A key tenet of the Third Doctor era of Doctor Who is that the Doctor is exiled to Earth, where he joins forces with UNIT to combat various threats to the planet. This premise was meant to keep costs down whilst the show made the expensive transition to full-colour filming and more action. However, executive producer Barry Letts and script editor Terrance Dicks began to find the format confining. One writer colleague opined that the format reduced the show to just two types of episodes: alien invasions and mad scientists. To shake things up, they introduced a new recurring threat in the form of the Master, the Doctor's opposite number and nemesis, which both made Season 8 very enjoyable but also rather predictable. More importantly, Season 8 had a test-run in the form of Colony in Space, the first story in two years to take the Doctor away from Earth.
For Season 9 they continued to shake up the format, with the Time Lords sending the Doctor on missions away from Earth. Even whilst on Earth, they decided to remove the Doctor from the environs of UNIT to have him have to combat threats without the resources of the Brigadier and his troops. As a result, of Season 9's five stories, only the first and last are "standard" stories for this era, with the Doctor and UNIT fighting a mutual threat.
Things get off to an absolutely splendid start with Day of the Daleks, in my opinion the most underrated story of the Pertwee Era and possibly the single most underrated Classic Who story of them all. As the title subtly indicates, this serial marks the return of the Daleks for the first time since Season 5's Evil of the Daleks. The Daleks have used time travel to alter history and invade and occupy Earth again (having done so previously way back in Season 2's The Dalek Invasion of Earth). However, they are opposed by a well-organised resistance force. The rebels have worked out that the Daleks took advantage of the chaos of the destruction of a 20th Century peace conference between the Soviet Union and China (currently teetering on the brink of a nuclear exchange) to invade, and believe that diplomat Reginald Styles sabotaged the conference. They plan to kill Styles to avert the chaos. The Doctor gets mixed up with events after the first assassination attempt on Styles fails.
This is a great story because it deals, for the very first time in the show, with the idea of a temporal paradox, a closed loop that is causing time to repeat in an inexorable way leading to disaster, which only the Doctor might be able to shut down. It's also excellent for how it presents the Daleks, as master manipulators ruling over a wrecked Earth from lofty towers, leaving it to human soldiers and Ogron shock troops to do all the running around for them (in reality this was to spare the increasingly ancient Dalek props from further wear and tear). Caught between is the Controller (Aubrey Woods), the overlord of the human population on behalf of the Daleks who likes to think he can reason with the Daleks and mitigate the damage to humanity, but clearly is weighed down by his conscience. It's Woods who helps carry the story, as his moral code struggles to assert itself and only finally succeeds after being exposed to the Doctor and Jo's compassion. The rebels are all a bit too posh (despite mostly good performances), but there's a unique feeling of Cold War doom to the story as the Brigadier gets reports increasingly indicating the outbreak of global annihilation. Given how unflappable the Brigadier normally is, his real worry as things get more tense is palpable. Things culminate in the long-awaited clash of UNIT and the Daleks, which has to be said looks laughably cheap even by 1972 standards in the original cut.
However, a "special edition" of the serial is featured on the various physical media and streaming releases, which uses moderate CGI, revamped Dalek voices (the originals are a bit tinny) and re-edits the final battle into something more impressive, though it also enhances one of the story's oddities, where the Doctor grabs an energy weapon and vapourises an Ogron. The special edition has him shooting two Ogrons to death, which feels a bit weird given the Doctor's well-known disdain for guns. The special edition is worthwhile for its much-improved final battle, but the CGI environments feel a bit much. Still, an underrated classic of a story.
The Curse of Peladon is another very fine story, though not quite as accomplished. The Doctor and Jo arrive on the planet Peladon at a crucial moment in its history, as it debates whether to join the Galactic Federation. The Federation has sent delegates from the planets Alpha Centauri, Arcturus and Mars to engage in negotiations, and the Doctor is disquieted that the Martian delegates are Ice Warriors, his old foes who have now apparently forsworn violence and are famed mediators. Someone is trying to sabotage the negotiations and the Doctor, mistaken as the Earth emissary, has to find out who. This is a great story for its whodunit aspect and fine political intrigue, with David Troughton (son of former Doctor Patrick) giving a stately performance as the young King. Katy Manning also shines as Jo Grant posing as a princess, giving haughty orders to her retainer, the Doctor. The alien delegates are great, with the Doctor trying to overcome his prejudice against the Ice Warriors. Special shout-out to Alpha Centauri here, a giant phallic creature with a massive eyeball who operates in a continuous state of anxious panic, but has a fine cutting line in the type of observations you wish more people would voice in Doctor Who more often. Like The Dæmons, this is a story whose critical reputation has waxed and waned over the years but feels like it's been on the slide recently, but I think is a winner, with a cracking pace and some excellent dialogue, even if the contemporary political satire (the story is based on the UK's debate on whether to join the European Common Market) is a bit on-the-nose.
The Sea Devils sees the Doctor visiting the Master, who was captured at the end of the aforementioned The Dæmons and is now imprisoned in a maximum security facility on an island. The Master's inevitable plans to escape coincide with some ship disappearances in the area, and the Doctor's discovery of the Sea Devils, aquatic cousins of the Silurians he met back in Season 7. This is another cracking story, with the usually-interminable length of the standard six-parter here alleviated by shifts in tone and setting. The three-way conflict between the humans, the Master and the Sea Devils is well-handled, and the full cooperation of the Royal Navy in the episode means some insane production values, complete with the use of a Royal Navy warship, rescue helicopter, hovercraft and speedboats making the story feel epic in a way no other story of this era (or possibly the whole Classic show) really gets close to. It's also nice to see the Doctor cooperating with a Royal Navy taskforce rather than UNIT (although exactly why he doesn't call in UNIT is unclear) and Captain Hart (Edwin Richfield) and Commander Ridgeway (Game of Thrones' Maester Luwin, Donald Sumpter) are splendidly-written characters. There's also a nice scene here of the Master enjoying watching The Clangers, setting up a gag thirty-five years later when a later incarnation of the Master finds himself watching Teletubbies.
The Mutants is a bit of a mixed bag. This is possibly the most "standard" Doctor Who story of Pertwee's run, with the Doctor encountering a tyrannical government and helping the freedom-loving rebels rise up against them. There's a bit more nuance here as the government is actually a colonial force from Earth and the rebels are the natives of the planet Solos angrily demanding independence from their overlords, who literally live in an orbital "Skybase." This is Bob Baker and Dave Martin channelling Malcolm Hulke, with a familiar mix of solid worldbuilding, some interesting characters and some biting contemporary political satire, this time riffing on apartheid in South Africa. There's also some hard science about the planet Solo's complex multi-century orbit resulting in seasons that last for decades (foreshadowing, if only coincidentally, Brian Aldiss's Helliconia Trilogy and George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire).
However, it's a story that feels like less than the sum of its parts. There's some great performances, and Paul Whitsun-Jones' Marshal might be one of the most despicable Doctor Who villains of all time for being an officious bureaucrat with zero morality whatsoever. Most of the rest of the cast is solid, generally getting the assignment of being earnest or incredibly hammy, but it's Christopher Coll and Rick James who stand out as the Rosencrantz-and-Guildenstern-like (or Bodger and Grift, for JV Jones fans) Stubbs and Cotton, two ordinary guards who inadvertently trip over into becoming main characters. It's definitely a story that's very interesting in its ideas but, like most six-parters, feels too long.
The Time Monster rounds off the season in even more frustrating style. The Master is back, this time posing as a Scottish scientist (even if his accent veers from "tenuous" to "non-existent") trying to create matter transmission technology to help summon Kronos, a powerful chronovore from outside space/time. The battle of wits between the Doctor and the Master is splendid stuff, with the Master having his own assistants (who reluctantly swap sides once the Master's evil schemes are exposed) and there being a complex bit of business as the Doctor and Master try to materialise their TARDISes inside one another to defeat each other's plans, which is visually arresting (enough that the idea later gets revisited in Season 18). There's also some strong gags, like Sergeant Benton being turned into a baby and the Master time-shifting a V1 rocket from 1944 to take care of a UNIT column. Unfortunately all this good work is undone in the final two episodes, which reverts to nonsense as the Doctor and Jo run around in ancient Atlantis trying to stop the Master. If this had a been a four-parter set on contemporary Earth it would have been great, but the final two parts weaken the whole story.
Still, the ninth season of Doctor Who (****½) is mostly excellent, with three great stories in a row and two more which, if more flawed, still have much to commend them. The return of the Daleks, Ice Warriors and Silurians (if a different type of them) are all successful, and restricting the Master to just two stories works much better than him turning up every week. Jon Pertwee is also at his best this season, giving a mellower performance with less shouting, and Katy Manning has better material to work with than the previous season, particularly in The Curse of Peladon, The Sea Devils and The Time Monster.
- 9.1 - 9.4: Day of the Daleks (*****)
- 9.5 - 9.8: The Curse of Peladon (****½)
- 9.9 - 9.14: The Sea Devils (****½)
- 9.15 - 9.20: The Mutants (***½)
- 9.21 - 9.26: The Time Monster (***)
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