I wrote this in 2014, following enquires from others about where to start with watching Doctor Who. In retrospect, I probably would have dropped The Talons of Weng-Chiang back down the list, or off the bottom, as the casting of a white actor in make-up as a Chinese character, regardless of the nuance in the performance and writing, is obviously problematic. Hope this is otherwise useful.
With the new series of Doctor Who just starting, and a new
era of show dawning with Peter Capaldi’s debut, now would be a good time for
anyone who has been interested in the series to take the plunge and catch up.
There is one small catch, however – they will be running a 50-year backlog.
The simple solution would be to just watch the modern
series, which started in 2005 and has notched up seven series to date, but this
would leave out the hundreds of episodes from the show’s original 26-year run
which are more than worth your attention. Despite the different format, tighter
budget and occasionally dated production, many of them still stand up as
excellent adventure stories, with a perfect mixture of action, mystery, comedy
and horror.
My idea is this – watch the modern series, and between each
season dip back into the past to catch up on older episodes from the classic
run. Perhaps one story for each of the original seven Doctors, thus making up a
further season of stories to alternate with the 21st century show.
So here’s a guide to what to look up as you go, with attention paid to what
elements are reintroduced in each season of the modern show, and where they
originally came from.
Season One (2005) starring Christopher Eccleston and Billie
Piper
Elements introduced: The Doctor, the TARDIS, the Nestenes,
UNIT, the Daleks, regeneration
In going back to the original series, there’s really no
better place to start than with the very first story. An Unearthly Child (1963) laid the groundwork for the series, with
a pilot episode that introduced a strange schoolgirl, two teachers who let
their curiosity overwhelm them, the crotchety old man they find at a junkyard
the girl claims as her home and the extraordinary machine hidden inside a
police box. It’s still a stunning piece of drama, and is following by the
series’ first adventure, with the four travellers finding themselves in the
Stone Age and at the mercy of a tribe who have lost the secret of fire.
After three years in the role, ill health forced original
Doctor William Hartnell to leave, and the production had the ingenious idea
that, since the character’s background was entirely unknown, he could simply
change into another person. The result was the casting of Patrick Troughton as
the new Doctor, more happy-go-lucky tramp than his predecessor’s stern
grandfather. One of the greatest showcases for Troughton’s ability was The Enemy of the World (1967-8), in
which he not only plays the sometimes-childlike-sometimes-steely second Doctor,
but also a Mexican industrialist in the near future with a plot to take over
the world, one piece at a time. The influence of James Bond weighs heavy on a
story that splits its time between Hungary and Australia, but the fast pace,
twisting story and engaging performances, especially from the series’ lead,
keep it on the rails.
Troughton too decided to depart after three years, though
his concerns were more related to how typecasting might damage his career. The
new production team decided to go in a different direction, and cast comic
actor Jon Pertwee as the third Doctor. Pertwee, however, played against type,
and approached the role with considerable seriousness, making his Doctor a man
of action and high-minded ideals. His debut was Spearhead from Space (1970), the first Doctor Who serial to be made
in colour and the first to film entirely on location. The result, showing the
Doctor’s first meeting with the Nestenes and Autons as he adjusted to exile on
Earth, easily bears comparison to British science-fiction cinema of the time,
and it remains the template for how to reformat the show. Just look at
Eccleston’s first episode to spot resemblances.
Pertwee became the longest-serving Doctor to date, spending
five years in the role, although seasons were shortened at the turn of the
1970s from 10 months to only six. The question of who would replace him was
solved when a little-known character actor was cast, someone who would make the
role his own and become, for many, the perfect Doctor. Tom Baker lasted seven
years on the series, taking it to new heights of success, launching it in the
United States and seeing in the birth of modern fandom. One of his finest
serials was The Talons of Weng-Chiang
(1976), in which a visit to the theatre in Victorian London gets him embroiled
in a mash-up of Sherlock Holmes, Jack the Ripper, the Phantom of the Opera and
every other piece of period horror you can think of. A rich, witty script and some gorgeous design
and photography on the dying streets of London’s docks make this truly one of
the greats.
The dawn of the 1980s saw a new direction for Doctor Who. A
new producer decided on a more serious approach, and Baker, sensing a change in
the wind, decided to quit. The fifth Doctor would be Peter Davison, already a
household name but also the youngest Doctor to date at only 29. Changes to the
series were drastic, with the regular characters wearing outfits more like
costumes than clothes, electronic music being used throughout, and the
programme moving away from Saturday early evenings for the first time to screen
mid-evening twice weekly. One of the most intriguing results of this all-new
Doctor Who was Kinda (1982), an
eerie parable about the colonisation of a primitive planet that is home to an
evil entity that dwells in the dark places of the mind. Still seen as one of
the most original serials the programme has attempted, this is a strange, ambitious
story with an impressive visual style.
Davison heeded advice he had been offered by Patrick
Troughton when he took the role, and decided to leave after his third season.
His successor, Colin Baker, could not have been a greater contrast. While the
fifth Doctor was gentler and more compassionate than many of his other
incarnations, the sixth was loud, brash and wilfully egotistical. The consequence
of this was that his Doctor was hard to like and remains arguably the least
popular. The series too was taking a more garish approach, with levels of
violence, gore and black humour ramped up so far that the BBC cancelled the
1986 season with only a few weeks’ notice, scrapping the planned scripts and delaying
broadcast by nine months. Before that, however, Vengeance on Varos (1985) showed the direction the series was
aiming for – a bleak, brutal story about a society kept under control with
televised torture and execution, it demonstrates how the grim tone of the sixth
Doctor’s first season could be made to work, and includes impressive
performances from Martin Jarvis as the powerless but noble ruler of Varos and
Nabil Shaban as the slug-like arch-capitalist Sil, one of the decade’s great
original Who villains.
Baker’s second season was a ratings failure, and he was
unceremoniously fired without filming a handover. Moving into 1987, the series
now had to rapidly cast a new Doctor to get the series on air by the autumn,
and the surprise choice was Sylvester McCoy, an actor who had started in
cabaret and novelty acts before moving into serious theatre. The seventh Doctor
started as something of a clown, but in time a quiet darkness was revealed
underneath, making him perhaps both the most charming and most sinister of the
Doctors. This can perhaps be seen best in The
Greatest Show in the Galaxy
(1988-9), in which he visits a strange circus on a desert planet, where the
Chief Clown rules with sequinned fist. One of the most fantastical yet
unnerving stories, and benefitting from a production crisis that meant filming
had to be conducted in a real big top.
Next time: Monsters!
Season Two (2006) starring David Tennant and Billie Piper
Elements introduced: Sarah Jane Smith, K9, the Cybermen,
parallel universes
Probably the most legendary element of Doctor Who is its
monsters, and the most legendary of those is the Daleks. Their first appearance
was in only the second ever serial, The
Daleks (1963-4), making them the first alien menace the Doctor fought. The
hate-fuelled metal creatures would become the standard of evil against which
the Doctor measures himself in later stories, but here they are only a little
more cruel and callous than the Doctor himself. The horribly mutated survivors
of an atomic war, prisoners inside metal casings that cannot leave a steel
city, the Daleks brutally turn down the offer of peace from the descendents of
their enemies, the Thals, and plot to retake the world of Skaro for themselves
alone. Probably the most important story apart from the pilot, with the Doctor
being forced out of his isolationist attitude and forced to take a moral stand
for the first time.
The only true rivals the Daleks have ever had as kings of the
monsters have been the Cybermen. Originally from an advanced civilisation on Earth’s
twin planet Mondas, they were once human, but soon the atmosphere froze over
and food and energy reserves started to dwindle. Replacing body parts with
plastic and steel allowed life to continue, but this was not enough. Eventually
even the brains of subjects were operated upon, removing the emotions that
could restrict the survival instinct and replacing them with merciless logic –
logic that dictated the rest of the planet must be converted immediately, and
then any humanoid life, wherever it was found. Though not their earliest
appearance, The Invasion (1968)
shows them at their most powerful, joining forces with an electronic magnate of
the near future to mount a full-scale stealth attack on the Earth, opposed by
only the Doctor and his new friends in the debuting UNIT, led by Brigadier
Lethbridge-Stewart. The latter would become a fixture of the series over the
years, with actor Nicholas Courtney being regarded by many fans as an honorary
Doctor. Part spy thriller and part alien invasion epic, the serial benefits
from a comparatively huge budget, richly enjoyable performances, especially
from Kevin Stoney and Peter Halliday as the Bond-villainesque Tobias Vaughn and
his repulsive henchman, and a cinematic style that sees Cybermen pouring out of
manholes and marching down the steps outside St. Paul’s Cathedral.
One of the issues with The Invasion that arose later is that
of missing episodes. The BBC did not have a permanent archive policy until the
late 1970s, meaning that Doctor Who episodes from the eras of the first three
Doctors were generally fair game for junking once storage space became an issue
and the rights to sell copies overseas had expired. Jon Pertwee’s tenure has gradually
been restored in its entirety, but 97 of the 253 episodes screened in the 1960s
are still missing, with only home audio recordings surviving. Two episodes of
The Invasion are missing to this day, but the DVD includes special animated
versions produced in a similar style to the live action material, and synchronised
with the episodes’ complete audio track.
The first season featuring the third Doctor saw a range of
threats challenge the newly-exiled Time Lord on near-future Earth. The
highlight of the year, and possibly the entire Pertwee era, is widely regarded
to be Inferno (1970), which starts
as a simple story of a project to drill through the Earth’s crust unleashing a
strange mutating slime, but when a power surge to the TARDIS in the middle of
the Doctor’s attempts to get it working plunge him into a parallel universe, it
become a meditation on free will and predestination, as well as possibly one of
the bleakest stories in the series’ history. Two versions of the Earth are
heading for an apocalyptic firestorm, with the Doctor knowing that he will be
forced to abandon some lives to save others. A riveting story with a heavy, oppressive
atmosphere, and one of the series’ great triumphs of pure drama.
In contrast, Tom Baker’s early stories were marked by a
fondness less for weighty material, but instead having the TARDIS land in the
surroundings of a horror film and seeing how matters would play out. Having
been paired with tough, resourceful and goodhearted journalist Sarah Jane
Smith, the Doctor would have some of his most popular adventures in the
mid-1970s, few more so than The Seeds of
Doom (1976). A story that leaps from Antarctica to a stately home in
England, it sees the Doctor trying to tracking down alien seed pods that, if
they germinate, could turn the whole of Earth’s plant life against humanity. Unfortunately,
they have fallen into the hands of a madman obsessed with his vision of a truly
green and pleasant land. Equally inspired by the classic sci-fi horror The
Thing from Another World and the surreal spy capers of The Avengers, this is
one of the most purely enjoyable stories, with a fantastically sardonic villain
in the psychopathic millionaire Harrison Chase.
Many popular monsters and villains from the series’ past
were revived during the fifth Doctor’s era, but one of his most effective
stories was entirely original. Frontios
(1984) saw the TARDIS land on a planet further in the future than the ship was designed
to travel, to find what could be humanity’s last outpost under attack from the
skies and from underground. A moody, yet ingenious story that questions how the
Doctor would fare if the TARDIS were destroyed, it has remained one of the most
consistently popular of its time.
On the other hand, there are times when Doctor Who really
fouls up. There are few sixth Doctor stories than many could recommend whole-heartedly,
and it hard to imagine a less likely candidate than Timelash (1985). A generic central idea of a struggling planet
ruled by a mysterious dictator while on the brink of war with its solar neighbour,
it typifies Doctor Who at its most pedestrian, but there is still pleasure to
be had, with the story taking a strange left turn to incorporate a historical
figure, some excellent prosthetic make-up and an attempt by Paul Darrow,
playing the dictator’s puppet ruler, to save the production singlehandedly by
playing his character like Richard III. Seeing Doctor Who at its worst is
something best done early, and even if no enjoyment can be extracted from the
wrong-headed production, it will still make other adventures look better.
The fresh creative broom brought to the series in the late
1980s meant a new approach to the series’ mythology, and the most ambitious
example must be Battlefield (1989).
The opening story of the classic series’ final season, it saw a return to
action after many years for UNIT and the now-retired Brigadier
Lethbridge-Stewart as they faced an unlikely threat – a war between knights
from a parallel dimension spilling into our world in search of their long-lost
king, Arthur. The Doctor is at his most deeply shaded, teasing a romancing
couple at one point, threatening to behead someone at another, and following a
series of clues left behind by his own future self, pointing the way to his own
destiny. An all-action story that still questions the nature of war, and
boasting in the demonic Destroyer one of the most effective creatures the
series ever produced, this indicated how the series could have developed in the
1990s.
Next time: the Doctor’s own people!
Series Three (2007) starring David Tennant and Freema
Agyeman
Elements introduced:
the Master, the Time Lords
For someone who has prided themselves on existing outside
their society, the Doctor does spend a lot of time in the presence of his own
people. Apart from his granddaughter Susan, the first time another of his own
race appeared in the series was The Time
Meddler (1965). The TARDIS lands on the Northumbrian coast in the summer of
1066, only days from the Viking invasion and the Battle of Stamford Bridge and
weeks from the Battle of Hastings. The Doctor is happy to chat to the locals,
but is startled when the sound of plainsong from the nearby monastery skips a
groove, leading to him to encounter a monk with a plan to rationalise the next
thousand years of Earth history. A strangely atmospheric story, benefiting from
the eerie mood of the deserted monastery and the no-nonsense scepticism of new
companion Steven Taylor, played by future Blue Peter presenter Peter Purves.
The Monk is a superb character, with Carry On regular Peter Butterworth
carefully balancing impishness and an edge of cunning. A simple but effective
story, and one of the highlights of William Hartnell’s tenure.
After six years of aimless wandering, the first phase of the
series was brought to an end with The
War Games (1969), which also brought the curtain down on the
black-and-white era and Patrick Troughton’s tenure. Appearing to land in the
trenches of WWI, the Doctor and his friends are immediately sentenced to death
for espionage, but the British general appears to take orders from a piece of futuristic
technology in his rooms and hypnotises officers to do his bidding. This is only
part of a monstrous scheme, one which is too big for even the Doctor to defeat
alone. The Time Lords make their first appearance in this story, invoked as an
authority of almost unimaginable power, with even the ruthless architect of the
villains’ project, played by a supremely menacing Philip Madoc, speaking of
them with a hushed, awed fear. They appear in person at the climax, embodied as
something like space-age Greek gods, capping a 10-part epic that never slackens
its pace, is riven with a strong anti-war and anti-authority message and
provides the second Doctor with a superb departure.
With the third Doctor exiled to Earth by the Time Lords at
the story’s conclusion, the programme’s new format required some creative
thinking from the new production team to keep it fresh. One proposal, that the
Doctor be given a regular archenemy to be Moriarty to his Sherlock, proved to
be ideal, and led to the creation of the Master and his first appearance in Terror of the Autons (1971). A sequel
to Spearhead from Space, the Nestenes make a second assault on the Earth, this
time aided by a Time Lord, who fled their home planet seeking not knowledge and
experience, as the Doctor did, but unlimited power. Roger Delgado, an
experienced character actor of Mediterranean descent and Cockney by birth,
landed the role of a lifetime as the Doctor’s new mortal enemy, combining wit,
charm and a deadly sense of danger to produce the definitive version of the
character in a story that plays like a live action comic strip. Five minutes
cannot pass without another colourful incident, action sequence or new threat,
and some of the visual gimmickry, such as a doll coming to life and strangling
a man, policemen being revealed as faceless automata or a man being found dead
in his own lunchbox, have passed into Doctor Who lore.
Not all of the Doctor’s encounters with his own people have
been so threatening. Undertaking a mission for the White Guardian, the fourth
Doctor was given a junior Time Lady as his new travelling companion, and he and
Romana soon struck up a rapport. When Mary Tamm decided to leave after a year,
Romana regenerated and turned into Lalla Ward, who proved the perfect foil for
the whimsical humour and pin-sharp intelligence of Tom Baker’s Doctor.
Their signature story is undoubtedly City of Death (1979), where a holiday
in present-day Paris leads to the theft of the Mona Lisa, a prototype time
machine and a plan by a shady aristocrat that could erase the last few million
years’ of Earth history. Largely written by Douglas Adams after the original
writer was forced to drop out, this is one of the pinnacles of the series, if
not the pinnacle. An intelligent yet hilarious script, gorgeous location filming
around the French capital, the romantic sweep of Dudley Simpson’s music and the
warmth of the performances, especially Julian Glover who, as Count Scarlioni,
relishes every Bondian quip, combine to make a programme of pure delight. Watching
it now, it’s not hard to see in the chemistry between Baker and Ward the seeds
that lead to their marriage, less than two years later.
Appearances by the Master had abruptly ceased later in Jon
Pertwee’s tenure, enforced by the tragic death of Roger Delgado in a car
accident, but the character was revived at the end of Tom Baker’s term, now
played by Anthony Ainley. He faced Peter Davison’s fifth Doctor several times,
but the key story to watch is The Caves
of Androzani (1984). Ainley appears only briefly and does not heavily
impact the story, but the production is marvel to behold all the same. A casual
visit to a desert planet and an idle exploration of some rock formations lead
the Doctor and his friend Peri into the heart of a civil war. Before long they
are wanted by both sides, and simply getting off the planet alive may be too much
to hope for. A rich, innovative story, this throws the fifth Doctor’s gentler
and more compassionate persona into sharp relief, pitting him against an
unsympathetic army chief on one side and a psychotic on the other, the latter
perpetuating a war over a life-extending drug solely as an act of revenge.
Armed with a revolutionary directing style, Graeme Harper would be the only
director to work on both the classic and modern series, but again the
supporting performances are key, with Christopher Gable as the masked and
damaged Sharaz Jek slowly turning from deranged warlord into tragic antihero in
a role earmarked for David Bowie. The Caves of Androzani is regarded by many as
the greatest story from Doctor Who’s long history, and I count myself among
that group.
The 1986 season, Colin Baker’s second and ultimately last,
was structured as a single 14-part story, divided further into four
instalments. The sixth Doctor has been summoned by his own people to answer for
his actions, and in first four episodes of The
Trial of a Time Lord, subtitled The
Mysterious Planet, evidence is presented in flashback of a visit to the
planet Ravolox, which hides a dark secret in the tunnels of an underground
society, whose inhabitants believe the surface to be uninhabitable. In the
courtroom, the Doctor questions where Peri has gone and suspects that all is not
as he is being told. A last throw of the dice to keep the series on the air,
after it was suddenly cancelled a year earlier and only kept in production
after the press and public voiced their anger, this needed to be spectacular to
keep Doctor Who alive. Instead, there is an intriguing story that, while
involving, fails to operate on the level of compulsive viewing that would have
restored the series’ fortunes. Even so, there is much to enjoy in the
staggering opening shot, the off-kilter, enigmatic tone and strong performances
by from the likes of Michael Jayston as the Valeyard, the Doctor’s black-robed prosecutor.
Of course, Doctor Who did stay on air, but after three years
of fighting against Coronation Street in a midweek slot, the series came to an end.
The reasons for this are many and varied, but consolation can be taken from the
final story broadcast in the classic run, the appropriately-titled Survival (1989). It mirrors the opening
episodes, with the Doctor, having once abducted a pair of Londoners now
bringing a missing Londoner home, with teenage delinquent Ace returning to her
Perivale stamping grounds to find many of her friends having vanished. The
Doctor’s interest is piqued by the local wildlife, and finds that a quiet
suburb on a Sunday afternoon has become a hunting ground for the Cheetah
People, who have fallen under the spell of a familiar face. Anthony Ainley
returned to Doctor Who after a three-year absence for the story, offering a
quieter version of his more theatrical version of the Master. This matches him
perfectly against Sylvester McCoy’s seventh Doctor, turning their only
on-screen encounter into a memorable battle of wills. The story, riddled with
symbolism and thoughtful dialogue, packs a huge amount into only three
episodes, and is fitting that the series should have ended with such a tale of
facing one’s past and looking to the future.
Speculation that Doctor Who could return featured on tabloid
pages for much of the 1990s, but this eventually came to fruition when, after
years in development, a television movie was produced with the intention of
launching Doctor Who on American television. Bearing no episode title of its
own and titled on DVD simply Doctor Who:
The Movie (1996), it begins with the seventh Doctor taking the Master’s
remains home, little knowing that death
can do little to slow him down. The TARDIS crashes on New Year’s Eve, 1999 in
San Francisco, and with the wounded Doctor regenerating into his eighth
incarnation and the Master possessing the body of an unfortunate paramedic, the
two Time Lords are set to battle to the death, while Earth may not live to see
the 21st century. Despite certain Americanisms seeping in, the
project remains true to the programme’s origin, the key being Paul McGann’s
performance as the dashing, Romantic eighth Doctor in his only onscreen
appearance until 2013. Able to flit from childish delight at a new pair of
shoes to doomladen prophecy of the planet’s imminent fate, McGann proved the
perfect choice for the part. Eric Roberts lays on the camp somewhat, as the
Master becomes more animalistic than ever, but the lush direction, endearing
dialogue and staggering production design – the TARDIS control room has never
looked as good – create something special, even if the hoped-for series failed
to materialise.
Next time: Best friends and arch-enemies!
Series Four and Specials (2008-10) starring David Tennant
and Catherine Tate
Elements introduced:
the Sontarans, Davros
I’ve not said much so far about the Doctor’s travelling companions,
because I thought it was giving them a run of their own. As mentioned before,
the first people to barge their way into the Doctor’s life were Ian Chesterton
and Barbara Wright, teachers at a present-day London. Acting as viewpoint
characters for the audience and conduits for the series’ twin educational targets
of science and history, they eventually formed a close bond with the Doctor and
his granddaughter, finding equal footing with the series’ title character.
Barbara’s key story is The Aztecs
(1964), in which the TARDIS lands inside a tomb of a priest, and on emerging
through a one-way door built to allow the spirit to depart, Barbara is hailed
as the reincarnation of the powerful Yetaxa. With her new-found influence, she
determines to do something the Doctor has expressly forbidden – end the Aztecs’
human sacrifices and save their civilisation from destruction. The most
theatrical of stories, based on a few simple sets and largely dialogue-based,
it’s also one of the most adult, offering a detailed and carefully-researched
study of a lost world as Barbara fights suspicion from others regarding her
true identity , knowing that Cortez is only over the horizon. Strong storylines
for all the regulars, including a romance for the Doctor and a fight to the
death for Ian, show the series’ strengths even with the limited resources of
the early 1960s.
The second Doctor’s longest-lasting companion was Jamie
McCrimmon, a young 18th century piper and survivor the battle of
Culloden, who appeared in all but the first of Patrick Troughton’s stories. He
and Frazer Hines developed a great on-screen chemistry that they also shared
with co-stars including Wendy Padbury as Zoe Heriot, a mid-21st
century child prodigy now in her late teens. The trio’s first full adventure
together, The Dominators (1968), is
a fine showcase for all three, as they land on a supposedly peace-loving planet
to find brutal warlike aliens plotting to exploit it for their own ends.
Jamie’s resourcefulness and courage in fighting the eponymous villains and
their robotic Quarks is matched by Zoe’s scientific knowhow and logical
reasoning, while the most comical and anarchic Doctor himself finds his
counterparts in the glum, humourless and aggressive Dominators.
The best-known and most popular of the classic series
companions is Sarah Jane Smith. A tough, no-nonsense journalist who refusing to
let herself be pushed around, her first appearance in The Time Warrior (1973-4) throws her straight in at the deep end.
The Doctor, investigating a series of disappearances in the scientific
community, follows a trail back to the Middle Ages and an alien stranded in
Wessex, unaware that a nosy reporter has stowed away and is convinced she’s in
some sort of Robin Hood theme park. Sarah Jane shows impressive skill in
adapting to time travel, and by the end of the story is helping to break a
castle siege as bandits led by a rogue Sontaran storm the battlements. Linx,
the castaway spaceman, is a superbly unpleasant creation, and his relationship
with robber baron Irongron and his slow-witted sidekick Bloodaxe show off
writer Robert Holmes ear for comedy.
Sarah Jane stayed with the Doctor after he regenerated into
his fourth incarnation, and they were joined by Harry Sullivan, a good-hearted
if old-fashioned Navy doctor on attachment to UNIT. In their most popular
adventure, they are hijacked by the Time Lords and dropped on a desolate planet
ripped apart by a millennium of war. As the conflict between two civilisations
reaches its endgame, they are given a simple task – to avert the Genesis of the Daleks (1975). For the
first time, the Doctor encounters the brilliant mind behind his most monstrous
enemies, as he ventures into the underground bunker used by the Kaled
scientific elite and their leader, the crippled psychopath Davros. Michael
Wisher is outstanding as the Daleks’ creator, with even a prosthetic mask and
the use of a single arm failing to limit his mesmerising performance. Nazi
parallels abound, with the ill-fated Kaleds based on the SS and Davros being a
twisted merger of Hitler and Mengele. Suffice to say, the Doctor fails to
prevent the Daleks’ birth, but in discovering the truth of their origins and
pondering the good the creatures achieve despite themselves, it remains a kind
of victory.
After a long break, the Cybermen returned to Doctor Who in Earthshock (1982), sporting an
impressive redesign that brought them out of the wetsuits of the 1960s and into
state-of-the-art pressure suits of modern-day fighter pilots. The story,
influenced by Alien, sees the silver giants planning to attack Earth in the 26th
century, and the Doctor joins with a group of marines and the crew of a freighter
to stop them. Early in the fifth Doctor’s tenure, the TARDIS was beginning to
be a little cramped, with Australian air hostess Tegan Jovanka, alien princess
and biochemist Nyssa and petulant teenage mathematician Adric all sharing
space. With only so much story to go around, one would have to leave, but there
would be few companion departures as memorable as this action-packed thriller.
With past monsters becoming a common sight in the series by
the mid-1980s, it was inevitable that the Sontarans would return, and they do
so in style in The Two Doctors (1985).
Following two parallel stories, featuring on the one hand a returning second
Doctor and Jamie and on the other the sixth Doctor and Californian college
student Peri Brown, it follows attempts by the Sontarans to develop a time
machine of their own for use in one of their endless wars. Having stolen the
research, the clone warriors, a brilliant scientist in their pay and two
collaborating aliens with deep stomachs, they repair to a quiet location on a
backwater planet – near a city called Seville. Filmed on location in Spain, and
with entertainingly sparky chemistry between Baker and Troughton, this is great
fun for those with strong stomachs. The series was going through a phase of
body horror, so the sight of bloodied corpses, severed legs and one character
eating a live rat may be a little too flavoursome.
For the 25th anniversary season, it was only
natural that the Daleks would return, and in Remembrance of the Daleks (1988) they launch their most ambitious
plan yet – securing a Time Lord superweapon that would give them mastery of the
cosmos. Except only the Doctor knows the weapon is in a graveyard in London in
1963 – just where he left it, a long time ago. After several series of
budget-tightened adventure, this was a return of action to the series, with the
military engaging slick new Daleks on the streets of Shoreditch, surprising
hints about the distant past of the Time Lords being dropped and the Daleks’
Emperor making a special appearance. The seventh Doctor is now accompanied by
Ace, a teenage explosives enthusiast and general delinquent from West London.
Inarguably the template for companions in the modern series, she comes from a
mundane background, has a strained relationship with her mother, and in this
story embarks on a first, ill-fated romance. Sophie Aldred is terrific in the
role, and remains for many the best of the Doctor’s travelling companions.
Next time: myths and legends!
Series Five (2010) starring Matt Smith and Karen Gillan
Elements introduced:
the Silurians
One of the major themes of this series is the legend of the
Doctor, and this combines neatly with the more fairy-tale tone of the new
production. One of the key early stories to establish the Doctor’s reputation
is The Dalek Invasion of Earth
(1964), the first rematch between the Time Lord and his arch enemies. Having
landed in the ruins of London 200 years from now, the TARDIS travellers find
that the Daleks have taken over, enslaving humanity and enacting a monstrous
plan that could endanger the entire galaxy. It is almost the first time that
the Doctor consciously steps up and stands again the forces of evil, completing
the evolution of the character over the series’ first season from selfish
hermit to selfless hero.
Doctor Who has rarely moved into pure fantasy, but on the
occasions when such digressions have been attempted, the series goes all in. The Mind Robber (1968) throws both the
characters and the audience in at the deep end, when the TARDIS is pulled out
of time and space altogether before exploding, with the second Doctor, Jamie
and Zoe finding themselves in a strange realm where fictional characters are
real, the story of your life is written before you live it and where being trapped
in the pages of a book can last forever. A remarkable feat of imagination,
especially given the resources available, it is one of Troughton’s most
entertaining stories. Production itself was famously troubled. An extra episode
was produced and tagged onto the front of the story to fill a gap in the schedule,
but no extra money was available for sets, props or actors. The result, the
closest Doctor Who has come to a Lynchian nightmare, remains deeply unsettling.
Earth’s legends are littered with stories of monsters from
under the ground, and one could imagine that in the world of the series, many
of these could be traced back to ancient history and stories of The Silurians (1970). Another wildly
ambitious story with a killer premise, it sees the Doctor investigating strange
goings-on at an underground nuclear research station. Strange figures stalk the
caves nearby, survivors of a people older than man can imagine – and they want
their planet back. An intelligent, thoughtful story that offers no easy answers
to its moral conundrums, it offers one of the most downbeat endings of the
series’ history. There is still no lack of pleasures, however, especially the
performance of Peter Miles (also seen as Davros’s right-hand man in Genesis of
the Daleks) as the increasingly unhinged head of the facility, who gets one of
the best death scenes I can remember.
Other myths on Earth tell of powerful beings descending from
the skies to walk among us. A popular theory in the early 1970s, Doctor Who
revisited it a number of times, but never as brilliantly as in Pyramids of Mars (1975). The Doctor
attempts to return Sarah Jane to UNIT headquarters, but while finding the right
spot is still more than half a century out. Emerging into a country house in
1911, they find packing crates from Cairo and a surly foreigner treating the
house as his own, while the missing owner’s brother tells them of a lost archaeological
dig and the strange radio signals he is receiving from Mars. A being of
phenomenal power and infinite evil is awakening, but chance does the Doctor
have to defeat a god? A tribute to the mummy movies of generations past, with
moody, atmospheric direction and some superb dialogue, this story is capped off
with Gabriel Woolf’s performance as Sutekh, the ancient Egyptian god of death. Masked
and immobile for most of the story, he manages to project a frightening
character with his whispering voice alone, making him one of the most memorable
villains of the series.
Few monsters in Doctor Who truly defeated for ever, and the
Mara is definitely one of those. A sequel to the previous season’s Kinda, Snakedance (1983) sees the Doctor and
his friends land on the creature’s home world, a bustling medieval society
about to celebrate the anniversary of the Mara’s banishment. But could it still
be lurking, in the dark corners of the mind? And can the Doctor convince people
that it is returning before it wreaks havoc across the world? Boasting one of
Martin Clunes’ first television performances, this like its predecessor looks
more towards the spiritual rather than the scientific, with the mind’s capacity
for quietness and simplicity being perhaps its greatest defence.
The story of The
Trial of a Time Lord continues in Mindwarp
(1986), where the next stage of the evidence against the Doctor is his most
recent adventure. Following a trial of gunrunners, the Doctor and Peri find
themselves again in the company of Vengeance on Varos’s Sil, as his superior
undergoes a new form of surgery that could extend his life indefinitely. But in
the courtroom, the Doctor struggles to remember events as they are portrayed,
and soon things spiral beyond even his control. Featuring Brian Blessed in one
of his loudest supporting roles, this is something of a curate’s egg. Some
strong acting and production work combines with a muddled, unclear script, but
the twist ending pushes the series in a new direction, raising the stakes in
the trial and showing the most brash and outspoken Doctor that everything has a
consequence.
Some myths have always existed. Stories of creatures that
drain the blood from the living. Tales of playing games against Death itself.
Legends that tell of the end of the world. The
Curse of Fenric (1989) brings all of these together in one of the most
layered stories of the series’ history. The Doctor and Ace land at a Royal Navy
signal camp in WWII, apparently to see the first of the modern computers as it
is used to decode Nazi ciphers. The base has another, far more sinister purpose,
however, and as ancient Viking runes carve themselves into the wall of a nearby
church, Russian commandos land on the beach and a black fog starts to creep
across the waters, the final endgame in a contest stretching back a thousand
years is about to be played. Shot entirely on location and filled with action,
horror, terrific performances from Sophie Aldred and guest star Nicholas
Parsons as a priest whose faith is crumbling, and a superb score by Mark Ayres,
this could be the highlight of 1980s Doctor Who.
Next time: the phantom!
Series Six (2011) starring Matt Smith, Karen Gillan and
Arthur Darvill
Elements introduced:
the Cybermats
A key theme this series is the notion of the Phantom – that
spectre of the future, of death or of inescapable change. It reappears
constantly, in the form of the Doctor’s foreshadowed murder, the future version
of Amy, her “ghost” in the form of the Flesh walking around in her image, and
of course River Song herself, a symbol of the Doctor’s own future. For a
science-fiction series like Doctor Who, the idea of being haunted by one’s own
future is a potent one.
It could be said that this was first sighted in The Tenth Planet (1966), William
Hartnell’s final story as the first Doctor. Landing at the South Pole 20 years
from now and finding a bustling space tracking station has been built under the
snow, the Doctor predicts that visitors are imminent. Far from being drawn by
reindeer, they are borne on a world equal and opposite to Earth, and seek the
assistance and resources of the planet for their own survival. Viewers would
not have seen these monstrous half-mechanical parodies of humanity before, but
they would fear them soon. They are called Cybermen. Hartnell’s health was in
poor shape at the time the story was recorded, so much so that he had to drop
out of the penultimate episode, necessitating hasty rewrites to cover his
absence, but there are moments when the fire that he brought to that crotchety
old man burn bright once again. The original Cybermen are a nightmare vision,
with cloth masks stretched over faces and human hands emerging from plastic
arms. The energy drain of the planet Mondas would ultimately prove too much for
the Doctor, as he collapses to the floor of the TARDIS, and his features blaze
with white light...
The Cybermen proved an immediate hit with audiences, and a
rematch was hastily arranged for the following year. The Moonbase (1967) would see another base under siege, this time a
weather control station on the surface of the Moon. With a strange plague
breaking out just as the Doctor and his friends arrive, they come under
suspicion until a familiar silver shape is glimpsed. The Phantom again is felt,
as a concussed Jamie is menaced by a Cyberman and almost abducted by them for
their own evil purposes, but his bleary-minded cries that the mythical “phantom
piper” has come to claim him ultimately save his life. A tight, sharply written
story with a plethora of engaging characters among the base’s multinational –
the leader being, of course, English – this is a true archetype of Doctor Who
adventures, and one that would provide a template in years to come.
Not all spectres are so malevolent. Some offer just a
guiding hand towards a melancholy future. The
Green Death (1973) was the end of an era for Doctor Who, both for the
production and for the Doctor himself. A controversial scheme by a chemical
company in South Wales attracts the attention of Jo Grant, who defies both the
Doctor and Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart to throw in her lot with Clifford
Jones, a Nobel Laureate and environmentalist that even she describes as
reminder her of a younger version of the Doctor. The three years Katy Manning
spent on the series as Jo saw the character gradually mature, and now finally
she strikes out on her own. The Doctor and UNIT join her when the activities of
Global Chemicals put first the region, then potentially the world in danger,
but it’s Jo’s story. The final scene is Doctor Who at its most bittersweet,
with the character’s celebrating not only their victory, but Jo and Cliff’s
engagement. But not the Doctor. He quietly puts down his wineglass, slinks away
without a word, and drives off framed against the setting sun.
It was a tall order facing the series in Tom Baker’s final
story. Two new companions had to be introduced, although one was returning from
the preceding serial, a new version of the Master was to be defined, and most
of all a threat had to be created that would be an appropriate send-off for the
Doctor’s most long-lived incarnation. Logopolis
(1981) solved the problem with a remarkable elegance, as the Doctor and
Adric, seeking to finally fix the TARDIS’s chameleon circuit, materialise
around a real police box, allowing them to take all the necessary measures to
take to the eponymous location, a colony of monk-like mathematicians. But that
innocent-looking police box on Barnet bypass is anything but, a pale indistinct
figure watches from a distance, a dark presence at the heart of the TARDIS burns
with hatred, and on Logopolis, a secret will be uncovered that could plunge the
universe into darkness... forever. A sombre, funereal tone pervades the story,
aided by Paddy Kingsland’s superb music and the spectral presence of Anthony Ainley
as the Master. With nothing less than all existence at stake, the fourth Doctor
departed on a high note.
The story’s immediate continuation, Castrovalva (1982), pushes the story further. Though the Master’s
scheme is foiled, a back-up plan for personal revenge quietly clicks into
place. With Adric missing and the new Doctor’s regeneration failing, Nyssa and
Tegan’s only chance to get him to the village of the title, a settlement on a
forest world devoid of the distraction that are preventing the Time Lord’s mind
from healing. But for the Master, traps with traps have been set, and this time
escape will be impossible. Gently paced like its predecessor, and with another
beautiful Kingsland score, this offers a superb puzzle for the viewer to
unscramble, just as the new Doctor tries to make sense of his new mind and
allow his new personality to emerge. A remarkably sophisticated story bears
multiple viewings to unpick the layers of thought, this is a treat for the
mind, as well as the eyes and ears.
Only two instalments remain of The Trial of a Time Lord, but as they number only six episodes
between them, both can be tackled together. Terror of the Vervoids (1986) sees the Doctor presenting evidence
for his defence from his own future, demonstrating the lives that he will save
if found innocent and allowed to continue his travels. An Agatha Christie-style
tale on an interstellar cruise ship sees a series of murders take place, people
masquerading as others and all manner of intrigue. In the hold, a series of
pods, the product of onboard experiments, are starting to germinate, but as the
court examines the evidence, the Doctor discovers it has been tampered with,
and that this may be an adventure he does not live to see. An engaging mystery
in the context of a Doctor Who adventure, the framed story is slight but
entertaining, and introduces a companion from the future in the form of fitness
fanatic Mel, played by Bonnie Langford.
The trial comes to its conclusion in The Ultimate Foe (1986). With charges against the Doctor stacking
up and his claims that evidence has been tampered with falling on deaf ears,
help comes from an unlikely source. With Mel and Sabalom Glitz (from “The
Mysterious Planet”) arriving to assist, the Doctor starts to unravel a conspiracy
of monstrous proportions, one which could set the Doctor against his own
people. Conceived in haste as production on Doctor Who barely held together,
this is a triumph against circumstance. Having barely started the first episode,
original writer Robert Holmes passed away. The creator of the Autons, Nestenes
and Sontarans, head writer for Tom Baker’s first three seasons and author of
“Terror of the Autons”, “Pyramids of Mars”, “The Talons of Weng-Chiang” and
“The Caves of Androzani”, he was much loved. The then-head writer Eric Saward
attempted to take over, but his efforts were rejected, leading to an
acrimonious split from the series. The finished episodes had to be drafted in
the presence of a lawyer to ensure that no details from previous versions were
used, but the polished production gives a lie to the troubles. A shift towards
grotesque Victoriana suits the final story well, as does the dream logic and
handsome location filming. The reveal of this story’s Phantom is a chilling
moment that still echoes in the series today.
With Doctor Who moving into a more lyrical mood towards the
end of the 1980s, a story such as Ghost
Light (1989) would not seem to fit in any other era. The seventh Doctor
takes Ace to a house in her home town in 1888, apparently as some kind of test.
But there is something odd about the household. Its owner emerges only at
night. A creature is being kept in a cellar. A policeman is comatose in the
drawing room. And an ancient entity is becoming curious about the world outside...
A work of incredible density, with several viewings required to fully absorb
the story, this was held up as the benchmark for the level of sophistication to
which Doctor Who could aspire during the long years off-air. Gorgeously
produced entirely in studio, with a witty script and charming performances,
this was the last story produced for the classic series. It went out at the
height of its powers.
Next time: the victory lap!
Series Seven (2012-3) starring Matt Smith, Karen Gillan,
Arthur Darvill and Jenna-Louise Coleman
Elements introduced:
the Great Intelligence, the Ice Warriors, the Zygons
The 50th anniversary special and the following
final episode featuring the eleventh Doctor saw him triumph over his past and
his own mistakes, so an overview of some of his greatest victories would be appropriate
for this final chapter. As seen in “An Unearthly Child” and “The Daleks”, the
first Doctor was a miserable, selfish old man when he first appeared, openly
suspicious and paranoid towards Ian and Barbara. This situation comes to a head
in The Edge of Destruction (1964),
the final story of Doctor Who’s original commission. Set entirely inside the
TARDIS and featuring only the regular cast, it sees the Ship crash during
transit. When the reluctant travelling companions wake up, their memories
return only slowly, and as concerns grow as to what or who stranded the ship
and strange events start to pile up, Susan suspects that something has got
inside. Not just inside the TARDIS, but inside one of its occupants. A superb
chamber piece and a masterclass in dramatic writing, with the tensions between
the characters forced to the surface as they face their apparently hopeless situation.
The climax would completely redefine the relationships between the characters
and massively alter the Doctor’s own worldview.
By the end of his tenure, he had changed from being a sneering
bigot to someone who sees it as his duty to seek out and fight the forces of
evil, and a template for the Doctor as heroic crusader appears in The War Machines (1966). Touching down
in present-day London, the Doctor senses something uncanny about the
newly-completed Post Office Tower, and his investigations – along with some
creativity with the truth regarding his credentials – lead him to discover it
to be the home of WOTAN, a supercomputer that will shortly link up with others
across the world. Little do its operators know that WOTAN has become
self-aware, and is already planning to improve mankind’s efficiency by taking
over the world. Effectively becoming a Terminator film on the streets of
Swinging mid-60s London, the story has a freshness and immediacy that’s as
entertaining and engaging today as in that golden World Cup summer of first broadcast.
The Doctor nervelessly facing down one of WOTAN’s eponymous robots shows how
far the character had come – from callous hermit to courageous hero.
The second Doctor was the first to encounter the Great
Intelligence, but while their original encounter is almost entirely absent from
the archives, its sequel from the following year is missing only one episode
following the recovery of film prints in Nigeria last year. The Web of Fear (1968) would set the
tone for Doctor Who’s future, with the time traveller fighting an alien in
tandem with the military, lead by Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart – here appearing
for the first time as a colonel. With the Intelligence’s previous plan to
escape the astral plane via a Tibetan monetary with the aid of robot Yeti, this
adventure moves the story on by decades. A Yeti has reactivated and escaped a
museum, and soon London is covered in a strange, deadly web. Towering creatures
patrol the Underground, and a tiny outpost of soldiers and scientists desperately
seek a solution as the noose around them tightens. One of the most thrillingly
atmospheric stories in the series’ history, thanks to direction from its master
of suspense, Douglas Camfield, and sets so authentic London Transport
complained about camera crews trespassing.
With the Master having plagued the Doctor and UNIT
throughout his first season on the series, it was inevitable that the finale
would bring the storyline to an appropriate close. The Dæmons (1971) features the Master attempting to pull off his
most audacious, yet vindictive plan to date – starting with a televised archaeological
dig, through the sealing off of a village by a heat barrier, to the possible
extinction of humanity, all for his own amusement. Drawing heavily on folklore
and then-popular theories regarding the origin of civilisation, this was a
product of its time in many ways, but the luscious location filming around the
Wiltshire countryside, Roger Delgado’s full-blooded performance and the sight
of the lads from UNIT able to let their hair down for once make this something
truly special. Even the cast and production team agreed, with many on both
sides of the camera naming it as their favourite story.
The appearance of the Zygons for the 50th
anniversary might have led some to think they were a perennial of the series,
but this could not be further from the truth. Their only previous appearance
was in Terror of the Zygons (1975)
at the start of Tom Baker’s second season. A farewell in some ways to the old
order, with the Brigadier making his last appearance for eight years as the
fourth Doctor takes his place as a wanderer in time and space over his
predecessor’s domesticity, this tells of the TARDIS being summoned to Scotland.
Oil rigs are being attacked, and debris seems to carry bite marks from a giant
creature. With some of the locals suspicious of investigations, the Doctor soon
finds that the presence of the Loch Ness Monster could spell disaster for the
world. A hugely entertaining story packed with charming detail, superb design
in the grotesque Zygons and their organic ship and script that balances horror
and humour (“You can’t’ rule the world in hiding – sometimes you have to go out
on the balcony and wave a tentacle”), it is easy to see why those peculiar
creatures made such an enduring impact.
A major celebration was arranged for the series 20th
anniversary, with all the Doctors to have united alongside a plethora of
companions to fight an army of monsters led by the Master. But plans changed,
scripts were reworked and actors grew concerned about returning too quickly to
the series. The resulting feature-length adventure The Five Doctors (1983) includes Tom Baker only by way of unused
footage from a story abandoned during production, but such as the story’s
complexity that his absence is hardly noticed. The fifth Doctor and his friends
are finally enjoying a peaceful holiday in the pastoral splendour of the Eye of
Orion when he feels something attacking his past. His previous incarnations are
being pulled out of time and placed in a forbidden arena to fight for the
ultimate prize. As old friends reunite and old enemies draw their plans against
them, someone is pulling the strings in a game with the highest stakes
imaginable. What could have been an overstuffed disaster with a huge cast and
an avalanche of cameos is in fact a highly enjoyable light-hearted adventure,
with everyone getting a moment in the sun and some moments to make a fans heart
sing, such as the third Doctor finally getting to face off against the Cybermen
or Lethbridge-Stewart, making up for all those rings the Master ran around him
with a blistering haymaker. As light as a soufflé but as filling as Black
Forest Gateau, this restates the series ethos in the most crowd-pleasing way.
There might have been little for Doctor Who to celebrate in
early spring of 1985, with the series set to vanish from screens shortly with
only vague assurances of its return, but Revelation
of the Daleks (1985) would ensure that it went out on a strong note. The
sixth Doctor and Peri travel to the cemetery world of Necros to pay their last
respects to an old friend, but this is little more than a lure. The facilities
of Tranquil Repose, a rest home for the recently deceased, have been
infiltrated by Davros, and he has found a way to make excellent use of his new
resources. Doctor Who’s blackest comedy, this compensates for its grim,
misanthropic tone with some excellent characters and performances, especially
Clive Swift as the vain and creepy “head of preparation” and Alexei Sayle as
the DJ entertaining the residents with a succession of on-air characters, all a
cover for his own shyness. Just as the axe hovered over the series, so
sometimes its luck paid off. Heavy snowfall the night before location filming
lent these scenes the perfect mood, neatly offsetting the harsh wit of the
dialogue and the horror of Davros’s plans.
With a new Doctor, new head writer and new focus, the series
felt hugely refreshed in the late 1980s, and the first true flowering of this
approach was felt in Delta and the
Bannermen (1987). The seventh Doctor and Mel win a time-travelling trip to
Disneyland in the 1950s with a group of shape-shifting aliens, but a collision
with a prototype satellite forces the space bus down outside a Welsh holiday
camp. None of the visitors seems to mind – apart from one quiet young woman who
bought her ticket at the last minute, and who has trouble on her tail. Shot entirely
on location in South Wales and with a light comic tone, this could not be more
different from the series even two years earlier. A superb script gives the
Doctor time to ruminate on love as a local mechanic falls for the mysterious
Delta, and even Ken Dodd, perfectly cast in a cameo, adds to the cheery, upbeat
tone. A Doctor in South Wales, engaging in romantic entanglements to the sounds
of pop music while menace lurks around the corner – isn’t this where we came
in?
“Doctor Who is watched on several levels in the average
household. The youngest child might be peering at the screen from behind a
cushion, the next one up laughing at him, the oldest saying “Shh, I want to
listen!”, and the parents saying “Isn’t this enjoyable!” – Tom Baker.
