativity until it eats itself.

• While that’s not a perfect metaphor for Doctor Who itself, it’s probably more relevant today for many franchises, especially Star Wars.

• Because of that continued relevance and the punch-above-its-weight production design, The Greatest Show in the Galaxy has definitely improved with age. The Blu-ray has some improved effects (the robot chasing the TARDIS, better lasers, etc.), but they’re hardly necessary.

• When something penetrates the TARDIS to kick off an adventure, it’s particularly interesting. It’s inherently more violative of the Doctor’s sanctuary, so you feel more of an impact. There’s a danger of overdoing this—they definitely did it too often in Whittkaer’s era—but here it’s a nice foreshadowing (hopefully intentional) of the power level they’re dealing with, which is paid off with the reveal of the gods in episode four.

• I like that the Doctor is enthusiastically diving in, while Ace is reluctant, which is a nice reversal of their personalities. I think the Doctor: 1) likes circuses, and 2) clearly understands there’s a huge problem to solve with the Psychic Circus.

• This story has a ton of characters, and virtually all of them are introduced in episode 1: The Chief Clown, the Ringmaster, Nord, the Stallslady, Flowerchild, Bellboy the Captain and Mags, Whizz Kid, etc. Luckily, they’re all very distinct, but it’s asking a lot of the viewer early on.

• The location work was predictably done in a quarry, though I’m not sure if it was the best choice. I think the bleakness of the terrain adds to the idea that this is a franchise on its last legs, but it’s almost too desolate: It feels like the circus hasn’t been attracting crowds for a while. While that’s sort of the point, given how demanding the Gods of Ragnarok are, you have to assume there has been a steady stream of individuals up until this point, and this is literally the last of them.

• The simplicity of the gods’ “evil plot” is actually kind of refreshing: “Dance, people! Entertain us!” The fact that they do it in an ultimately terrible and self-destructive way (who’s going to entertain you if you kill the Ringmaster and the fortune teller/Morgana?) underscores the evils of addiction, not to mention boredom: You know its bad for you, but you keep doing it anyway. Witness doomscrolling, TikTok—this will always be relevant/true.

• Ultimately, it’s probably best to not get too bogged down into the details of who the Gods of Ragnarok are, their motives, and the mechanics or history of the circus itself. This one is really more about the vibes and the metaphor, and those work wonderfully.

• Deadbeat is an interesting choice of hero. He’s kind of a non-presence until he “comes around,” but after that he and Ace make a pretty good team, blowing up stuff to save the day.

• Production values of this one were pretty damn good.

  • It’s hard to believe they filmed a lot of this in a literal tent, but that actually turned out to be visually great.

  • The robot conductor looks very cool, the Chief Clown’s makeup is excellent, the acrobatics, etc.—all top marks.

  • Nord’s bike is, indeed, wicked.

  • The explosions are some of the best in Classic Who—the conductor robot is absolutely atomized, and Sylvester McCoy walking away from a very real explosion is perfect (despite it being much larger than they planned).

  • The miniature work they did with the Big Top is really convincing.

  • Love watching the Doctor swing around the Big Top in episode 4. This is the “Chekhov’s gun” payoff of having a circus as your primary set piece—you have to pay off with high-flying action.

• Whizz Kid is great. Here’s a super-early version of meta commentary on Doctor Who as a franchise with fans, and scrutinizing that relationship. Smart and astronomically more relevant today.

• The villains in this are really good: The Captain might be the best performance. The way he twists his nonchalance into evil indifference is great, and his perspective—that what he’s doing is supremely logical since it’s very clear what happens to performers in the Psychic Circus—isn’t just understandable, it’s arguably justified. Witness Rose in Bad Wolf: “OK, I’ll play to win.”

• Ian Reddington as the Chief Clown is outstanding. His gestures, eyes, the way he speaks, everything. You can see why he was voted top villain of the season in DWM.

What did Pete’s family think?

• Grace adored this episode. With all the colorful characters and budding mystery, she declared “I love this already,” about 10 minutes into episode 1. She thought it was super interesting, and she loved all the characters (or loved being creeped out by them, in the case of the Chief Clown). She called it her favorite Classic Who story, at least until episode 4, which I think she felt was a bit disappointing.

Four Questions to Doomsday - Pete

1. Why did the Randomizer take us here? Obviously answering Chris’ request. More importantly, it shows just how much the McCoy era, and his Doctor, improves over the course of 2 seasons.

   The Highlanders had the companions wanting to explore while the Doctor wanted to leave. This is the reverse.

   Not as much quarry as Time and the Rani, but still plenty of quarry.

2. What if the evil plot had succeeded? So they don’t get the medallion to the Doctor, and gods kill him. Ace and Mags try their hand at the Dark Circus, entertaining the gods and then reflecting their power back on them. With the Doctor dead, though, Ace ends up joining Kingpin’s circus.

3. Where’s the Clara splinter? She’s the Stallslady, waving away the locals, making the circus seem uncool to them, preserving the planet’s indigenous population as best she can.

4. Dalek, Ogron, Professor Hayter, Viscount Banger, Fixed Point in Time, Lady Cassandra, or Zarbi? Punches way above its weight for the McCoy era. There’s a little too much going on early on, and the central premise (an interstellar circus that lures people to their deaths) requires a good deal of headcanon, but it’s a super fun watch that’s gotten more relevant with age. Dalek-Banger hybrid.

Chris commentary:

• I would really, dearly love to be one of the “Cartmel kids” who think this story is cool overall because the Doctor fights gods in it. I would! I wanna believe! But I can’t! The story’s just too naff! It’s too on the (clown) nose, in every way possible, until that bafflingly un-earned reveal with the gods …

• That said, it’s fun to go back to the beginning and consider the meaning of the Doctor learning juggling BEFORE the Circus invitation arrives. But …

• The problems are baked into the script from the start, and I think it’s a result of too many cooks in the kitchen – or rather the same cook going back too many times.

• For instance, the original version of Whizz Kid – where he’s a computer games genius and turns into a ghostly scoreboard when he dies – would have been amazing! And then you wouldn’t have to turn him into an on-the-nose parody of fandom! Which Wyatt admitted he did. Which given he’s not a sci fi fan himself, rankles more.

• Though overedited, the script manages to look so jumbled it’s like it wasn’t edited at all. There’s an example that gets me right at the start, in the TARDIS. “How extraordinary,” says the Doctor of the junk mail. Then one line later: “just the kind of thing you’d expect to see in this part of the galaxy.” Well, which is it? It can’t be both extraordinary and mundane in these parts? And that’s on page 1! Many such examples … this one is solved by the novel.

• The last time we see the round things. Pour one out for the round things …

  

• Even the TARDIS is getting smaller. The door to quarters etc. now just seems to be a closet.

• Headcanon: the Psychic Circus is where he gets the psychic paper? (Because there has to be something psychic about it, we don’t really see much in the way of psychics …)

• Yeah, ok, the sheets were nicer than they would have been in the studio.

• Much of this was shot in the car park for East Enders. I hate that for Who … but it’s very telling, and it’s why much of Greatest Show leaves me with a sour taste. So much of it seems so cheap and so tired. Again, it’s like a show that wants to go.

• Except for the Chief Clown, of course, who almost single handedly saves this thing from Ogron oblivion. And that’s 1000% Ian Reddington.

• I cannot take any scene on that rundown hippy bus seriously. Or any of the hippy characters, tbh. And it’s because Stephen Wyatt hated hippies, which made them an odd choice for his heroes. Write what you know! And don’t come for the hippies before you understand San Francisco …

• For example, the doctor and ace are eating fruit to prove they’re not hippies. This is ass backwards. Remember noted fruitarian and hippy Steve Jobs?

• I mean the Doctor IS a hippy, for crying out loud. Just ask his wife. But even before she said that, just look at what he does … An itinerant adventurer who pleasure jaunts around, picking up strays in his bigger on the inside hippy bus; he’s very forgetful, turns into a social justice warrior when he feels like it, has a loose relationship with time, can’t hold down a job … I mean, even Hartnell – the long hair and a fondness for far-out Edwardian garb … need we say more?

• If you know it’s going to look cheap, acknowledge that in the script. Maybe this is too New Who a thing to hope for, but so much of this could have been great if they’d simply had the characters remark that this is … well, a pathetic excuse for a circus, and for an audience of 3? This isn’t what they’d been led to believe in the brochures, etc. etc. the Doctor does a bit of that when he gets to the planet, why drop it?

• Otherwise it just doesn’t pass the smell test. We can’t suspend disbelief that much. We’re not Nord. What was it that Whizz Kid was a fan of here, exactly?

• Captain Cook was supposed to die at the end of episode 1, but the writer liked him too much. Love the actor, but about one episode is all I could stand of the character – himself more an apparent parody of the Doctor than of Indiana Jones, the intention.

• This is the second time Who has been too clever by half about its own decline and fall, with terrible on-the-nose metaphors (this and Trial of a Time Lord) that only make the case for cancellation stronger …

• And so little of it was actually intended by Wyatt. Just read into it. Which is telling.

• As is the fact that Wyatt loved what was on screen! Like George Lucas loved Phantom Menace …

• From Kingpin to Deadbeat? Srsly?

• Is there ANY character who’s not a cliche? Peggy Mount playing a Peggy Mount cliche. Nord as a biker cliche. Whizz kid. Captain Crunch. (why steal Captain Cook’s name?) Mags …

• Ok, Mags is pretty cool, even if she does look like she stepped out of a Bonnie Tyler video. But her name appears to be taken from the werewolf girl in “The Circus of Dr Lao,” 1935, which bears a lot of similarity …

• Cliffhanger at the end of ep 1 was supposed to be the clown beckoning them in, which would have been FAR better.

• “All’s fares in love and war” – ugh, no wonder McCoy ad-libbed “just the ticket.”

Four-ish Questions to Doomsday - Chris

1. Why did the Randomizer take us here? McCoy original sin, McCoy second sin … Chris Jury (Deadbeat) was the other guy I didn’t mention who could have been Seven … episode 4 was the most watched, reverse of Time and the Rani …

3. Where’s the Clara splinter? She’s created this whole “gods of Ragnorak” side quest for the Doctor … that is in fact the illusion (this should be obvious, because look at them), because her real purpose is to DESTROY AND DEFEAT CLOWNS back in the real world, on Segonax itself. Why? Because the Doctor has come dangerously close to being a creepy clown HIMSELF at times. Especially in the last incarnation, with that coat. And even the seventh, with those spoons (or more accurately, sporks), and all the terrible tricks he thinks are great … let’s be honest, the Doctor’s inner clown is never very far from the surface. And if he’d encountered these clowns without thinking they were hiding something evil underneath, maybe he’d join their cult, or start a whole new one? Bringing the greatest clowns in history to the Greatest Show in the Galaxy, using the TARDIS as a taxi service? And then several regenerations down the line awaits … the Valeyard Clown …

4. Dalek, Ogron, Professor Hayter, Viscount Banger, Fixed Point in Time, Lady Cassandra, or Zarbi? Fixed Professor in Time.

Plot Summary

The Rani captures the Doctor, triggers his regeneration, and attempts to acquire unprecedented power over time and space by impersonating Mel.

Notable for:

• Sylvester McCoy’s debut as the Seventh Doctor — the first regeneration story since The Caves of Androzani (1984).

• Colin Baker was fired and refused to film a regeneration scene, so McCoy wore Baker’s costume and a wig for the pre-title sequence.

• John Nathan-Turner originally preferred not to include the regeneration, but he later changed his mind. Andrew Morgan wanted to use a clip of Colin Baker, but JNT refused.

• Kate O’Mara’s second (and final) televised appearance as the Rani.

• Written by Pip and Jane Baker, who also wrote The Mark of the Rani, the Rani’s debut story.

• Andrew Cartmel’s first story as script editor. He famously disliked the script, calling it a story “that wasn’t about anything.”

• Location filming was at Cloford Quarry, Westdown Quarry, and Whatley Quarry. So much quarry they needed three of them!

• The Doctor and Rani’s age is given as 953. Strange, then, that the Doctor regresses to 900 in the new series! (Notably, he was 749 in The Ribos Operation.)

Pete commentary:

A Kid’s Show

• I don’t know if any other Doctor Who adventure feels more “kid” than Time and the Rani—at least from the TV canon.

  • The design is the first clue: ’80s Doctor Who is infamously neon, but this takes it to a new level. From the synthesized, super-early-CGI rainbow credits to Mel and the Rani’s outfits to the Lakertyans green look to the brightly lit sets, it’s hard to process the sensory overload. There’s some dark stuff in this one, but it’s literally washed over with light and color.

  • The story isn’t terrible, but the dialogue feels very unreal. Bonnie Langford, primarily a theater actor, struggles to make anything that comes out of her mouth sound like something a real person would say. The Rani’s smug veneer from The Mark of the Rani has gotten 10x thicker, as has her makeup. That’s fitting, but she almost feels like a caricature of her own character. The writing and her performance wouldn’t be out of place in, say, The Curse of Fatal Death. And McCoy’s antics, while in general charming, certainly amplify the feeling of silliness.

  • The spoons. And McCoy doing pratfall after pratfall in ep 1.

  • In short, it’s incredibly difficult to take Time and the Rani seriously as a Doctor Who story. Doctor Who is famously adaptable to different genres, but taking a step back, it’s hard to believe this is the same series that gave us The Caves of Androzani just 3 years earlier.

The Regeneration

• The regeneration is, sadly, absolute trash. There were circumstances, but McCoy in a wig ended up adding to the infamy of this episode. And the excuse “We didn’t know people would rewatch/scrutinze” no longer holds water at this point. By 1987, the show had clear international appeal and home video was rapidly expanding. Just inexcusable considering what they were able to do decades before with the “whiteout” in The Tenth Planet.

• The fashion show is pretty basic. You get a couple of moments with the scarf, one of Pertwee’s tuxes, and the Fifth Doctor’s outfit, but it’s all pretty pointless and unmemorable. I suppose you don’t need to make too much out of this—they just treat it as “hey, remember when he looked like this?” But considering the interesting things they did in the past—Davison’s Doctor unraveling the scarf, and the Sixth Doctor proudly displaying how different and unhinged he is by stubbornly adopting the technicolor dreamcoat—the show is already capable of doing more with this opportunity.

• McCoy (and the show) are of course trying some things out, and one of those things is the Seventh Doctor misquoting cliche expressions (“Fit as a trombone,” “A kangaroo never forgets,” “Time and tide melts the snowman,” et al.). I remember at the time thinking this could be an interesting quirk of the Seventh Doctor, but in hindsight it’s another kid-oriented thing that undermines the Doctor’s authority needlessly. It’s good that they dropped it.

The Lakertyans

• The Lakertyans are almost interesting: The makeup is like a low-budget Draconian, which is fine, but what’s underexplored is their apparent instinct to turtle and surrender when threatened. The Rani has effectively taken this society hostage, but the only explanation for why they don’t resist is the insect dome. But why don’t they destroy it? Why do they have no weapons? Why do they just let the Tetraps strap lethal ankle bracelets to them? You get the impression they’re kind of like the Thals of various races that allow their worlds to be conquered.

• Why do the Lakertyans even GO to the pleasure dome or whatever it’s called? “Let’s go hang out at the place where there’s a giant mechanical bee hive full of lethal micro-drones!” “Nah, I think I’ll just stay home and read.”

• Finally, Ikona’s unilateral decision to ditch the cure to the insects’ venom is NUTS. I guess it’s teaching them to solve hard problems and grow a pair? You’d think he’d be arrested/cast out on the spot.

The Rani

• Kate O’Mara fully understood the assignment. Her performance is scenery-chewing and OTT, but amazingly so. She also knows how to satisfy by deliberately underplaying certain lines—in particular, “Cretin,” which was dripping with the perfect amount of disgust and arrogance.

• The Rani disguising herself as Mel is so audacious that you can scarcely believe it as it’s happening. It’s funny how the Doctor half falls for it, occasionally spouting lines about how evil and bad the Rani is. It goes on a tad too long, but—the goofiness of seeing Kate O’Mara in Mel’s ultra-’80s outfit aside—it’s a pretty smart plan, and almost works.

• It’s also great how the Rani plays Mel as a backhanded slap to the character.

• Once she changes back, the Rani clearly took a quick side trip to visit her hairdresser.

• It’s hard to argue with Grace’s assessment that this isn’t a particularly good episode for Mel, who gets trapped in a mine, captured by Urak, and generally responds to every twist and unexpected thing with her trademark canary cry. She continues to scream in the bubble even after it lands in water. She screams about the Tetraps when she should be running. Etc.

• The Rani’s overall plan is, uh, strange. Simulated strange matter will detonate actual strange matter, which will *somethingsomething* and transform Lakertya into a time manipulator? I suppose you could argue it’s no better or worse than any other technobabble plot, but because we never see the Rani as the master (mistress?) of time, like she plans to be, we don’t feel the stakes. It’s really just taking a trendy science thing and mentioning it in a Doctor Who story. It’s also not that interesting from an educational standpoint—all we hear about strange matter is that it’s really heavy.

• That said, the megabrain is pretty fun. I really love the closing of the third episode. Even though it’s a lousy cliffhanger, I love the idea of the Doctor, his personality quirks amplified by regeneration crisis, being a really “bad influence” on the collective hive mind. It’s like the troublesome-student scene in The War Games x100.

Misc

• Leaving the appearance of the Tetraps a mystery is pretty effective, actually. It’s too bad that they don’t milk their first appearance in episode 2 for much drama. It’s really just, “Here’s Urak.”

• The Tetraps’ “glitter guns,” which shoot stun nets, is pretty creative.

• The “bubble mine” is a bit weird. Again, if the goal is to kill, why not just use an explosive? I suppose the idea being that the mine kills ONLY the person who steps on it. Theoretically, if the Rani was taken hostage, she could lead the person to one of the mines.

• When Ikona saves Mel from the mine, the entire thing disappears, not just the bubble.

What did Pete’s family think?

• Grace enjoyed the story, though she didn’t think it was a good episode for Mel. She thought that she didn’t do anything and basically screamed a lot. She was very engaged with the Rani’s switcheroo with Mel, asking a lot of questions.

Four Questions to Doomsday - Pete

1. Why did the Randomizer take us here? It liked the de facto post-regeneration crisis of The Highlanders, so it jumped right to another one. It’s also in love with disguises—the Doctor in the Highlanders impersonating an old woman, a German doctor, and a soldier; the Doctor and Rose as kitchen staff in Rise/Age. The Master as a senior naval officer in The Sea Devils. The Rani is just following the formula.

2. What if the evil plot had succeeded? Beyus chickens out or is too late to stop the rocket from hitting the asteroid. The Rani is happy, but she’s still overpowered by the Tetraps in her TARDIS. Mel and the Doctor barely escape in the Doctor’s TARDIS. The Tetraps bully the Rani to tell them how to operate the time manipulator, but she turns the tables on them by fooling them into erasing their entire history. The Doctor has to stop her, but now she can wield the power of time. The Time Lords may get involved, but there’s a good chance the Rani has foreseen that, laying a set of traps for them to convince them to leave her alone.

3. Where’s the Clara splinter? She sold a bunch of ankle bracelets to the Rani but made them so easy to disable that they’re compatible with any old wire, electrical or fiber-optic.

4. Dalek, Ogron, Professor Hayter, Viscount Banger, Fixed Point in Time, Lady Cassandra, or Zarbi? Ogron who dated Cassandra once. It’s not wrong to be disappointed or even angry that this is McCoy’s debut, and ended up setting the tone for most of his first season (Paradise Towers and Delta and the Bannermen continue much of the neon silliness). His Doctor thankfully ended up being more mysterious and darker than Time and the Rani would lead you to believe, but he definitely started on the wrong foot.

Chris commentary:

• Ah, the rage-quitting story returns.

• September 7, 1987, a day that will live in infamy …

• Well, not really. I didn’t even mention it in my diary at the time, which was the last diary entry I would write that year.

• 20% of the people who watched the first ep quit before the second! I’m not alone

• The Two Bonnies

• It’s not just that Baker wouldn’t film the regeneration, it’s that the whole story was supposed to be his swan song. He would die defeating the Rani and the giant brain.

• Pip and Jane Baker think they’re being so didactic, but they’re just either incomprehensible, pseudish, or unintentionally hilarious. “The Center of Leisure!”

• There are so many unnecessary layers to this evil plot! A rocket? An asteroid? Strange matter? A Time manipulator (cribbed from the “Race Against Time” book)? Some other materials? And she’s somehow building the Key to Time or something? Make it make sense!

• I wish I could report Race Against Time is a good choose your own adventure … but 1987 me would have been annoyed by that too.

One Questions to Doomsday - Chris

1. Where’s the Clara splinter? Making the Rani’s Mel costume.

Plot summary

The Master watches the Clangers while aiding ancient creatures in their attempt to retake the Earth for themselves.

Notable for:

• First appearance of the Sea Devils.

• Return of the Master after being captured in Season 8.

• The Royal Navy participated in the shooting, which gave the production access to locations, equipment, and personnel (many of the sailors are actual sailors).

• The story marks the first time the Third Doctor says his catchphrase, “reverse the polarity of the neutron flow” in full. He says it again in The Five Doctors.

• One of the most repeated serials of the classic series.

Pete commentary:

• The Sea Devils is a cool idea—a riff on the Silurians, but underwater. That gives an opportunity to do different things, and with the cooperation of the Royal Navy they managed to create something really memorable. However, it’s memorable more for the production than the story itself. There’s a great deal of focus on the Doctor vs. the Master in the first 3 episodes instead of the Sea Devils themselves. That part draws you in as you wonder about the Master’s plan, how he’s going to get the upper hand, and how the Sea Devils will factor in. Once that’s over, though, there’s isn’t much to keep you watching and it runs out of steam before the finish line.

• The biggest problem, compared to The Silurians, is that the Sea Devils themselves have not texture to them. They’re not interesting—there’s no “young Sea Devil” and “old Sea Devil” to argue. Admittedly, you don’t want to do the exact same thing again, but they don’t even attempt to show any texture to their society.

• Also, the Sea Devil voices are a questionable choice. The echo-ey direction they want makes their dialogue harder to hear, plus it takes them a while to say anything. Points for making them distinct from the Silurians, but it’s just not very practical.

• That said, the actual design of the creatures is topnotch. They really hit it out of the park with the Sea Devils in terms of the look. Basing them on a turtle was smart—it looks weird and alien yet somehow familiar. It’s also great that they dispense with any mystery early, show the creature plain as day, and lean into the look throughout. You’ve got a winner, use it.

• The netting on the Sea Devil costumes is an interesting choice. I would have preferred something that looks a little more like armor, but it’s distinctive. And, yes, better this than having “naked” Sea Devils. However, it does make you wonder why the Silurians didn’t believe in clothing.

• Speaking of, it’s a good choice that the Sea Devils don’t have the third eye. That was always a bit too magical in the original story. Swapping it out for a weapon feels like the right call, though you do wonder if these creatures have any other abilities besides simply being able to breathe underwater.

• That said, similar to Legend of the Sea Devils, you wonder why their undersea base is filled with air. Other than them being clearly amphibious, you have to assume the Sea Devils would regularly host Silurians back in the day, so they had to have air-filled chambers. Also, you need air for combustion, so at some point they need to do something on land just to use technology, you would think.

• This is a good bookend to The Silurians in another aspect: This time, the Doctor is forced to make the choice to kill all the Sea Devils to ensure there isn’t a war. After this adventure, you might assume he’s more sympathetic to the Brigadier’s choice at the end of The Silurians, though of course the circumstances are somewhat different.

• The noises the Sea Devils make, especially when they’re hurt, is nice and alien. There’s good texture to the creatures in most aspects of their design, at least.

• The hand-scan the Sea Devil leader kinda, sorta seems like a tiny throw to the idea of the telepathic/telekinetic powers of the Silurians, if you squint.

• The Sea Devils sure are trigger happy! Contrast the Sea Devil pulling a gun on the Doctor in episode 2 when he’s just trying to say hi. Obviously, the Master has already poisoned their minds, and they’re on a combat/war footing. It’s a nice message that “these aren’t your father’s reptile people.”

• It’s never really explained why the Sea Devils capture the submarine. Then again, it’s never explained why they’re sinking ships in the first place. It’s all a general “provoke a war” plot, though it brings up the question: Why not destroy the sub instead of capture? You could argue hostages, though they don’t use them. You could also argue control of the nukes, but again, they don’t use them. Underutilized plot device here.

• When the Master says the Doctor “tricked” the Silurians, which led to their destruction, the Doctor oddly doesn’t argue the point.

• Walker is a 100% stock character, and that’s OK. He’s a bureaucrat, a coward, and unfortunately the guy in charge. There’s an interesting message here that’s a bit pro-military: that it’s the people on the front lines who really know what they’re doing, and that the civilian authorities have zero clue and are deeply cynical.

• OK, we know the whole prison thing is a sideshow, but it is 100% MENTAL that there are dangerous swords right outside the door to the Master’s cell!

• Intentional or not, the music for this one nicely combines the in-your-face-insanity of Carey Blyton’s Silurians score and the eerie weirdness of Dudley Simpson. I don’t know who at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop did this one, but really nice work on the Sea Devils’ riff.

The Master

• The best parts of the story are arguably the scenes between the Doctor and the Master. They’re made even better by contrasting them with the Master’s relationship with Trenchard, who is so clearly beneath him. The Master is utterly toying with him, delighting in his power over Trenchard, demanding a second TV (“Color… of course”) and absolutely owning him when he gets Trenchard to believe he might actually be fooled by the space rats in The Clangers.

• Trenchard is so dim, and so stupid to believe the Master at all, you have to wonder how he ever got this job, whether or not he was briefed at all on exactly who the Master is, and what oversight there is on this prison. There’s really no good way to reconcile this—you just have to go with it. You could presume there is at least some low-level hypnosis/suggestion going on.

• Still, so many of the lines and scenes with Pertwee are great:

  • “He’s put on weight.”

  • “Quite a few people were in favour of having you executed.”

  • “I sincerely hope we meet again very soon.”

  • “My dear Doctor, I can walk out of here any time I choose.”

  • “I always find that violent exercise makes me hungry.”

• It’s a crying shame, though, that the Master turns into a huge idiot in episode 6. When the Doctor transmits the signal that disorients all the Sea Devils (quite a range on this thing!), he seemingly just stands there.

• He leaves the Doctor alone and unsupervised to coordinate with Jo.

• He also apparently doesn’t check the Doctor’s work on the device, or what he’s done is somehow beyond him, because he’s clueless that the Doctor has “reversed the polarity of the neutron flow” and turned the reviving thingie into a weapon. I like to think that the Master, on some level, intentionally looked the other way so that the Doctor would win and they could keep on playing this game between the two of them. The psychology that culminates in the Missy Master starts here.

• The Master’s escape at the end is pretty cool, but where did he get that mask? Answer: He probably had been planning some version of this escape for a while, and had the mask in his pocket. It’s not like Trenchard would ever have him searched.

Jo

• Really nice moment that shows the evolution of Jo and the Doctor’s relationship when she alerts him to the Master, and he doesn’t question her at all, just immediately explains to Hart the seriousness of the situation. And the fun bit with the sandwiches later is a nice counterbalance that they still riff on each other.

• Jo gets physical with the guards! Who knew she was such a tough gal?

• Her costume is stylish, and complements the Doctor’s black tuxedo nicely.

A Complete Misnomer

• The Doctor says here that the Sea Devils/Silurians aren’t from the Silurian period after all (which I think everyone agrees), but that they should be called the Eocenes. The big problem with this is that it’s a period well after the dinosaurs. It’s also well before anything that could pass as an “ape.” Everything’s contradictory, but the most important aspects the series seems to have settled on are:

  • That the Silurians and Sea Devils are contemporaries

  • That there is a direct connection to the dinosaurs

• Most of the later stories are vague about the length of time the Silurians have been in hibernation.

What did Pete’s family think?

• Grace liked the story, and really liked the Sea Devils. She said the costumes were great, especially their cute “derpy” faces. She observed early on that the island/castle where the Master was kept “doesn’t seem like a high-security prison.”

Four Questions to Doomsday - Pete

1. Why did the Randomizer take us here? Sea Devils so soon after The Silurians? Right when The War Between is a thing? Too perfect. Also depicts the Doctor reluctantly killing all the bad guys at the end, like in Rise/Age, though that’s pretty common.

2. What if the evil plot had succeeded? The Sea Devils’ plan is to revive many if not most of the other Sea Devils on Earth via some kind of transmitter that the Master is constructing. Assuming that the Master devices not to be a complete boob at the end, he might take the Doctor’s knowledge and actually do that. Sea Devils revive across the planet, and we have The War Between 53 years early. They almost do this in the actual story, but presumably they’re nuked if the Doctor’s device doesn’t blow up, but every other Sea Devil (and probably Silurian) base is reactivated. Earth has a big problem on their hands, but the Doctor and the Master might actually team up to defeat them, since the Sea Devils betrayed him anyway.

   
   Speaking of, the Master’s plan is to use the Sea Devils to conquer Earth for himself, it seems. How does he plan to get rid of them, or subjugate them? It’s never explained, but presumably he figures out some way to control them or torture them through the signal he transmits. Then what? New Gallifrey, like in Last of the Time Lords, just with Sea Devil soldiers?

3. Where’s the Clara splinter? She’s the secretary for one of the other men in the golf tournament, who is also chairman for the committee for the UK fencing team. At her suggestion, the chairman negotiates that his team gets to train on the prison island (since it has such fresh air) with a large supply of swords available at the prison.

4. Dalek, Ogron, Professor Hayter, Viscount Banger, Fixed Point in Time, Lady Cassandra, or Zarbi? It’s an Aquatic Dalek. Good, but not great Doctor Who. The Sea Devils are a brilliant design, and the Doctor-Master chess game is great entertainment. But it rapidly loses steam once the Master is free, and the action is fairly unmemorable, apart from the scale of the Navy’s participation.

Plot Summary

One a parallel Earth, Rose must contend with the possibility that her alternate father may be working with a megalomaniac to evolve humans into machine creatures.

Notable for:

• First “proper” appearance of the Cybermen in NuWho, following the presence of a Revenge-style head in Van Statten’s museum in Dalek (referenced in this story).

• Introduces parallel worlds for the first time in NuWho.

• Came out on the year of the 40th anniversary of the Cybermen’s first appearance.

Pete commentary:

The Re-introduction of the Cybermen

• The re-introduction of the Daleks was so successful in S1, it was only natural to do the Cybermen next. The challenge for the new series was: How do you do that for new viewers (who may not be familiar) without getting bogged down in continuity? Not to mention: The Cybermen’s history in Classic Who was always convoluted and had a fundamental problem: Why was this “alien” race such a perfect metaphor for technology run amok, and hell-bent on converting humans specifically?

• Flipping the Cybermen’s origins to a parallel universe was a masterstroke in simplifying all of that, while simultaneously cleaning up the Cybermen’s are-they-or-aren’t-they-human problem. Obviously it also sets up most of the character moments in this story, but it also gives the audience the opportunity to see their origins for THIS series. I honestly can’t get over how perfect a solution this was.

• I like the choice to keep the Cybermen out of focus/off-camera for most of the first episode. As with Daleks in Manhattan, this isn’t some misplaced sense of surprise. We all know these are Cybermen—it’s right there in the title—and if you’re a hardcore fan, you’ve probably even seen the advance photos. But knowing what they are and seeing them in action, in context, are different things. It’s also a great choice to have the first time they come into focus be when the Doctor sees them.

• And boy do they make an entrance: smashing all the windows and instantly taking charge. It’s important to establish your monsters as formidable, and this certainly does it.

• It’s great that we also have total clarity on exactly what the Cybermen are: a human brain transplanted into a suit of armor. It puts to rest (for these Cybermen anyway) what conversion means and more importantly why they’re horrific. While it doesn’t match what’s been shown before (particularly Attack of the Cybermen), the alternate-universe thing gives them a pass.

• Moreover, this episode establishes (or at least very strongly implies) that the World Enough and Time theory on the Cybermen holds: There is no master plan, and no actual “race.” They are what happens when technology outpaces humanity, as Twelve put it. I like to say that they are an anomalous outgrowth when any race reaches a certain level of technology. Afterward, there is a chance that either:

  • a group of that race will get desperate enough to augment themselves to the logical conclusion (Mondas).

  • A lunatic will actually think “upgrading” is actually a good idea overall (Lumic).

• It’s also great that this story gets back to the fundamentals of what the Cybermen are, metaphorically. They call themselves “Human.2,” they call what they do to humans “upgrading,” that “all humans will receive a free upgrade,” and that “upgrading is compulsory.” The story’s overtones about Big Tech and what it does to us—forcing us to keep up year after year, device after device, software version after software version—is one of the strongest elements. And it’s actually newly relevant: The Cybermen are a perverted, obvious downgrade from the human experience even though they claim to be better. AI chatbots today seem similar—they’re everywhere and growing in presence, even though they don’t always give accurate outputs. Yet somehow we seem to be forced to use them.

• Much has been said about the “Delete” catchphrase. It feels like they were trying to create a catchphrase for the Cybermen similar to “Exterminate” for the Daleks. Judged by that standard, you can see it as a failure. But the Cybermen aren’t the Daleks—they don’t scream catchphrases. The fact is they have continued to use “Delete” in various episodes; it’s just stated matter-of-factly. And I would say it’s a success in this one: Though overused, it’s a brilliant moment when the Cyber-Leader says it for the first time when it kills the president. It’s the same notion as in Star Trek’s “What are Little Girls Made Of?”—killing people with about as much thought as you’d put into switching off a light.

• As if all that wasn’t enough, there are moments that actually explain why the Cybermen want to convert the entire population of Earth. When asked by Lumic what it thinks, they Cybermen responds: “We think of the humans. We think of their difference and their pain. They suffer in the skin. They must be upgraded.” It’s fantastic—they just want to help. And anyone who doesn’t want it must be deranged or an obstacle. It echoes the Borg’s assimilation justification, given in The Best of Both Worlds in ST:TNG: “We only wish to raise quality of life for all species.”

• That said, they’re not too much of a Borg ripoff. What characterizes the Borg, besides being cybernetic, is the network and the adaptation. Those sometimes feature in Cybermen episodes (not this one), but they’re not the point.

• The Cybermen’s best moment, though—the one that really hammers home the horror of what they are—is when that one Cyberman reveals to Pete that it used to be Jackie Tyler. It gut-punches you hard, because you know it’s over for her. They just totally and firmly established that the Cybermen remove your brain and put it in a suit. There are announcements in the factory that the bodies are then “incinerated.” It’s horrific, and obviously totally irreversible. (Pete’s musing about this is classic denial.) This is Lytton time a million. Finally the Cybermen got someone we care about. AND the parallel universe thing gives the series a “get out of jail free” card on it. Brilliant!

• The Sally Phelan Cyberman scene is also a nice punctuation of this point. Also provides a bit more on what they are, with the artificial central nervous system.

• Choreography is great: The Cyber-marching is all pretty spot on. The “disco” moment in the factor is inadvertently hilarious, though.

• Let’s talk design: It’s very, very good. Finally, you get the sense that these Cybermen are heavy, formidable, and built like tanks. A lot of that is thanks to the sound and sound editing. The Cyber-stomp is now an integral part of these monsters, and it features in pretty much every appearance since. It also conveys what they are extremely succinctly: You never question why the Cyberman don’t run because it’s extremely obvious, just from the sound, that they’ve traded speed for durability.

• Overall, the idea of these creatures being made of steel works better than being “silver,” which is vague.

The story:

• This early in the series, you half-believe the Doctor when he says the TARDIS is “dead.” Sure, you know the series won’t end here, but it’s great that they keep the stakes high even after the Doctor solves the problem. He says they will never be able to return to this universe. Of course, he turns out to be wrong, but we didn’t know that at the time.

• Introduces the idea of regeneration energy being something the Doctor can tap into whenever he wants. I don’t like this development overall for the series, but it does work for the story. Tennant is great at the emotional beats: “Worth every second.”

• The zeppelins is a neat little way to emphasize that it’s a parallel world. If you’re hardcore into sci-fi, you know it’s a trope, but the point is that it’s a trope. Also, the vast majority of the audience will simply take it as a signpost of it being parallel.

• The cliffhanger is fantastic because it stays a step ahead of the fans. The first time I saw this, I was practically yelling at the screen that they should surrender. In fact, the story gives that solution: The Cybermen tell all the party guests that they will be upgraded and only start killing people when they resist or flee. So it’s great that the Doctor and the “gang” try this and it doesn’t work. You’re definitely think, “Oh, shit.” And you really don’t know how they’re going to get out of it.

• That said, the Doctor using the TARDIS component to kill the Cybermen feels a bit like a deus ex machina. We’ll take it—it’s not completely out of nowhere—but it’s really convenient that the “beam” bounces from one Cybermen to the next, on and on, and kills just the Cybermen. Uh, ok.

• The EarPods/AirPods connection is a little too perfect, and a little too off. This was done right when Bluetooth earpieces were taking off, at least with a certain set. It’s perfect because obviously AirPods—which are this idea, but done right—came just a few years after. It’s also off because it stretches credulity that the people of Earth would ever decide that wearing these clunky pods on their ears would be acceptable.

• Pretty cool that they end up at Battersea Power Station, the same place that kicks off The Dalek Invasion of Earth. There seems to be also a subtle reference to The Five Doctors: “We attack on three sides. Above, between, below,” which was exactly the same strategy for getting in the Dark Tower.

• Some parts of the plot are off target:

  • The bit early in Rise where all the people stop and act hypnotized is pretty nuts. People don’t do that, generally, and it would be really inconvenient for someone, say, pouring coffee or performing surgery. It’s a nice bit that emphasizes creepiness, but it stretches the realism a bit too far.

  • Lumic is truly nuts. How could anyone, who has lived as a human being, who has presumably experienced some kind of happiness at some point, would ever think life as a Cyberman isn’t just a last-resort longevity move, but something that is actually preferable—so much so that the entire world should be converted. I know all megalomaniacs have to have this kind of leap, but in Lumic’s case it’s ludicrous.

  • Crane has been with Lumic for decades. He’s basically Lumic’s Nyder. He’s fully in the know of what Lumic is planning, or at least he must have some idea—even if he doesn’t know it’s explicitly world conquest, he knows that he’s converting people against their will en masse. Why would Lumic just treat him the same as all other human fodder? That’s really stupid.

  • There are plot conveniences aplenty at the end:

    • How do Jake and Mickey get on the roof unopposed?

    • Why are there humans guarding Lumic’s zeppelin instead of Cybermen?

    • Why do the Cybermen think Pete Tyler should be “rewarded by force?” Pete wasn’t an inside man like Crane. And what “reward” would this be anyway? And why do they bring Rose along? She’s a nobody.

    • Similarly, why do the Cybermen proactively scan the Doctor to learn his physiology? Which, OK, might be something they want to investigate. This one could have been solved by the Doctor telling them to scan him before they kill him.

    • Finally, when Lumic comes out as the Cyber-Controller, it’s really cool and all, but he gives no sense of why he’s keeping anyone in the room alive.

• The ending with the Cyber-Controller climbing the rope ladder after them is great, but it’s straight out of Aliens.

Rose and her family:

• Billie Piper is great in this. She says so much when she’s not saying anything. It’s this perfect situation where she knows intellectually everything the Doctor is saying to her about this not being her world or her parents. But it’s the kind of situation where you start making up your own reasons for pursuing what she wants—or thinks she wants.

• Similarly, her scenes with alternate Pete and Jackie at the party are really well done. Her conversation with Pete brings about a natural connection just like in Father’s Day, which is a nice echo. That emboldens her to talk to her mother, which of course turns out very bad.

• Camille Coduri delivers her acidic lines—particuarly the one to Rose—extremely well. She’s always been a bit OTT, but it’s hard to watch that intensity put through a cruel lens. Superb choices here.

• I really love it when Piper plays jealous Rose. The bit where she says maybe Lucy’s “a bit thick.” lol

• Similarly, when Rose suddenly realizes that “Rose” is the dog (she already knows she doesn’t exist on this world), it’s a perfect chaser to the seriousness of the Doctor’s speech to her about this not being her world/parents.

• The final scene between Rose and Pete is nicely played. Rose wants to tell him who he is to her, and she does, but he can’t handle it, which is exactly right. He just lost his wife in the most horrific fashion. He’s got a lot to sort out.

Mickey/Ricky:

• This is the culmination of Mickey’s arc. Yes, we all know now he returns in the season finale, but that story isn’t about him. This one is. The cardboard coward from Rose is now fleshed out and much braver after his experiences.

• The direction Mickey chooses—to stay in Earth 2—is influenced by many things. It’s never explicitly stated, but when Mickey asks to go with the Doctor in School Reunion there’s a part of him that probably thinks he can reconnect with Rose by sharing these experiences with her. But the opening scene emphasizes he can’t compete with the Doctor—their bond is just too great. Also, he spent a year being ostracized because everyone thought he was responsible for Rose’s disappearance. And of course the thing with his gran (made up for this story—Rose mentions his mother in “Rose”).

• Ultimately, though, it’s all about him finding his voice, choosing his path, being brave. The early scenes are almost meta: Mickey’s accusations that he’s always going to be an afterthought are undoubtedly true, and I love that he tries to get Mickey on his side to keep Rose from being tempted, and he’s basically asking if he’s chopped liver. He’s stepping out of the show almost: why are you assuming I’m a stock character?

• Noel Clarke plays Ricky with a permanent scowl on his face, and shovels a little bit of “Batman” gravel onto his voice. It’s a bit superficial, borderline silly, and turns Ricky into a bit of a caricature. You can look past it, but it’s a bit painful to watch in hindsight.

• That said, it was probably destined to be a half-caricature when they decided to name Mickey’s counterpart Ricky, an obvious in-joke referencing the Ninth Doctor’s nickname for him.

• Mickey shares a final kiss with Rose when he goes to help Jake.

Music:

• Huge shout-out to Murray Gold for absolutely nailing the Cybermen’s theme. It’s so iconic at this point that it’s been used I believe in ever single Cyberman episode since—even ones where they’re not the main villain.

• One of the reasons it’s so effective, besides being really distinctive and hummable, is that it can be played all kinds of different ways. The higher-key version when it’s trying to convey intrigue and mystery works just as well as the “march” version.

Misc:

• “Set sail” for Great Britain is a really cool cut-to-credits line. Brings the action home to a UK audience and is obviously a big mislead that they’re on a boat.

• The PETE 1 license plate is a nice reference to Bessie’s WHO 1.

• Venezuela mention! Jackie’s earpods can apparently get signals from there.

• I like the Doctor’s retort of “you never said” to “you never asked.” I’m on his side here—how are you supposed to know what’s important to someone in every situation if they don’t say?

• “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” is a little random for playing over the screams of Cyber-conversion, but it’s still a chilling moment.

• Mickey/Ricky’s abs almost look CGI!

• Torchwood mention!

• Lumic’s chuckle to the president is a bit much.

• Ricky saying he’s London’s most wanted for traffic violations is pretty funny, and I really like the Doctor’s line that he does much the same.

• Ricky’s death is a bit unexpected, but I love the moment right after where Mickey is staring at the Cyber squad on the other side of the fence and they just silently stare back. It’s the Cybermen’s most zombie-like moment ever. That said, it’s a bit confusing whey they don’t just smash through the fence. Perhaps they’ve been instructed to not damage too much infrastructure?

• Jake’s reaction when he hears Ricky is dead is so intense that you have to think the bond goes deeper than just friendship. It’s obviously not explicit, so you can interpret as you see fit, though the theory that Ricky, obviously an exact genetic duplicate of Mickey, might be gay, might bring up some uncomfortable questions if you think too hard about it.

• Hints that Pete’s world might not be so rosy: There is a curfew. Is the president… uh, elected?

• Poor Mrs. Moore. You know she’s going to buy it when the Doctor and she are going through the tunnels. But the actress is great, and you really sympathize. Another almost companion.

• Why is Lumic’s Cyber-Controller still sitting?

What did Pete’s family think?

• Grace likes this one a lot, though we saw it fairly recently. She thought the earpods were tacky. But she loved all the twists with the parallel world people.

Four Questions to Doomsday - Pete

1. Why did the Randomizer take us here? PETE 1 is a play off Bessie’s WHO 1, first seen in Doctor Who and the Silurians.

2. What if the evil plot had succeeded? It kind of should have, if you think about how much an upper hand Lumic/the Cybermen have when the Doctor, Rose, and Pete are their prisoner. Say, they all die. No one’s there to tell Mickey to send the code, so the Cybermen conquer London and subsequently Earth. Would they still get sucked into the parallel (our) Earth? Or do they just become a Cyber Empire in Pete’s universe? That could end up being Cyber-dimension.

3. Where’s the Clara splinter? She’s Cybus’ HR manager and runs all the office parties and birthdays. Somehow that file got into the Cybermen’s master program, amplifying the need for “rewards” for all Cybus employees. Top priority.

4. Dalek, Ogron, Professor Hayter, Viscount Banger, Fixed Point in Time, Lady Cassandra, or Zarbi? If you’re not religious about the Cybermen in Classic Who, this is the best possible re-introduction of them. For Cybermen fans, it’s a banger. For everyone else, it’s good Doctor Who. It’s a banger-Dalek hybrid.

Subscribe now

Chris commentary:

• Let’s talk Pluribus! The Lumic Cybermen are basically exhibiting the same “biological imperative” to upgrade humans as The Joined do — they want to end our suffering, and their own emotions are being suppressed (Pluribus is so far only hinting at this part). I’d love to see a cyber story in the future that’s more explicitly built around the “what if zombies but nice all the time” notion that makes Pluribus such a brilliant subverter of sci-fi tropes.

• Likewise we really need to see more of the “constant upgrade” concept, the notion that our gadget ownership is accelerating faster than we can really keep track. And then you wake up one day with a Whoop and an Oura and an Apple Watch attached, when you really meant to reduce and simplify …

• Likewise, Cybermen could help explore our growing modern horror at the “enshittification” of tech. They’re kind of the ultimate enshittification.

• And AI! What if Cybermen hallucinated, like, 20 or 30 percent of the time!? That would be mad, in the RTD sense. Now I kind of wish he’d done Robot Revolution as another cyber origin story instead.

• Side note: I wish the show had told us what Lumic is dying of, exactly. I get that it doesn’t really matter but if you just go for the body horror of it without naming the disease, he’s just a distant 2D nut job instead of a real character.

• Trigger warning! That is, everyone in the UK looks at Lumic, then and now, and thinks “Trigger!”

• Good thing I’ve just been reading Luther Arkwright and know all about the Zeppelin = parallel world trope. Shame Michael Moorcock doesn’t get a shout out.

• Likewise, Lumic’s parallels with Davros are so obvious that you kind of want the Doctor to give that a shoutout too.

• The double earpiece thing was inspired at a time when we all had the one headset. Now it looks prescient. I definitely noticed them less this time around …

• WHAT WAS THE DAILY JOKE

Plot summary

The Doctor, Ben, and Polly get caught up in the aftermath of the Jacobite Rebellion in Scotland and are quickly thrust into a corrupt plot to turn soldiers into slaves.

Notable for:

• First appearance of Jamie. They weren’t sure he was going to be a companion, so they shot 2 endings, one with him leaving with the crew, and one with him staying.

• Last “historical” episode until Black Orchid.

• Completely missing. Only photographs, telesnaps, and audio recordings exist.

• Elwyn Jones was commissioned to write, but Gerry Davis had to step in and write the entire thing.

• Solicitor Grey was apparently a real person.

Subscribe now

Pete commentary:

• The Highlanders is peculiar to watch after seeing the latter parts of Troughton’s run. They’re clearly trying some things out here, with the stovepipe hat and his many disguises and accents. Intentional or not, this is a similar historical template as adventures like The Reign of Terror and The Romans, where the Doctor impersonates someone to get through the adventure. Except in Troughton’s case, he adopts different personas rather than just claiming to be someone he’s not.

• It mostly doesn’t work. The Doctor’s German accent is cringe, and him being an old woman feels so unconvincing it’s annoying.

• Unbelievably, it’s the Doctor who wants to leave in the first few minutes! I’m not sure what Ben and Polly are thinking when they see a primitive cannonball and decide they’re “home.” Clearly not your time, plus there’s some kind of violence happening. “Sounds like the cup final,” isn’t cutting it.

• I liked that the story is simple enough to follow, but with enough historical texture to make it interesting. Ben throwing the gun is a bit dumb, but it also emphasizes the primitive weaponry. They’re thrown into the Battle of Culloden, but only at the end. They’re captured, but not as POWs but as potential slaves. Etc.

• Ben’s escape from the ducking is wildly risky, but I also like that he took the matter into his own hands. Clearly he’s had to get out of a few scrapes as a sailor.

• This adventure largely succeeds on the drive and spirit of Ben and Polly. It might be the best adventure for them I’ve seen so far. Polly takes the initiative in going to rescue her friends, is charmingly confident when blackmailing Ffinch, and shows her sympathetic and vulnerable side when thanking him for not giving them away at the end. Polly is both adventurous and kind, making her the perfect companion template.

• That said, sometimes the obstacles they encounter are manufactured. Polly shows she’s not great at negotiation when Kirsty denies her the ring at the end of episode 1. It’s really like the writer (Davis) wrote it with no cliffhanger and inserted this dumb conflict. At least it sets the stage for the ring.

• Jamie is a subtler presence in his debut story. He doesn’t drive much of the action, but he does make an impression with the few lines he’s given. He’s clearly fiercely loyal—not just to his clan, but to his friends, and people he feels he’s indebted to.

• It’s nice that Jamie’s first onscreen act is to give a wounded guy some water.

• Fun to see the Second Doctor playing the recorder. Most of the references to this (in The Three Doctors, mainly) seem a little too self-referential, almost remembering something that never actually happened.

• Has “fiddle” ever actually meant a trick or ruse, or is Ben from a parallel Earth?

• “I’ve never seen a silent lawyer” is a pretty great line.

• I’m glad the story makes reference to how bad the conditions were on ships at this time.

• Kirsty and Polly get a good dynamic going, and Polly gets to show her “keeping it real” sincerity when she says it’s “obvious” Kirsty hasn’t had to do much fetching and carrying in her life. Later, Kirsty says she’s “bonnie enough,” with is almost a backhanded compliment.

• The Doctor needs a nap!

• A shame that the major action sequence in episode 4—the sword fight on the Annabelle—has been lost. It takes several minutes, and it looks like it’s a good establishing moment for Jamie.

• Jamie gets to come on the TARDIS on the promise he shows the Doctor how to play the bagpipes. Did he ever deliver?

What did Pete’s family think?

• Watched this one alone.

Four Questions to Doomsday - Pete

1. Why did the Randomizer take us here? Yet another reference to “Doctor who?” which is almost too tongue-in-cheek, considering the Doctor chooses “von Wer” as his German surname, which inspires the Sergeant to ask. Pretty clear throughline from Doctor Who and the Silurians as well as The War Machines.

2. What if the evil plot had succeeded? Assume it’s Jamie who’s knocked overboard, Trask’s men overpower the Highlanders, and they’re all made slaves in the West Indies. Assuming they’re not killed, the Doctor, Ben and Polly decide to make the best of their situation and get on board for a journey to the tropics. But the Doctor soon creates a means to return to England to get back to the TARDIS, while Ben does his best to protect Polly. They eventually get back, but more “wounded” than before, and sans Jamie. Their departure in The Faceless Ones is more bitter than bittersweet.

3. Where’s the Clara splinter? She dug the bear trap!

4. Dalek, Ogron, Professor Hayter, Viscount Banger, Fixed Point in Time, Lady Cassandra, or Zarbi? Professor Hayter. They tried to do a historical and found it didn’t quite fit Troughton’s sensibilities. They learned a lot about what not to do with his Doctor (silly accents, headgear).

Chris commentary:

• Rule 1: The Young Pretender lies. Cosplaying as a Scot. Never been there until this rebellion, age 25. Grew up in Rome, was more Polish (his mother’s side) than Scottish. Told his staff he was in touch with Jacobites in England – he wasn’t. Sulked when his finest military mind told him to retreat from Derby. Didn’t give him a free hand at Culloden. Refused to give an order until half an hour into the battle, when 500 of his men lay dead. Ruined everything and ran off while his men got slaughtered.

• More Scots in the government army than in his. The lowlanders (whose officers led the shameful butchery after) hated the highlanders!

• Highlanders had a horrible feudal clan system. Charlie marched them all night for this, his first ever battle, without food for 2 days, because he wanted to surprise the Duke of Cumberland on his birthday. Cumberland, also age 25, was a butcher. Ate his lunch while soldiers turned the field red, bayonetting wounded on his orders. Innocents were killed on the road to Inverness. No one comes out of Culloden looking good.

• The 1961 book by John Prebble and the 1964 movie of Culloden, by Peter Watkins, were both groundbreaking and extraordinary. Gerry Davis used the former more than he used “Kidnapped.” There are sections of the book that seem to have been lifted almost directly … go listen to the Missing Episodes podcast for more details. Davis even lifted a “Solicitor Grey” who actually sold Scots into indentured servitude!

• But by and large it means The Highlanders is accurate. Dismisses the cause as “romantic piffle” – he’s got Charlie’s number. Jamie tells us he fled from the field. The only real howler is the Scots talking about “English” troops. But that’s par for the course in the romanticized versions.

• Let’s explain the Jacobite cause using Doctor Who characters/actors! The Doctor’s first wife (Elizabeth I) had no kids – because the Doctor didn’t or couldn’t do his duty? – so it passed to the guy who liked Ryan and hunting witches (James I, or in Latin, “Jacobus”). His son was Charles I (Alec Guinness in the Cromwell movie), executed, interregnum, Charles II (on the throne while the 5th Doctor helped start the fire of London in 1666), his Catholic brother James II, deposed and fled to France. His son, the cause of the deposition, styled himself James III, would have been longest serving monarch, lived in Rome at the pleasure of the Pope. His son was Charles Edward Stuart. Who tried to get the French to support his cause with an invasion and shows up at Versailles at the exact same time as … Madame de Pompadour.

• 60+ years after the battle, romantic tartan-wearing “lost cause” Scotland was in full effect – thanks largely to Sir Walter Scott – affecting even the “bad wolf” herself, Queen Victoria!

• Worth mentioning the movie more, which did amazing things on a Doctor Who budget, no more than a dozen extras shown at once, through innovative use of close-up interviews to camera

• Meanwhile … let’s talk about the Doctor’s drinking. Is he off the wagon here? A deleted scene suggests so.

Four Questions to Doomsday - Chris

1. Why did the Randomizer take us here? It’s 2026 – the 280th anniversary of Culloden! Seasonally appropriate programming – ep 2 broadcast on Xmas eve, ep 3 on Hogmany!

2. What if the evil plot had succeeded? It did … on many other ships.

3. Where’s the Clara splinter? As in Demons in the Punjab, Clara’s main job is preventing the Doctor from seeing the true horror out there. Especially in a regeneration crisis, he’d want to pursue Cumberland for his war crimes. There were crying children on the battlefield! Dying 13 year old Scots! Is the TARDIS designed to not land in the middle of battles because he’d be tempted to change them?

4. Dalek, Ogron, Professor Hayter, Viscount Banger, Fixed Point in Time, Lady Cassandra, or Zarbi? Fixed Dalek in Time

   Thanks for reading Pull To Open: A Random Doctor Who Podcast! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Plot Summary

Earth’s first civilization wakes up from millions of years in hibernation and wants its planet back from the creatures who evolved in its absence.

Notable for:

• Only episode title with the words “Doctor Who” in the title (possible exceptions: Doctor Who: The TV Movie and The Death of Doctor Who, one of the episodes of The Chase). It was a simple production error, but it did inspire the show to stop using “Doctor Who and…” on script titles to avoid it in the future.

• First appearance of the “Reptile People” (a.k.a. Silurians, Sea Devils, Eocenes, Homo Reptilia, Homo Aqua).

• First production with Barry Letts officially the producer, but he couldn’t actually fulfill those duties due to other commitments. Terrence Dicks and his assistant were effectively the producers on Silurians.

• First appearance of Bessie, which isn’t the same car as in Spearhead from Space.

• First use of Color Separation Overlay (CSO) for scenes like the dinosaur in the room.

• Original color prints were lost but the color was restored from off-air recordings, records, and more. Was distributed in black and white for much of the ’80s.

• Last story to not have the “scream” in the lead-in to the closing credits.

Pete commentary:

Season 7

• First a quick word about Season 7, since we won’t be coming back here again now that we’ve got bingo. Has there ever been a more successful season of classic Doctor Who? The stories are great enough to stand on their own, but coming out of Season 6, which could have put the show on course for oblivion, Season 7 had no right to be as good as it ended up being. After a promising start in Spearhead, the season takes flight with The Silurians and never comes back down. Just an incredible run.

• Notably, our good friends at The Doctor Who Show just did a List Makers episode on their favorite seasons of the classic series and BOTH Dave and Rob picked Season 7 as their No. 1. Fan consensus is in, and it’s a banger season.

‘Aliens’ on Earth

• With the Doctor confined to Earth, the creative team needed to come up with interesting ways to do monsters without having space aliens invading every week. The idea of a pre-human civilization is inspired, and the Silurians is the first modern take on the idea (although HP Lovecraft dabbled).

• The story has been tremendously influential. Not only has it inspired several sequels in the show, an X-Men story referenced it when dino-human versions of the Marvel heroes arrive on our Earth, and it even name-checks the Brigadier (although he’s not seen). The story ends with the dinosaur people telling the humans to be more respectful of their environment, and bragging that their technology is so “natural” that, if their civilization were to ever disappear, all their buildings, equipment, etc. would simply be reabsorbed into the ecosystem. It comes across as an explanation for why humans have never found any trace of Silurian or Sea Devil civilizations in the fossil record.

• Just from the color and texture, it seems clear the Silurians’ technology is intended to be more “organic” than human tech. The production team is limited by what they have, though, so it’s more mechanical than it looks in later appearances (though clearly the Silurians have some equivalent of plastic and metal).

• The Voth in Star Trek: Voyager are nearly identical in concept: a civilization of dinosaur people who left Earth to explore the stars, eventually ending up in the Delta Quadrant. The makers of that show have never said the Silurians were an inspiration.

• Land of the Lost’s Sleestaks are another take on the idea, though that show was supposedly set in a pocket universe, not the past per se.

When are the Silurians from?

• Going from this story alone, there’s a strong implication that the Silurians are contemporaries of dinosaurs (or at least the great reptiles of the Triassic), given the “watchdog.” Still, the dinosaur doesn’t resemble any dinosaur we know, so that means it’s either something not in the fossil record (certainly possible) or a creature the Silurians have engineered/modified.

• It seems HIGHLY unlikely the Silurians are from the actual Silurian period, since the most dominant animal life was arthropods (centipedes, etc.) and early fish.

• In the Sea Devils, the Doctor later speculates the reptile people are from the Eocene period, but this makes little sense either since that’s well into the age of mammals. It seems unlikely an intelligent reptile would emerge during this period.

• That said, the Silurians refer to the humans as “apes,” which only arose in the wake of the dinosaurs’ extinction. Perhaps a gap in the fossil record?

• Later stories would cement the Silurians’ connection with dinosaurs, most especially Dinosaurs on a Spaceship. However, that episode depicts the Silurians having the tech for a space ark, which brings up the question why they ever needed to go into hibernation.

• Notably, the Silurians never call themselves by that name.

Doctor Who?

• The title, “Doctor Who and The Silurians” was a simple mistake, but Bessie’s license plate clearly was not. It’s a rare onscreen reference to the show itself, and one that Barry Letts says he never would have approved. But since he wasn’t available, the show went ahead and did it, and the person in Britain with the actual “WHO 1” license plate wrote to complain that he wasn’t credited.

• Pertwee strips to a T-shirt in episode 7, once again revealing his snake tattoo. I believe this was the last time we see Pertwee’s tattoo.

Suspenseful Story, Complex Villain

• This story takes three whole episodes before we see a Silurian, and those episodes are a master class at world building and creating suspense. We DO see a dinosaur in the first scene, so it’s not like we’re bored, but it’s a great mislead: the dinosaur isn’t the monster—or at least, it’s not the interesting one.

• There is tension immediately with Peter Miles as Lawrence being a complete dick to everyone he suspects is trying to slow down his project. Plus there’s clearly something going on with Doctor Quinn and Miss Dawson. Power losses, people going feral, tons of spelunking! By sheer variety, the story doesn’t bore you.

• Episode 2+3 also give the outstanding Silurian POV shots! The three lenses is so cool, giving the sense of an alien thing while also nicely aligning with the Silurian third eye (which we see later).

• Once the Silurians arrive, things move faster. The Silurians’ plans go from

  • stealing power to

  • killing the UNIT soldiers to

  • negotiating peace to

  • wiping out humanity with a plague to

  • taking out the Van Allen Belt (Ozone Layer?) to

  • reviving themselves to

  • killing everyone with radiation to

  • going back into hibernation.

• Whew, that’s a lot! However, none of it feels too forced, and goal tend to naturally follow the previous ones, at least most of the time.

• The Silurians’ third eye basically ends up being a kind of magic wand. Nonetheless, you kind of “get it”—it’s a way to focus some type of psychokinetic energy. Sometimes that means killing people, sometimes it means melting (and reconstructing!) a wall. It’s definitely a little too convenient sometimes, but most of the time it works.

• The absolute best thing about the Silurians, of course, is that they’re complicated: Different Silurians have different ideas on what to do about the humans, a refreshing change from one-dimensional monsters like the Ice Warriors or the Cybermen. The Silurians have “texture,” and it goes beyond just the basic war-vs-peace perspectives of the Young and Old Silurians. The scientist has a manner and logic to him that contrasts nicely with the Young Silurian. They even move a bit differently.

• Speaking of movements, the overall twitchiness of the Silurians is an excellent choice. It probably came about from the actors not being able to move their faces much at all, so they need to punctuate some dialogue with head movement. And it works: the right lines and actions get emphasized, and it makes them seem a bit more alien.

• On the design: I think this is by far the best Silurian design. It’s humanoid but clearly not human, and even though you might CGI or at least animate the eyes today, I like them a lot better than the “human eye” versions we got in the new series. I also like the fin-like ears, the ridges on the head, and the claws. Just outstanding work—a shame they never brought this specific design back. The “update” in Warriors of the Deep is just shameful.

Performances

• Watching the serial this time, I was much more appreciative of the performances. Everyone is bringing their A-game. Pertwee looks like he’s been performing in the role for years, he’s so confident. Nick Courtney and Caroline John are both at their peak, with Liz having the exact right balance of standing up for herself as a scientist and deferring to the Doctor.

• I love the scene where the Brig is trying to get her to man the phones, she pushes back, but the Doctor, correctly and with the right tone, reminds her of what the priority is. Top marks: gives Liz’s credentials and allows her some agency, underscores the Doctor’s rationality and overall approach of communicating in a way that’s effective—exactly what he’s trying to do with the Silurians.

• The guest cast delivers, too:

  • Peter Miles understood the assignment—he clashes with Pertwee early on, and you understand you’re supposed to love to hate this guy. Though, certainly, his schtick gets a little old after five episodes (he dies in episode 6).

  • Norman Jones as Major Baker is a good second human foil for the Doctor. The script is smart in showing his turn when he believes the Doctor to be a traitor. You definitely understand, if not empathize, that he believes everyone around him is taking crazy pills.

Story

• Generally, the script is very good at making the conflict feel natural and not forced. Quinn is selfish, which creates some nice mystery and dramatic irony in the early episodes. Then it’s all about what to do about this obvious and growing threat from the caves while getting resistance, fueled by incredulity, from the people in charge. I prefer this version of the Doctor connecting to modern day than the President of Earth stuff of the Capaldi era. Definitely more of an underdog.

• I love love LOVE the resolution to the episode 3 cliffhanger: A probably hostile alien just walks in the room, apparently to attack the Doctor. How does he get out of this scrape? By staying calm and talking: “Hello. Are you a Silurian?” This is perfect Doctor Who—this is the show: the Doctor in charge, winning through intellect, curiosity, and respect for other life forms.

• Weird choice of the Doctor to not tell the Brig that Quinn is dead. Barely understandable, but surely he’d know it would backfire at some point.

• Love the fourth-wall-breaking Silurian: “I am the leader now.” This guy watched The Feast of Steven.

• Weird detail that was later ignored by everyone: The Doctor claims to be “several thousand” years old.

• The plague scenes are really scary. I think they overdid it on the makeup, but watching people collapse in the train station and the streets around is quite effective, making the production seem bigger than it was. Camera angles are cool and surreal too.

• There are no stairs to get out of Wenley Moor?

Music

• It has to be said: Carey Blyton’s music is bonkers! But it’s also quite memorable. He definitely never got the memo that a successful soundtrack should never be noticed.

• It actually starts out pretty well, but quickly goes way over the top.

• I can’t really watch the serial without thinking about the kazoo-style “beeping” when the Silurians do something dramatic. I definitely appreciate it and I quite enjoy the OTT Pertwee-style music that carried over with Dudley Simpson.

Genocide!

• So the Silurians were planning a genocide, so the Brigadier genocides them right back! This is a very ugly choice, morally, and you almost wish that The Silurians came later in Pertwee’s run to make it more of a wedge that gets driven between the Doctor and UNIT.

• You can steel man it somewhat—the Silurians were clearly hostile, and their power level isn’t fully known. The risk of reviving them is arguably too great, given the scale of their hostility and their level of technology. And leaving them be just postpones the threat. Not a view the Doctor supports, of course, but you have to picture an offscreen scene where he and the Brigadier go at it, and he fully makes the case. He wouldn’t persuade the Doctor, but perhaps there would be begrudging understanding of the position.

• Is it a full genocide, though? The Brigadier says he wants the base “sealed permanently,” not “destroyed.” The final scene shows the hibernation unit opening behind the Young Silurian as the cavern collapses, plus you hear the “revive” sound. Were they planning a sequel all along? Warriors of the Deep kinda-sorta suggests that the Silurian leader in that adventure is the same guy as the Old Silurian.

• Generally, though, fan consensus has settled on this group of Silurians being wiped out here. Like I mentioned at LI Who, you kind of need to do a genocide at the end of Silurian/Sea Devil episodes. Otherwise, you’re stuck with a group of creatures who should logically be hell-bent on finding and reviving other members of their race, which are supposed to be all over the planet. Then you’re in alternate-Earth territory, where the Doctor Who universe doesn’t resemble ours in the slightest.

What did Pete’s family think?

• Grace came in at episode 4, and she was incredulous that anything had happened in the previous three. She said she could completely keep up with what was going on. I think that speaks to the slow build-up, but that build-up is necessary to really appreciate the story, I think, because she liked it, but wasn’t blown away by it.

Four Questions to Doomsday - Pete

1. Why did the Randomizer take us here? Musical contrast: The War Machines had virtually no music, and this one is the other extreme: music all over the place and in your face. (Thank you, Carey Blyton). Also jumping ahead to what The War Machines begat: the Doctor interacting with contemporary Earth, which of course the Pertwee era is all about.
   
   The biggest connection, though, is with Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks, with the Doctor fighting for the survival of a new species, and expressing total disgust when they’re genocidally killed off.

2. What if the evil plot had succeeded? This is a case where we know exactly what would have happened if the Silurians won the day because that story’s been written: The novel Blood Heat is set in a parallel world where the Doctor is killed in the course of this adventure and the Silurians take over. Years later, the planet has become a tropical world ruled by the Silurians, who generally see the remnants of humanity (including the Brigadier and other UNIT personnel) as a nuisance as they continue to rebuild their civilization. The humans nearly launch a genocidal war against the Silurians, but the Seventh Doctor prevents it and forces the two sides to make peace.

3. Where’s the Clara splinter? She runs a “Potholer Outfitters” kiosk, converted from a storage room Wenley Moor. She always has plenty of overalls in multiple sizes, has a very liberal payment plan (“Get me next time”). and all of the overalls, helmets, ropes, etc. are made to be put on and taken off very quickly.

4. Dalek, Ogron, Professor Hayter, Viscount Banger, Fixed Point in Time, Lady Cassandra, or Zarbi? Loved this one as a kid (despite it being in black and white for the longest time) and it still holds up. It really is a great concept, and an excellent script. Everyone delivered on this one. No doubt—this is a Viscount Banger.

Plot Summary

An emergent artificial intelligence seeks to replace humanity as the dominant force on the planet by constructing a legion of deadly, adaptable robots.

Notable for:

• Last adventure for Dodo. Jackie Lane’s contract expired halfway through, so Dodo has no leaving scene.

• First adventure with Ben and Polly, and the only complete surviving story that features them.

• Features London’s Post Office Tower.

• Kit Pedler was interviewing as a science advisor on the series and suggested a story where computers used telephones to take over the world, based on the question from producers: How could the Post Office Tower “take over?” He got the job, and they used the story idea, though he’s credited as “Kit Pedlar.”

• Only one War Machine prop was built.

• One of the first stories to use stylized title cards.

• The story is deliberately set in modern day because the producers decided the audience was getting bored with historical stories.

• The story was one of the last to be destroyed/wiped/junked. It was restored by discovering copies in Nigeria, but they had cuts. The cuts were all partially restored from clip, another copy of episode 2, and minor recreations/edits synced with off-air fan audio recordings.

• In Survivors of the Flux, it’s mentioned that UNIT somehow missed “the whole thing at the Post Office Tower,” which led them to appoint “Corporal” Lethbridge-Stewart.

Pete commentary:

• The War Machines is quite notable for several reasons, but the most important one is it begins the template of the Doctor interacting “officially” with contemporary Earth. The Doctor isn’t just shrunk and dealing with giant insects, or dealing with some kind of covert invasion on his own. He’s interacting with the authorities, advising them, and even joining forces. This obviously became the template for how he could interact with UNIT, but it’s seen throughout the Troughton era, too (The Faceless Ones, The Web of Fear, Fury from the Deep, and The Invasion).

• Moreover, this is Doctor Who catching up to the swinging sixties, with Ben and Polly obviously meant to represent “hip” youngsters at the time: going to discotheques, dancing all night, and generally being shiny, happy people. It’s a shame that Polly, who is really strong in the first half, spends the second half hypnotized.

• It’s never fully explained how Brett and Major Green know who the Doctor is. Or WOTAN for that matter. In the novelization, it’s explained that Ian Chesterton was involved in the design and building of WOTAN, or at least some foundational aspects to it, and Ian told others about the Doctor.

• This might also explain why WOTAN refers to the Doctor as “Doctor Who,” since Ian was the very first person to utter the phrase in the series (perhaps he needed a placeholder name in official documentation and thought it was apt). Strangely, however, the novel “corrects” this and has WOTAN call him the Doctor.

• The Doctor testing WOTAN by asking it to solve for the square root of a not-even-very-high number is laughable. Any computer since ENIAC would be able to do that. Today, ChatGPT can consider highly complex strategic decisions that challenge even PhD level humans, and it’s not even 60 years later (handful of heartbeats to a Time Lord).

  

• How does WOTAN know what TARDIS stands for? (Ian again, probably.)

• It’s a bit sinister that WOTAN wants to take over the Doctor (“Doctor Who is required”) but it seems to promptly forget that it said it was “top priority” after the War Machines go into production. Once it’s clear Dodo has failed, why wouldn’t they keep trying?

• Sir Charles ends up being the main authority figure the Doctor interacts with, so it’s a shame he’s such a stuffy guy who has no chemistry with the Doctor. I really like how the Doctor acknowledges they need him (“We need Sir Charles’ authority, his help. Without this we can do nothing.”), but looking back you sure miss the Brigadier.

• Cool how Downing Street is mentioned—let’s you know the scale of the threat. The show wouldn’t pay off this line until Aliens of London in 2005.

• It really sucks that Jackie Lane never got a proper leaving scene for Dodo. Subsequent media (Who Killed Kennedy mostly) have given the character more closure, but it would be good to unpack a bit more why she left in this way. I like to think she knew that if she went to the Doctor personally, she would be tempted to go with him again, but she wanted a normal life, and there was no guarantee she would ever get back to London.

• Episode 1 pushes the bounds of realism not by a sentient computer almost plotting to take over the world, but by showing a press conference where officials openly talk about problems: “Perhaps there is something wrong with WOTAN….” I know he’s talking to the Doctor in that moment, but he says it openly in the room. Also, he makes no attempt to paper over Brett’s crazy behavior.

• How WOTAN physically gets anything done is a bit unclear. It hypnotizes people via sound, it looks like, since it can do it through the phones. OK, I guess, but it does suggest there is some kind of audio signal that takes over the human mind that theoretically anyone could use, if they can just find it. At least with the Master you can argue he has a kind of psionic ability that gives him a special edge. But WOTAN is just a human-built computer, at least as far as we know.

• Also, how exactly does it jam all those guns? Guns are entirely mechanical—there is no “receiver” in them to be taken over. The only thing that makes sense is the War Machines would need to use some kind of powerful and precise magnetic field. I’ll buy it, since it makes them quite formidable.

• The War Machines themselves are a bit too boxy to be taken seriously. Their primary threat to London seems to be knocking over all the milk crates and trash cans. “Surrender now, humans, or you’ll have one hell of a mess to clean up!”

• The War Machine guns borrow heavily from the Dalek guns in the Peter Cushing movies. I don’t love it, mostly because it’s never explained how they work. Are they gas? Or is the gas meant as a stand-in for an energy weapon (which is generally how they’re depicted in the Dalek movies)? I’d like to think the latter, but there are scenes where there’s a bunch of smoke floating about.

• It’s a little vague how the first War Machine’s incomplete programming enabled the Doctor to shut it down (or did it shut down on its own?). Still, it’s fine. The better scene is when they disable the second machine with a magnetic field, but wow did they get lucky that a second machine went haywire!

  

• Polly makes a great first impression. It’s awesome how proactive she is when looking to find Dodo, and she is clearly a smart, confident ’60s lady. Yes, she’s a secretary, but she doesn’t let that fact diminish her—she speaks to her male colleagues (and even her superiors) as an equal.

• Sad indicator of real-world sexism: Anneke Wills is way down the credits, after much of the male guest cast, even though Michael Craze is right after Dodo.

• You’re struck by how “innocent” the interactions between Ben and Polly are, with Ben not thinking to make a play for her, even after smacking around Flash (love the name). True, they’re not given much time to pursue their attraction to each other, but there’s barely a whiff of romance. In modern Who, they would completely zero in on the sexual tension.

• Speaking of Flash, doesn’t the Inferno have a bouncer? Or did those come later?

• Ben being assigned to barracks for 6 months is a fine setup for his character, and is thus aptly whisked away by the Doctor, but that just seems like a weird thing to happen to someone who joined the navy specifically to see the world.

• Why does the team building the War Machine kill the tramp instead of “converting” him? And once Polly persuades them not to kill Ben, why not convert him too?

• And the tramp’s death is written up in a paper within hours?

• At the end of episode 2, it’s a bit unclear whether the War Machine is just knocking things around or deliberately looking for Ben.

• How is it the people in the warehouse haven’t noticed the army encircling the building? WOTAN is not so good at the security.

• End of episode 3 is pretty cool. Love seeing the Doctor defiant as everyone retreats.

• I get that the crisis is big and it needs to be top priority. But the Doctor dismissing Ben’s concerns about Polly is somewhat out of character for him, even for the First Doctor. And it’s a good thing Ben was proactive here—it he hadn’t physically taken Polly out of the WOTAN room, she might have ended up like Krimpton.

• Speaking of, that’s another problem with the Doctor’s plan—it involved the murder of someone. You could argue it was necessary, but I would have liked to see more compassion from the Doctor other than, “There’s nothing you can do for the poor fellow.” It’s also ironic considering the Doctor’s (contrived) line criticizing Sir Charles for his “strong-arm tactics.”

• The magnet solution is great, though I don’t get why the machine was still moving while it was in the perimeter. NuWho would have had the perimeter much larger.

• There’s not much in the way of a soundtrack to this one, which would continue with The Smugglers. Obviously, incidental music was not a priority for this production team, which led to a lot of oppressive computer noises throughout.

What did Pete’s family think?

• Grace thought it was “weird.” She also questioned why anyone would be at a club like the Inferno during the day (maybe it’s summer).

Four Questions to Doomsday - Pete

1. Why did the Randomizer take us here? Taking over a key city as the first step of a larger invasion definitely echoes Daleks in Manhattan. And in both a romance (Tallulah/Laszlo, Polly/Ben) factors heavily into the plot. Polly must be secretly longing for Ben given that her affection shines through WOTAN’s programming, which seems to have no trouble turning regular people into merciless killers.

2. What if the evil plot had succeeded? I don’t see how WOTAN could conquer a bouncy house let alone a city. Still, to take the question seriously, someone mentions the War Machines are impervious to grenades, and you have to imagine its weapons are, in reality, more effective than they’re depicted. Couple that with the ability to jam mechanical weapons, and you’ve got a serious problem on your hands.

   You have to imagine the Doctor’s War Machine falls over or something, so they can’t get to the tower in time. The other War Machines deploy at noon, and over the next couple of days they kill many thousands before the military can get enough of the population evacuated to really respond. By the time the authorities can authorize an air strike, WOTAN has built its own drones. With air superiority and the ability to mechanically jam most weapons, WOTAN quickly takes over London. Simultaneously, it uses phone lines to initiate similar campaigns in all the cities it mentioned.

   Earth’s in a real pickle! The Doctor would need to perhaps summon help (the Daleks, perhaps, a la Revolution?) to fight off WOTAN’s new army of War Machines, built and maintained by a hypnotized workforce. Polly’s resistance hints at a possible wide-scale solution to free the humans of its control.

3. Where’s the Clara splinter? Convincing Dodo to not go back to the Doctor because she’ll want to keep traveling with him if she goes. Clara knows Dodo needs to live to experience the events of Who Killed Kennedy.

4. Dalek, Ogron, Professor Hayter, Viscount Banger, Fixed Point in Time, Lady Cassandra, or Zarbi? Fixed Point in Time. Super important episode for Doctor Who, establishing how the Doctor—and the show—deal with modern day. It’s too bad the War Machines aren’t great as a monster or prop, and by the end, even though we’re told 10 more have been deactivated, we have no interest in seeing them again. Still, the overall story holds up, even if many of the details look pretty silly today.

   Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Plot Summary

The last four Daleks in existence plan to merge their DNA with human beings to create a new master race in New York City, 1930.

Notable for:

• Return of the Cult of Skaro.

• Establishing shots of NYC (e.g. Liberty Island, the view from the Empire State Building) were actual footage shot by the crew, then spliced into footage shot in Cardiff.

• A deleted scene explains why the Doctor is taking her on a third adventure even after he explicitly said he would take her on just one trip (which was extended to two—one in the past, “The Shakespeare Code,” and one in the future, “Gridlock”). This is a “detour” trip, the “scenic route” as the Doctor takes her home.

• Andrew Garfield stars as Frank, and it’s clear the production team had no idea he’d become arguably the most famous person to ever come out of Doctor Who—the Doctor Who Confidential doesn’t mention him at all.

Pete commentary:

• It’s always satisfying to see the Daleks interact with or threaten Earth. The show understood this immediately: after they proved to be a smash hit, the very next adventure was “The Dalek Invasion of Earth.” We saw them in the present in Doomsday, and in the far future in The Parting of the Ways, so this completes the trifecta of going to the past—but not too distant in the past.

• This is an ambitious two-parter that makes the most out of its many resources: the Daleks, the larger guest cast, the New York setting. The setup is fantastic: lots of things happen in Part 1, and it ends on a truly eye-popping cliffhanger. Part 2, however, doesn’t let up on how far it wants to push the story, and it smashes into reality pretty quickly: the limited budget, the precious few minutes to wrap every character’s story in some kind of satisfying way, the impossibility of threading the needle of a story set in the past with world-changing consequences. It’s safe to say Part 2 doesn’t deliver on all the fun and coolness promised in Part 1. It doesn’t fall on its face, but it does limp over the finish line.

• I can see why they tossed the deleted scene that establishes why Martha is continuing with Ten:

  1. It’s not really necessary. Casual viewers don’t care, and fans will make up whatever in their heads.

  2. The tone is all wrong. Ten is actually a bit cold and even slightly mean to her. It’s not a great way to start. MUCH better to open with them being happy and excited to be in New York City in 1930. Gets the audience on board right away, and we’re not thinking too hard about their relationship.

• Technical detail: You could probably see the ESB from Liberty Island in 1930, but it would be a speck on the horizon, and not as large as Ten and Martha see it. That said, you can do a lot with perspectives and cropping (like when people are silhouetted against a gigantic full moon).

• The Daleks’ entrance is handled really well. I often get annoyed at episodes like Day of the Daleks that treat the Daleks’ presence in the episode almost as a mystery, despite being mentioned in the title. That said, they’re marquee monsters—you still want them to make an entrance Here, they balance it perfectly. No mention of their actual name, but the setup from Diagoras is really nice, and the other guy plays his irritation well (“Oh, what is that supposed to mean” “Who are we working for?”). You almost expect it to be some kind of “syke!” mislead, with a guy or a pig (which we saw in the cold open) in the elevator. But no: This is a Dalek episode, the audience wants to see Daleks—here you go!

• The scene a bit later—the conversation establishing scenes between Diagoras and Dalek Caan—is superb: gets across exactly what this guy’s relationship is with the Daleks, and why Sec ends up choosing him to merge with. It’s criminal that it was cut from U.S. broadcast on the Sci Fi channel at the time.

• It also establishes Sec’s motivation: Dalek Caan’s observation that the Daleks have been obliterated but that humanity always survives is leading him somewhere but he can’t quite put it together. Sec, of course, does, which sets up his speech later about, “Why are we not victorious?”

• Nice subtle touches on the cruel indifference of the Daleks: Their response to the labor shortage is, “We need more bodies.”

• The scene right before the cliffhanger shows how well Helen Raynor understands the Daleks: they don’t respond to meekness. If you want them to respect you, you have to confidently demand it. Martha plays this extremely well, even going so far as to use their catchphrases against them (“Report!”). It makes total sense that they then use it as an opportunity to explain, boast, and gloat—something they always love to do. The only problem with it is that it makes no sense that Martha would know this. There should have at least been a quick line from the Doctor that pushes her into this: “Ask them what’s going on, but don’t waffle. They hate weakness.”

• I cant say how much I love the “But you have… doubts?” scene between the two Daleks in the sewer. Each beat and camera shot is perfect. The Dalek looking behind it, then swinging its dome back toward the other to say, “Yes.” Love it!

• The pig slaves are an interesting choice. As a plot device in a Dalek show, they’re very good: They emphasize both how desperate the Daleks are (there are only four of them, so they need foot soldiers) and their casual cruelty: mutilating people, with no way to reverse the process. However, it’s hard to get past how silly they look—it’s hard to take them seriously. Laszlo mentions how they’re “trained” to kill people in gruesome ways, but because it’s Doctor Who, we never see it.

Theater

• The story does an excellent job of depicting what at least feels like a realistic version theater life, especially in 1930s New York. Tallulah’s accent is delightful, and, though she’s very pretty and the lead of the show, she’s still clearly a struggling actress who’s only valuable as her next job.

• All the backstage stuff feels very real, though the other girls and any other personnel besides Laszlo conveniently disappear when the script calls for it or don’t exist. No big, though—you buy it in the moment.

• The Broadway number is nicely done. Your taste may vary, but it’s definitely in the spirit of big showstopping performances of yesteryear. It’s a bit ersatz in that it doesn’t feel like it’s part of a bigger musical or story, but that’s OK—it’s not like Murray Gold was going to write a whole musical for a Doctor Who one-off.

• When Martha tells Tallulah that she had been on stage before for “Shakespeare,” Tallulah responds with “How dull is that?” Oh, honey, if only you knew.

Sec

• It’s a guy in a rubber mask! But what a mask—great little Dalek tentacles twitching on his cheeks. Here’s where I think casual viewers might have been weirded out, but Whovians have been handheld into this, and we buy it: it’s a good version of what you’d image a human+Dalek would look like.

Guest cast

• Stealing virtually every scene he’s in is Hugh Quarshie as Solomon. His first scene certainly establishes who he is really well, and even if you might quarrel with the way he resolves the bread conflict, you can’t deny he’s the guy in charge and everyone respects him. He gets a clever line about the neighborhood getting classier by the day. His death is perfectly handled: It’s a Dalek story, so someone we like has to die, and his speech is so well-written—any reasonable human would listen—but of course the Daleks have not even an ounce of compassion.

• Andrew Garfield makes Frank very memorable. We definitely feel it when he’s taken by the pig slaves, and are extremely relieved to see him OK. He has an excellent final scene with Laszlo, essentially vouching for him, and you hear the sympathy in his voice. You get the sense that Frank will eventually become the new Solomon.

• Miranda Raison as Tallulah is an acquired taste, but she definitely goes for it. I really like Tallulah and think her accent is delightful. She’s always performing, even when they’re about to be killed by the slaves. Of course she’s the one to yell, “Dalekanium!” with Martha.

• Eric Loren finds the humanity in Sec quickly, and he has a nice final line about death and destruction choosing the Daleks.

• Ryan Carnes is perhaps less memorable as Laszlo, but his happy ending is a great contrast with the rest of the story, and strikes the right tone at the end. Would be too depressing otherwise—RTD’s instincts were very good here.

The Problems with Evolution

• Like I said, Part 2 takes a tumble about halfway through, after the attack on Hooverville:

• The script does a great job of papering over plot holes up until this point, but multiple explosions in Central Park would attract attention from the police and firefighters, even in 1930. Same with two flying Daleks leading the Doctor to the sewers. How could someone not notice that?

• The final execution of the “human Dalek” plan has several problems:

  • Sec says they have eleven minutes until the solar flare from the START of the Doctor helping them. This is just a ridiculously short amount of time, and I have no idea why they didn’t say “37 minutes” or even “92 minutes.” Ultimately doesn’t matter, but it’s irritating.

  • How do the Doctor and Sec not notice what the other Daleks are doing? I get that there needs to be a moment when the Daleks do the double-cross, but it should after they do some crucial component of the plan, then the Daleks stop them and take some time to execute THEIR plan.

  • The big problem with the plan is that it reneges on the promise it made at the beginning of the episode: We see what a Human Dalek is—it’s Dalek Sec, a.k.a. Mr. Tentacle Face. Turning the human “shells” into human Daleks, but still having them look human, is betraying the promise. Clearly there wasn’t budget for this, but then don’t promise it, however indirectly.

• The Doctor’s last-minute shift of the plan has good and bad parts:

  • I like that the Doctor must think on his feet, and the fact that his sonic doesn’t do so well against 1930s riveting might be a subtle point about the working class.

  • However, getting in the way of the lightning bolt, and that transferring his DNA into the process… well, we’re already stretching things on the “suspension of disbelief” spectrum. This is stretching Doctor Who science and plotting up to the breaking point.

  • What pushes it OVER the breaking point is the climax. The Daleks have apparently succeeded in putting “100% Dalek” DNA into these humans. But of course the Doctor has now inserted Time Lord DNA into the picture, which screws it up. Fair enough, but are we really to believe the effect would be so large that NONE of the Human Daleks shoot the Doctor when ordered? Not one? They ALL suddenly have a moral problem with it? We don’t know the Time Lords to be a morally superior race, and even if you believe they are, seriously, not a single Human Dalek feels their Dalek “urge to kill?” I get the drama of it, but this was too much for me.

• Ending is excellent: The establishing that Dalek Caan is the absolute last, no-takebacks Dalek in all of time and space gives dramatic clarity. Caan’s defiance of the Doctor, the Doctor’s surprising speech to him, and his “emergency temporal shift”—you’re on the edge of your seat. The last beat with him knowing that he’ll see Caan again (because he always does) is a nice promise, one that at least we know the show (and RTD) will eventually deliver on, even if they have no idea what form that will take at this point.

What did Pete’s family think?

• Grace loved the vibe, especially. Broadway stuff and Tallulah. She enjoyed watching it again, but also understands that it’s not the best story. She thought Sec looked like one of the aliens from Calvin and Hobbes. She sympathized with the Daleks other than Sec—she said the plot wasn’t something the Daleks would ever do.

Four Questions to Doomsday - Pete

1. Why did the Randomizer take us here? To keep our singing streak going: both The Ice Warriors and The Space Pirates have sopranos creating some eerie transitions, and the Swampies are all about chanting “Kroll.” It’s all been leading to Tallulah’s big showstopper.

2. What if the evil plot had succeeded? It really should have. The Human Daleks kill the Doctor, then the others. However, pretty quickly they start to have problems, and they slowly break free of Dalek control (maybe they have a “you have doubts” moment in the sewers, just like their masters). They organize covertly, then plan to wrest control from the Daleks. They might even discovery the Daleks have some kind of execution fail-safe and seize control of it before they strike, setting off a new Time War on Earth: Daleks vs. Time Lord/Dalek hybrids.

3. Where’s the Clara splinter? She’s at the Empire State Building, pushing buttons on the elevators to make sure they’re always there for the Doctor and his friends, but that the Daleks and pig slaves keep needing to wait.

4. Dalek, Ogron, Professor Hayter, Viscount Banger, Fixed Point in Time, Lady Cassandra, or Zarbi? If I had to rate each episode, I’d give Manhattan a Dalek, and Evolution a Prof. Hayter, so this is a Dalek-Hayter hybrid for me.

Subscribe now

Chris commentary:

• Reach definitely exceeds grasp here. When Daleks come to Manhattan, you want it to be big and bold, epic, a billion billion Daleks … or certainly more than the classic series standard of 4, no? Well, unless …

• the whole Sec/Cult of Skaro “aren’t they sad/sweet/scrappy” kind of thing could have done really well if it played out like a parody of the classic NY immigrant’s tale, just four Daleks trying to hit the big time with one big score on the Empire State, and one of them really wants to integrate with the locals. Plenty potential but …

• this script also wanted to play it scary and like they’ve taken over the city unnoticed and can just casually fly into Central Park and … it just ain’t got the New York sense of scale, man. Especially not in the Prohibition era! How can you do NYC in 1930 without speakeasies and gangsters and jazz, RTD?

• Even Moffat (arguably, we’ll get there) couldn’t make the scale of NYC work and he had the budget to include a CGI Lady Liberty.

• Should Who just stay the hell outta New York, man? Discuss! (With Peter Purves atop the Empire State. Hot diggety!)

• Even though there was a tiny bit of location shooting, it really doesn’t feel like it. The skyline scene, today, makes you wince. Setting it in Central Park makes a kind of sense; at least you can film park scenes in Cardiff. But those are definitely British park benches.

• What was the point of Solomon if you burn the character in that phenomenally stupid way? He didn’t seem naive before. Are you playing it for laughs a la Mars Attacks?

• Likewise, what’s the point of the pigmen? What was it about pigs that fascinated Daleks so much they wanted to hybridize them? Pigs are astonishingly wilful, intelligent creatures, how do they make for good slaves?

• (And maybe, by the way, in an American context, in a story set just 65 years after the 13th Amendment, in the land of Jim Crow … just don’t use that word.)

• And how did none of the pigmen at any point in the script ever say “thanks for saving my bacon, Doc?” (Because that’s about the level of dialogue we’re at here, when full-on cheesy would have been better.)

• Hooverville History Corner: Yes, there actually was one in Central Park at this time, but it was a lot better attended to and administered.

• Accurate that the Depression was called a Depression during the Hoover administration, but not accurate that the Empire State was built with disregard to workers (or that a dollar a day would have been considered “slave wages,” which isn’t even a thing)

• Time to do a Dalek story ratings roundup, here near the halfway point?

• Well, the accents have gotten unintentionally funnier. But only Tallulah is really leaning in to the Bugsy Mallone of it all (which is surely where her name comes from). And her dance number may be the best thing in this.

• Should Daleks in Manhattan have been a musical? The cast do sometimes seem like they’re about to burst into song, Dalek Sec could have killed with an “I want” song – he and the Cult could have argued back and forth about how cool / awful America is, like the Puerto Ricans in West Side Story, and … well, at least Brits have an easier time sounding like Americans when they sing.

• Oh Doctor, surely you’d wonder if that glowing green ball looks like a Rutan? Did Fang Rock mean nothing to you?

• The most unintentionally hilarious thing about the Daleks is … are they becoming nudists? One’s basically walking around in a surgical gown, naked at the back, and Sec seems to really relish letting it all hang out before his conversion …

• when you think about it, Daleks have come to Manhattan and … stuck bits of their pants on the Empire State Building? Damn tourists!

• There’s a point where the Daleks are accused of having no emotions, and … c’mon, man, that’s not the Daleks. Hate is plenty emotional!

• Once I realized it was the Dalek version of “Friends,” my brain came up with a new version of the theme:

• So no one told you life was gonna be this way (EXPLAIN! EXPLAIN!) / you’re in the Empire State with human DNA! / Seems like you’re always stuck in a travel machine / but when it hasn’t been your Day, your Death, your Power, or even your Eeeeeevil …. Caan’ll be there for you! (When the flare starts to fall) Caan’ll exterminate you! (cause we’ve been here before) Caan’ll run out on you! (cause he’s a time traveller too …)

Four Questions to Doomsday - Chris

1. Why did the Randomizer take us here? The Statue of Liberty, featured in our previous Whomoji. November, 95 years ago: seasonally appropriate programming! Or maybe …it’s referencing a certain president’s “Piggy” comment?

3. Where’s the Clara splinter? Behind Tallulah’s sudden radical shift in feelings towards her pigman lover?

4. Dalek, Ogron, Professor Hayter, Viscount Banger, Fixed Point in Time, Lady Cassandra, or Zarbi? It’s a Dalek … no, wait, what’s that coming out of its casing? What is this horrible hybrid? Well, thereby hangs a tale.

   Y’see, Professor Hayter’s papa went to Columbia University in the 1920s, lost everything in the Wall Street crash, ended up in Hooverville, and he met this dame, see, and her name was Cassandra, and why mister, she was so thin you could almost see right through her …

   Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support our work.

Plot Summary

The Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe are squeezed between a suspicious starship captain and merciless pirates who are plundering the space lanes of a nascent Earth Empire.

Notable for:

• Almost entirely missing, very little survives beyond the single episode.

• Robert Holmes’ second story. Was originally supposed to be 4 episodes.

• Difficult to date, but it seems like it’s early in Earth’s interstellar travels, so the 22nd or 23rd centuries, most likely, even though a screen in episode 2 implies it’s 1992!

• In other media, it’s revealed that the Issigri Mining Corporation eventually becomes the Interplanetary Mining Corporation from Colony in Space.

• Was written as a replacement for The Dream Spinner by Paul Wheeler, which had technical problems and was axed.

• Last story to be produced by Peter Bryant.

• The regulars were filming The War Games during the production of episode six and appear only in pre-filmed inserts.

• First story where John Nathan-Turner was on staff, as a floor assistant.

• Per Doctor Who: A Celebration, the model work was done by the BBC’s new “Space Unit,” which had created working models for the network’s coverage of the Apollo program.

• Episode 2, which had already been preserved by the BBC, was also recorded off-air by an enthusiast. It’s the earliest known home video recording of Doctor Who.

• Similar to The Ice Warriors, a soprano, Mary Thomas, provided vocals for the eerie-sounding space transitions.

• Only time the title cards included quotation marks.

• Holds the record for the longest amount of time for the Doctor and his companions to appear in a story (15 minutes), per the TARDIS wiki. (not counting Mission to the Unknown)

Pete commentary:

• Holy cow, what a slog. I try not to be biased by the fact that this is done with reconstructions, but this tale of pirates in space trying to outwit both the frontier cops, the company people, and the Doctor and his companions is a padded, pointless mess. Patrick Troughton left the show mostly because of the punishing schedule, but you can imagine he’d be more okay with it if he was putting out excellent work. I suspect The Space Pirates may have pushed him over the edge, leading him to think, “I’m working all the time, and THIS is the stuff I have to show for it?”

  • Corroborated by Michael Troughton: According to him, Patrick Troughton wasn’t impressed by the slow-moving plot. “I remember my father arriving at our house after completing a producers’ run-through for episode two of The Space Pirates. He was angry, but anger born of frustration rather than aggression. I recall him complaining to my mother about how dull and unwatchable The Space Pirates was going to be: ‘This is episode two and we’re still trapped in that bloody awful spaceship set. I told them people will just turn off.’” He did, however, grow to enjoy it.

• That said, you have to give points to The Space Pirates for trying something different than the typical alien invasion. It’s one of the rarer Troughton episodes where all the heroes and villains are human, with no rubber mask in sight. So it’s a bit refreshing in that regard.

• Let’s list off all the times the regulars are captured and put in closets or confined spaces, and escaping becomes a major plot point:

  • They’re forced to hide in the beacon

  • The pirates toss them in the pit

  • Caven puts them in Dom’s old study

• Getting captured or held at gunpoint is part of Doctor Who, but in each case the act of escaping takes a ton of time and ostensibly shows the cleverness of the Doctor (the exception being the first time, where the risk he takes backfires). The repetition makes it feel tired, and basically a crutch.

• SAY SOMETHING NICE: The pirate helmets slay.

• The Star Trek influence here is palpable, but only in design and plot. The crew of the V-ship are mostly interchangeable stiffs. Hermack is stolid—I can’t help but think he’s reading all his lines from cue cards. Warne and Penn don’t seem to have any distinctive qualities, apart from their accents, and they don’t do much in the way of problem solving. This might be based on the crew of the Enterprise, but it sure doesn’t taste the same.

• Similarly, the final scene, with them cracking a bad joke about walking to the TARDIS, then cutting to credits as everybody laughs, seems like it’s trying to mirror the back-slapping endings of many Star Trek episodes. The problem is the joke sucks, and it essentially dismisses the 6(!) episodes we just saw as filler.

• The plot is a bit strange to begin with. Who pillages cargo by attaching rockets to it in order to pick up later? It’s honestly not a terrible idea, but the only time the script uses it effectively is when the pirate dart switches up its nosecone.

• Also, it’s really convenient that the pirates didn’t think that anyone could figure out where their base is simply by plotting the end point of the course they were on. Maybe do a less direct path next time?

• It’s funny to watch ’60s era sci-fi where everything is analog and transistors were new. The idea that Caven needs to attach hardware to take over the LIZ remotely is quaint. Surely it would just be software today.

• Madeline’s wig is… oh boy. Who thought this metallic bouffant was a good idea? It doesn’t look future-y at all—it’s just a mental ’60s fever dream, and not in a good way.

• How did Madeline not notice her dad was being kept prisoner right under her nose for years? He must have been fed, watered, clothed, etc. and taken to the bathroom (no one comments on any bad smells). And why has Dom gone feral? What exactly was Caven’s plan with him?

• How the hell does Zoe not understand what candles are? She also isn’t familiar with argonite and the other technology of the period. Which is fair enough, but it negates her typical cleverness, which makes you wonder why Holmes wanted to do that. Did he have it out for her?

  • Moreover, I can’t stand the idea that someone from the future wouldn’t be familiar with elements of the past. Star Trek does this sometimes with characters not knowing what cars from the 20th century are. I may not ride horses at all, but I understand what they are, and that most people used to use them for transport a couple of hundred years ago.

• SAY SOMETHING NICE: There’s some great dialogue from Troughton when he speaks Zoe and Jamie:

  • “Zoe, don’t be such a pessimist.”

  • “Jamie, I think you don’t appreciate all I do for you.”

• I appreciate Caven’s evil, though he seems really dumb once his plan is found out. I’m just going to blow up everything? You’re not even going to take Madeline as a hostage?

• Dervish’s escape from the Issigri office in episode 6 makes Jamie look incredibly dumb. Dude, you had one job!

• The theme of the old timers (Milo and Dom) having the experience and know-how to save the day isn’t terrible, though it’s a bit of a rehash of what we saw in The Seeds of Death.

• I have no problem with there being explosions in space, but where are the stars? Everything looks black.

• The climax, with both Dervish and the Doctor messing around with what look like vats of liquid nitrogen, is one of the most ill-advised in Doctor Who history: slow, plodding, and wholly predictable. Wow, he cut the right wire at the last minute? What a twist!

What did Pete’s family think?

• Grace was a trooper in getting through the reconstructions on Daily Motion, but wow was it a slog. She liked episodes 1+2, and she rebounded in episode 5, but generally she found it hard to follow and confusing.

Four Questions to Doomsday - Pete

1. Why did the Randomizer take us here? Simply fulfilling the pirate’s curse, I suppose. I did ask for no screams, and it almost delivers, with the exception of the end of episode 3.

2. What if the evil plot had succeeded? Say that Caven gets out a minute earlier and is able to set off the bomb at 11:58 or so. Everybody dies. Not only that, but he has a TARDIS once he recovers the beacon parts. In selling to the highest bidder, he gets a lot of interest from the Daleks and Cybermen. He sells to one of them (or someone else), gets majorly rich right before one or the other invades all of time and space.

3. Where’s the Clara splinter? Designer of the beacons: durable, magnetic, airtight, modular (so easily split apart), with their own gravity, and each with their own oxygen tank—totally convenient to be marooned in! She might also be distracting Jamie somehow in episode 6, letting Dervish escape.

4. Dalek, Ogron, Professor Hayter, Viscount Banger, Fixed Point in Time, Lady Cassandra, or Zarbi? Ogron. Sorry, Bob Holmes. You went on to do great things, but about the only thing this is notable for is padding. And the pirates’ helmets.

   Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Plot Summary

On a swamp-covered moon, the Doctor must contend with a gargantuan squid to prevent the ethnic cleansing of a primitive tribe.

Notable for:

• Fifth story in The Key to Time season arc.

• Tony Harding, who designed K-9, also designed Kroll.

• Seven is the Doctor’s lucky number? It changes considerably once we get to The Creature From the Pit.

• Location shooting meant K-9 couldn’t participate.

Subscribe now

Pete commentary:

• Doctor Who’s kaiju episode! The Power of Kroll is great fun, ostensibly doing something big and dumb right before the final wrap-up to The Key to Time. To be nicer, it’s big and simple—big monster threatens everyone in the story while telling a relatively straightforward story about the evils of colonization and racism. It’s all very what-you-see-is-what-you-get, and everybody shows up (except maybe Glyn Owen as Rohm-Dutt).

• There’s something very cool about the TARDIS materializing in reeds. They should do it again sometime.

• Thawn at one point asks if the Doctor is from “outside this constellation”—an interesting prediction from the 1970s how the future would measure regions in the future.

• The guest cast is a who’s who of Doctor Who veterans:

  • Philip Madoc (also the War Lord in The War Games and Solon in The Brain of Morbius) gives some nice texture to Fenner. He wants what he calls “progress,” but he has a moral code, disapproving of Thawn’s extremist streak that leads him to murder.

  • John Leeson as Dugeen is a bit further along the continuum of extremes. He clearly has sympathies with the Swampies and the “Sons of Earth,” though he’s not fully on board until he’s forced to choose whether he wants to participate in the genocide.

  • Neil McCarthy had appeared in the Mind of Evil, but he gets more to work with here with Thwan. He twists his mustache (almost literally) plenty, and you understand from the get-go where this guy’s coming from when he decisively dismisses the Doctor’s assumption that Mensch, the swampie, should be counted as an equal.

  • The three of them elevate otherwise ho-hum dialogue: I like it when Thawn and Fenner argue about what to do, and the technical feasibility of any particular solution.

• Romana screaming at the end of episode 1 feels a little out of character. It’s not great to see her reduced to a regular screaming Doctor Who companion when she’s not supposed to be cut of the same cloth. It can work if that’s the point—that the terror of the situation is so great that even someone as sophisticated as Romana loses her cool (which I’d argue Destiny of the Daleks does well)—but that’s not the case here. That said, Mary Tamm can scream with the best of them.

• “Swampie” is such a smart term. It’s clearly a racial epithet, one tossed around so casually that you never actually hear their proper species name.

• The base doesn’t employ women, ostensibly as a matter of policy (that’s certainly the implication from Rohm-Dutt), so they’re sexist, too!

• The music in the Kroll ritual is bare-bones, even by Doctor Who standards. The whispered hymn of the sisterhood of Karn is like Bohemian Rhapsody compared to, “KROLL! dum-dum-dum-dum-dum KROLL! Dum-dum-dum-dum-dum KROLL!”

• Can’t hate the swampies: They went all the way with the green paint and the braids. It works, even if there’s a little too much shine on the faces at times.

• Kroll, the special effect, is very dated now, though I remember as a kid really being into the idea of a gargantuan monster. I hadn’t seen any Godzilla movies before this, so this might have been one of my first encounters with a kaiju-like monster in fiction. Seeing it rise against the horizon is really neat—you want to believe it, though there isn’t nearly enough supporting elements, in either effects, performances, or story, to really sell it.

• Kroll’s first appearance is underused. When it rises, only Thawn, Rohm-Dutt, and the swampies see it. There’s no close-up of anyone’s face looking shocked. And how did the Doctor and Romana miss it? Also, it’s incomprehensible that it’s not the cliffhanger. There was a huge opportunity here, and they missed it.

• When Kroll rises for the episode 3 cliffhanger, the Doctor and Romana are strangely calm.

• They also haven’t thought through what a beast the size of Kroll would mean, physically. Where are the vast waves that would be displaced? How could Kroll have any problems destroying the refinery almost instantly? How could it get this close to shore at all (does the lake get instantly deep once you get a few feet in)? Etc.

• The tentacles aren’t as bad as they could have been, but they do underscore the problem with scale: why are they so small compared to the creature? I guess these are some kind of secondary tentacles? Used for hunting? Why is it hunting? Surely eating a couple of humanoids wouldn’t sate it. And it hunts through “surface vibrations?” Did it watch Tremors?

• Romana speculates the tentacles would feed the creature while it’s dormant for hundreds of years. I guess it wants a real meal when it gets up, but wouldn’t it want to hunt something much larger, and in the water?

• Robert Holmes elevates the script beyond the seemingly dumb premise by giving the swampies some depth. Ranquin is far from a noble primitive: he’s manipulative, deceitful, violent, and clearly blinded by his faith—all the qualities of a fundamentalist society. Whether the swampies were always like this or pushed by the Delta Magna colonists is up for debate.

  • I also like how Ranquin talking about the many on Delta Magna who support the swampies’ cause in a way that suggests he thinks they’re suckers. A prototype of the “useful idiots” argument.

• The swampies’ torture chamber is creative. Obviously based on the the rack. The tightening of the vines is kind of silly, but it doesn’t take too much headcanon/suspension of disbelief (these are alien plants, after all) to buy in. And the way the Doctor gets out is quite good.

• However, if the whole point is that shattering the glass of the skylight lets in the rain, they seem to have forgotten that in the very next shot as the Doctor frees Romana and Rohm-Dutt: there’s no rain pouring down from the opening.

• I like the Doctor’s line that one can make “progress” mean anything. I don’t know how much that idea may have been used to justify colonization, but it’s a good way of bending the argument back: what are you even doing here?

• I really enjoyed this exchange—Bob Holmes, you’ve still got it:

  • DOCTOR: I think it’s an illustrated history of the tribe. A sort of Bayeux tapestry with footnotes.

  • ROMANA: Oh, a sort of Holy Writ.

  • DOCTOR: I think it’s atrociously writ, but the pictures aren’t bad.

• A bit strange that Thawn feels he needs to shoot Dugeen. Why not grab him and push him back since he’s clearly struggling to even stand?

• Thawn’s death is shocking, partly because it’s one of the extremely rare times Doctor Who shows blood. It’s quite grim, but it’s a pretty smart choice. You hate this guy? You’re bloodthirsty for justice? Here’s some blood.

• Tom Baker is his usual banterous self: It’s super fun when he tries to blame his sabotage on the cleaning lady. Suggesting Kroll is saving Thawn (and the others) for pudding is excellent, too. “Kroll is…” “...all baloney!” So good. THIS is why we tune in every week—seening him have fun while being the smartest person in the room and saving the day.

• Convenient that the segment just inserts itself on the tracer in this one. Put the scuba gear on ice, Romana!

• Can’t imagine Fenner is going to be OK. The swampies menacingly surround him at the end, and they’ve just lost their god and many of their people.

• Which makes you wonder: The Doctor just “killed” their god. How are they not pissed?

What did Pete’s family think?

• Grace was amused at the swampies’ chanting, saying it looked like a fun “workout class.”

Four Questions to Doomsday - Pete

1. Why did the Randomizer take us here? I asked it to bring the heat, and it delivered: According to the Doctor, the base’s “heat exchangers” have raised the temperature of the lake, contributing to Kroll’s awakening. In the beat of the Kroll chant, you can ALMOST hear Vanilla Ice.

2. What if the evil plot had succeeded? Say Thawn kills Dugeen earlier and destroys Kroll, plus the swampies. Somehow the refinery survives. The Doctor then needs to see that Thawn is indicted for his crimes while also somehow recovering the fifth segment, which would now be in somewhere in the lakebed.

3. Where’s the Clara splinter? She’s the designer of the Doctor’s boots, which morph into pants whenever the wearer wills it. Handy!

4. Dalek, Ogron, Professor Hayter, Viscount Banger, Fixed Point in Time, Lady Cassandra, or Zarbi? This is a fun one, with just enough under the surface to surprise you (see what I did there?). A Dalek-Zarbi hybrid.

   Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support Pull To Open.

Plot Summary

As the world contends with a new ice age, an group of aliens trapped in the ice threaten to take what’s left of the planet.

Notable for:

• First appearance of the Ice Warriors (duh).

• In the 1960s, global cooling was actually a concern, though the story’s premise—the destruction of plant life—relies on overpopulation as a justification. Brian Hayles also was inspired by the discovery of a mammoth frozen in Siberia.

• The Ice Warriors is difficult to pinpoint in future history. The world has been ruled/managed by a computer for over 100 years and there’s been time for massive plant life extinction and a resulting ice age. That would seem to place it in the far future, but the fact that the humans don’t recognize the Ice Warriors implies it’s before the other Ice Warrior adventures, including The Seeds of Death, which is in about the 21st or 22nd century.

• Rare instance of the TARDIS doors opening outward.

• A German broadcaster watched The Ice Warriors as a sample to see if they wanted to pick up Doctor Who as a series. The committee unanimously gave it a thumbs-down, leading to Doctor Who being fairly unknown in the country.

• The onscreen bear was shot exclusively for this story—not stock footage.

• Deborah Watling couldn’t finish filming the last episode, so she was written out as abruptly returning to the TARDIS.

• The Ice Warrior helmets were redesigned halfway through to make them more flexible for the wearers.

• Costume designer Martin Baugh rejected many of Hayles notes that put in electronic components in the Ice Warrior armor, and instead did something more like a two-legged turtle.

  Subscribe now

Pete commentary:

• The theremin-heavy opening credits are nice break from the usual; also the ditching of the word “episode” or “part” in front of the numbers. The stock animal noises are less great.

• The Ice Warriors is a slow burn: It takes a while for things to get going, and although the warriors are visually interesting, they’re pretty standard Doctor Who monsters. The story is a little confused whether we should see this as creeping doom or a chess match between the warriors at the base. Other episodes have done either better, so it doesn’t end up being particularly memorable.

• Clent and his team taking all of their direction from a risk-averse computer has newfound resonance now that people are developing unhealthy relationships and even dependencies on AI chatbots. The overall message that, no matter how good computers get, human judgement and agency must be central to what we do with them, is excellent and timeless. In addition, you can’t progress without a certain amount of risk tolerance. Not random or reckless risk, but risk informed by study, intellect, and experience.

• The themes are great, but it’s a shame the Ice Warriors themselves aren’t really incorporated in a meaningful way. Think about a version of The Ice Warriors script where Clent’s rigidness, indecision, and deference to the computer is contrasted by Vagra’s flexibility, decisiveness, and determination to make his tools work for him, not the other way around. You could backread this a little into some of what he does (like baiting his trap with Victoria and countermanding his underling’s impulse to destroy her), but you don’t get the sense this was Hayles’ intent.

• Generally, the Warriors motivation is a little unclear. They seem to be defaulting to “merciless Doctor Who baddie” as opposed to a race with more nuance, as subsequent appearances would make them out to be. Why don’t they just talk to the humans? Why are they so immediately hostile? Wouldn’t getting some intel on the planet, how long they’ve been in hibernation, etc. would be good before deciding that your only options are flee or conquer?

• That said, there’s more texture to them here than in The Seeds of Death. They’re not quite the evil brutes they would become.

• You can definitely see why they created the Ice Lords in that adventure, though. There isn’t enough distinction between the warriors to know which one is the leader.

• Jamie sure is enjoying women’s fashion in the future! The banter between him and Victoria is amusing at the end of episode 1. He’s protective of her, but he’s got a bit of a crush, too.

  

• The scientific basis of the premise is total nonsense. This wouldn’t be the second ice age, more like the fourth or fifth. Destroying plants would lead to global warming, it’s universally believedThe Doctor says the Ice Warriors have been frozen in the glacier since the first ice age/when people were cavemen, but there are no glaciers in Britain even today (late 20th/early 21st century). I suppose they could have been moved from elsewhere, but that’s a lot of contorting of plot.

• While generally glaciers advance slowly, hence the term “glacial pace” meaning excrucitatingly slow, the script’s speculation that the glaciers advance fast during an ice age does match geological evidence. While the fastest glaciers have been seen to advance in modern times is 50 m/day, some have moved as much as 600 m/day in the ice age.

• Why are Arden, Walters et al. even looking for paleontological finds anyway? Brittanicus base seems to be in a state of perpetual urgency with regard to ionizing the glaciers back. Why are they screwing about in the ice, especially since it seems to be advancing 100 meters(!) at a time?

• The hissing of the Ice Warriors’ dialogue was apparently the invention of the guy who played Vagra, Bernard Bresslaw. It’s pretty distinctive, though here in the first outing, it does impede understanding in places. They got better at it by the time of the Pertwee episodes.

• The sonic effect is a nice change from the Daleks “go negative” blasts. I like it.

• The “Omega factor”—wonder why the Doctor didn’t think the Time Lords were involved! This isn’t explained one bit, which is probably OK, but exposes it as just a naked plot device.

• The computer assessment of the Doctor is spot on: “High IQ but undisciplined for our needs. Present evaluation, to be used on research projects, but could be obstructive in certain situations.”

• Victoria lets out some of her signature screams early on, but the script nicely lets her use her “scared little girl” reputation to her advantage when the Doctor tells her to cry for show to fool one of the warriors.

• The chess game between the warriors and Clent—both wanting to know the power systems of the other—is a bit interesting, but it’s a shame the stakes never change. Six episodes is too long for there to be zero twists. Also, the Doctor telling Vagra that they’ll find what they need in the base—there’s no hint at all that he’s lying, which is confusing.

• “I’m pinning all my hopes on the Doctor.” Smart man, Clent, but you should defer to him about computers, too.

• How is it Jamie is the one to say, “Lead on, Macduff”?

What did Pete’s family think?

• Grace endured The Ice Warriors, and said she liked it, though it was a slog. She likes Jamie and Victoria. She was amused at the warriors’ “Lego hands.” She instantly caught that the TARDIS magically righted itself in episode 6.

Four Questions to Doomsday - Pete

1. Why did the Randomizer take us here? Wolves in Britain! The only two stories to feature them (to my knowledge) shown back to back. Also, native Scottish accent ahoy!

2. What if the evil plot had succeeded? Varga says the Warriors will either return to their planet or conquer this one. Presumably if they succeed in getting Clent to not take action, the ice sheets advance and the Earth becomes even more crippled. It would be seemingly vulnerable to invasion, but… from just the five of them? Even if Ice Warrior tech is superior, I think they’ll have a tough time. When they realize this, I think they flee to Mars to find… what? A dead, abandoned planet? Their story would become the search for their civilization. First stop: what remains of the Galactic Federation—assuming this is in the Federation’s future.

3. Where’s the Clara splinter? Directing traffic between the glacier and the base to ensure no one sees anyone else as they walk from one to the other.

4. Dalek, Ogron, Professor Hayter, Viscount Banger, Fixed Point in Time, Lady Cassandra, or Zarbi? Calling Ice Lord Hayter. Lots of promising stuff here, but it needed another draft or two to clean it up and give the Ice Warriors themselves more purpose.

Plot Summary

In the Scottish Highlands, the Doctor meets Queen Victoria, battles a werewolf, and seeds a secret alien-hunting organization.

Notable for:

• Reveals the founding of Torchwood in 1879

• RTD was originally going to state in the episode that these events in the parallel world (Pete’s World), without the Doctor, would have resulted in the Queen’s death, and that’s where that world diverged.

• For many scenes, David Tennant uses his normal Scottish accent.

• The Doctor says his name is James McCrimmon of Balamory, a reference to both his past and a Scottish children’s show.

• Pauline Collins (Queen Victoria) also played a role in The Faceless Ones.

• Per RTD in the commentary, the chase through the mansion was partially a conscious attempt to do better than the chase in Aliens of London.

Pete commentary:

• Tooth and Claw is a nice reminder that this is a MODERN show. It’s really great to get that emphasis, and in the cold open, no less:

  • Right off the bat, rapid-edit cinematography for an excellent action scene, altering frame rates with tons of cuts.

  • Love the red tunics—beautiful use of color, which makes the monks easily identifiable as a menace when they’re guarding the house against escape.

  • Wire work: virtually unheard of in Doctor Who at this point. Finally it gets the Matrix/Hong Kong action treatment.

• Cute that the Doctor intends to go to 1979: reminder that the TARDIS is general unreliable; the slamming down with Tennant and Rose on the floor is a nice callback to The Unquiet Dead—they’re back together, possibly even closer than before. This conveys to the audience, who may not be convinced of Tennant as the Doctor yet, that Rose is. Very smart way to keep easing fans into Tennant as Ten.

• Background CGI is quite convincing; the wolf, less so, but it’s pretty good for the time. And they get to mask it in shadow.

• How scary is Tooth and Claw? When Jack was seven or eight, he refused to watch it after the scene where the Host is hauled into the cellar, and you see its black eyes. Grace had been freaked when younger, too, but now she’s totally cool with it.

• Smart design: the observatory room is very cobbled together, not fancy at all. It’s the room of an eccentric, not a legit scientist.

• The lighting is very good—especially the dinner scene. Good use of close-ups vs. wider shots. Smart way to make exposition not feel like exposition.

• The running gag of Rose trying to get the queen to say “I am not amused” is a bit of a stretch, but it speaks well of her—that she’s not intimidated by historical figures.

  

• Is there any science to the moonlight-triggered lycanthropy at all? At least the wolf alien needs to be exposed to the light (as opposed to it “just happening” when the moon is full, as you’d do with magic or a curse) for the transformation to happen. So it acts as some kind of trigger. Is there something special about the moon that changes the light as it reflects? And a full moon bestows just enough to act as a trigger? Enh, it’s a stretch on a stretch, but I’ll go with it.

• Trope of the old guy/steward who’s convinced the wolf is dead is an eye-roll moment. Wish he hadn’t been so obstinate—I might have cared more when he’s killed.

• Interestingly, RTD says the wolf retreats from killing the women because it has a sense of honor, not because of mistletoe. The wolf does sniff the air before retreating though, strongly suggesting the latter.

• Nice little moment when the Doctor and Rose hug both out of relief but excitement that there’s a werewolf, something even the Doctor has never seen, for real. Nicely follows the, “Oh, that’s beautiful” moment in the cellar.

• It importantly disgusts the Queen, leading her to banish the Doctor. This is a genius move, in that it leads her to create Torchwood, setting off the arc plot, but it also shows the understandable reaction of many who place the blame of a crisis on the presence of people equipped to deal with it. It comes up again and again in fiction (the original Flash TV show, Captain America: Civil War) and arguably the real world. It’s a fair—and interesting—question: does the presence of powerful defenders invite powerful attackers? The problem is, once those defenders have proven their usefulness in battling back attackers, it would be hard to make a case to get rid of them.

• Pretty great that the Queen gets to kill Father Angelo, who was (seemingly) established as the chief bad guy in scene 1.

• The supporting cast, Lady Isobel and Sir Robert, do a good job humanizing the characters, and they kiss so much that they are very clearly in love. Raises the stakes nicely to emphasize the terror and deadliness of the wolf. Shame Robert doesn’t really get a good shot in. Would have been nice if he wounded the wolf somehow, slowing it down.

• The Jesus shot of the wolf is a bit mental and OTT. I could have done with something slightly scaled down. It makes the wolf seem somehow noble in that it seems to give in to sacrificing itself, which is a little odd. Didn’t want to build the Empire of the Wolf after all, I guess.

• Cool for Doctor Who to insert a sci-fi explanation for a quirk of the royal bloodline. The Doctor and Rose joking about it is very apt, tells you to not take it too seriously.

• Final scene is much more serious: sets off the arc plot, pointing the Doctor to Torchwood. Funny how there was a reference prior to this—hints at what kind of “time can be rewritten” rules we’re working with.

• What happened to the monks outside?

What did Pete’s family think?

• Grace liked it, but she said it wasn’t something she’d want to come back to again and again.

Four Questions to Doomsday - Pete

1. Why did the Randomizer take us here? The last couple of stories were mostly inside, especially The Happiness Patrol. Here there are some fantastic scenes outside—great location work, and used to the max.

2. What if the evil plot had succeeded? Did it? I suppose if the wolf got more than just a “quick nip,” the Queen is more explicitly in the thrall of the wolf—that is, the wolf’s personality “migrates” to her. Perhaps this is done covertly through the next 120 years or so, leading to a serious attack from within in 2007 or so. That could have been the arc plot, though it would have turned Doctor Who into a camp horror show.

3. Where’s the Clara splinter? She’s the chief jeweler at Helier and Carew at the Royal Jewellers at Hazelhead. She’s secretly applying modern techniques, making them the absolute best in the world, and requiring the Queen to make her pilgrimage.

4. Dalek, Ogron, Professor Hayter, Viscount Banger, Fixed Point in Time, Lady Cassandra, or Zarbi? Lady Cassandra, ultimately. Memorable for the Torchwood kickoff and there’s great banter between Tennant and Piper that re-establishes the rapport between the characters. But the plot is thinner than you remember, and, frankly, the bar is higher for Tennant since he has so many bangers. This would be pretty good for most Doctors, but for him it’s just OK.

Subscribe now

Plot Summary

The Doctor and Ace arrive on an Earth colony where a merciless autocrat has mandated happiness, enforced by a sadistic executioner made of candy.

Notable for:

• Production team considered this for black-and-white to emphasize the film noir atmosphere

• Sheila Hancock played Helen A intentionally as a caricature of Margaret Thatcher, whom she detested. Graeme Curry denies it was supposed to be a direct satire of her, but he has said it was “probably in the back of my mind.” Years later, McCoy and director Chris Clough said the production team deliberately ran with the idea.

• Curry originally envisioned the Kandy Man as more human in appearance, with powdery skin and a lab coat. This version is described in the Target novel.

• Special Edition on the Blu-ray adds back several cut scenes, plus has improved effects, mostly conveying the scale of Terra Alpha with cityscape pans, and many more signs/murals in the background (some faded).

Pete commentary:

General:

• The Happiness Patrol makes a solid case for being the epitome of the show’s reach exceeding its grasp. Lots of ambition here to tell an epic story of the Doctor bringing down a tyrannical government in one night. There are deliberate choices of style (film noir), theme (its not-as-obvious-as-you’ve-heard politics), and scale (human colony on an alien world, with factories, a theater, eerie streets). It’s really ambitious, but it’s limited by the realities of TV production and Doctor Who in particular at the time.

• It really should have been four episodes! So much was cut, and some of the scenes I think are crucial at bridging part of the plot. Including:

  1. Ace and Susan Q have a moment while walking after she’s captured that establishes their fondness of each other, and Susan Q’s rebellious nature. In the transmitted version they’re suddenly buddies for no reason.

  2. There is a fantastic exchange between Daisy K and Helen A about the Doctor escaping—another tour de force from Hancock.

  3. The Kandy Man has a much better entrance, scaring away Trevor Sigma and cutting off his own thumb.

• Four episodes would have let them flesh out the pipe people more. As is, they’re fairly extraneous, and honestly a bit laughable. They’re like a cross between Bellal from Death to the Daleks and the Ewoks, but in both of those cases you get a lot more. The Pipe People are super forgettable.

• They honestly might still have been forgettable. A better use of an extra episode would probably be introducing a drone character to give more dimension to the protesters that Earl Sigma recruits.

• The film noir stuff is there, especially with Earl Sigma’s scenes. But the limits of the TV budget and standards meant that a ton of stuff was overlit, such as Helen A’s office, the waiting zone, and others. I don’t mind the Kandy Kitchen being lit up, since that’s supposed to be sweet and OTT. But generally it would have been great to do more with the idea.

• That go-kart, though—oy. The buggies in airports would be better escape vehicles. The Happiness Patrol jeep isn’t much better. Shame there was no budget for location shooting at all.

• Makes good use of music. Having the harmonica and the blues serve as the banner for the drone protest is great symbolism. I think it would have been better to have the Muzak punctuate more of the Helen A scenes.

Camp!

• Similar to Delta and the Bannermen, this is an example of the McCoy era dealing with its limited resources by leaning hard into camp, playing up iconography and OTT performances to the point where it hopes you’ll overlook how dodgy the whole thing looks. Some of this works—Helen A and the Kandy Man—while other aspects fall short (the Happiness Patrol themselves don’t look cheery or menacing enough).

• There’s some nice setup when the Doctor and Ace are talking, and she mentions she hates muzak. You start to wonder why they have muzak at all, and then the Happiness Patrol shows up, with their cheerleader outfits. It’s all a veneer over something sinister, clearly. Even if you didn’t have the first scene with the execution, you know something bad is happening here.

The Kandy Man

• The Kandy Man is great. Even though the entire idea is totally nuts: The Kandy Man is some kind of construct, created by Gilbert M, built out of an actual person (he says he brought the Kandy Man’s bones in a suitcase) and a mix of confectionaries? Whatever, dude. The novelization fills in a little more of the gaps, but it’s still a bit glossed over. David Pope really nails the performance, though—a Joker-type executioner who delights in killing people with sweets. He’s quite literally a visual treat, and his overt menace definitely makes an impression on kids.

• They clearly spent a good deal of the budget on the Kandy Man and the Kandy Kitchen, so it’s a shame he doesn’t get to kill anyone outside of the hapless guy at the beginning. He kinda-sorta does something to Earl Sigma, but he seems to recover almost right away. He also gets bested by the Doctor via the same trick twice. The Kandy Man could have, and should have, been more formidable—another reason to make the story four episodes.

• LOVE how he answers the phone: “Kandy Man.”

• Fifi doesn’t work quite as well. It’s better than other effects, but the story seems to kill it off, bring it back

Helen A and Terra Alpha

• The whole rationale of Helen A’s regime is a superb idea: A totalitarian government that enforces its regime by insisting that everybody be happy. You get it, and you get how that could be an underlying, almost religious philosophy, and how so many people could be coerced to go along with it. There are clear advantages for a lucky few (the Happiness Patrol) and harsh consequences for everyone else, but there is a seemingly democratic system of the auditions. It’s a little Hunger Games—you see Donald Sutherland’s logic in what Helen A is doing: giving the people a sliver of hope to keep them all repressed.

• That said, the enforcement of this is pretty confused. The Happiness Patrol shoot Silas P almost on sight the moment he seems to be just slightly glum. There are several other points where you’d think they would shoot others (Ace in the waiting zone, for one) for the exact same reason, but they don’t. Are the rules really this arbitrary? Or did Daisy K shoot him out of jealousy (he was just “knighted” by Helen A, after all)? But if the rules really are that arbitrary, the Doctor’s defense at the auditions shouldn’t have worked.

• In other words, I wish they had explained a little more about how the ground-level enforcement of happiness works—what are the rules the Happiness Patrol must abide by? That would have given the audience more to work with in various scenes, and let us get nervous when someone like Earl Sigma or Ace starts to go outside of them.

• “There are no prisons on Terra Alpha.” Great line, because of what it implies. It’s exactly the kind of thing a regime like Helen A’s would brag about as evidence of how nice the place is. But the implication is that all prisoners are either freed or, well, “disappeared.”

• You can headcanon the confusion in an effective way by reminding yourself that this is an empire on the verge of collapse. Its own internal logic is beginning to break down as everybody starts questioning what the point of everything is. The woman at the beginning is the strongest indicator that Terra Alpha is at the precipice of revolution. The Doctor is only here to give it a shove.

• One more thing that would have given this more resonance or believability: more backstory. Why would the people of this colony submit themselves to the tyrannical rule of Helen A? What happened? You want to hear just a little bit about how they got here, just to understand why they turned to someone who would force everyone to be happy (something unbelievably tragic, perhaps?).

The Politics

• This is certainly one of the more overtly political episodes of Doctor Who, and it gives a good amount to chew on. There’s the criticism of Margaret Thatcher, which is obvious, though the actual policies of Helen A—execution squads, thought policing, labor camps making sweets—are clearly in another universe. It’s a great satiric performance, but it’s a bit hollow: a delicious candy shell surrounding bland, empty calories.

• The one thing that might be more tangible is the thinly veiled (and arguably thin) LGBTQ+ commentary. The fondant surprise execution of the man in episode one, where he’s killed for expressing public grief, could be seen as this regime’s cruel punishment for “coming out” as unhappy. There’s also Helen A’s declaration that, “Families are very important for people's happiness,” a fun-house mirror twist on a central conservative philosophy often used to push traditional family structures.

• If that’s where they were going, though, it’s a bit confused. Helen A’s regime is all about gaudy decor, camp, and emphasizing happiness, and the word “gay” literally means happy. It kind of feels pro-gay, tbh. Is it appropriation? Maybe. It’s more appropriation of emotions (facile happiness masking misery) than anything gay, though. There’s also the bit where Gilbert M and Joseph C run off together, which could have been more pointed one way or the other if they’d bothered to develop it more.

• Some have said the Kandy Man is some kind of avatar for capitalism, and given he’s all about manufactured sweets, branding, and artificial pleasure, it’s perhaps understandable. But the analogy is purely surface level: There’s zero mention of any kind of economy or private enterprise on Terra Alpha. In fact, the Kandy Man is clearly an agent of the state, enforcing government rule. Everything the Kandy Man and Helen A stand for is a fascist, authoritarian state with more government control, not less. It’s totally incompatible with markets, deregulation, private property, etc.

• All the anti-Thatcher stuff here would seem to date the episode, but The Happiness Patrol has a more timeless message: That the authoritarian structures that force people deny their own feelings (and possibly even reality) will eventually collapse under the weight of their own contradictions.

• The Happiness Patrol also offers a good road map/game plan for thought policing. Success depends on:

  1. A central ideology that sounds good on the surface (“Happiness will prevail”)

  2. An enormous propaganda campaign (Helen A’s continual broadcasts)

  3. Rewards for those who go along (sweets and safety for most, membership in the Happiness Patrol for a few)

  4. Punishments for those who don’t (execution by fun gun, the Kandy Man, or the auditions).

• John Kenneth Muir in his 1999 book, A Critical History of Doctor Who on Television, saw parallels with what was then called “political correctness,” and I’d argue they resonate even more in the era of outrage mobs and cancel culture, which similarly are all about control, conformity, and suppression of protest. Instead of a government demanding smiling loyalty, online communities and institutions can demand ideological conformity. Cross, or even question, the orthodoxy and you will be mercilessly punished.

• Of course, we’ve passed the peak of that era and are entering something new, which arguably confirms that all authoritarian regimes eventually collapse. But what’s beyond the scope of The Happiness Patrol is that what comes after isn't necessarily a “happy” ending. The message still applies because tools of control are not inherently right-wing or left-wing—they are human impulses that attach themselves to whichever ideology is ascendant. The danger is mistaking dominance for moral justification.

Misc

• Great “Doctor” moment: the Doctor talking the snipers out of doing their job. Again, more indication that the regime is collapsing: these “soldiers” (they seem more like bored security guards) are already questioning their role, and the Doctor gets them to rethink what they’re doing by forcing them to kill up close. Beautifully written, and very emblematic of the show.

• I don’t know if this is the best episode for Ace. She starts strong, wanting to make the bad guys “very, very unhappy,” but then Ace is captured and recaptured multiple times, without doing too much in between. The story is intent on having her end up at the Happiness Patrol auditions, but that’s the cliffhanger to episode 2 (and a great cliffhanger it is!), so everything up to that is kind of a pickle ball match. She doesn’t even get to properly kill Fifi with the nitro-nine.

• Why does Earl Sigma save the Doctor in ep 1?

What did Pete’s family think?

• Grace wisely said, “You can’t be happy without being sad,” after episode 2. She enjoyed it, thought it was different, and was into the Kandy Man. She really liked the Special Edition, with the new city views of Terra Alpha.

Four Questions to Doomsday - Pete

1. Why did the Randomizer take us here? The Doctor makes direct reference to Invasion of the Dinosaurs as soon as they arrive in Terra Alpha. Also, the Doctor connects with Richard Nixon in TIA/DotM, and here he’s confronting a Thatcher stand-in. It’s also an interesting contrast in general with “the Doctor reacts” format of Doctor Who—here he’s being very deliberate about what he’s doing.

2. What if the evil plot had succeeded? I shudder to think. Helen A’s regime exists on top of the emotional equivalent of ethnic cleansing. She’s obsessed with eradicating all unhappiness, and with more tools at her disposal, she could take things to another level. I could envision a Circle-like escalation in what she does to actually read people’s thoughts to find who really is happy and who isn’t, or even “deprogramming” sadness and unhappiness from the human brain by force. We’re already doing 1984 for kids here, so it’s not too difficult to go into something more adult.
   
   How would that happen? I would focus on the Doctor saving Ace at the auditions as the turning point. It doesn’t work, and they take him prisoner. Ace dies, the Doctor is taken back to the Kandy Kitchen, where the Kandy Man executes him again and again.
   
   But again, it’s hard to see the evil plot succeeding because Helen A’s regime seems to be on its last legs. Trevor Sigma is an indicator of this: He was tasked with gathering the names, not of the citizens of Terra Alpha, but of everyone who’s disappeared. It appears to signal that Galactic Centre has its own suspicions of what Helen A is up to.

3. Where's the Clara splinter? She’s Susan Q! Perfectly aligns with Clara’s character, and the Doctor wouldn’t recognize her years later without all that white makeup. Also, her name’s Susan—want to ask if she’s your granddaughter, Doctor?

4. Dalek, Ogron, Professor Hayter, Viscount Banger, Fixed Point in Time, Lady Cassandra, or Zarbi? Pink Dalek: solid Doctor Who, and emblematic of the show in so many ways: “Let’s go for it,” despite having only $5, with a strong Doctor, great monster, and excellent guest cast. It’s more political than most, but by making it less direct (apart from the Thatcher impersonation), you get something interpretable. Darker than most, but you leave it with confidence.

Subscribe now

Chris commentary:

• Very of its era – Watchmen smiley face with blood, Amusing Ourselves to Death, maybe King of Comedy, maybe even I'd argue They Live! – trying to smile through it, the connection of smiling and comedians and heading towards a certain sense of capitalistic doom.

• Gordon Bennett! (History corner?) Likely derived from James Gordon Bennett, a Scot who emigrated and made it big in American media. Basically the 19th century Logan Roy (Succession).

• Took me a while to realize Helen A is the first among equals, that the society is stratified by letter. How does that work, then? (Also, makes it very easy if the space slugs from Dot and Bubble come to eat all the Terra Alpha elite, and why wouldn't they? They're kinda right-wing and extra sugary!)

• Love that Helen A is just a straight-up Thatcher parody, in the sense that everyone involved just casually admits that was the intent. Hate that it doesn't really lean in to being a Thatcher parody, even with Sheila Hancock doing the voice. Not until the very last speech do you get the connection.

• Not very effective an attack on Thatcher … but isn't it weird that Doctor Who would be taken off the air almost one year on from the broadcast of this story … and almost exactly two years on, Thatcher herself would be ousted! Spooky … is Doctor Who like a space bee that stung Thatcher? Is 1990 where the Doctor learned the devastating line "doesn't she look tired?"

• God, it would be amazing to see this with a budget. Or on film. Or with better audio. Or with just a few better casting decisions, like the guy playing Earl.

• Did we really need the Theta Sigma callback?

• Why are aliens called Sigma anyway?

• Did we need the pipe people?

• The actual evil plot is DARK: "we have controlled the population by 17%." That's a genocide!

• Cannot believe bloody Bassetts went and narked on bloody Doctor Who. Yes, it's an obvious Bertie Bassett copy. But HOW many jelly babies did Tom Baker sell for them in the 70s? When you couldn't get advertising on the BBC for love nor money?

Four Questions to Doomsday - Chris

1. Why did the Randomizer take us here? PET DEATH TRIGGER WARNING. Dino discussion. The "is Who too political" discussion. Just been watching SEVERANCE: Helly R!.

2. What if the evil plot had succeeded? Terra Alpha becomes the Galactic Center of the blues.

3. Where's the Clara splinter? Teaching Earl how to play harmonica?

4. Dalek, Ogron, Professor Hayter, Viscount Banger, Fixed Point in Time, Lady Cassandra, or Zarbi? Could it be … a Viscount Zarbi?

   Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support Pull To Open.

Plot Summary

The Doctor, UNIT and Sarah must evade prehistoric beasts to thwart a group of radicals who have infiltrated the government to actualize their dangerously regressive view of the world.

Notable for:

• Was the Doctor Who story airing on TV when host Pete Pachal was born. Considering I spent much of my childhood obsessed with both Doctor Who and dinosaurs, it might not be a coincidence.

• Dinosaurs! This is the first time Doctor Who tries to do dinosaurs in a big way. Although it dabbled in The Silurians, here they try to make the dinosaurs central to the story and the action. The poorly realized puppets ended up being infamous.

• The story immediately follows the events of The Time Warrior.

• The script makes the bold decision to have Captain Yates betray UNIT and the Doctor.

• The first episode is simply titled “Invasion,” ostensibly to preserve the surprise of the dinosaurs, even though the Doctor is attacked by a pterodactyl about halfway through the episode. Hulke didn’t like the choice, and the Radio Times spoiled things anyway.

• The first episode was lost, but a black-and-white copy was recovered, so the story is complete. The DVD includes a colorized version. Omnibus versions sometimes entirely omitted episode one.

• First appearance of the Whomobile.

• Sarah’s age is stated: 23.

• Working title was Timescoop, a noun the show would use later for Borusa’s equipment in The Five Doctors.

Pete commentary:

• The conspiracy is real! Invasion of the Dinosaurs is such an interesting story to return to in the modern day. With all the focus on conspiracy theories these days, it’s fun to see a story indulge the conspiracy that goes to the highest levels.

• Politically, it’s got layers. Even though the Doctor is sympathetic to Grover and Whitaker’s cause, he condemns their extremist ways. In an era where it’s anathema to ever tell your own side “you’ve gone too far,” this is a refreshing appeal to rationality. The Doctor correctly identifies greed as the true villain, though it’s a bit on the nose—even by Gatwa era standards.

• Funny that the Doctor thinks it’s Sunday when they first land. The source of his aversion to Sundays? (I don’t think they ever confirm that it’s Sunday.)

• The Doctor is surprisingly compromised physically a couple of times in this story. First in ep 1 when he’s hit by the looters, then by all the explosions around the T-Rex attack at the end of ep 2/beginning of ep 3.

• Shout-out to the animal guest cast: not the dinosaurs, but the stray dog in th ep 1 and the kitty cat in the window in ep 6.

• The soldiers attacking the T-Rex at the end of episode 1 feels like an odd choice. Have bullets been proven effective against dinosaurs? Why not just drive away?

• The Doctor’s statement that the T-Rex is the “largest and fiercest predator of all time” dates the story a bit, since it’s been proven incorrect in subsequent years. Giganotosaursus, Spinosaurus and arguably the Therizinosaurus from Jurassic World: Dominion are all better contenders, though T-Rex is up there, and is still the most famous.

• The moment when the Doctor is about to give the Brigadier a Venusian high-five is pretty priceless—it almost looks like Pertwee breaks a little. Some other moments of humor, “Ah, there you are, Doctor, now what are you up to?” It’s a little OTT, but I’m glad they did it.

• Pertwee looks good in blue. I guess he changed in the TARDIS after The Time Warrior?

• The Whomobile would be great if it did anything. Instead, we need to wait until Planet of the Spiders before we see it in real action. Here, it’s just a big tease—a Chekov’s gun that never gets fired. Love that new car, Doc, but what does it DO?

• There was an opportunity to do more with it in episode 5, but instead we get a long, boring “chase” with the Doctor driving a jeep, often backing up to do a 3-point turn. If you think parking at Home Depot is exciting, has Doctor Who got the adventure for you!

Story+guest cast:

• Peter Miles (who would later play Nyder in Genesis of the Daleks) does a decent job as Whitaker, but you don’t get much there. He’s just cold scientist guy.

• Better are Grover and Finch. It’s almost a giveaway that Grover is going to be the bad guy, given how much the Doctor says he admires him in ep 2. But his performance is very good, believably selling the warmth and intelligence of a successful and empathetic politician.

• The file room is also the lift?! Lol. I’ll buy it for the story, but omg it’s inadvertently funny. I guess the idea is that, if anyone gets too close, Grover will show them the file room, entice them with the (real?!!!) file, and then escort them into the base? And then why not just kill them? Why put Sarah on the “ship” to make trouble? Why capture her at all when you could just show her the fake file? Why have the file or the file room at all? Why why WHY?

• I kinda don’t get how the Stegosaurus appearing at the hangar automatically means the Doctor is behind everything. How did he do it? With what equipment?

• Why do the guys in the base let the Doctor go in episode 4? Why not take him prisoner? I guess they figure Finch will neutralize them?

• Except Finch doesn’t. The biggest turning point for the story is when Finch is about to take the Doctor back into custody in ep 6, but backs down when the Brigadier and Benton show up. Why do that? OK, you don’t have overwhelming force, but it’s your job to hold these guys. Finch just seems to trust that the Brig will do that, which is really dumb.

• The resolution is a little bit of a cop-out, with the Doctor relying on his Time Lord-ness to reverse the beam or whatever. It’s the Pertwee equivalent of the end of the Star Beast, which was essentially the same idea, just with better special effects.

The Dinosaurs:

• Yes, they’re terrible looking. The sad thing is, they’re also not really characters. The T-Rex that they capture is the closest thing to a “role,” but there’s nothing particularly interesting about what they do—they mostly just plod in the background.

• I don’t expect feathers or even a realistic walking pose given the time this was made, but THREE FINGERS on the T-Rex?! Pick up a book, guys. I’m sure kids all over Britain were like, “That’s wrong!”

• Also, partly because the cast is mostly acting to nothing, there is no moment where someone pauses to take in the awesomeness of these beasts from the past. There’s also zero mention of any interest in studying them, or that—by virtue of seeing real dinosaurs—scientists have finally filled in many blanks.

• Benton dutifully describes the color code for the dinos, but makes no mention of what the yellow pins are. Speaking of, why only four species of dinosaurs? My guess: they are able to predict the behavior of these specific species, and mostly it’s about mass. Bigger dinosaurs are better for calibrating the machine.

• At least Hulke and Letts understood that, if you’re going to have an adventure called “Invasion of the Dinosaurs,” you need to have dinosaurs in every episode. Episode 5 comes close to violating that, but then the T-Rex is back at the end.

• They really overuse that T-Rex cliffhanger, though: It’s the threat at the end of episode 1, 2, and 5. Three out of five cliffhangers!

• As bad as the T-Rex is, the pterodactyl is less convincing. At one point the Doctor swats it with a mop. You use what you’ve got, I guess.

Great episode for Sarah:

• This is an excellent adjunct to The Time Warrior as an introduction to Sarah. She gets to do a great deal of questioning, logical thinking, and sleuthing as a journalist. Love the moment where Finch asks what her sources are on whether Whitaker was a crank or not—his colleagues at Oxford, other ministers, and the science guy at the Times. Thorough and credible!

• She also reasons her way out of the ship, convincing Mark in the process. I would have liked it better if they had played up the moment where she opens the door—showing her thinking, “Oh God, I hope I’m right,” or something like that. But the act is very Doctorish and earns her even more cred as a companion.

• She of course makes the mistake in ep 3 of asking permission to take pictures of the dinosaur, rather than forgiveness.

• Finch of course helps her out, but it’s a bit odd that she doesn’t think it suspicious at all that Finch has suddenly become her best friend after dismissing her in the previous ep.

• Nice moment early on between Yates and Sarah, suggesting a friendship that they return to in Planet of the Spiders.

• Sarah’s denim outfit with the huge collars is the most ’70s thing she ever wears. Also, it means that someone undresses and dresses her while she's unconscious, which we really don’t want to think about.

• Sarah also begins her long career sneaking through vents! Thank goodness that secret base needs A LOT of ventilation.

• The “We left Earth 3 months ago” is by far the best cliffhanger.

UNIT:

• This is the last story that “feels” like a UNIT episode. You have the main three all back, and they’re all given good material. The Brigadier is good at helping the Doctor even when he shouldn’t, gets to be a bit patronizing to Sarah, but generally comes across as the man in charge because of the respect he commands.

• This is an outstanding episode for Benton. He has his charm, plus the later episodes get to showcase his loyalty: first by allowing the Doctor to subdue him with a little Venusian aikido, then by punching out(!) Finch.

• Yates' betrayal is what makes this episode so memorable. Credit to the team for doing it and going (almost) all the way with it. He definitively puts his lot in with Operation Golden Age in episode 6, and it’s extremely apt that Benton is the one who subdues him. The good soldier vs. the traitor.

What did Pete’s family think?

• Watched this one alone 😭

Four Questions to Doomsday - Pete

1. Why did the Randomizer take us here? Similar to The Android Invasion, we’ve got some eerie home-but-not-quite vibes. Perhaps also a reminder to Twelve that when dangerous stuff is afoot in a heavily populated area that perhaps an evacuation is in order?

2. What if the evil plot had succeeded? The most obvious turning point is if Finch doesn’t back down when the Brigadier pulls up. There’s a firefight, and even if the Doctor escapes, he loses access to the explosives they need to break into the base. He can’t get there in time, and he’s not there when Whitaker throws the switch. The Earth is regressed to sometime pre-civilization.
   
   The big question: Is the Doctor still there? It’s shown that, as a Time Lord, he has a great deal of immunity to the effects of Whitaker’s machine. Can he put things right? Sarah would still have created the rebellion, and the people seem to not like what they’ve done. But if there was no going back, they’d have to accept it.

3. Where's the Clara splinter? She’s the one at Operation: Golden Age who undresses and redresses Sarah to put her on the ship.
   
   OR She works for the Home Secretary for the UK, and doesn’t trust Finch. She’s influenced the secretary to limit the number of troops Finch can personally commandeer, allowing the Brigadier to stand up to him.

4. Dalek, Ogron, Professor Hayter, Viscount Banger, Fixed Point in Time, Lady Cassandra, or Zarbi? Paging Professor Hayter. If you overlook the horrendous dinosaurs, the story is quite engaging early on, and Lis Sladen is so good you completely forget Katy Manning (sorry, Katy). This is the last time the whole UNIT gang is really together, and they’re in top form. But it goes on too long, and the whole thing is a bit too linear. Would have been acceptable as a four parter, but six activates the boredom meter and pushes it down into Hayter territory.

Chris commentary:

• Malcolm Hulke done dirty and getting so angry about his original idea getting lumbered with dinos and Yates the traitor, he phones in his last script. Letts dreaming of Drashigs but so checked out with Moonbase 3. Dicks focused on training his protege Holmes, casually wants to kill off Yates. No actor understanding the villains aren’t supposed to be played like villains. Everyone asleep at the switch. The dinosaur model can kicked down the chain to a model maker who went out of business. Pertwee having a mid life crisis, and no wonder. Sladen having her hair did against the rules. Is *this* the most soap opera Who has been behind the scenes? Sorry Ncuti, whatever your reason for leaving the show is, it isn’t as drama as this!

• The conspiracy is misunderstood – it's actually reactionary. Environment used to be a solid right-wing issue.

• VERY British to have the resolution depend on the soldier making tea

• Would benton have been better?

Four Two Questions to Doomsday - Chris

1. Why did the Randomizer take us here? The Doctor DOES land on Sundays! Hulke vs Moffat and there’s only one timey wimey winner. It knows I haven’t finished Godzilla Minus Zero. It wanted me to meet this puppet.

2. What if the evil plot had succeeded? HOW COULD IT?

   Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Plot Summary

The Doctor, River, Amy, and Rory investigate a death of someone close to them, then instigate a revolution in the USA in 1969.

Notable for:

• Series opener of Series 6

• Return of River Song

• Features another “death” of the Doctor, fake-out regeneration and all.

• Introduction of the Silence, giving a face to “Silence will fall,” a line originally uttered by Prisoner Zero in The Eleventh Hour.

• The Doctor’s age is explicitly stated: 909 for the younger version, 1103 for the older version.

• The Doctor says he doesn’t like wine.

• Another Star Trek reference: Joy thinks the Silent in the bathroom is a mask.

• Lots of footage shot in the USA, in Utah and Arizona.

• A “prequel” minisode was shot and produced. It’s on the Blu-ray. It features a phone call between Nixon and the child, with a Silent observing in the Oval Office.

• The TARDIS can turn invisible, though it mucks up the scanner (unless you’re River).

• Space: 1969 is an obvious reference to Space: 1999

• The set for the Silence ship was originally in The Lodger.

Pete commentary:

• The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon needs to work on a couple of levels:

  1. Does it successfully set up a season-long arc that you’re interested in?

  2. Does it work on its own?

  3. I’d say it succeeds on both extremely well, though perhaps a bit more on the arc than as a standalone.

• The dynamic between all the leads is excellent, and I’m really glad Moffat didn’t make us wait to see the Doctor, the Ponds, and River all together again. We really like these people and how they are with each other—it’s why we watch.

• Equally, the episode levels-up bigtime when the Doctor dies, and it’s largely because you see that dynamic ripped apart. Huge props to Karen Gillan for giving everything to make us believe it, to go through that trauma with her character. It’s such a moment when the Doctor walks out of the bathroom—you’re shocked, but you’re also angry. When River slaps him, you know he doesn’t deserve it, but you completely understand why she does it.

• This all sets up perhaps my favorite scene in the whole episode: when they’re poised to follow their lead from Canton, and the Doctor just says, “No.” It’s perfect because the Doctor can’t be a boob in the dark in his own show, and it’s a superb reminder that, although we like River, we don’t know her. Asking her point-blank, “Who are you?” is an excellent, commanding moment for Matt Smith’s Doctor.

• The Silence: Fantastic choice for an alien. The design aligns nicely with this script—they look like a hybrid of the “grays” and the Men in Black, which matches the 1960s/USA/FBI vibe they’ve got going on.

• The Silence’s ability to make people forget them and then suggest things for them to do later is INCREDIBLY powerful, obviously. While I understand you want to show what they can physically do to you, too, and that you need some kind of special-effects-laden climax, they really don’t need their electro powers on top of that.

• Speaking of, why did they murder Joy? While no one will see/remember the Silence, they will remember Joy. You’d think there’d be a massive security alert if someone were to disappear from the White House. And there are a little bit of remains.

• The bathroom scene seems to be the moment where Amy is taken.

• Generally, though, the power of the Silence is really extreme, so they have to “de-power” them a bit to ensure they’re defeatable:

  1. The Silence are overconfident, don’t carry weapons or even have any major ones. They simply can’t conceive of a way the Doctor and his companions could do anything against them, so they don’t try very hard to stop them.

  2. Their success is solely measured by getting a spacesuit for the girl. They really don’t care much about conquering or occupying Earth.

  3. The Doctor says the Silence are parasites. They simply aren’t that creative or capable on their own and are more like magical thugs. Which makes sense, since they’re not the ultimate boss.

  4. Given all that, I’ll buy it, but Moffat really did have to stretch things back to ensure his characters could come out on top.

• And do they ever: I really like the cleverness of the climax: inserting a tiny bit of Silence footage onto the moon landing. Great, triumphant moment, and most important it’s smart and in character for the Doctor. It’s too bad we only see a couple of scenes of people rebelling against the Silence—it would be amazing to see it happening worldwide.

  

• Day of the Moon has some great bits of comedy, like when Nixon asks the NASA security people to let the Doctor go,

• Nice moment at the end when Canton reveals he’s gay. The exchange with Nixon is pretty fun, and reminds you that you’ve really gotten to know these characters a bit and care about them. Wild that Doctor Who of all franchises got us to like Richard Nixon, but there you go.

• I can’t say enough about all the great dialogue between the regulars:

  1. The Doctor yelling to River if she’s got the scanner working yet.

  2. The Doctor telling Rory he appreciates him all the more for not wanting to join River the dark.

  3. River: “I’m quite the screamer.”

• HORRIBLE choice to keep the Doctor-Amy-Rory love triangle thing going, with Amy speaking to the glowy thing about how she loves “you” (meaning Rory), but wording it in a way that it plays on Rory’s insecurities. Just… no.

• That said, great moment where the Doctor asks Rory if he remember being the lone Centurion. His response is an easy, “have your cake and eat it too” explanation, but I’ll take it.

What did Pete’s family think?

• Grace was very interested. She really wanted to watch the second part after we finished The Impossible Astronaut. She still wants to know how the Doctor gets out of being killed.

Four Questions to Doomsday - Pete

1. Why did the Randomizer take us here? I think it just missed Matt! Last time we hit the Matt Smith era was The Girl Who Waited, last September. Certainly the death of the Doctor and regeneration are probably on its mind after Gatwa’s finisher. And double-Doctor fun from Android Invasion is repeated a little bit here with the two Elevens.

2. What if the evil plot had succeeded? Taking the evil plot as the Silence’s: They want to occupy Earth and manipulate the human race to… get a spacesuit? That seems to be the entire point of their “invasion,” so the evil plot ultimately succeeds. In fact, that is, in a big way, the entire structure of Series 6: It kicks off with “paramount success” (as the Daleks would say) of an evil plot—the murder of the Doctor. And the whole season is about figuring out how to undo that when it can’t be undone.

   To entertain the idea of the Silence’s dominance of Earth being somehow the point, you’d have to think that the Silence have some kind of designs for Earth even absent the events of The Wedding of River Song and The Time of the Doctor (which they probably do—I don’t think the Doctor’s actions here are completely irrelevant; they just clearly don’t prevent the Madame Kavorian’s plan to kill the Doctor). In this case, they might anticipate the Doctor’s plan, jam his device for uploading the footage, but still allow him to believe he’d defeated them.

3. Where's the Clara splinter? She works at the National Archives, ensuring the marked timestamps of all the moon landing footage line up with what people expect, not the actual footage.

4. Dalek, Ogron, Professor Hayter, Viscount Banger, Fixed Point in Time, Lady Cassandra, or Zarbi? Dalek-Banger hybrid! Crazy good, even if the 2nd part has some nonsense.

   Subscribe now

Chris commentary:

• Fever dream par excellence

• Wine gums, did anyone get that?

• DW at the height of its power

• Brilliant of Moff to set this up as "one of the four leads will die"

Four Questions to Doomsday - Chris

1. Why did the Randomizer take us here? I bloody mentioned the Silence during the Whomoji challenge last time. I literally summoned them. And I said "spoilers!"

   – also the lots-happening-cold-open connection. And Jim the Fish! Fish. People. Oh, and it's so nice to do a bit of a Moff retrospective when everyone's hating on RTD2.

2. What if the evil plot had succeeded? It … did? Human history continues as it always has pre 1969?

3. Where's the Clara splinter? Where indeed?

4. Dalek, Ogron, Professor Hayter, Viscount Banger, Fixed Point in Time, Lady Cassandra, or Zarbi? Doctor Who is a Banger now. Bangers are cool.

   Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Plot summary

Undercover at Coal Hill school, the Doctor must protect the planet from a rogue killing machine while correcting Clara’s “boyfriend error.”

Notable for:

• The episode where Danny Pink finally meets the Doctor.

• The Blitzer's design was based in part on Babyface from Toy Story.

Pete commentary:

• The Caretaker is strangely forgettable. There’s a lot of fun Moffat dialogue and some revealing stuff about the Doctor, brought out by his relationship with/hostility toward Danny Pink. But it doesn’t stick.

• Jenna Coleman gives a fantastic comedic performance here. I think her eyes grow to 4x their regular size when the Doctor walks in as the new caretaker, a look that she retains through a lot of the episode.

• The rapid-fire adventuring in the cold open is really fun, though again, a bit unmemorable. I feel like the Doctor/companion being tied up and threatened with death/starvation/whatever is a trope at this point (see Flux et al.), so no the strongest beginning, but I appreciated the “ready to run” bit. Although who the hell does a run mime by running in place when they arrive at their significant other’s apartment?

• Notably, Capaldi has one of his many talk-directly-to-camera moments. It’s to his Doctor what crying is to Gatwa’s.

• On a technical level, the episode makes good use of close-ups to heighten the emotional tension in scenes.

Brilliant dialogue

• Moffat loves writing for Capaldi. The whole first scene between him and Clara is bursting at the seams with banter, and there are so many fun lines throughout:

• “You got kidnapped by Boggons from space and then you all formed a band and met Buddy Holly.” “No, I read the book.”

• “We’re exactly the same age.”

• “Is your name really Disruptive Influence.”

• “Haven't you got shoplifting to go to?”

• “You’ve made a boyfriend error.”

Doctor vs. Danny

• Wow you thought Mickey had it bad. Twelve is a total dick to Danny. We’ve talked about the PE thing before, but it’s both a jerky thing to Danny and to PE teachers. I suppose the revelation that the Doctor likes maths means calling Danny a PE teacher is his way of coping and putting him at arm’s length.

• The whole thing where the Doctor mistakes the teacher who resembles Matt Smith for Clara’s boyfriend is pretty clever.

• Takes Danny a few minutes, but you’re totally on his side when he confronts the Doctor in the TARDIS.

• “Space dad” LOL

• “He’s an officer”—this really gets under the Doctor’s skin. Because it’s ultimately true—the Doctor is from the aristocracy, and he’s ashamed of it. Also at this point Gallifrey is still lost, so it’s a sensitive topic for him.

• The Doctor’s behavior is kind of redeemed a bit by the ending, where it seems he was putting Danny through that to test if he’s good enough for Clara. I guess? Clara seems to accept this dad-like role in her life, which makes sense, considering what happened to her parents.

• Clara and Danny: this should be a bit of a turning point for them, but it doesn’t feel like it. I wish they’d had a more upbeat ending, or more romantic. Them just in an apartment watching TV doesn’t really anchor you to anything.

Courtney

• The episode shows why Courtney is a breakout character this season, and based on this performance she was inserted in previous episodes.

• She and Capaldi have some nice banter, and she’s great at calling him out while asking questions.

• Great line: “End of the world for me tonight, whatever you do. Parents' evening.”

• Done dirty a bit by the final scene, but at least we get a little “spillage” callback.

What plot?

• Ultimately the Skovox Blitzer is just a device to poke at the relationships, and while that’s fine, it’s also the main reason the adventure doesn’t stick with you. It’s not really connected to anything, plus the high-stakes/low-stakes confusion of what’s actually happening makes you wonder whether you should care. And because it’s a robot, there isn’t even a memorable guest appearance (a la Anthony Stewart Head in School Reunion)

• The Skovox Blitzer isn’t the best thing they’ve ever created. It’s not super credible as a threat, despite vaporizing the cop.

• This thing is destroying parts of the school during parent night! How does no one notice?

• Really didn’t need to overdo the threat, that the Blitzer threatens the entire planet. It’s fine for it be just a very dangerous weapon/thing that might kill dozens or hundreds of people.

• Generally the Doctor’s attitude here—to deal with the Blitzer completely on his own, without even bothering to warn anyone or get them to safety—does feel a bit strange. If you think about it, that would apply to all sorts of episodes, from Closing Time to Boom Town, but this episode draws attention to the “normal” reaction because Danny articulates it (“Evacuate!” “Call the army!”). It’s honestly hard to argue against him, especially with all the kids and parents in so much danger.

• Invisibility watch? That sure would come in handy in, I don’t know, EVERY episode of Doctor Who? They should have destroyed it at the end. Or call attention to some fundamental problem with being invisible (just the watch disappears?).

• Twice the Doctor uses the phrase, “the lie of the land” — foreshadowing?

Final tease of the arc plot

• Something eerie about a nondescript office, no windows, bland colors: like Severance or the backrooms meme—Series 8 was ahead of its time

• Seb is amazing, able to do a lot with just a few lines

• Remember when we didn’t know who Missy was?

What did Pete’s family think?

• Grace thought it was OK, though she called out how a laser gunfight in a school would no doubt be noticed. She liked Clara and Courtney.

Four Questions to Doomsday - Pete

1. Why did the Randomizer take us here? Not for the alien invasion! From the Android invasion, both show a level of trust and competence with the companion. Clara is kind of the new Sarah, only this time still attached to Earth.

2. What if the evil plot had succeeded? No evil plot here other than the Doctor’s perhaps, at breaking up Clara and Danny. If that happens, then Clara perhaps has a healthier relationship with the Doctor and ends it earlier, since she won’t be dealing with the trauma of losing Danny, because he (dead or not) simply won’t be part of his life.

3. Where's the Clara splinter? Sliding right into parent night after the “real” Clara leaves. You’re not fired after all!

4. Dalek, Ogron, Professor Hayter, Viscount Banger, Fixed Point in Time, Lady Cassandra, or Zarbi? Lady Cassandra, I’d say. There’s not much of a plot, but the dialogue and character work “looks” amazing.

   Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support the podcast.

Plot summary

A brainwashed astronaut betrays the Earth to a hostile race with plans to take over the planet with android duplicates.

Notable for:

• Rare Terry Nation story to not feature the Daleks. (He also did The Keys of Marinus.)

• Story was influenced by Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

• Last story to feature UNIT until The Five Doctors (though it’s mentioned in The Seeds of Doom, Time-Flight and Mawdryn Undead)

• Last story with any UNIT regulars: RSM Benton, Harry Sullivan

• The second story of the season where aliens use duplicates to invade Earth, the first being Terror of the Zygons.

• They shot the Devesham scenes in East Hagbourne, Oxfordshire. Tom Baker was mobbed for autographs.

• The Brigadier character, though mentioned, is replaced by Colonel Faraday because Nicholas Courtney was unavailable.

Pete commentary:

• The Android Invasion is more of a fun concept than a story. “Let’s do a story where people are duplicated.” “What’s the story?” “Alien invasion, I guess? Easiest thing.” “OK, sure. Who’s invading? What’s their deal? And how are they using the duplicates?” “We’ll figure that out later.”

• It’s a strange, almost meta experience watching The Android Invasion now. It seems to have been made to be taken at least semi-seriously, and is representative of a time when the idea of human-looking robots was in the air. A lot of the storytelling beats are really obvious in hindsight, which probably gave it the reputation of aging poorly for a good, long while. Today, though, it comes across as more camp than unsophisticated. Add to that the appeal of the Doctor and Sarah’s relationship, and you can appreciate it more today.

• Ep 1 is good: so eerie

• Episode 4 is a great culmination of the adventure, with lots of double action, especially with the Doctor, and all kinds of misdirection as things heat up.

Androids!

• The glitching UNIT soldier is a cool way to start the story. Familiar, but unsettling, like most of episodes 1+2. I like the clues that suggest something is very wrong (bone-dry weather, the money all being the same year.

• Finger guns are cool! Shame they’re forgotten about.

Sarah

• Split decision on whether this is a good episode for Sarah. She gets to save the Doctor a couple of times, plus holds her own in the village pub. But she also gets herself captured a lot, and ends up yelling “over here” to the Doctor from behind a corner at least one too many times.

• Worst of all: Sarah’s ankle injury is such an eye-roll moment. How come the Doctor never twists his ankle?

• That said, it’s fun to see Lis Sladen playing the android version of herself.

• Fembot Sarah reveal is fun, and it’s the moment that epitomizes why The Android Invasion is enjoyable silliness so many years later. Seeing the ripped-away face, which has been done and spoofed and done again all over the place (Austin Powers being the most notable) transports you into a meta state of dramatic irony while watching this. You don’t just know things the characters don’t—you know things the production team doesn’t.

• Sarah the android is a bad shot. I never like this—robots should be perfect shots, really.

The Kraals

• I know I asked for more ambitious aliens, but the Kraals are really unmemorable, and those masks do not work. They look like someone punched a Sontaran way too many times.

• The Kraals are pretty undeveloped as an evil race. Apparently their planet has lots of radiation, so they want to leave. But, hold on, they don’t seem to mind the radiation? And the Doctor and Sarah seem OK, though they mention they shouldn’t stay long. It brings up the question: Why didn’t the TARDIS detect this?

• Love that Styggron gets to yell “SCIENCE!”

Crayford

• Crayford is a cardboard cutout of a character. His motivation is paper thin: The script calls for a human to help the Kraals, so he’s extra pissed off that Earth just wrote him off (which they didn’t) and thinks the Kraals should just be given the entire Northern Hemisphere?

• How does the Doctor know Styggron lied to Crayford about being wounded and saved?

• And Crayford really didn’t take his eyepatch off until now? Even once?

Misc

• The TARDIS gets a “500 year service?” Guess we’re way out of warranty now. Also, it’s kinda nuts that the key makes it “continue” to Earth, though it does work narratively that it puts the TARDIS out of reach for our leads until the end.

• Excellent choice to take away the TARDIS. It’s almost a requirement in much of Doctor Who: take away their refuge so you can have real stakes.

• The Doctor is a fan of “libertarian” causes—takes on a slightly different meaning today.

• The matter-dissolving bomb is a cool moment. I like how the village becomes a desolate landscape. It’s very eerie.

• “That’s stealing!” Wonderful Tom Baker line.

• That said, the Doctor android is pretty dumb to betray itself so quickly to the real Sarah. All of these androids should be programmed for maximum subterfuge.

• Nice moment when Harry and Benton talk about expecting the Doctor and Sarah. You think the script might be making a mistake except you get reminded that the TARDIS went on ahead.

• It’s nuts that UNIT doesn’t put a guard on the TARDIS, especially with the key still in the lock!

• The Doctor has a robot detector? First, how would that even work. Second, where did he get this all of a sudden?! Would have come in handy earlier.

• Doctor jumping out of a window is nuts, but good nuts.

• Great bit where the Doctor fools android Benton.

• It makes no sense that Styggron and the androids don’t just kill everybody, though. Benton and the IT guy get knocked out. The colonel and Harry get tied up. The Doctor android has the jump on a whole bunch of people in the final episode (including the Doctor), but doesn’t shoot them when it has the chance. If Styggron were competent, he’d order everyone killed. Maybe he wants Crayford’s cooperation still?

• Freeze frame is hilariously bad, though it nicely mirrors the villagers holding perfectly still in the first episode. I also like how they do a shot with the android Doctor from behind to commit to the bit.

• The ending is a little confused. The Doctor is unusually violent, but then we realize it’s the android, but THEN we learn the Doctor reprogrammed it. So the Doctor wants to have his cake and eat it too with regard to violence—committing a violent act without getting his hands dirty. Isn’t this what you accuse villains of doing, Doctor?

• Nice banter with the Doctor and Sarah at the end. We all know she doesn’t really want to go home, including the TARDIS. Fantastic that it was ad-libbed!

• Er… what’s the Kraal fleet doing now?

What did Pete’s family think?

• Grace liked it, thought the misdirection as to who is who was pretty clever.

Four Questions to Doomsday - Pete

1. Why did the Randomizer take us here? I did ask for more creative aliens, and I got the Kraals. Be careful what you wish for. Mostly, though, I think the Doctor using the android to do his violent dirty work echoes what he does in The Interstellar Song Contest. In both cases, the Doctor uses a duplicate of himself to be the violent one.

2. What if the evil plot had succeeded? Let’s say the Kraals and the androids actually get properly violent and kill everybody they duplicate. Even though the scientist can reposition the dish, the Doctor is dead (maybe a Davison regen), so the Kraals are able to send the androids to dispatch the virus. Perhaps Crayford has a change of heart once he sees the Kraals’ true plan and decides to throw the switch to freeze the androids, but he’s killed by Styggron, though it might give Sarah a chance to escape. Thus begins the first “long invasion” as the androids slowly wipe out chunks of the Earth with the virus with the Brigadier and Sarah fighting on the other side.

3. Where's the Clara splinter? A UNIT scientist who worked on a robot detector based on the Doctor’s research. When she hears about the Doctor’s TARDIS turning up, she sends over the robot detector to the Space Centre for him to pick up in the lobby.

4. Dalek, Ogron, Professor Hayter, Viscount Banger, Fixed Point in Time, Lady Cassandra, or Zarbi? We’re deep in Zarbi territory. The Android Invasion is a warmed-over version of a lot of the android stories at the time—The Stepford Wives, The Bionic Woman, Star Trek’s What Are Little Girls Made Of? While at the time I’m sure they thought they were doing something quite tense and scary, everything is quite obvious now, especially given the title. That said, the motions are so telegraphed, with such stereotypical iconography (the fembot faces, all the clockwork noises) that it’s become camp to the extreme. I challenge anyone to not have a good laugh at Benton shooting Baker’s android in episode four. Nothing makes sense, but it’s great fun.

   Subscribe now

Chris commentary:

• Aggressive lack of continuity: Autons, Ambassadors, and Sontarans could all have been mentioned. And the Marie Celeste! You'd think the writer of the Chase would have the Doctor mention he'd been there …

• Doctor doesn't get a full pint, that should have been a tip off

• 11-12 million watched this! Including me on my 2nd birthday. This was the closest to Xmas Who!

• The Cheese poster! And I had that dartboard

• G-Force and rocket shots

• Doctor robot should have been cliffhanger … also reference the Chase???

• Android Doctor has holographic clothes?

• Sutekh is learning ridiculous evil scheme – make copies, eh?

One Question to Doomsday - Chris

Why did the Randomizer take us here? From Grun to Styggron … eenie meenie minie moe …

Plot Summary:

Diplomats of the Galactic Federation will lose an important treaty with a primitive planet unless an Earth ambassador called the Doctor can solve an ancient mystery.

Notable for:

• Hayles wrote 2 stories: one for Ice Warriors, another cheaper story: this was combined

• David Troughton previously appeared in Enemy of the World as a guard. He was in the War Games as well. He also played the professor in Midnight.

• Katy Manning really lived her character, being smitten with David Troughton.

• At the time the UK was about to enter the EEC, but in the DVD commentary Dicks dismisses that this was a deliberate mirroring — “just in the air.” Hayles died in 1978, so his perspective is unavailable.

• Although there are film sequences, the story didn’t have any outdoor filming.

• The whole premise (multiple delegates, a whodunnit, and a tug-of-war over mining rights) is arguably a retread of Star Trek’s Journey to Babel.

Pete commentary:

• The Curse of Peladon is a tight political thriller with vague parallels to real-world diplomacy. Plus it has great costumes, a monster with an interesting backstory (even if the actual monster is uninteresting), and some fun misleads. There are a few clichés (like the mute “champion,” Grun), but it holds your attention throughout, and even when the whodunnit question is answered, you’re still invested in the characters and want to see how they deal.

• The Shakespearean vibe of the whole affair is very welcome, with a lot of dialogue playing out in throne rooms and castle corridors, and the story advancing often through two or three people talking behind closed doors. Tapestries, torches, caves, men with swords—this is a D&D fan’s dream.

• Lots of palace intrigue right off the bat. There’s a chancellor and a high priest, and they’re bickering, each trying to persuade the king, and one dies right away. You get what they’re doing immediately, and the game’s afoot. Textbook.

Galactic Politics

• The story is about traditional/conservative forces (led by Hepesh) allying with a foreign power (Arcturus) to block joining an interstellar alliance (the Galactic Federation) so they can keep a strict religious regime intact while still benefiting financially. They do this by undermining their leader and when that doesn’t work they attempt to seize power through violence. It’s a solid story that can certainly be seen through the lens of today—lots of echoes in the isolationist vs. globalist debates that continue to dominate much of international politics. Brexit has some pretty obvious parallels (minus the civil war).

• Peladon is clearly steeped in tradition and the “old ways”—for one, it’s a full-on monarchy. With all the swordplay, you get the sense they are/were a low-tech planet that has been thrust into being “space-aware” by virtue of their mineral wealth.

• Tons of religious/ceremonial, “you can’t do this or you’ll be killed” rules. I don’t get the sense this is a condemnation of any particular religion, but more of a setting-enhancer to emphasize the more “allegiance to tradition” religiosity that pervades the script.

• I like that the delegates are all from planets close to Earth. You get the sense that this could be the early days of Earth’s colonial period, though there’s nothing to date the story otherwise. Most episode guides place it around the year 3500.

• At one point Alpha Centauri says “Raise them from barbarism”—echoes of colonialism.

• That said, Alpha Centauri honestly seems like the most sensible when it doesn’t want to interfere in local politics.

• Isn’t it weird that two of the four delegates have the same name as their planet of origin? I would have liked a line that mentions that names for individuals aren’t a thing everywhere in the universe.

• Speaking of… King Peladon of Peladon? 🤷🏻‍♂️

Great Aliens

• I frickin’ love how ambitious the story is with its many aliens and their costumes. Alpha Centauri is truly nuts—the product of a kind of cyclops fever dream, but with a voice that alludes to high-strung characters like C3P-0. Arcturus is Dalek-like without being a Dalek, and is just about enough voice modulation that we will tolerate.

• Best of all are the Ice Warriors. Who knew they looked so brilliantly colorful! The Ice Lord Izlyr in particular has great red lenses on his very green helmet. The Blu-ray really brings them out in all their glory.

• It’s a nice mislead that the Ice Warriors aren’t the bad guys, though the twist is a bit simplistic by modern standards. What makes it great, though, is that we see the Doctor being somewhat flawed, strongly suspecting the Ice Warriors based on his past experiences and showing some prejudice to Jo: “I know the Ice Warriors, Jo. They're a savage and a warlike race.”

• Arcturus is a variation on the “brain in a jar” alien that works decently, though why is he armed? Why does Ssorg have a huge rifle? (And how does he pull the trigger with his Lego hands?) It’s a strange diplomatic contingent where everyone is packing.

• Also, why isn’t there some kind of diplomatic immunity for the Doctor et al.? Being sentenced to death for accidentally entering a particular religious temple is nuts.

Peladon and Jo

• David Troughton is quite good as Peladon. You immediately sympathize with him, and his dramatic tears are believable. His skirt-and-boots outfit is a little, uh, bold, but it’s not distracting, and it doesn’t take away from his good looks. Apparently Katy Manning did not have to act much to be smitten with him, and Jo’s, “Doctor, present me to the hottie over there” line is a nice moment. Not just because there’s obvious sexual tension, but it allows Jo a moment to show her sophistication at being able to play along with the charade that they’re Earth delegates.

• Nicely directed scenes between the pair: the script has lots of dialogue, obviously. And there’s a nice mix of shots—two-shot, close-ups and extreme close-ups, especially with Jo and King Peladon. In one of their conversations in ep 2, there’s a shot that begins on their hands, emphasizing the connection forming between them.

• I like the scene when Peladon proposes to Jo. Not only is it really well directed, but it’s a nice bit of cluelessness on the part of Peladon. You also sympathize with the whiplash that Jo is experiencing.

• It’s kinda nuts that Peladon has no idea there are catacombs and secret doors in a castle he’s lived in his entire life. He must have had a very sheltered childhood (which tracks, since he’s royalty).

The Doctor and Jo

• Nice episode for Jo, stepping up to the occasion and playing along competently at being a princess when the moment calls for it.

• Love the Venusian lullaby, callback to The Daemons. Hard to place the music, but it’s God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.

• Great exchange between the Doctor and Jo when they rib each other for getting a little too into their roles as a “chairman delegate” and princess. Grace said it was “such a NuWho convo”

• Doctor calling Jo an “idiot” is harsh, but he quickly acknowledges she was brave. It works, for the time.

Etc.

• So what was Arcturus’s and Hepesh’s plan at the end of ep 3? Arcturus shoots the Doctor—who is still thought to be the official Earth delegate—in plain view of everyone. Doesn’t that basically unmask the entire evil plot. Does he then shoot Jo, Ssorg, Izlyr, King Peladon, and anyone else? It seems like that’s the only way forward here: kill everybody and make up any story you want. Makes sense, but really, really risky.

• Who builds a castle on a cliff? I suppose you can headcanon that by presuming Peladon has a history of warring factions/nations, and the castle was one of the most well-defended.

• Also, does the sun ever come out on Peladon?

• The wigs on Peladon are out of control.

• Jo is going out for a night on the town with Yates?! Holy cow—kind of a outlier data point on the whole “Yates is gay” narrative. Still figuring himself out, I suppose. Of course, it's just an excuse to get Jo into a “royal” outfit. Her eyelashes are fierce.

• The torch-activated secret doors do well at taking a great kid fantasy and making it part of the plot.

• Aggedor actually looks pretty good. The bear-like creature costume looks like something that could believably kill quite easily. And they paid nice attention to the “wet” nose.

• The big sword fight at the end is really impressive as a piece of “theater” combat.

• The cutting of the ep 3 cliffhanger is so bad, you need the Doctor to explain what happened

• Poor Peladon—Aggedor ends up killing both of his advisors/mentors.

• Time Lords again!

What did Pete’s family think?

• Grace liked it. She enjoys seeing the Third Doctor and Jo, and she was never bored.

Four Questions to Doomsday - Pete

1. Why did the Randomizer take us here? It’s a contrast with the current era of Doctor Who, which always seems to be upping the stakes, threatening all of reality or killing everyone in the universe. This is relatively lower stakes, and it uses its time well to flesh out more characters and their relationships.
   
   Also, in contrast to Earthshock, impersonating someone official helps the Doctor a lot here. You can see why he started carrying psychic paper.

2. What if the evil plot had succeeded? Say Aggedor doesn’t kill Hepesh, but kills the Doctor instead. He regenerates into Tom Baker, and Hepesh forces all the delegates off the planet. The Doctor and Jo have to either find the TARDIS or hitch a ride with Izlyr or AC. Hepesh eventually makes a deal with some other nefarious power for mining rights.

3. Where's the Clara splinter? Echoing governess Clara, Peladon Clara helped keep young Peladon blissfully unaware of the secret doors in his own castle.

4. Dalek, Ogron, Professor Hayter, Viscount Banger, Fixed Point in Time, Lady Cassandra, or Zarbi? A very competent Dalek. Great looking, well plotted and paced, with plenty of fun and just the right amount of politically flavored content to get your mind working.

   Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Plot Summary

A greedy alien family hatches an elaborate plot to get the human race to nuke itself.

Notable for:

• First cliffhanger of NuWho!

• First appearance of Harriet Jones

• First appearance of the Slitheen family, NuWho’s first real attempt walking, talking CGI villains.

Pete commentary:

• Here’s NuWho trying out a lot of different things:

  • A proper time jump, dealt with realistically: What do companions leave behind?

  • For the first time, a sexual relationship with between the Doctor and his companion is even talked about.

  • The prime minister is often referred to in Doctor Who, and this one finally goes there, going direct to Downing Street.

  • Slitheen being the surname

• Ultimately this two-parter is a fun comedy with some real stakes. Not the invasion per se, but the relationships of the Doctor, Rose, Jackie and Mickey. Each one does an excellent job to get you to care about them and their point of view.

  

• RTD is superb at this: portraying relatable people and putting them in fantastic situations to get them to realize who they are by forcing them to make high-stakes decisions.

• “You’ve been gone a whole year.” — This makes Aliens of London one of the best-ever cold opens. Doctor Who was still brand new, and we weren’t sure what to expect, and RTD made sure we were not ever going to be too comfortable. This is so good. As it’s happening, you really wonder, “OMG, are they really doing this? Is he going to somehow go back and change it?” Nope! They just deal. Incredible choice.

• It also leads to NuWho’s first serious dating controversy: this story effectively establishes that most of contemporary NuWho is supposed to occur 1 year in the future.

• “Is this a sexual thing?” Just when you’re acclimating to the idea of the time jump, they throw in this genius line. It’s perfect, because it’s said by a policeman, which means the show gets to acknowledge the question everybody has always, always had in their minds about Doctor Who without actually going there. Of course, it opens the door, and gets readers used to the idea, because the show fully intends to absolutely go there.

• Finally see Downing Street in Doctor Who: It’s about time, really. I like the clever way they avoid saying who the current prime minister is with Rose saying, “How should I know? I’ve been gone a year.” The production team wanted to imply it was Tony Blair, but I think it’s better that it remains vague.

  

• It’s excellent to see Mickey and Jackie’s evolution. This is the story that goes a few inches deeper from the stock characters we saw in Rose.

  • Leads to the Doctor’s evolution of how he treats Mickey—invites him to come by the end

  • So does Rose! Not in love with the Doctor yet. Big contrast to her reaction in School Reunion when Mickey joins them.

  • It’s impressive what Noel Clarke was able to do with Mickey, turning him from the shallow coward that everyone was saying “dump him” to someone we care about.

  • “Do it then.” Mickey half wants her to.

  • Camille Coudri really sells the “Rose has been gone and I’ve been a wreck ever since” idea.

• “Narrows it down” — an excellent scene. Makes the Doctor less omnipotent and all-powerful, and show why he needs a team. Also good message for kids: here’s how you problem-solve.

• The ending is excellent: Emphasizes that Rose is now making a clear choice to go adventuring with the Doctor, and the end, with her mother waiting 10 seconds and then walking away is just the right amount of haunting.

What did Pete’s family think?

• Grace really likes this episode! Enthusiastically joined a rewatch.

Four Questions to Doomsday - Pete

1. Why did the Randomizer take us here? It’s a bit on the nose for Doctor Who, but aliens are pretty obsessed with Earth. Looking at the invasions we’ve recently done, Aliens of London and World War Three is giving Earthshock a run for its money in terms of the convoluted-plan-to-stated-goal ratio.

2. What if the evil plot had succeeded? Mickey doesn’t succeed in rerouting the interceptors from destroying the cruise missile. It never hits Downing Street, the Slitheen get the code, launch the nukes, everybody dies. Let’s assume somehow the Doctor and Rose survive by stowing away on the Slitheen spaceship. The Doctor, still dealing with the Time War, is driven over the edge by losing his favorite planet, too. He goes Time Lord Victorious, dematerializes the entire planet of Raxacoricofallapatorious, War Lords-style. Eventually he figures out Rose is supposed to be the Bad Wolf, which inspires him to go back, get the Moment, and erase this reality somehow.

3. Where's the Clara splinter? She’s a reporter for the Evening Standard—the first one to suggest the whole thing was a hoax.

4. Dalek, Ogron, Professor Hayter, Viscount Banger, Fixed Point in Time, Lady Cassandra, or Zarbi? It’s wrongly remembered for the Slitheen, which earned a reputation as being too childish on account of all the farting. Aliens of London/World War Three is the first time Doctor Who really set out to deconstruct the premise of the show, and deserves respect. It’s been long surpassed by the scripts that have come since, but this was the adventure in Series 1 that gave everyone permission. It’s a Fixed Point in Time.

   

   Subscribe now

   All images c/o The Black Archive