Doctor Who: Season 18

The Doctor and Romana are recalled to Gallifrey, to Romana's distress as her journey with the Doctor is coming to an end, but the TARDIS is accidentally transported to another universe. As the Doctor tries to get them home, they recruit a new companion and then learn that the fate of the entire universe is hanging in the balance...and an old enemy has returned.

Season 18 of Doctor Who, airing from 1980 to 1981, was, once again, a time of great change. Douglas Adams had left after just one season as script editor, due to overwork caused by his Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy project blowing up big time. Graham Williams had also chosen to leave as head producer (the then-equivalent of a modern showrunner) after three seasons, finding the job had been more stressful than expected due to budgetary issues. John Nathan-Turner, who'd worked on the show since 1968, was promoted to showrunner and quickly hired Christopher Bidmead as script editor and lead writer. Bidmead was noted as having more knowledge of "proper" science fiction and was tasked with moving the show away from the silliness that had grown unchecked over the preceding few seasons.

Nathan-Turner also decided that the show was in need of a revamp, arguably the most significant since the series had moved into colour production with Season 7 back in 1970. More sophisticated visual effects were employed, thanks to the advent of computer technology and better model shots and prosthetics. It was hardly competing with Star Wars but at least it looked a bit better than what had come before. The title sequence was changed for the first time since Season 12 and the theme music given a somewhat funkier, electronic makeover. The cumulative result was to announce that Doctor Who had moved, very firmly, into the 1980s.

Bidmead and Nathan-Turner were also both keen to refresh the show creatively and in its casting. Lalla Ward had already announced her intention to leave the role of Romana, and Tom Baker had, as usual, played hardball in early-season negotiations and was quite surprised when the production team accepted his departure instead of arguing for him to stay by offering more money. They were also keen to remove K9, feeling his presence made the Doctor too powerful, not to mention making a mockery of the Doctor's strict no weapons policy: he doesn't like carrying guns but having a mobile laser tank trundling around is fine, apparently. These changes also required the introduction of new companions, with the 18-year-old Matthew Waterhouse cast as Adric mid-season and Janet Fielding joining as Tegan in the series finale. There was also an unexpected decision to promote guest star Sarah Sutton to a companion as Nyssa in the finale, resulting in a complete change of TARDIS crew and the most crowded TARDIS since way back in Season 4 (and the TARDIS wouldn't be this crowded for so long again until Series 11 of the new era...though that's a different story), although the full impact of that would not be felt until the following season.

The season launches with The Leisure Hive. The new music and new title sequence immediately impress, but the bemusingly long tracking shot of Brighton Beach that follows feels like the director is trying a bit too hard to make it feel like a different show. The story moves to the planet Argolis, where the survivors of a devastating war have funded reconstruction by turning the planet into a resort. Unfortunately, the odd appeal is now seen as old-hat and the planet teeters on the edge of bankruptcy. A spate of deaths and tensions with the Foamasi, the alien species who won the war with Argolis, intrigue the Doctor into getting involved. It's an odd story - and the first of several through the decade to dwell on capitalist themes - but at least feels fresh and original compared to what has come before, with a couple of refreshing plot twists and some interesting new effects (such as better locking-off technology that means the TARDIS can now materialise whilst the camera is moving). It's also the first story of the season to put Tom Baker in prosthetics, with him having to spend an episode or so aged into a very old man.

This continues in Meglos, where the Doctor's appearance is taken on by a hostile shapechanging cactus alien, and means that Tom Baker has to play both the hero and the villain. Despite complaining about the prosthetics required whenever Meglos changes shape, it's clearly an acting challenge that Baker relishes and he delivers clearly his best performance since at least City of Death here. The story and worldbuilding are quite good with its central story of a planet caught in a battle between reason and superstition, with a splendid array of guest performers. Bill Fraser and Frederick Treves are particularly good and there's a nice returning performance by Jacqueline Hill, here playing the antagonistic Lexa but whom is best-known for playing one of the Doctor's first companions, Barbara, back in Seasons 1 and 2. There are also some very impressive effects shots, at least by contemporary standards.

Full Circle is the first in a trilogy of serials set in E-Space. The TARDIS is sucked through a portal to this other dimension and is unable to escape, leading the Doctor and Romana to try visiting several planets in this new realm. On the first they run afoul of a conflict between the descendants of the crew of a crashed starliner and strange creatures rising from the swamps. This is a somewhat standard Doctor Who story, enlivened by an interesting last-minute plot twist, but its main purpose is to introduce new companion Adric, played by Matthew Waterhouse. Unfortunately Adric comes across as a bit of a wet blanket rather than the roguish "Artful Dodger" the producers had envisaged, but the Marshmen are a visually impressive opponent.

State of Decay, written by Terrance Dicks and held over from prior seasons, is a better story but an incongruous one. It feels like it's straight out of the Hinchcliffe/Holmes era, with a full gothic horror vibe and its premise basically being "the Doctor meets vampires!" Where the serial sings is the tying in of the vampires to the mythology of the Time Lords, and its effective guest cast who get the assignment, which stays just on the right side of camp.

Warriors' Gate is Doctor Who at its flat-out most bananas. Doctor Who always hovers around the edges of being totally surreal, and at rare moments in its history it gives in to the impetus. The last time it went Full Weird was arguably Season 6's The Mind Robber, and it wouldn't even try to match this again until Ghost Light in Season 26. Still, those stories at least had the Doctor and his companions written as normal, dealing with weird events. Warriors' Gate extends its atmosphere of weirdness to the Doctor, Romana and K9, who have poetic turns of dialogue in a story that starts traditional (a ship gets lost in the boundary of E-Space, after losing track of a captive creature who helps guide them) but rapidly takes a turn for the bizarre. Director Paul Joyce imbues the serial with a dreamlike quality, and its minimalism (the serial is mostly shot on greenscreens with only a couple of real sets) contrasts with the extensive and mostly-effective effects work. The bizzarity is not helped by the odd way that Romana and K9 leave the show at the end, with the hint of them going off on their own adventures we never hear about again, at least not on the main show (spinoff media, as usual to the rescue). It's certainly the most unusual-feeling Classic Doctor Who show of them all, and ambitious even if not a full success.

The Keeper of Traken is a refreshing change back towards what appears to be normality: the Doctor and Adric, having escaped E-Space, arrive on the planet Traken at the request of its dying Keeper, who feels evil is afoot. However, the Doctor is then framed as being the source of the evil. The serial has a splendid guest cast, with Anthony Ainley being the standout as Tremas, but Sheila Ruskin providing a splendid two-faced performance as the charming-but-deceitful Kassia. Adric's been a bit underwhelming as a companion so far, but he perks up a lot in a double-act with Sarah Sutton's likeable Nyssa, which I suspect played a key role in the decision to bring her back as a companion. The story itself is very solid, mid-to-upper tier Doctor Who, but what perks it up immensely is the ending. Arguably for the very first time, the "normal" way a Doctor Who story is supposed to end gets thrown out of the window by a series of shocking twists, something that feels more like an episode of Buffy or Babylon 5, and the serial itself ends on a hell of a cliffhanger as the Doctor's greatest enemy stages his most impressive comeback to date.

The series finale, Logopolis, written by Christopher Bidmead himself, is one of Doctor Who's better regeneration stories. There's something of the surreal air of Warriors' Gate here, as the story involves the TARDIS materialising around a real police box (so the Doctor can measure it and unjam the chameleon circuit), but this has been predicted, so a trap has been laid for the Doctor which causes an infinite regression of the TARDIS interior. Janet Fielding's Tegan stumbles into the TARDIS in the middle of all this chaos. Meanwhile, a mysterious figure is trying to help the Doctor and his companions towards a terrifying destiny the Doctor has to face head-on, and there's also a bunch of guys who are muttering equations that are preventing the universe from being destroyed. Obviously someone thinks it would be a brilliant idea to try to silence them.

The result is Doctor Who at its most grandiose and epic. For once the fate of the entire universe is at stake and, this not being a near-weekly occurrence as in Modern Who, the stakes feel pretty convincing for once. There's a ticking clock of doom as the Doctor realises his regeneration is coming but he tries to keep a brave face up for his companions. The story is odd, and dense, but also busy with a constantly-evolving plot, changes of scenery and characters coming and going. John Fraser delivers a superb guest performance as the Monitor, and there's a great turn from British character actor Tom Georgeson as a police inspector out of his depth. Janet Fielding also makes a terrific impression as new companion Tegan, even if she takes what's going on a bit more in her stride then you'd expect. Logopolis closes out the epic, immense Tom Baker era (which lasted longer, in episode count at least, then the next five Doctors combined) in appropriately epic style, and welcomes the arrival of Peter Davison as the younger-seeming Fifth Doctor.

As a bonus, at least on the Blu-Ray release of the season, there's also A Girl's Best Friend. This is a one-off TV movie, planned as a backdoor pilot for a show provisionally called K9 & Company. The 50-minute Christmas special sees the return of Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith, some five years after she parted company with the Doctor. The Doctor has built a third iteration of K9 and sent him to her to help in her investigations. Sarah soon needs his help as she investigates weird goings-on in her aunt's remote village out in the country. It's a pretty standard story, with traces of The Dæmons and The Stones of Blood (and, more amusingly, vague foreshadowings of the movie Hot Fuzz), though shorter and more focused. Elisabeth Sladen effortlessly slips into the role of Sarah Jane, but here as the heroine and star, and rises to the occasion easily. The guest cast is game and the direction effective. The script is solid enough and this being a slightly more upgraded version of K9 sees him have a little bit more of a personality and sense of humour than his two predecessors. How long the legs would have been on a full series of this is unclear (as K9 basically lasers his way to resolving the story fairly effortlessly), but it does feel like the premise could have led to a full series. Well, I suppose it did when The Sarah Jane Adventures finally debuted in 2007, twenty-six years after this episode aired, but that's another story as well. I will caution that K9 & Company might well have the very worst title sequence and musical score of any television show ever made. It's really something.

The eighteenth season of Doctor Who (****) is a hugely transitional one, with the entire cast and most of the crew changing over its considerable length (it being the longest season between Season 6 and Series 4 of the Modern era). If John Nathan-Turner wanted to put his stamp on the show he succeeded: there's a completely different energy working in this series by the end of the season and, for better or worse, the excesses of the Tom Baker era are slowly ironed out. If Baker was unhappy with many of these changes, it at least seems to galvanise him and he delivers some of his best performances since his Imperial Period (Seasons 12-14), with his performances in The Leisure Hive, Meglos, Warriors' Gate and Logopolis being particularly accomplished. Doctor Who has finally reached the 1980s, properly, and nothing will quite be the same again.

The season is available on DVD and Blu-Ray, as well as streaming on BBC iPlayer in the UK and various services overseas.

• 18.1 - 18.4: The Leisure Hive (***)
• 18.5 - 18.8: Meglos (***½)
• 18.9 - 18.12: Full Circle (***)
• 18.13 - 18.16: State of Decay (***½)
• 18.17 - 18.20: Warriors' Gate (***½)
• 18.21 - 18.24: The Keeper of Traken (****)
• 18.25 - 18.28: Logopolis (****½)
• K9 & Company: A Girl's Best Friend (***½)

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Doctor Who: Season 10

A mysterious power emanating from a black hole threatens to overwhelm our universe, with even the Time Lords powerless to stand against it. In desperation, they recruit the first three incarnations of the Doctor with a special mission: locate the source of the danger and eliminate it.

In 1973, Doctor Who turned ten years old. The BBC was determined to celebrate the show's longevity, and the production team decided to create a story where the three Doctors - William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee - joined forces to face down a mutual threat. Producer/showrunner Barry Letts and script editor Terrance Dicks also decided it was long past time to end the Doctor's exile on Earth. The format had succeeded in freshening up the show, but was also becoming limiting in the kinds of stories that could be told.

Slightly oddly, they decided to lead the season with the anniversary story, although airing in January 1973 made it closer to the ninth anniversary than the tenth (in fact, the first story of Season 11, airing in December 1973, was actually closer to the date). The Three Doctors is the first "multi-Doctor special," a concept that a lot of fans and creatives on the show love, and one that a lot hate (most famously, Russell T. Davies and Peter Capaldi). These stories, although still in canon, are generally an excuse for knockabout fun rather than doing anything too serious, and so it proves here.

That said, the story should really be called The Two-and-a-Bit Doctors, as William Hartnell was rather unwell at the time and found it difficult to stand and remember his lines, so is limited to pre-recorded VT footage on the TARDIS and Gallifrey scanners. This is a shame, but his warmth and irascible wit still comes through nicely in what would turn out to be his swansong (he passed away in 1975). The story itself becomes the Troughton-and-Pertwee Double Act and it is splendid, the two veteran actors sparking off one another with aplomb. The script also gives Jo Grant, Sergeant Benton and the Brigadier a lot to do, so the Doctors don't overwhelm proceedings. There are some superb visuals, with the entirety of UNIT headquarters sucked into a black hole, and some effective location filming in the inevitable quarry location. The monsters for this story - the Gel Guards - are both deeply stupid and highly prescient, acting as early predecessors to British television icon/nightmare from hell, Mr. Blobby.

Stephen Thorne is certainly...enthusiastic as long-missing Time Lord stellar engineer Omega (here not looking quite so much like a giant skeleton demon thing, as he was inexplicably portrayed in New Who's fifteenth series), but doesn't give a lot of nuance to his performance. I get the impression his mask was confining so he has to yell his lines rather than act them. But it does add to the "expensive panto" feeling of proceedings. The script has some great lines, and it's so much fun seeing Troughton and Pertwee joining forces you can forgive the slightness of it all. The story's biggest weakness is that the Brigadier acts like a total military dolt for most of it, an easy mistake to make when writing the character. Still, highly enjoyable, knockabout fun.

Carnival of Monsters starts as a weird one, with two apparently disconnected stories. In one, two new arrivals, entertainers, try to get through customs on the planet Inter Minor only to run afoul of customs. In the other, the Doctor and Jo arrive on a ship that famously disappeared in the Indian Ocean in the 1920s, which is attacked by what appears to be a dinosaur. The Doctor realises the ship is trapped in a time loop. The oddness of the two disconnected storylines is soon resolved: the entertainers are carrying a device called a Miniscope, in which a whole load of miniaturised creatures are being carried to entertain the crowds. A potentially fascinating premise is let down a little by the limited sets and locations available: the Doctor and Jo spend ages stuck in the guts of the machine, making their way across massive circuit boards. The serial hints at the possible return of the Cybermen before annoyingly pivoting to featuring creatures called Drashigs as the main threat, which are a very nice design but don't have a lot of depth to them.

More successful is Robert Holmes's banter-laden script, with a lot of funny lines and some early appearances for future Davros Michael Wisher (as Kalik) and companion Harry, Ian Marter (as Andrews). Leslie Dwyer and Cheryl Hall are also most entertaining as Vorg and Shirna. Potentially a great story is let down by what feels like budget limitations (the makeup for some of the aliens is poor, and some sets are overused) and pacing problems. This is a four-parter that can feel longer than some six-parters. Still, entertaining stuff, especially for the implication that the SS Bernice was a missing ship as famous as the Marie Celeste, but, thanks to the Doctor's actions, its disappearance never happens and the timeline adjusts (hence why we've never heard of it).

Frontier in Space is that rare Doctor Who beast, a full-blown space opera. Arriving in the 26th Century, the Doctor and Jo find the mighty Earth and Draconian Empires on the brink of full-scale war, with both sides accusing the other of attacking their ships. A full-blown Malcolm Hulke Special, packed with convincing, intricate worldbuilding (I would kill for some of this in the modern show), genuine political intrigue and the Doctor in full diplomat-pacifist mode, and with Jo getting some meaty plotlines. The Master showing up is much more tolerable here than normal, especially if you know this is Roger Delgado's last appearance: he tragically died in a car crash just a few weeks after the story was transmitted.

The story is very busy, avoiding the normal problems of duller six-parters, with the story moving from Earth to a penal colony on the Moon, to various spaceships and the Draconian capital. There's a lot of macho posturing, more subtle political overtures and military shenanigans, to the point where this story feels like a dry run for both Blake's 7 and Babylon 5 (Joe Straczynski is a noted Doctor Who fan, and the backstory of the previous Earth-Draconia War feels somewhat familiar). Throw in the Master, Ogrons, the surprise return of an old enemy, and you have what should be a total winner. What lets the story down is the fact that the Doctor and Jo spend most of it in prison. They go from being prisoners of the Earth Empire to incarcerated by the Draconians to prisoners of the Ogrons to prisoners of the Master, sometimes in what feels like the same episode.

Planet of the Daleks starts a rather dim trend for Doctor Who Dalek stories, with the appearance of the Daleks kept a surprise for the end of Part 1 of the story, despite "Daleks" appearing in the title, and in this case the last story pretty much letting us know that the Daleks might be about. This is Terry Nation's first Doctor Who script for almost a decade, and it's clear he hadn't been keeping up with the show in the interim as the script showed up with individual titles for each episode (something that hadn't been done for seven years at this point). The story has promise, as it brings back the Thals from the OG Dalek story and has a very small, focused cast, with each character getting a solid amount of development. There's also a rare moment of continuity as the Doctor talks about some of his former companions. The characters in this serial feel like their stories actually continue when the Doctor isn't around, which is rare at this point in the show.

Again, this is a four-parter masquerading as a six, and the pacing is a bit sluggish. There's a lot of people running around and getting captured and split up and infected with a fungal virus and needing a cure. The vfx are again a bit too ambitious as well, and Nation seems to be fall back too readily on ideas from earlier scripts (the sequences in the Dalek base feel a bit too reminiscent of the very first Dalek story). But there's a solid action-adventure story here, and the ending is a major cliffhanger which eventually gets tied up in a great comic story (Paul Cornell's Emperor of the Daleks).

The Green Death sees shenanigans down a coal mine in Wales, sparking an investigation from both the Brigadier (on the side of the local big energy conglomerate) and Jo Grant (on the side of the local eco-warriors). The Doctor, in something of a huff at everyone getting along without him, goes off to Metebelis III alone and, in one of the funniest sequences in the show's history, gets ten shades of trouble knocked out of him by the local flora and fauna. This sequence put me in mind of playing Dungeons & Dragons and one player has a strop and flaps off on a solo side-quest where the DM kicks the hell out of them until they get with the program and rejoin the rest of the party for the actual main story.

The rest of the serial unfolds as something of a spiritual successor to Season 8's The Dæmons, with the full UNIT team getting lots to do, with the locals pitching in to help or hinder as required. There's a right-on ecological message where the metaphor drives the story without the need for the writers to give a TED Talk on what it all means, a winning guest cast and one of the show's more outrageous villains. The ultimate bad guy is a very overused trope (one Star Trek had rather over-used a few years earlier) but the writers give him a ridiculous sense of humour and whimsy so he becomes a bit of a scene-stealer, and arguably loses because he's too busy trying to impress the Doctor with witty repartee rather than actually enacting his Evil Plan.

The story is also notable for seeing the departure of Katy Manning as Jo Grant after three seasons, making her (at this point) the show's second-longest running companion (after Jamie in Seasons 4-6, back when the seasons had far more episodes). It's probably fair to say that Jo had a mixed run as a companion, especially early on. She was supposed to be a skilled UNIT agent, trained in escapology as well as armed and unarmed combat, but the writers had a tendency to forget about that and have her screaming and getting captured. But when the script allowed it, Manning's superb sense of humour would come through (quoting Beatles lyrics to a confused Second Doctor in The Three Doctors), as well as her ability to unexpectedly take command of threatening situations (shutting down the prison riot in The Mind of Evil; posing as a royal princess in The Curse of Peladon; defeating the Master in a battle of wills in Frontier in Space, earning his grudging respect). Her departure is one of her best stories, especially for the impact it has on the Doctor, who seems more quietly devastated by her leaving than any other companion bar his own granddaughter Susan (at least at this point). Pertwee is particularly superb at this point.

Season 10 (****½) is a very enjoyable season of Doctor Who, with some great scripts, ideas and performances. Even when stories fall short of their potential, the ideas are at least very interesting. You can criticise the season for maybe being a bit too ambitious at the time, with the vfx creaking to realise the writers' vision, but it's all solidly fun stuff.

The season can be seen right now on the BBC iPlayer in the UK, BritBox in much of the rest of the world, and is also available on DVD and Blu-Ray.

• 10.1 - 10.4: The Three Doctors (****)
• 10.5 - 10.8: Carnival of Monsters (****)
• 10.9 - 10.14: Frontier in Space (****)
• 10.15 - 10.20: Planet of the Daleks (***½)
• 20.21 - 10.26: The Green Death (*****)

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Doctor Who: Season 9

The Doctor's exile on Earth continues, but he has convinced the Time Lords into sending him on at least some clandestine missions, although they keep him on a short leash. The Doctor's latest adventures also include the return of some very old foes.

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.

The season can be seen right now on the BBC iPlayer in the UK, BritBox in much of the rest of the world, and is also available on DVD and Blu-Ray.

• 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 (***)

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.

Doctor Who: Season 8

The Doctor's exile on Earth continues, to his consternation. A new threat arises with the arrival of the Master, a fellow renegade Time Lord but one who bends his skills towards conquest and destruction. UNIT, the Doctor, and new assistant Jo Grant have to take on the Master in a series of battles with the fate of Earth hanging in the balance.

The seventh season of Doctor Who saw an improvement in the show's fortunes, which had been looking dicey as the 1960s came to an end. The show moved into full colour with a new Doctor, a new companion and a whole new paradigm, along with more action, explosions, stunts and gadgets. Season 8, airing in 1971, saw the production team refusing to rest on their laurels and changed things up again, though a bit more modestly this time around. They decided to make five stories rather than four, meaning they could drop the episode count per serial. The three seven-part stories in Season 7 were a bit on the long side. Season 8 would instead have two four-parters, two-six parters and, splitting the difference, a five-parter.

The decision was also made, for the very first time in Doctor Who history but certainly not the last, to have a season-spanning arc, revolving around a new Time Lord nemesis called the Master. The Doctor had previously - twice! - faced off against an antagonistic Time Lord called the Monk (in Season 2's The Time Meddler and Season 3's The Daleks' Master Plan) but the feeling was that he was more of a bumbling comedy foe than a serious threat. The Master was conceived of as a Moriarty to the Doctor's Sherlock Holmes, his direct nemesis and counterpart on the side of evil. Not only was the decision made to introduce the Master, but to have him in every story of the season, with a loose linking storyline with the Doctor trying to capture his foe whilst he in turn is trying to escape Earth (after the Doctor inadvertently traps him there in the first story of the season). Roger Delgado plays the Master with absolute charm and relish, and sparks off Jon Pertwee most excellently.

Things kick off in Terror of the Autons, a direct sequel to the previous season's excellent Spearhead from Space. The alien Nestenes are once again planning to invade Earth with their plastic-controlling powers and Auton warrior-constructs. The Master joins forces with them, but the Doctor is alerted to his presence by the Time Lords, who are concerned about the Master's level of threat to them and to innocent lifeforms. The Doctor also has to join forces with a new companion, UNIT assistant Jo Grant (the splendid Katy Manning) after the somewhat abrupt, off-screen departure of Liz Shaw. The resulting story is a bit overstuffed - it has multiple guest stars, the first appearance of the Time Lords since the Doctor's exile started, and also introduces Richard Franklin as UNIT Captain Yates - given its runtime. It also has some of the less effective vfx of the season, such as the character killed by an inflatable sofa and the ugliest murderous doll known to man. It's entertaining but not a patch on Spearhead, though at least Roger Delgado gets a good workout from carrying the serial on his shoulders.

The Mind of Evil makes better use of its greater episode count to incorporate more characters and tell a bigger story. The Master plans to use a mind-control machine, disguised as a way of curing career criminals, to help him start WWIII by sabotaging a peace conference between the United States and China, which the UK is hosting. This plan involves taking over a prison and capturing a passing biological warhead (as you do). Oh, and he also needs to recover his missing TARDIS dematerialisation circuit, so has to lure the Doctor into a trap.

The result is a surprisingly pacy story with lots gong on, with returning writer Don Houghton employing some of the same techniques that made Inferno such a success in the preceding season (sadly, this would be Houghton's last script for Who). The segues from diplomatic thriller to prison break-out drama to action movie as UNIT storms the prison are well-handled, and the guest cast is great. The story even manages to be pretty good (by early 1970s standards) at how it handles the China subplot, employing actors of Chinese origin and having a minor plot point revolve around being able to speak Hokkien rather than the more common Mandarin (we'll assume the TARDIS was totally offline in this story, so its translation circuits were not working...I'll get my coat). Jo is also on great form here, using her UNIT skills to single-handedly stop a prison riot in its tracks and constantly working to undermine the Master's plans. Throw in some decent action sequences and you have a reasonably entertaining story, though not as good as Inferno.

The Claws of Axos is the most disappointing story of the season, despite the presence of a respectably gargantuan frog. It has a terrific opening as UNIT is collaborating with British and American forces on how to find the Master, only for an alien spaceship to arrive on a collision course with the Earth. Cue fusillades of defensive missiles, the Doctor arguing with a bloodthirsty-but-dim British politician as only Pertwee can, with the Brigadier caught in the crossfire. Things improve as we find out the Master is a prisoner of the Axons (putting him on the same side as the Doctor and UNIT from the off, for once) and the humanoid Axons are terrifically realised, with some great prosthetics work and eery performances.

Unfortunately the story goes for a bit of a wander, and the story feels more poorly-paced than Mind of Evil despite being an hour shorter. The conclusion to the story is unnecessarily convoluted as well, and Jo gets a lot less to do (though her single-handedly storming an alien spaceship to rescue the Doctor is kind of badass). Still, there's a lot of great ideas here, like the Brigadier having to reluctantly employ the Master as interim scientific advisor in the Doctor's absence, even if they don't entirely succeed.

Colony in Space is a test-run for the producers hoping to end the Doctor's exile on Earth, with the Time Lords reactivating the TARDIS and sending it (with the Doctor and Jo on board) to the planet Uxarieus in the year 2472 to apprehend the Master, although oddly the Time Lords don't actually bother telling the Doctor any of this, hoping he'll figure it out. On Uxarieus, the Doctor finds a group of peaceful colonists at odds with a ship from an interstellar mining corporation which is planning to strip-mine the planet, whilst the native inhabitants are either ignored or killed. This is a Malcolm Hulke (The Silurians) special, putting together some complex worldbuilding and dealing with themes like colonialism, corporate corruption and environmental devastation, but wrapping it in a lot of fistfights, gun battles and creepy aliens. The episode is let down by some terrible effects (the colonists being scared off by a back-projected image of an iguana is particularly dumb) but some very effective location filming in a quarry. The Master feels a bit shoehorned in and the six-episode length kills the pacing in the home run, with the colonists and mining corporation turning the tables on one another so often you often forget who's got the upper hand at any moment. The ending also feels a bit random. But, an entertaining enough story.

The season wraps up with The Dæmons, a story whose reputation has waxed and waned over the years. At one point it was considered the best Pertwee story and one of the best Classic Who stories full stop (top ten, certainly), but it then went through a lengthy period of derision. Watching it for the first time in around thirty years, I was relieved to find it's closer to the former than the latter. This is easily the best-written Pertwee story to date, with a witty script full of top banter between the UNIT crew and the Doctor. Captain Yates and Corporal Benton have way more to do than normal, including at one point flying into the threatened village in a helicopter hilariously emblazoned with G-UNIT on the side, with Yates wearing a most fabulous coat. Guest star Damaris Hayman destroys everyone else with her unhinged-but-upper-crust performance as a white witch (who 100% ruthlessly seduces Benton the second this story is over), and the Master as the leader of a sinister coven prone to saying things like, "so mote it be!" is 100% a brilliant idea.

The story also goes to some wild places, with the entire village sealed off from the entire world via a "heat dome" that will make you ponder if Stephen King and/or the writers of The Simpsons Movie watched this story at some point, and a tone that veers seamlessly from The Wicker Man to Hot Fuzz. The Brigadier unable to get into the village and having to work with his Doctor-from-Temu Sergeant Osgood (probably the father/grandfather/uncle of UNIT's Petronella Osgood from New Who's Series 7 through 9) is also comic gold. The only major weaknesses are that Jo really does get sod-all to do, and in fact is treated rather harshly by both the Doctor and Yates for no real reason, and the way the sinister Azal is defeated is a bit out of left field, likely a result of the last minute rewrite that saw the story move from a six to a five-parter. 

Season 8 of Doctor Who isn't quite as accomplished as its predecessor, but is still an entertaining enough instalment of the show. Roger Delgado is charming, charismatic and occasionally menacing as the Master, but he's also overused here, with too many rapid-fire appearances diluting the character. The stories can also be a tad repetitive: the Master joins forces with the evil alien invaders of the week, only to realise they're going to double-cross him, so he then swaps sides and helps the Doctor defeat them instead, and manages a last-minute escape. The stories here - especially The Dæmons - thus benefit more from being watched individually than binged sequentially. Even in the weaker moments there's usually some good ideas going on. We also get a splendid new companion with Jo Grant, but she suffers from serious character decline over the season, with the effective UNIT agent trained in escapology, armed and unarmed combat of the first two stories replaced by a standard ditz-who-needs-constant-rescuing by the end. Still, future seasons offer opportunities for improvement.

The eighth season of Doctor Who (****) can be seen right now on the BBC iPlayer in the UK, BritBox in much of the rest of the world, and is also available on DVD and Blu-Ray.

• 8.1 - 8.4: Terror of the Autons (***½)
• 8.5 - 8.10: The Mind of Evil (****)
• 8.11 - 8.14: The Claws of Axos (***)
• 8.15 - 8.20: Colony in Space (***½)
• 8.21 - 8.25: The Dæmons (*****)

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.

Doctor Who: Season 7

The Doctor has been finally tracked down and captured by his own people, the Time Lords. Found guilty of interfering in the affairs of other planets, he has been exiled to the planet Earth in the late 20th Century, his TARDIS disabled and even his knowledge of space/time travel blocked. He's also forced to regenerate. Arriving on Earth, the new Doctor joins forces with his old ally, Brigadier Alastair Lethbridge-Stewart of the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce (UNIT), just in time to help thwart a series of attacks on the planet by aliens, obstinate scientists and even its ancient, original inhabitants.

If you're going to start watching Classic Doctor Who, probably the optimal entry point is the start of Season 7. Originally airing in 1970, this was the first season of the show to be made in full colour and to adopt a restrained episode count of 25-26 half-hour instalments. It's also the first season not to have any missing/destroyed episodes (earlier seasons have gaps that have been bridged by animated reconstructions or audio tracks). It's also, uniquely in Classic Who's 26-year run, the only time we get a new Doctor and a new companion at the same time. The season also acts as a reboot of the premise, with the Doctor now exiled on Earth and working with UNIT to face down a series of hostile threats as he tries to either escape or earn his freedom by doing good deeds for the Time Lords. Finally, it's very good, and sometimes even said to be the single finest season of Doctor Who, although I think that's a bit more of a stretch.

The decision was also made to make the show more action-packed, taking inspiration from James Bond and the much higher-budgeted, glossy shows made by ITC (The Prisoner, The Saint, UFO, Thunderbirds and so forth). The Third Doctor is as likely to disarm an enemy (non-lethally!) by using Venusian Karate then to talk them down, and his favoured way of resolving a situation is to build a fancy machine and "reverse the polarity of the neutron flow." Unable to use the TARDIS, the Doctor instead gets around with a car, Bessie, a vintage roadster he updates with a huge number of space age gadgets. The scripts also have a little more humour, and take advantage of their larger casts with numerous recurring UNIT characters on hand, as well as the Doctor and his various companions in this era. Compared to the six seasons that came before, it was dynamic, fast-moving and pacy.

Compared to 2025, the pacing feels considerably less dynamic. Season 7 consists of just four stories rather than the normal five, meaning that the stories had to be significantly longer than was normal. Only the opening serial, Spearhead from Space, is the standard four episodes in length (equal to two modern episodes). The other three all clock in at seven episodes apiece, which is on the longer side even for Classic Who (only three stories in the whole run of the series are longer, all earlier on). Subsequent seasons have more four-parters and their longest stories never rise above six episodes, with even those being phased out before the end of the 1970s.

Spearhead from Space gets things off to a strong start. We meet the Third Doctor, played by Jon Pertwee, suffering from post-regenerative disorder/stress. It's fortunate that he is quickly found by UNIT and the Brigadier (played splendidly, as always, by Nicholas Courtney). UNIT's own new scientific advisor, Liz Shaw (Caroline John), is quickly sidelined by the Doctor's superior knowledge, but holds her own intellectually and has a sardonic sense of humour that is quite entertaining. The serial introduces the recurring menace of the Nestene Consciousness, a powerful alien intelligence that can animate plastic to serve its needs, resulting in the onslaught of murderous shop dummies, the Autons. There's a reason why Russell T. Davies borrowed heavily from this story when he relaunched Doctor Who in 2005 with the episode Rose (even down to re-staging the shots of shop dummies coming to life and bursting through windows). This story also looks superb, as a result of being the only Classic story to be entirely shot on film and hence to get a full, native HD upgrade. The guest stars are pretty good and the four-episode run keeps things ticking over nicely.

The Silurians - more technically Doctor Who and the Silurians due to a titling error - also introduces a new, recurring element in the mythology with the titular Silurians, intelligent, humanoid dinosaurs who went into suspended animation when the Moon was captured into Earth's orbit, causing global disturbances. Awoken tens of millions of years later, the Silurians are understandably annoyed to find the planet overrun by apes, but are divided on how to handle the problem, with one leader willing to try diplomacy, another violence and another caught between. The Doctor and UNIT are drawn into the crisis when the Silurians tap a nearby power plant to aid in their revivification.

Although its seven-episode, three-hour runtime feels a little steep, it actually makes some interesting shifts in the story to avoid feeling too dull. Early episodes deal with a manhunt for a single Silurian after it is cut off from its fellows, the middle episodes revolve around the Doctor trying to broker a deal, and the conclusion revolves around a genetically-engineered plague the militant Silurians unleash upon humanity. The story has a strong moral core as the Silurians are shown to be a complex society of individuals who do not always agree with one another, and the Doctor has to try to talk UNIT down from blowing up the Silurian base. Some bad production values aside (a dinosaur stalking the cave network is definitely writing cheques the BBC's vfx department can't even hope to cash at this point), this is a complex and rich story with a lot of thorny questions and no easy answers. It is let down a little bit by the plague being resolved off-screen with some blink-and-you-miss-it dialogue.

The Ambassadors of Death sees a manned mission to Mars returning to Earth and almost immediately being hijacked by unknown forces for their own ends. The Doctor and UNIT find themselves in a battle of jurisdictions and wills with the British government and also the unknown assailants, all the while trying to negotiate a possible alien first contact situation. To be honest the main story is a bit bobbins and the serial has the worst pacing of the season, but this is made up for by the show's first employment of Havoc, a specialist stunt team. Previously, stunts on the show were handled by the show's own personnel, who were not well-versed in this area. This story goes berserk with frankly unnecessary but hugely entertaining fight sequences, hijacks, explosions and a use of helicopters that boards on the gratuitous. This story not only went overbudget but vapourised it, possibly explaining why the subsequent serial is so claustrophobic and doubles up most of the cast to save money. Everyone looks like they are having a lot of fun, so it's hard to criticise it too much for the number of times UNIT is tactically defeated by a bunch of East End thugs for hire, or why the aliens put up with a ludicrous amount of manipulation from small-minded criminals.

Inferno has sometimes been cited as the best story of the Pertwee era, and one of the best serials in Doctor Who's history. I wouldn't go quite that far, but it's the highlight of the season. The Doctor is drafted in to help assess a huge drilling project that is tunnelling deep into the Earth's crust to generate cheap energy. Intriguingly, the Doctor has another and more personal agenda, which is to use the energy that's being released to help repair the TARDIS. The initial episodes set up possible sabotage at the project, and the complex political intrigue between the project's leader, drilling advisor, the government oversight official and UNIT, who are handling security. Just as that is threatening to get boring (pun unintended), the Doctor is blasted into a parallel universe where Britain is a fascist state. Scenes of the Brigadier, now the evil Brigade Leader (without his moustache, in an amusing inversion of Star Trek's approach), and military commander Liz Shaw subjecting the Doctor to Nineteen Eighty-Four style interrogation, remain fairly disturbing. This is also one of Pertwee's finest hours, as the Doctor has to remember his compassion for saving lives even extends to these darker versions of his friends. Nicholas Courtney in particular gives an absolutely chilling performance as the Brigade Leader, and Caroline John is outstanding as both versions of Liz in what turns out to be her swansong from the show. The ending is one of Doctor Who's most powerfully bleak moments, and is terrifically-written and acted.

Season 7 of Doctor Who comes with all the caveats of watching a season of television produced by the BBC on a very tight budget in 1970: production values rarely rise above adequate (overuse of cool-looking helicopters aside), some of the guest stars are sublime and some others are hamming it up like panto dames, effects shots are mostly risible, and the shooting on video results in some iffy lighting set-ups. But, overlooking the production weaknesses, the ideas are often very strong, the scripts are often quite smart and the performances by the regulars are excellent. Pertwee's Third Doctor is a little pompous and arrogant, but he is also moral, a firm believer in science and diplomacy, and if you're up against an alien invader, there's nobody else you'd rather have at your side.

The seventh season of Doctor Who (****½) can be seen right now on the BBC iPlayer in the UK, BritBox in much of the rest of the world, and is also available on DVD and Blu-Ray.

• 7.1 - 7.4: Spearhead from Space (****½)
• 7.5 - 7.11: The Silurians (****½)
• 7.12 - 7.18: Ambassadors of Death (***½)
• 7.19 - 7.25: Inferno (*****)

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.