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Authoritative and Genteel

Review of the Third Doctor’s era

1970 – 1974
Spearhead from Space
Doctor Who and the Silurians
The Ambassadors of Death
Inferno		 Terror of the Autons
The Mind of Evil
The Claws of Axos
Colony in Space
The Dæmons		 Day of the Daleks
The Curse of Peladon
The Sea Devils
The Mutants
The Time Monster
The Three Doctors
Carnival of Monsters
Frontier in Space
Planet of the Daleks
The Green Death		 The Time Warrior
Invasion of the Dinosaurs
Death to the Daleks
The Monster of Peladon
Planet of the Spiders

The switch to Three brought in some big changes. Most noticeably, the episodes were now in color! However, there was also a distinct change in the personality of Three when compared to One and Two. First off, he was the first example of the Doctor as Action Hero. With his Venusian aikido (or Venusian karate, depending on the story), he was not averse to getting into hand-to-hand combat. He was also a fairly good with a blade, prompting one adversary to comment that he’d never seen “a finer swordsman.”

Another change was that for a significant portion of his tenure, Three was stuck on Earth – exiled here by the Time Lords, with his knowledge of the relevant technology blocked. Thus began his real, long-term relationship with UNIT. Usually he only helped because he decided the problem the Brigadier brought to him was interesting, but of course we never saw the instances that didn’t result in an adventure. And somehow, Earth always seemed to be under threat of invasion from someone.

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Still Raze-y After All These Years

Review of Colony in Space (#58)
DVD Release Date:  08 Nov 11
Original Air Date:  10 Apr – 15 May 1971
Doctor/Companion:  Three, Jo Grant
Stars:  Jon Pertwee, Katie Manning
Preceding Story:  The Claws of Axos (Three, Jo)
Succeeding Story:  The Dæmons (Three, Jo)

When the Doctor forcibly regenerated into Three, he was exiled to 20th Century Earth. While that made for some less expensive down-to-earth filming for about a series and a half, eventually he needed to get back out into the broadness of time and space to keep the show fresh and interesting. Thus begins the Time Lords’ co-option of the Doctor’s services for their own purposes.

Off the Doctor and Jo go, quite unwittingly, to just one more dystopian Earth-colony of the future where a mining company is prepared to raze the planet for its mineral wealth. Notably, despite having already had three adventures with Three, this is both the first time Jo has set foot inside the TARDIS and, resultantly, the first time she’s traveled with him away from her own planet or time. Unlike some Companions, she’s less than thrilled at first, though just like all of them, she’s thrown right into Yet Another Fine Mess.

This story is from Season 8 – the one in which every single story involved the Master – so the only surprise is that, barring passing mention by the Time Lords in episode 1, he doesn’t show up until episode 4 (of 6). When he does, though, it’s Delgado’s typical schmoov operator, complete with updated TARDIS defenses (and filing cabinets! what Time Lord would be without them?) and classic quotes (like “tried and true methods are best,” and “but of course that’s typical of the High Council of the Time Lords – know everything; do nothing”).

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Clownish and Clever

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Review of the Second Doctor’s era

1966 – 1969
The Power of the Daleks*
The Highlanders*
The Underwater Menace*
The Moonbase*
The Macra Terror*
The Faceless Ones*
The Evil of the Daleks*		 The Tomb of the Cybermen
The Abominable Snowmen*
The Ice Warriors*
The Enemy of the World*
The Web of Fear*
Fury from the Deep*
The Wheel in Space*		 The Dominators
The Mind Robber
The Invasion*
The Krotons
The Seeds of Death
The Space Pirates*
The War Games
*Partially or completely missing

When Patrick Troughton took up the role of the Doctor, he had a huge task ahead of him. Not only did he have to make the character his own (a challenge every actor since him has also faced), but he also had to convince the entire viewing audience that he was the same person. Had the gamble not worked – or had Troughton been less brilliant – our favorite show would have died an early death. Lucky for us all, Two was a wonderful Doctor.

Not much remains (since so many of these episodes were wiped and remain lost, presumably forever) of Two’s time on screen. However, the scripts and the audio recordings are still out there. Some wonderful reconstructions that at least get the general stories across are readily available (I highly recommend the BBC’s photonovels). One of the quirky characteristics of Two that has been lost in the æther is his frequent use of his recorder, which seems to diminish with time, just as the percentage of extant episodes increases.

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Irascible and Avuncular

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Review of the First Doctor’s era

1963 – 1966
An Unearthly Child
The Daleks
The Edge of Destruction
Marco Polo*
The Keys of Marinus
The Aztecs
The Sensorites
The Reign of Terror*		 Planet of Giants
The Dalek Invasion of Earth
The Rescue
The Romans
The Web Planet
The Crusade*
The Space Museum
The Chase
The Time Meddler		 Galaxy 4*
Mission to the Unknown*
The Myth Makers*
The Daleks’ Master Plan*
The Massacre*
The Ark
The Celestial Toymaker*
The Gunfighters
The Savages*
The War Machines		 The Smugglers*
The Tenth Planet*
*Partially or completely missing

I think a lot of neowhovians dismiss the First Doctor as a rather grumpy ol’ cuss, and to a certain extent that’s a valid characterization – certainly it is if all you’ve ever seen is the first episode of An Unearthly Child. But there’s a lot more to One than meets the casual eye. Among other things, there’s a lot of character development in the first three years, if you bother to look for it.

Clearly, the beginning of Doctor Who is an era in which the show is still getting its feet under it, finding and defining the Doctor’s character. If you take a look at the concept notes or background notes, you’ll notice that from the beginning, it was not the Doctor who was the main character (despite the title of the show) – it was Ian! The structure of the early stories make complete sense once one has that little fact in mind. The Doctor was there as little more than plot device at this stage.

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Conceptual Gumbo – Just Add Salt

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Review of The Talons of Weng-Chiang: SE (#91)

DVD Release Date:  11 Oct 11
Original Air Date:  26 Feb – 02 Apr 1977
Doctor/Companion:  Four, Leela
Stars:  Tom Baker, Louise Jameson
Preceding Story:  The Robots of Death (Four, Leela)
Succeeding Story:  Horror of Fang Rock (Four, Leela)

This release is unusual for me in that it involves a story I’d already watched (albeit only once). It was interesting to go through it again with not only much more experience of the Whoniverse but also a memory of both the storyline and my initial reactions. With a bit more perspective, I came away with a new appreciation for Talons and an understanding of the fondness so many Long Term Fans have for it.

For anyone new to the story, let me just throw out the one thing that really bothered me on first viewing: the main Chinese character (Li H’sen Chang) is played by a (Caucasian) British actor (John Bennett). That and the fact that the titular deity (who was, by the by, actually a god of culture and literature) was pronounced “weng chai-ang” – like a coffeehouse drink – rather than a more nearly correct “wen ch[ah]ng” – with an [ah] as in “father” – very much rubbed me the wrong way when I first saw Talons three or so years ago. This time, I was able to take it all with a grain of salt, and let me tell you – it was much more palatable this time.

The story is pretty much a love letter to Victorian-era literature. It has elements of Sherlock Holmes, Pygmalion (or My Fair Lady, if you prefer the musical version), Phantom of the Opera, and various Fu Manchu stories that fed into the stereotype of the Limehouse (Chinatown) area of Victorian London, not to mention a bit of Jack the Ripper. Taken as a nod to all these rolled into one, it’s quite charming.

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Much Ado About Nothing

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Review of The Wedding of River Song
Warning:  This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2011 BBC

While I will admit that I rather enjoyed (most of) the Series Six finale, and there were plenty of moments that felt epic, when you stop and think about it for a while, not much really got resolved. Moffat is a master at smoke-and-mirrors scriptwriting, like last year when the universe got “rebooted,” yet we didn’t learn anything about why the TARDIS blew up in the first place. In fact, we still don’t know the answer to that particular little puzzle.

Now we do have the answers to a couple of big questions: no, the Doctor didn’t really die on that beach (was anyone surprised by that?); and yes, River Song is his wife. Sort of. Actually, that wasn’t clearly answered, either, thank-you-very-much. I can’t imagine the Doctor actually taking that kind of thing seriously (especially since it was clearly used as a device to gain River’s cooperation). Perhaps that’s why they did a handfasting ceremony instead of an actual wedding. Are they really “married”? How binding/lasting is a handfast marriage? How did the Time Lords (does the Doctor) view such an interpersonal contract? Frankly, I was terribly disappointed to see these two get “married”; not only does it go counter to how I think of the Doctor, but it made River’s story overly predictable (“Of course she’s the Doctor’s wife! What else could she possibly be to him?” Yuck.). My own personal canon will look on this as a non-binding contract-of-convenience, and leave it at that.

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“Closing” in on the Reveal

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Review of Closing Time
Warning:  This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

On the surface, Closing Time is a light-hearted, family-oriented romp leading us into the series finale. I, for one, don’t believe it. I think it’s highly unlikely that the production team would use something so utterly fluffy to head into the final stretch of the series, especially with all the portents of doom we’ve been getting since The Impossible Astronaut aired back in April.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2011 BBC

It doesn’t even take very thorough digging to see there’s way more than the top-layer story here. The whole thing is very “meta.” Here are just a few examples of how it references previous episodes:

  • Opening: much like Rose, the shop girls close up, then find danger in a dark part of the shop.
  • The Doctor visiting Craig: “Doctor’s Reward,” anyone?
  • Another baby: could there be any more babies (or kids) in this series? (Will the Doctor’s cot reappear next week, or next series?)
  • “Stop noticing; just go”: did he learn nothing from Bowie Base One?
  • “You always win! You always survive!”: Obviously, this references the fans’ view of the Doctor. The lovely, not-quite-weepy expression of the Doctor’s reaction is supposed to help convince us that’s not going to happen again this time. (Sorry, Mr. Moffat; protest all you like, but no one’s buying it.)
  • “He needs someone”: Donna told him so. But did he listen? Noooooo. And where did it get him? Hello, Eleven!
  • “Oh, please. Just give me this.”: Seems we’ve heard this somewhere before…
  • Impossible Astronaut continuity: he nicks the blue envelopes from Sophie and gets a Stetson from Craig.
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Labyrinthine Clues

Review of The God Complex
Warning:  This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

Perhaps it’s the fact that it was originally intended to be part of Series 5 instead of Series 6, but for some reason The God Complex has had a whole lot of hype. All sorts of superlatives were used, and somehow it was supposed to be something to which we all really looked forward. Having seen it, I can’t say that I didn’t enjoy the episode, but it certainly wasn’t All That. To begin, there were some important ways in which it was quite derivative.

It's OK; we're nice!
Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2011 BBC

I had really mixed feelings, for example, about Rita. Overall, I loved her (nearly as much as the Doctor did), but you really know from the get-go that we’re not taking on a new Companion (even if poor Amy doesn’t when the Doctor pretends to “fire” her). Which, of course, means she’s another Astrid Peth – perfect Companion material doomed to die heroically/horribly. Personally, I’d rather not invest emotional capital where the investment is sure to fail. That makes it hard to engage as fully in the episode as it might deserve.

More blatantly, though, it takes a page straight out of The Curse of Fenric. The climactic scene with Amy is a perfect rehash of how the Doctor has to ruin poor Ace’s faith in him in the earlier story, and for effectively the same reason (though it’s actually done much more gently here). Although I do like the way it sort of references the previous episode by turning Amy Pond: the Girl Who Waited into Amy Williams: the Girl Who Stopped Waiting, there’s no hiding the fact that the major plot point came straight out of Fenric.

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Like Night and Day

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Review of Day of the Daleks (#60)
DVD Release Date:  13 Sep 11
Original Air Date:  01 – 22 Jan 1972
Doctor/Companion:  Three, Jo Grant
Stars:  Jon Pertwee, Katy Manning
Preceding Story:  The Dæmons (Three, Jo)
Succeeding Story:  The Curse of Peladon (Three, Jo)

To start Three’s third season, the production team was looking for some sort of hook to draw in viewers. The resulting story became the first of Three’s encounters with the Daleks, who returned after a nearly five-year absence (about half the show’s run, at that point). The viewing public loved it (more than 10 million people watched), and yet it’s often had a bad rap since for its less-than-stellar execution. Enter the DVD era.

If ever there was an embodiment of a fan’s obsessive love for this show, it’s the Special Edition of Day of the Daleks. Aside from a plethora of good extras, there’s an entirely separate version of the story to watch, with updated effects and even new footage spliced seamlessly into the original material (SE). Unless you’re the type of person who really enjoys the ambience and historical context of bad production values, I really recommend starting with the SE (disk 2). However, if you don’t watch any of the original (disk 1), you’ll never appreciate just how much it has been improved (I recommend episodes 2 and 4 for comparison, or just episode 4, if you want to whittle it down to the bare minimum).

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Kicking Ass and Waiting Games

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Review of The Girl Who Waited
Warning:  This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2011 BBC

With a few jarring-moment exceptions, I was able to enjoy this episode as it was intended – an emotional look into Amy’s character and into her relationship with Rory (again). It starts out very contrived, with Amy and Rory both breaking Rule Number Whatever: Don’t Wander Off and making some dumb moves (e.g., telling Amy to “push the button” instead of specifying, or not asking Rory in return, “which one, idiot?”). Then we get the somewhat ridiculous excuse to strand the Doctor in the TARDIS (“Germ 7” is loose, and only affects two-hearted species? That’s the best you’ve got?) so that they can shoot Doctor and Companion material separately a la “The Lodger” (they even go so far as to have a TARDIS-to-planet comm link in the same way).

Once the crew officially splits up, though (and why is Amy so sanguine about letting them fly off to “rescue” her, knowing the vagaries of the TARDIS?), everything steps up a notch. Along with the handbots becoming increasingly creepy and unintentionally (on their part) threatening, we get a few humorous moments as Amy gets oriented (like the available ride “authentically modeled on the famous Warp Speed Death Ride at Disneyland-Clom“), and the beautiful scenery of the Gardens to ease us into the main story.

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