Tag: doctor who

Season 15, 1977, 4 episodes.

An evil corporation on Pluto has a stranglehold on the economy and freedoms of mankind. But The Doctor, Leela and K-9 foment rebellion! Surprise, the creep in charge is an alien!

This is a less gonzo episode than the past few and that’s welcome. It’s perfectly serviceable and apart from K-9’s errant laser beam there’s not much groanworthy special effects. The characters are standard but fun, especially the smug tax collector who reminds me of a greedy pompous Fred Willard who really loves his job. Apparently the writer of this episode really had a grudge with taxation.

You’d think an episode called the Sun Makers would have more focus on the artificial suns around Pluto. But really it seems just a way to justify the typical English grey skies when the characters are outdoors.

Next up: Underworld

Season 15, 1977, 4 parts.

Some unethical scientists do some kind of sciencey-scan on an unusual, possibly alien, skull. This ‘activates’ the skull which slowly transforms the lady scientist into a gold, gorgon-like woman and summons beasties reminiscent of H.P. Lovecraft’s From Beyond…I think so that it can manifest into it’s previous gestalt form and do some bad things to the universe. Luckily, old local Mrs. Tyler is a disciple of the ‘old religion’ AKA witchcraft and knows some tricks, and she teams up with our heroes.

This is one that probably could have been done in 2 episodes, especially considering The Doctor and Leela don’t do much until the climax. As usual it’s a mix of occult and space/time gobbledygook. The most mad of the mad doctors has a bad accent but the other doctors are less hammy. Overall, another germ of an interesting concept, left out so long that it becomes stale, and tentatively kicked down the hall a bit.

Next up: The Sun Makers

Season 15, 1977 (4 parts)

Here’s a weird one – a virus that transmits through eye lightning gives people a silver fuzz on their face and hands and they become mind-controlled by the viral “nucleus” which looks like a prawn. Even the Doctor becomes infected but Leela is immune because she’s all instinct, whereas the virus needs intelligence. Seems like a backhanded compliment to me.

At a space hospital, we are introduced to K-9 the robot dog and the Doctor and Leela are cloned, and their clones shrink down Fantastic Voyage style to take care of the prawn monster inside the original Doctor. But the prawn uses the same size-changing technology to embiggen itself and now the invisible enemy is very very visible. And makes bad decisions. The professor is a fun character. The story starts out strong but kind of fizzles out. Clever use of some cool-looking visors to hide infection and the Doctor’s ridiculously long scarf is used as a tether in this episode.

Next up: Image of the Fendahl

“When I say ‘run,’ run like a rabbit…”

4th season; 1966; six 1/2 hour episodes.

Partway through the season, the Doctor regenerates for the very first time, and we enter the Patrick Troughton era. This is an exemplary Who episode, even though the original films were lost and this story was reconstructed in 2016 using the original audio and animation (re-finessed in 2020, which is actually the year that the story is set).

An Earth colony on the planet Vulcan is terrorized by Daleks after an overzealous scientist reanimates them from an inert space capsule. The scientist sounds like a muppet performed by Terry Jones. The new Doctor seems a bit queer (not gay but acting erratically) and emotionally distant from his companions, and the story gets intensely dark by episode 6.

The animation is quite limited, you can hear a lot of action happening in the audio, especially during the climax, but it is not reflected in the animation. This limitation of the human characters is actually offset by doing away with the limits of the daleks on a practical set. Instead of having the few dalek models moving about with cardboard cutout of a dalek crowd behind them, it’s like these guys were designed to be made into 3-D models and replicated in this environment. So that at least works better than the original!

One of my favourite episodes!

Season 15, 1977

In which I learned about the Schermuly pistol rocket apparatus (see below).

Horror At Fang Rock is probably the Who episode I’ve seen the most times, and therefor have the most memories of, with the possible exception of “Unearthly Child.” It’s also one of the most suited to a Call of Cthulhu RPG adventure – a few people in a lighthouse are victimized by an alien blob that is trying to call its fleet of spaceships to decimate the planet.

Interesting and well portrayed cast of characters, but don’t get too attached to anyone. e. Includes the folksy old-timer who believes in sea monsters, who, to the actors credit, becomes the monster, after a fashion. Castaways include sleazy stock broker reminiscent of Carter Burke in Aliens, and the high-strung secretary who provides more than enough screaming and fainting spells until her inevitable demise.

Leela does some fine companioning in this episode, unlike previous eps her ideas and actions are not pooh-poohed by the Doctor and all the men. She’s in control and in her element, fighting monsters. This is also the episode where her eyes change colour, because actor Louise Jameson was tired of wearing brown contact lenses for the character, so they wrote a bit into the script where she was blinded, but when she recovered her eyes became blue. Why they would care what colour her eyes were when the character was introduced is beyond me.

All in all a fun, spooky bottle episode that could serve as a great introduction to Doctor Who for folks who like period horror.

Next up: The Invisible Enemy

Gosh I wonder who the bad guys are in this series? Robots of Death has not one but two persons of colour, who sadly are killed by ep 2 (of four episodes). Everyone, including the robots, has a futuro-baroque fashion sense, which is both incongruous and kind of refreshing to see something different. The robots don’t have a ‘robot voice’ but they do have robo-vision, when we see their victims through their eyes kind of like Predator. And of course when they go evil, it initiates the evil red glowing eye effect, as per their programming, I’m sure. The Doctor comes up with an ingenious plan to take out the robot controller, as well he should. Not too bad, overall, even though automatonophobia is misnamed as robophobia.

Next up: The Talons of Weng-Chiang (oh lordy)

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Season 14, 4th story, January 1977.

I thought this was going to be one where the Doctor had visited the planet before and created a terrible legacy, like violating the Prime Directive, which interfered with the natural development of the local society, but it turns out that the computer that they worship like a god is only partly the Doctor’s fault. And he references the past trip to the planet but they should have made this a revisit to a planet we’ve seen before. Anyway, it’s a fairly decent plot and this is the introduction of the companion Leela, of which I am a fan. I liked this one.

Next up: The Robots of Death

Season 14, Serial #3, 1976

Is this the first episode without a companion? At first I was excited but by the third (of four) episode my attention waned. I think this is the first time we visit Gallifrey the home of the Time Lords, and no surprise they’re all narrow-minded, stuffy white geriatrics. The Doctor is framed for murdering the president of the Time Lords (what?) by The Master, who looks like a ghoul from Fallout because he’s past his 12th regeneration or some such sillyness. There’s a deadly game of cat and mouse inside a psychic matrix where the danger of death may or may not be real. The climax is reduced to eyeroll-inducing fisticuffs.

Also there’s a panopticon, which is pretty cool.

Next up: Face of Evil

Season 14 ep 2 1976, Fourth Doctor

“The Hand of Fear” should have been called “Eldrad Must Live!” and includes a non-white actor for a change, though not in a significant role. In which the Doctor calls a pod of whales a school, tells a peon to go collect an obviously dangerous artifact and pays the price for it, and has an oops moment with an actor’s bosom. Looks like it was filmed in a milk plant but it was an actual nuclear power plant. Companion Sarah is dressed like a toddler and spends most of the time screaming and being a liability, hailing back to the early season companions. This was her last episode before coming back in a 2006 Tennant episode. I enjoyed that the Doctor worked to save the villain, even though it would obviously turn on him. A few clever and enjoyable turns.

Next up: The Deadly Assassin