Category: Doctor Who
Doctor Who episode 134: The Tenth Planet – Episode 4 (29/10/1966)
The Doctor is back, but for barely more than a cameo – McCoy got nearly as much to do at the start of the TV Movie. Most of the heavy lifting again falls to Michael Craze, who gets by far the best material in the episode, carrying most of the action and proving as useful a second lead as Peter Purves did. Ben is shown to be clever, resourceful and brave, inferring the Cybermen’s fear of radiation, and hectoring the dithering science staff of Snowcap into making a stand on behalf of Planet Earth. He literally saves the world from being exploded by the Z-Bomb and even gets to say, ‘While there’s life there’s still hope’ which is a better epitaph than the Doctor is going to get.
Continue readingDoctor Who episode 133: The Tenth Planet – Episode 3 (22/10/1966)
The irony is that the last extant William Hartnell episode doesn’t feature Hartnell – who was off sick. As such, the Doctor keels over just at the point that the Cyberman invasion fleet has appeared on the scanners. This at least makes the two events somehow seem connected, and foreshadows the forthcoming changeover: ‘I don’t understand it. He just seems to be worn out,’ says Polly.
Continue readingDoctor Who episode 132: The Tenth Planet – Episode 2 (15/10/1966)
This is one of the outstanding episodes of Doctor Who, serving as the mission statement for the show’s second-best monsters. And in an odd way, the Cybermen have never been as impressive as in these scenes. They look impressively weird – as uncanny as the Daleks, but made more horrible because of the recognisable bits – the human hands, and the eyes, sunken in dark sockets. Krail says, ‘You do not seem to take us seriously’ but these aren’t just buzzing robots out to conquer the galaxy, they’re something else entirely. They aren’t evil, they’re just indifferent – they have no malevolence, they just don’t care at all who or what has to suffer, as long as they survive. At least here, it’s nearly impossible not to take them seriously: this is the most impressive monster introduction since The Survivors.
Continue readingDoctor Who episode 131: The Tenth Planet – Episode 1 (8/10/1966)
The episode begins with stock footage of a rocket launch, fancy electronic lettering, and then a hi-tech control centre. Even more than The War Machines this is positioned in real world technology, where space travel comes down to meticulous coordination and careful timing, and not the Golden Age SF futures of The Sensorites or The Ark. While that reflects the fact it was written by the show’s scientific advisor, Kit Pedler, it fits in perfectly with the new style brought in by Innes Lloyd and Gerry Davis.
Continue readingDoctor Who episode 130: The Smugglers – Episode 4 (1/10/1966)
After a few episodes of twinkling genially, Hartnell is back in command mode for what amounts to his last hurrah: solving the churchwarden’s riddle, bargaining with Pike for the lives of the innocent villagers, and delaying things until the cavalry, in the form of Blake and his militia, ride in to defeat the pirates. In so doing, his generosity and morality shame Squire Edwards into repenting his villainy – and saving the Doctor from a vengeful Captain Pike.
Continue readingDoctor Who episode 129: The Smugglers – Episode 3 (24/9/1966)
Things take an unexpectedly complicated twist in the third episode, as everyone seems to have their own agenda, working against each other to achieve a common purpose: uncovering Avery’s gold.
Continue readingDoctor Who episode 128: The Smugglers – Episode 2 (17/9/1966)
Captain Samuel Pike is one of the great forgotten villains of Doctor Who. Michael Godfrey’s performance sounds great – full of menace, but, unlike Cherub, veiled with polite language. He’s also an inveterate snob, dressed foppishly, and with a taste for fine things, and muscular men, shirts slashed to the waist. I suspect there’s more than one man on board who’s enjoyed a taste of Cherub’s “Thomas Tickler”. The Doctor perceives this immediately, and plays on it to buy some time. Later, the flamboyantly periwigged Captain pays a visit to the venal Squire and is delighted by the stylishness of the manor house.
Doctor Who episode 127: The Smugglers – Episode 1 (10/9/1966)
Ben and Polly have stumbled into the TARDIS, and the Doctor is furious. For the first time in forever he thought he was going to be alone again, and now he has two more young people to worry about. Perhaps they’ve caught him off guard, or maybe the audience just need a refresher after the two-month gap since The War Machines 4 aired, but the Doctor is surprisingly forthright about what they’ve got themselves into:
Continue readingTHE DOCTOR: I have no control over where I land. Neither can I choose the period in which I land in
Doctor Who episode 126: The War Machines – Episode 4 (16/7/1966)
This episode’s title card is black with white text – the inverse of the previous three episodes’. That’s either a deliberate reference to the growing darkness of the serial; the way the Doctor reverses the polarity and switches the War Machines’ power against WOTAN, or more likely just a mistake.
Continue readingDoctor Who episode 125: The War Machines – Episode 3 (9/7/1966)
It’s lucky that this episode exists: trying to understand it from the soundtrack or tele-snaps would be hard going, because this is the show’s biggest ‘spectacle’ episode to date. A huge chunk of the running time is devoted to the pitched battle between the army and the War Machines in Covent Garden.
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