MY 50 FAVORITE CLASSIC DOCTOR WHO STORIES
For most of my life, this is a list that I have been unofficially preparing for. I do not remember what age I was or even what the first Doctor Who program that I saw was, (my recollection bounces between Horror of Fang Rock or Meglos, as well as me being between ten and twelve years old), but this program has been a hallmark for me ever since. A cousin of mine introduced it to me way back when, starting me with the Tom Baker era as one should. It took a lifetime of sporadically jumping back in and picking up more stories in physical media form, as well as watching old PBS recorded video tapes, (showing my age), or whatnot, depending on how difficult, out of print, or expensive actual copies of these stories were to obtain. Thankfully, most of them are available now and we even have unearthed stories that were previously wiped yet have now emerged in the last decade or so, meaning that there is more classic Doctor Who at our disposal than ever.
"Classic" Doctor Who of course meaning the show's original run from 1963 to 1989, comprised of seven different incarnations of the title character, played by as many actors. I briefly investigated the relaunch with Christopher Eccleston when it initially aired, but I bounced off quickly as it was a different program in every possible detail besides having the consistent concept of the Doctor being a Time Lord who flies around space and time with various companions in a faulty TARDIS that is stuck in police box form. Maybe someday I will join the 21st century and dive into the show's current incarnation to see what I have missed, but for right now, let us talk about the program's OG run shall we?
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| Some day Mr. Tennant. I hear that you have done quality work. |
As previously stated, I was indoctrinated on Doctor Who through Tom Baker's run. Hardly a controversial statement to proclaim him as my favorite of the Doctors since he has endured as the most popular and recognizable amongst all of them, (old and contemporary eras combined), let alone the fact that Baker held the titular position longer than any other actor and ergo has the most material to partake of. It will become increasingly obvious upon viewing my list here that the Baker years hilariously dominate the proceedings. I almost went ahead and just ranked his period, but that would leave out too much other excellent stuff from the other Doctors. Even the other Baker, Colin. Poor Colin Baker. Seriously, it is not his fault.
When it comes to what classic Who stories to include since many from William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton are incomplete or altogether lost, I made myself a simple rule. I did not put any reconstructions that utilize stills and existing audio, nor did I put any fully or largely animated episodes. I feel that it is unfair to rank those on the same merits as the serials that can be viewed in their completed or nearly completed format, embarrassing special effects, fumbled line readings, and soap opera aesthetics and all. There are plenty of lists out there where people threw in a Shada or a The Evil of the Daleks, but as enjoyable as those restorations may be, I left well enough alone and focused instead on everything else. So without any more dilly-dallying, here is what a Doctor Who fan in his forties likes best from the old stuff...
50. The Greatest Show in the Galaxy (1988)Season Twenty-Five
Sylvester McCoy's three season run as the Doctor was far from exemplary, continuing the diminishing returns trajectory of Colin Baker's even briefer stint before him. That said and like Baker's spell, there were the occasional stand-out, and
The Greatest Show in the Galaxy gets by largely on its singularity. McCoy's Doctor was more mischievous than his predecessors, which naturally allowed for some bizarre stories such as this one. The script here by Stephen Wyatt, (one of two that he did for the program, the former season's
Paradise Towers being the other), has a big top Psychic Circus in the middle of a desert on planet Segonax, which beckons in certain patrons to inevitably participate in the entertainment, all of which is proven to be for the Gods of Ragnarok who kill anyone whose antics do not appease them. McCoy gets to juggle and distract these Gods with some parlor tricks while their Roman arena-like base gets destroyed by Ace kicking a corpse into an energy well, (it's a whole thing), but the story works due to the unpredictable way in which it plays out. Even something as embarrassing as a raping ringleader, (I guess simply because the actor portraying him is African-American Ricco Ross, sigh), only mildly gets in the way. Also, Ian Reddington's
Chief Clown is one in a long-standing tradition of creepy ones to grace the screen.
(1965)
Season Two
Made on the cheap, (even by Doctor Who standards), to compensate for the previous Dalek story The Chase running over-budget, The Time Meddler is therefor a surprising stand-out that is notable for introducing us to the first Time Lord besides the Doctor. The character of the Monk is not addressed as such, (Time Lords would not get their name until the Patrick Troughton closer The War Games four years later), but we do venture inside of his TARDIS, which the Doctor sabotages in order to thwart the Monk's time meddling ways. Arriving in eleventh century Northumbria just before the Battle of Stamford Bridge was to take place, the Doctor, Vicki, and new muscle man companion Steven play back-and-forth catch-up with each other throughout most of the episodes, coming into contact with broadly drawn peasants and vikings while Peter Butterworth's mischievous title character does mischievous title character things. Butterworth and Hartnell eventually square-off and have some fun adversary chemistry with each other, and frequent director Douglas Camfield makes the most out of the tight shooting schedule, getting just enough mileage out of Dennis Spooner's script to make it a snappy four-parter.
(1989)
Season Twenty-Six
For Doctor Who's penultimate story from its original run, the series dipped its toes back into bold-faced horror with The Curse of Fenric. This was the first time that the show worked within such a genre in nearly a decade, particularly utilizing vampire motifs which were only touched explicitly before in State of Decay from Tom Baker's final season. Shot entirely on location, (which unfortunately means shot on video, as was the program's procedure at the time for anything done outside of studio), it is set during World War II where we further explore the origins of companion Ace while running into some Lovecraftian Ancient ones, as well as human decedents from the future who just so happen to be blood-suckers. Writer Ian Briggs penned both this and the proceeding Dragonfire, and he incorporates Norse mythology, possession, a disguised gay character, and references to Dracula and werewolves, all with a historical backdrop that showcases many of the hardships that were faced by English citizens who were caught up in the war effort. Three different versions of the story have come to pass, (with altered special effects and re-edits depending on the viewer's tastes), but if one can look past the terrible SOV aesthetic, this represents a rare high mark during the show's generally unfavorable final years.
47. The Aztecs(1964)
Season One
Initially,
Doctor Who was structured so that it could balance between conventional science-fiction and fantasy while also doing historical stories that provided more educational value than simply rubber-suited monsters and alien threats. Along with the following season's
The Time Meddler which had an identical central theme,
The Aztecs remains the best of these historical entries, largely because both stories dealt explicitly with the potentially disastrous effects of time travel, where people could try to change past events due to their, (in this instance), well-intended interference. Barbara is mistaken as a goddess and utilizes the opportunity to try and convince fifteenth century Mexican culture to abandon their most deadly practice, human sacrifice. The Doctor vehemently warns against this, and the errors of Barbara's intentions are ultimately revealed, but we get a stand-out performance from Jacqueline Hill in the process, plus the Doctor gets a rare romantic interest in Margot Van der Burgh whom he becomes accidentally engaged to. Susan also receives such prearranged treatment, though she gets the usual little to do otherwise, and school teacher companion Ian proves to be better at fighting than a trained Aztec warrior. Figure that one out.
46. The Enemy of the World(1968)
Season Five
The best discovery from the 2013 Nigerian unearthing of previously lost
Doctor Who 16mm prints was season five's
The Enemy of the World, a story that proved to be a tour de force for Patrick Troughton. Besides the titular Doctor of course, Troughton also portrays the tale's villain Ramón Salamander, a Mexican philanthropist/conniving would-be dictator who murders his way to the top and has manipulated a stable of scientists to create natural disasters to further his stranglehold on an impoverished planet Earth. Troughton is in excellent form here and wisely never indulges in scenery-chewing as the megalomaniacal bad guy, instead donning a convincing-enough accent, working his prominent eyebrows, and playing the Doctor impersonating the dictator with subtle mannerisms that manage to fool everyone on screen at one point, not to mention any audience member who is not playing close enough attention. Though it is afflicted by a bloated six-part running time as many stories were from this era, there is enough agency to the plotting to keep things moving, plus Troughton's performance and the story's singularity help distinguish it from others in the series. Not historical, not sci-fi, just the Doctor battling wits against a threatening baddie, one that also happens to look exactly like him.
(1971)
Season Eight
For the first time during Jon Pertwee's run, the inside of the TARDIS is shown, be it a singularly designed one that would never make a future appearance. There is more to The Claws of Axos than that though, another solid entry in the Master-led season eight. This was the first serial to be authored by the team of Bob Baker and Dave Martin, and their script about a stranded alien race manipulating a moronic bureaucrat into distributing their "miracle" substance across the globe for hasty planetary conquest was wisely reduced from six parts to a brisk four. The Axons are actually trying to deplete the planet of its energy, nearly pulling it off until the Doctor traps them in a time loop which conveniently exorcises the Earth of all that seemingly precious Axonite. The Doctor is in top form here, smelling bullshit every step of the way and one-upping the usually devious Master by tricking him into fixing the TARDIS, just as equally interested on ending his Earth exile as he is in defeating the story's alien menace. Of course this does not work since the Doctor would not be allowed to roam freely again by the Time Lords until the following season's opener The Three Doctors, annoying proclaiming at the end that he must be "some kind of a galactic yo-yo" for always bouncing back to UNIT HQ every time that the TARDIS goes anywhere fun.
(1985)
Season Twenty-Two
Producer John Nathan-Turner continues his penchant for grotesqueness, mining old villains, and bringing back old Doctors in the aptly titled The Two Doctors, which sees Colin Baker and Patrick Troughton joining heads against both the Sontarans and a race of ravenous aliens who are mostly consumed with thoughts of how tasty all of the galaxy's meat would be if properly prepared. Being a vegetarian, Robert Holmes wrote it as a sly critique on carnivorous appetites, making the Androgums a nasty race that require extensive genetic meddling to shift their focus to anything besides gluttony. The Sontarans are shoehorned in there, finding a ghastly demise to go along with John Stratton's butcher who continually licks his lips at both Peri and returned companion Jamie while laying them on a table to be sliced up. The program had forgone its standard four episode formula by now, but this serves as a six-part equivalent, with much of the story shot on location in the Spanish countryside and the whole thing bouncing between three different concurrent plots before everyone finally locks horns. Seeing Troughton get turned into an Androgum so that he and Stratton can stuff their faces in a fine-dining establishment without having the money to pay for it is a hoot, both actors delivering memorable performances this late into their careers.
(1988)
Season Twenty-Five
Doctor Who was one to indulge in political allegory here or there, and season twenty-five's The Happiness Patrol remains a stand-out for fusing desperate elements into its 1984-esque scenario of an oppressive human colony on a distant planet. We have a society run by women who dress like live action Jem and the Holograms characters, (the 80s were a different time), lesser male officers in pink suits, the TARDIS also being painted pink, a rat-dog puppet, an underground race of humanoid goblins, a blues harmonica player, and of course Kandy Man; a robot made largely out of edible sweets. How this all manages to be a thinly-veiled leftist critique on Thatcherism is due to a deliberately silly script by Graeme Curry, (his only work on the program), which never takes itself seriously and allows for Sylvester McCoy to further establish his mysterious prankster version of the Doctor by being three steps ahead of everyone, sticking and then unsticking Kandy Man to the floor, leading a successful revolt, and even singing "As Time Goes By" before cackling wildly as not to get arrested by the patrol of the title who is strictly instructed to enforce glee above all else.
(1982)
Season Nineteen
Plot holes and loose logic aside, the penultimate story Earthshock from the Fifth Doctor's first season is notable for a number of reasons. Producer John-Nathan Turner insisted on keeping the inclusion of the Cybermen a tight-lipped secret, so their cliffhanger appearance in the first episode easily ranks as one of the show's most memorable. Also, this was the only time that a Doctor Who companion was killed off, and it could not have happened to a more loathed chap as Adric has hardly endured as the series' most beloved sidekick. The fact that the story makes his demise a tear-jerkier is miraculous then, plus it is also plausible since Adric was successfully painted as the kind of guy that would be both stubborn and stupid enough to think that he could crack a mathematical equation in time to stop the space vessel that he was on from crashing into the earth and causing the destruction of the dinosaurs. Series regular Peter Grimwade maintains a white-knuckled pace from behind the director's chair, and he also manages to make the Cybermen threatening despite their flimsy scheme and how easily defeated they are. Up until the last few moments though, they do seem to have the Doctor licked, and Davison's portrayal exhibits a type of hopeless vulnerability that his predecessors rarely allowed in the role.
(1972)
Season Nine
The Curse of Peladon marks the return of the Ice Warriors who were last seen three seasons earlier in The Seeds of Death during Patrick Troughton's run. Speaking of Troughton, his lisp-tongued son David appears here as the King of the titular planet, caught between joining a federation of other planets and the superstitious traditions of his own, desperately enforced by his militant High Priest Hepesh. The Doctor gets sentenced to fight a royal champion not once but twice, showing off his ridiculous Venusian Aikido while just as ridiculously hypnotizing the royal beast Aggedor with a lullaby and a medallion. There is even more silliness in the appearance of the cycloptic, nine-armed Alpha Centauri, one of the most absurd creature designs in the original show's run, which says a lot. All of these cartoonish moments work to the story's advantage though, making for something the leans into the program's more campy attributes within a compact, four-part structure. The Ice Warriors themselves turn out NOT to be the story's villains, which is a clever enough sidestep, giving them a Klingon-type trajectory where one time bad guys can align with a "federation" instead of trying to conquer other races left and right.
40. Image of the Fendahl(1977)
Season Fifteen
Script editor extraordinaire Robert Holmes did his final work in such a capacity for
Doctor Who with
Image of the Fendahl, giving the series one more overtly horror-tinged story before they would only occasionally dip into the genre from here on out. The show worked within horror motifs so well that it is no wonder nearly all examples of such came out excellent, and this one is no exception. Writer Chris Boucher also penned the superb back-to-back Leela introductions
The Face of Evil and
The Robots of Death, taking his cue here from the
Quatermass work of Nigel Kneale, (a long-buried skull housing an extraterrestrial threat), by pitting the Doctor up against a mythic adversary from the Time Lord's past. There is black magic, an overgrown serpent monster, the aforementioned powerful and sentient skull, and Wanda Ventham turns into the gold-skinned gestalt alien of the title. The snake creature has the usual low-rent charm of others from the original show's run and is therefor about as frightening as a bag of Jelly Babies, but director George Spenton-Foster and producer Graham Williams maintain a serious tone that affords for plenty of sinister atmosphere.
39. Planet of the Spiders (1974)
Season Eleven
Though it is one of many overly-long stories in Jon Pertwee's consistently solid tenure, Planet of the Spiders still has several memorable deviations that make it a stand-out. It specifically references previous events, with the Doctor experimenting with the psychic properties of a blue crystal that he took from the Acteon Galaxy in The Green Death, as well as Mike Yates having been discharged from UNIT after his well-intended yet ill-advised treacherous behavior in Invasion of the Dinosaurs, here redeeming himself in a fitting swansong. We get a chase sequence, Buddhist philosophy, people possessed by the menacing "Eight-Legs" race, and another Time Lord disguised as both a retired abbot and as a Buddhist lama tulpa manifestation. The CSO effects were always jarring at best and far from convincing, but the spider planet dwelling is wonderfully realized, plus the mere concept of all-powerful arachnids who are hellbent on increasing their abilities gives the Doctor a formidable foe that technically "kills" him. Pertwee's regeneration sequence is arguably the show's best, and it provides a tearful would-be farewell that Sarah Jane Smith and the Brigadier helplessly bear witness to, only for Tom Baker to pop up bewildered for what would become the most lengthy run that any actor had in the role.
38. Day of the Daleks(1972)
Season Nine
Though it is often criticized for noticeably only featuring three Dalek props, as well as for shoehorning in the Doctor's most celebrated bad guys as a last minute decision to give the beginning of the ninth season a substantial hook,
Day of the Daleks still transcends its setbacks with an intriguing time travel scenario and a welcomed four-part structure. After a British diplomat is visited in his estate by what he believes to be a ghost, UNIT is called into investigate, and the Doctor and Jo Grant uncover an elaborate plot by future rebels to assassinate said diplomat in order to prevent an explosion from happening at a forthcoming convention, an explosion that inadvertently makes it possible for the Daleks to enslave the human race. As good a reason as any to go back in time and fuck with history, but of course it never works that way and this is in fact a time paradox where the rebel's interference is exactly what causes the event that they are trying to stop. Jon Pertwee gets to indulge in his fondness for spiffy vehicles, (doing his own dangerous trike riding much to the nervousness of the onlooking staff), the Doctor and Joe briefly encounter future versions of themselves during a mishap in the TARDIS, and joining the Daleks are the brutish Orgons, who would appear two more times in the initial series' run.
(1975)
Season Thirteen
All familiar hands were on board for The Android Invasion, which was essentially a remake of the same season's opener Terror of the Zygons, just minus the embarrassing Loch Ness Monster puppet. It is another case of an alien takeover involving doppelgängers, this time being the androids of the title who shoot things out of their fingers ala-the Autons and are manufactured by the Kraal race that plans to unleash a virus to wipe out humanity for easier conquest. That ole gag again. While the second of only two non-Dalek Terry Nation scripts retreads plenty of plot motifs, it also throws in a few nifty ones. These include the fake and empty Devesham village that the Doctor and Sarah Jane investigate, presumed humans acting strangely and remaining motionless in a pub until a clock strikes, and both Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen getting to play and fight with maliciously programed robot versions of themselves. Frequent contributor Barry Letts pulls off some eerie atmosphere from behind the lens, elevating the familiar framework as both the guest and regular cast do. Though Nicolas Courtney was committed elsewhere and therefor a Brigadier stand-in was required in the form of Patrick Newell's Colonel Faraday, both Ian Marter and John Levene are given their farewell here as Harry Sullivan and Sergent Benton, respectfully.
(1978)
Season Sixteen
By the Key to Time season, Tom Baker's portrayal and the overall tone of the program was leaning heavier into silliness, so having future script editor Douglas Adams of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fame contribute a story was a natural fit for the era. The resulting The Pirate Planet sees the Doctor and Romana One trying to arrive at the title planet, only to have the TARDIS experiencing landing troubles and an unexpected society present where diamonds and rubies liter the streets, some people turn into telepathic zombies when they die, and a cartoonishly evil overlord both terrorizes his underlings and enriches the wealth of his citizens. It is a profound moment when we discover what is actually going on, made so by Baker momentarily dropping his buffoonish shtick and instead showing off his exceptional dramatic chops, the Doctor being aghast at the scale of the Captain's boastful mass murdering. Most of the story is played for chuckles though, with obvious gags, Baker behaving like an idiot savant, Mary Tamm rolling her eyes at him, and even a killer robot parrot that kills people when Bruce Purchase's burly Captain goes into a rage, which happens often. As opposed to the following season which would be uniformly goofy, the tonal balance is kept more in check here, and there are enough wild ideas in Adams' teleplay to keep it engaging.
(1974)
Season Eleven
A new companion, a new arch-baddie, a new opening title sequence, and the first mention of the Doctor's home planet of Gallifrey are all on board for the season eleven opener The Time Warrior. This would be Jon Pertwee's final season in the titular role, but the aforementioned Sarah Jane Smith, the Sontarans, and Gallifrey of course would all be sticking around for some time. Screenwriter Robert Holmes works his magic yet again, interjecting more humor than usual by placing both a militant extraterrestrial race and contemporary scientists in a medieval setting, clashing two different eras while simultaneously throwing a bewildered Sarah Jane into the mix. Elisabeth Sladen makes a delightful entry here, and seeing the Doctor's most beloved companion fumbling into danger in disbelief, (she wrongly and hilariously believes that she is in a some kind of Middle Ages reenactment, brassily talking back to deadly bandits and the like). Even though we only meet one of them, (Kevin Lindsay, who would also come back in the follow year's The Sontaran Experiment), the Sontarans make for one of the better one-note Doctor Who villains, a race of warriors whose only justification for existence is to engage in endless battle and conquer planets by simply landing on them and saying something along the lines of "This is mine now".
(1980)
Season Eighteen
Tom Baker's final season was subsequently the first where John Nathan-Turner took over as producer, and notable changes to the program were made from the onset. A new title sequence, a new TARDIS prop, a new version of the theme music, a new outfit for the Doctor, (including the silly Nathan-Turner trademark of question marks somewhere on the wardrobe, much to everyone else's consistent chagrin), John Leeson returning as the voice of K9, and most importantly, a noticeably more serious tone. This latter aspect all but eliminated Baker's increasing penchant for eye-winking tomfoolery, as well as the more playful yet occasionally grating aspects that the series leaned into in its more recent seasons. The Leisure Hive acts as a sly commentary on England's decrease in tourism at the time, though being a Doctor Who story, it is done in a wild manner where a loud-looking alien race has fallen on desperate times and are in the process of selling their planet to another alien race that are actually human-sized roaches in disguise. We also have Baker in excellent old man makeup, as well as a duplicator machine which nearly allows for the artichoke-headed Argolin to wage a vengeance war on the Foamasi bug-race until the Doctor tricks them.
(1973)
Season Ten
This season ten story rides a thin line of having both a ridiculous premise and ridiculous moments, (this was an early indication of how horrendous the prehistoric beats were going to end up looking in the following year's Invasion of the Dinosaurs), but it is also ingenious. This is hardly surprising considering that Robert Holmes wrote it, and the story that he came up with has a wonderful twist reveal after the first episode that is clever and silly in equal measures. The two intergalactic carny folk look a hundred times more absurd than even Colin Baker's Doctor did, but they are nevertheless amusing characters who stumble into a political coup on a planet of tight-assed, livid-colored aliens that do not know what humor is and prove to be the most susceptible customers for an off-shoot of three-card monte. Frequent participant Michael Wisher and future companion Ian Marter are both here in one-off roles, and the plot jumps from a ghost ship in the Indian Ocean, to a marshland full of Beetlejuice-esque sandworms, to the aforementioned Inter Minor planet, to a large part of the white-knuckled moments taking place inside of an actual machine. Even once the scheme is revealed and upon further viewings, it is all still a hoot.
(1973)
Season Ten
A horde of killer maggots, a mega-computer with a god complex, spelunking set pieces, an early form of Impossible "meat", blue crystals, hypnotized corporate minions, Jon Pertwee in drag, and the heart-string-pulling departure of Jo Grant, the tenth season of Doctor Who ended with a whole lot on its plate. The always jarring chroma keying aside, The Green Death overcomes its less than agreeable production values as the best Who stories do, with its desperate elements formatted around an environmental agenda where progressive minded hippies are literally fighting the short-minded machine. More text-text than subtext, all of the major players get plenty to do, with Jo in particular being rewarded with the best send-off that possibly any companion ever had. Her engagement to Stewart Bevan, (who Katy Manning actually did end up marrying after this, life imitating art), may be sudden, but it is also believable, plus the whole story takes its time with a melancholic coda that sees both Pertwee and Manning in top form. The show only came close to tearjerker terrain on rare occasions, and watching the Doctor quietly accept one of his most memorable companions saying goodbye as he sneaks out of the celebration to rides off in Bessie is just wonderful stuff.
(1971)
Season Eight
Enter The Master. For Jon Pertwee's second season opener Terror of the Autons, showrunners Barry Letts and Terence Dicks, (as well as screenwriter Robert Holmes), brought back the memorable Spearhead from Space aliens who likewise opened the previous season, as well as giving the Doctor both a new adversary and a new obligatory companion in the form of warm-hearted and peppy Jo Grant, whose charm the Doctor quickly falls for after initially being annoyed by UNIT assigning him an assistant to hand him things and tell him how brilliant he is, as the joke would go. As wonderful as Katy Manning is and always was during her run on the program, it is Roger Delgado's arch-nemesis Time Lord the Master who steals the show, as he was wont to do. Though his plan of teaming up with the Autons is as short-sighted as always and he hilarious gets talked out of it by a single sentence from the Doctor in the finale, the Master makes a formidable presence straight away with his hypnotizing skills and charismatic demeanor. Grotesque dolls come to life, plastic flowers attack, a guy gets killed by an inflatable sofa chair, and the Autons now have yellow suits and big emotionless heads in straw hats. In other words, there is nothing not to love.
(1975)
Season Thirteen
Tom Baker's second season kicked off with a "monster of the week" story that fused many narrative ingredients from previous ones, but the series was in such good hands from all of its personnel that the familiarity of Terror of the Zygons is more of an advantage than a detriment. We have rubber-suited aliens hatching a takeover scheme to morph the Earth's atmosphere to accommodate their needs, body-snatching, an oil rig setting, UNIT's firepower proving to be ineffective as always, plus an ancient myth made real in the form of the Zygons being behind the Loch Ness Monster. The latter abomination is as poorly realized as those in season eleven's infamous Invasion of the Dinosaurs, but it is the only drawback to an otherwise solid presentation, and at least the terrible puppet creature is reduced to a minimal amount of screen time. More emphasis is placed on the unsettling Zygons, who are given a fleshy and over-the-top creature design to match their sinister, whispery voices and organic spaceship controls. This would be the last regular appearance of UNIT, (Nicholas Courtney steeping down as the Brigadier until the Peter Davison era in Mawdryn Undead), though Ian Marter would pop up one more time as Harry Sullivan in The Android Invasion later in the season.
29. The Masque of Mandragora (1976)
Season Fourteen
Doctor Who's finest season kicked off with a story that would have been a highlight in any other, but is ONLY the least memorable one here compared to the stellar batch that immediately followed it. The Masque of Mandragora sends the Doctor and Sarah Jane to fifteenth century Italy where a Hamlet-esque scenario is taking place between a Duke who craves the throne while his noble nephew opposes him. There is also an astrologer baddie who ends up being the leader of a cult that wears robes and Doctor Doom masks while conducting human sacrifices, bringing some medieval horror into the mix for good measure. Similar to the season eight closer The Dæmons which also featured cultists and catacombed altars, there is a sci-fi element in place of a supernatural one in the form of the Mandragora Helix; a powerful living energy that the main villain Heironymous successfully harnesses at the cost of it taking over his physical body. This was the last Who writing contribution from future television producer Louis Marks, turning in a concise and academically-bent script that is matched by wonderful costumes, solid performances from the guest cast, and the debut of the wood-paneled "secondary console room" set for the TARDIS.
(1981)
Season Eighteen
After two horror-tinged tales involving gill men and vampires, the E-Space trilogy pulled a sharp 180 degree turn with its wrap-up Warrior's Gate. One of the most surreal and borderline incomprehensible Doctor Who stories, it finally allowed the Doctor to escape from E-Space and back into his own universe, but not before the TARDIS arrives in a limbo where a race of lion-esque time travelers are being harvested by slave traders. Bouncing between the slave vessel, the TARDIS, and a castle that switches timelines at a moment's notice, (with medieval robotic guards covered in spiderwebs and vortexes to walk through), the narrative is confounding in the most intriguing of ways. There were behind the scenes issues as newcomer Stephen Gallagher's initial draft was heavily reworked by script editor Christopher H. Bidmead and director Paul Joyce, the latter who was also let go during mid-production for falling behind schedule in his appreciated attempts to make the serial more cinematic. He succeeded in some respects since there are more adventurous camera angles and POV shots here than usual for the program, stylizing an already ambitious story. Of course this is also noteworthy for being Lalla Ward's departure as Romana, a companion whose exit was logically forecast earlier in the season due to her reluctance to return to the humdrum lifestyle of her fellow Time Lords on Gallifrey. Romana also took K9 with her at the Doctor's insistence, Tom Baker immediately proclaiming that she will be "superb" at her future society-saving endeavors.
(1983)
Season Twenty
The first in the Black Guardian trilogy, Mawdryn Undead introduced the companion Vislor Turlough; the only one whose arc began as someone that was actually trying to kill the Doctor. Thankfully, Turlough is both hilariously bad at achieving this goal and also was tasked with it against his will, his naïveté being manipulated by the Black Guardian who has finally caught up with the Doctor after being denied the Key to Time four seasons earlier. Why Valentine Dyall's scenery-chewing bad guy has to task a rebellious alien posing as a student on Earth to kill the Doctor instead of doing it himself is pathetically explained, and the story wraps up in arguably the most precise "nick-of-time" fashion imaginable. All that aside, Peter Grimwade's script is full of compelling ideas involving clashing timelines when the same person interacts with themselves, as well as the insufferable agony of immortality. Mawdryn of the title is one of several scientists who tried to artificially become Time Lords, thus dooming themselves and nearly costing the Doctor all of his remaining regenerations in their attempts to escape their burden. The set design is excellent as the scientist's ship looks like it was filmed in an art deco museum, and seeing Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart back as two incarnations of himself can only make an already engaging story that much better.
(1977)
Season Fifteen
The last Doctor Who story to air that had Robert Holmes as script editor was also one that he penned himself, the amusing critique of worker inequality and the British tax system, The Sun Makers. By and large, every season of the program had frequented the themes of an oppressive super power that tramples its citizens to the point of a long-overdue uprising, (as well as featuring everybody gallivanting around in corridors), and this is no exception. Where Holmes' story excels though is with its downright likeable villains who are each unique from each other, played with tongue-in-cheek charisma by Henry Woolf and Richard Leech. Woolf is a slimy and bald pipsqueak overlord who obsessively crushes the numbers and relishes in his evil suppression of his workers, while Leech finds increasingly more colorful titles to bestow upon his boss while remaining blindly adherent to the will of the company whose function no one seems able to explain. Leela is in her natural element riling up the renegades and even being allowed to throw a knife in a bad guy's back without the Doctor reprimanding her, and the Doctor remains three steps ahead of everyone at all times, allowing for Tom Baker to play things with the type of cocksure abandon that was still a season or so away from becoming full-on foolishness.
(1980)
Season Eighteen
A Hinchcliffe/Holmes era Gothic horror throwback, State of Decay also served as the penultimate Doctor Who teleplay from former script editor and long-time contributor Terrence Dicks. It was actually a retooled story that Dicks had submitted three years earlier, (originally titled both The Witch Lords and The Vampire Mutations at different times), which was fit into the E-Space trilogy where the Doctor, Romana, and a stowaway Adric find themselves on a planet that is curiously littered with advanced technology yet run as a feudal society by three pale monarchs who look straight out of Cradle of Filth. As the undead tyrants who are in the process of resurrecting their kaiju-sized super vampire master, William Lindsay, Rachel Davies, and Emrys James turn in ridiculous performances, bugging their eyes out and mugging off into the distance with bravado Béla Lugosi gestures. Elsewhere though, Dicks' script excellently utilizes the motifs that Who often frequented, where the Doctor effortlessly blows the minds of a primitive society with science, dispelling their unenlightened superstition and servitude. It may not reach the caliber of Baker's first few seasons, (though to be fair, few stories did), but it showed that producer John Nathan-Turner was at least serious about toning down the goofiness and revisiting a style that had always worked wonders.
(1981)
Season Eighteen
The return of the Master, The Keeper of Traken is a wonderful showcase for the Doctor's arch-baddie who as usual manages to maintain the upper hand until the closing moments. Before strapping it in as the evil and rival Time Lord which he would portray until the end of original series' run, Anthony Ainley got to be one of the benevolent council members of the Traken Union, an empire that has run smoothly for centuries just by everyone "being terribly nice to each other". That all changes when a mysterious and not-good statue dubbed the Melkur arrives on the planet and is looked after long enough to weave its manipulative influence over certain key members that run the place, causing all sorts of mayhem that of course the Master is behind every step of the way. Johnny Bryne's script provides enough "sure, that'll work" justification for the decrepit Master, (who somehow looks less monstrous than he did in season fourteen's The Deadly Assassin), being able to steal Ainley's body with the help of some leftover Source power, which is a long story. Sarah Sutton's Nyssa would not become an official companion until the following story and Baker send-off Logopolis, but she at least gets as much to do here as she ever did.
(1982)
Season Nineteen
Picking up immediately where the previous season's closer/Tom Baker adieu Logopolis left off, Castrovalva officially ushers in the Peter Davison era of Doctor Who, and it does so in an equally ambitious fashion. Both conjoined stories were authored by script editor Christopher H. Bidmead and feature elaborate, diabolical plotting from the Master, who kidnaps Adric and utilizes his mathematical prowess to create a fortified city that is based on both Dutch artist M.C. Escher's 1930 lithograph of the same name, as well as the concept of recursion. Bidmead keeps the plot moving, throwing the TARDIS in peril as it spirals towards the "Big Bang" and having the Doctor jettison his "zero room", (which is the only place where he can think straight during regeneration), all before arriving in the title city. This eventually reveals itself to be an infinite maze of entrances that all lead to the same square, with its inhabitants, history, and TARDIS coordinates all created by the Master in order to lure the Doctor there for disposal. Surely there was a less convoluted way to achieve this, but alas, that is never how the Master rolls. The fact that Davison's Doctor spends the majority of the story suffering from severe brain fog on account of his faulty regeneration makes for some white-knuckled tension as his companions try to assist him in putting the pieces together.
(1985)
Season Twenty-Two
For a general audience program, Doctor Who was not one to indulge in violence on the regular, making season twenty-two's Vengeance on Varos a noticeable change of pace. Thankfully, it endures more than just as a curiosity. It is a thinly veilied critique on Thatcherism via a planet that is run by a mining corporation that broadcasts executions and holds popular votes to determine the also broadcasted torture of its governors who fail to please the populous in an inherently corrupt political system. Bleak subject matte for sure, and we even get an infamous acid bath sequence where the Doctor quips after having to throw two guards into their melty doom. Yet despite its gory sensationalism, such things are satirical in execution. We frequently cut back to two comic relief, average Joe citizens who are ultimately at a loss as to what to do with themselves when the story wraps up and the Doctor has helped free the people of such overt militant law. Best of all though is Nabil Shaban's portrayal of the slithering reptilian bad guy Sil who delights in all manner of unpleasantry in his power-hungry quest to take over the planet and run things like a giddy toddler with access to a magnifying glass, the burning rays of the sun, and some ants. His is easily one of the program's most hilarious and memorable villains, and they would even find a way to shoehorn him into the following year's The Trial of a Time Lord.
21. The Three Doctors(1973)
Season Ten
Kicking off the show's tenth anniversary with their first pairing of previous incarnations of the Doctor, the apply-titled
The Three Doctors also had the distinction of ending Jon Pertwee's exile on Earth and introduced the cartoonishly megalomaniacal, granddaddy Time Lord Omega. At the time and even all of these decades later, the main selling point is to see Pertwee and his predecessors sharing the screen together, and he and Patrick Troughton form a hilarious partnership that shows just how unique their personalities were from each other. Sadly though, William Hartnell was only two years away from death at this point and was too ill to fully participate, thus his scenes were filmed separately from his forerunners. Still, Troughton and Pertwee getting scolded by Hartnell's ever-crotchedy First Doctor via teleprompter is delightful, plus there are enough moments between everyone to bypass this being more of an "if only" type of story. As Omega, Stephen Thorne rocks a ridiculous helmet and chews the scenery like any self-respecting villain should, though to the character's credit, if you invented time travel and all you got was a lousy several thousand years willing yourself back into existence in an anti-matter black hole, you would probably be a lot off your rocker too.
(1981)
Season Eighteen
Tom Baker's long tenure as the Doctor ended on as good of a farewell as could be expected, the bold yet melancholic season eighteen closer Logopolis. For a narrative that hinges on the silly concept of a planet full of mathematicians whose calculations somehow keep the universe in balance, it is all played straight, with a typically superb performance from Baker who is somber, charismatic, and as alien as ever while feeling the weight of inevitability on his shoulders. This comes in the physical form of a mysterious Watcher, a figure in white who continually shows up in the distance before interfering in the increasingly convoluted plot. Anthony Ainley's Master hatches a tyrannical scheme worthy of Roger Delgado's earlier incarnation, (including the villain's penchant for turning people into dolls), Sarah Sutton sticks around from the previous The Keeper of Traken as the new companion Nyssa, and Australian Janet Fielding's Tegan also joins the crew. TARDISES lead to infinite other TARDISES inside of the TARDIS, and it bounces from Earth, to the title planet, back to Earth again in order for the Doctor to thwart the Master's plan before falling to his presumed doom from a radio telescope tower. Script editor Christopher H. Bidmead's teleplay shows a wonderful knack for breaking up the usual form with more adventurous ideas, while simultaneously fusing it with tried and true motifs from serial's past. Baker deserved as much.
(1969)
Season Six
Even though Patrick Troughton's run on Doctor Who was plagued by a lack of more compact four-part stories, ironically the longest surviving of them is damn near the best. The War Games runs for ten whopping episodes and would prove to be a continuity benchmark for the program. For the first time, we find out that the Doctor is a Time Lord as we meet his race during the conclusion, a race that deliberates as to the fate of the meddling title character that has been on the run throughout the cosmos, interjecting himself in all manner of time and space. The punishment was that Patrick Troughton had to turn into Jon Pertwee, (a fare trade all things considered), and would be stuck on Earth with a faulty TARDIS and the codes to time travel blocked from his memory. Before all of that though, the Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe find themselves in the middle of a battlefield, yet the weird part is that different sections of the terrain seem to be inhabited by soldiers from completely separate eras in Earth's history. The plot unfolds gradually yet it amazingly never loses momentum for any detrimental periods, mostly because of how edge of your seat strange the whole scenario is until we are finally given some answers midway through. Cast wise, everyone is terrific, and the closing moments are some of the most poignant that the show ever had, Troughton lamenting his sentence as his loyal companions are sent back home without the knowledge of their time spent with him.
(1977)
Season Fifteen
The story whose airing was interrupted in Chicago by the infamous Max Headroom signal hijacking, Horror of Fang Rock kicks off Graham Williams' first season as producer, thankfully with script editor extraordinaire Robert Holmes still sticking around. An alien monster takeover set in a lighthouse, the Terrence Dicks-penned tale delivers in the "horror" of its title, pitting the Doctor, Leela, and six other characters in the early 1900s against a glowing extraterrestrial blob that murders most and takes on the physical appearance of one. The claustrophobic setting is treated with gloomy atmospheric care by director Paddy Russell, (her last of four Doctor Who assignments), even if the special effects leave much to be desired, as usual. Also as usual though, the shoddy production values are hardly a problem since they convey what they are supposed to convey, and it all leaves plenty of time for the Doctor to figure everything out and explain it to the unbelieving saps that he is trapped with. The tension between Tom Baker and Louise Jameson came to a head on set here, yet it was also resolved during shooting, which mirrors their character's growing fondness for each other. Leela being perpetually annoyed by the perpetually annoying and dainty secretary, (played with grating delight by Annette Woollett), is hilarious, as is her threatening to cut out anyone's heart who does not listen to the Doctor's orders, even if he fails to save everyone and can still garnish a laugh about it.
(1971)
Season Eight
Perhaps it was inevitable, but Doctor Who did their own version of Hammer horror with The Dæmons, doubling as the best story that Roger Delgado's Master was in during his two season long run as the Doctor's ultimate advisory and self-proclaimed intellectual superior. A common theme throughout the show would have the Doctor facing off against supernatural believers and practitioners with his exclusively scientific grasp of the situation, and the script, (which was collaborated on by Robert Sloman and producer Barry Letts under the pseudonym "Guy Leopold"), makes this the paramount theme. The Master concocts his usual poorly-thought-out plan of working with a powerful force that he has no hope of controlling, but the demon of the title is actually an ancient alien that was sent to Earth millennia ago to further the advancement of man. Now it is a ranting and raving giant satyr with horns who is none too keen to play along with these meddling Time Lord's shenanigans, and the quiet Aldbourne,Wiltshire location where it is summoned would fit right at home in any of England's Gothic horror movies from the era. At the end of the day, seeing the Doctor in an occult setting while the Master invokes evil by chanting "Mary Had a Little Lamb" backwards is just peak television.
(1968)
Season Six
Whenever Doctor Who dipped its toes into surreal territory, it was at least a memorable sidestep from the usual capture/escape/repeat alien threat stories. Thankfully season six' The Mind Robber is not only memorable, but also stands as the Second Doctor's finest moment. This was a rare case where a story was noticeably stretched yet still does not suffer from its added episode, which would be the opening one that was hastily elongated to accommodate for the previous The Dominators running short. Said opening is one of the most eerie in the series' entire run, when the TARDIS is stranded in a "nowhere" void and the view screen shows scenes of Zoey and Jamie's home worlds to beckon them outside. Once they are out there, they vanish, the Doctor becomes bombarded with psychic manipulation, the TARDIS presumably explodes, and Wendy Padbury's derrière gets noticeably highlighted in slow motion, and this is all before they arrive in a land that is made up of fiction come to life. The set pieces are delightfully outrageous and they come at a durable pace, keeping the audience guessing until the quasi-sympathetic villain's plan is finally laid bare. They even manage to take something like Frazer Hines getting the chickenpox in real life and use it for a bizarre sequence where he gets turned into a cardboard cutout and the Doctor has to assemble his face, which he does incorrectly so that a different actor can play Jamie for a bit.
(1983)
Twentieth Anniversary Special
The stand-alone twentieth anniversary special The Five Doctors is a fun member-berry romp that does not warrant close scrutiny and ergo can be celebrated in such a manner. Sans Tom Baker who respectfully declined participation, (and judging by the threadbare story, would have had little to do if he was involved), the other two surviving Doctors Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee join the current title-holder Peter Davison, along with Richard Hurdnall doing an exemplary job filling in for William Hartnell who had passed away eight years earlier. Seeing almost everybody back in the saddle, (along with former companions Susan Foreman, Sarah Jane Smith, and Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, plus several noteworthy Doctor adversaries that are shoehorned in for silly measure), it all provides the main selling point of course, and the script by long-time contributor Terrence Dicks' manages to maintain just enough flimsy adhesive to keep things together. Before dropping out, the show's finest writer Robert Holmes was originally commissioned to pen a different plot that involved the Cybermen trying to turn themselves into Time Lords, but Dicks' does some agreeable fan service by venturing into the lore of Rassilon, not to mention granting the story's main baddie a memorable punishment by immortality.
(1975)
Season Thirteen
The first story to feature the duo of Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen sans Ian Marter's Harry Sulivan, Planet of Evil sees the Doctor back on a distant planet and running into more horror motifs that producer Philip Hinchcliffe and script editor Robert Holmes were adamant in exploring. This one borrows some bestial monster transformation trappings and fuses them with the Forbidden Planet's "Creature from the Id", also with the age ole Doctor Who trope of a stupid aggressive asshole who never believes a word that the Doctor says and makes things that much worse in the process. Having a mostly invisible monster saves money of course since the actors just have to writhe around a bit to convey that they are being attacked, but this ends up being a saving grace for the serial since they were able to then afford to shoot the atmospheric jungle "exteriors" at the famous Ealing Studios. They are easily some of the best realized sets in the program's history and show how much better Who could have looked overall if they regularly had more than a handful of British pounds to work with. Elsewhere, there are tense cliffhangers and Frederick Jaeger goes full red-eyed wolfman, plus Baker and Sladen exhibit more of their effortless chemistry together.
(1970)
Season Seven
Jon Pertwee's era in Doctor Who was loaded with six, (and even in this case, seven), parters which often times suffered to varying degrees from repetitive plotting and padding, but his first season closed out on a high note with Inferno. The concept of parallel universes had been running steady through science fiction since the 19th century, and Stark Trek had more recently popularized it on television with the famed 1967 episode "Mirror, Mirror". Here, the Doctor is transported to an Earth that has been overtaken by militant fascism, which allows for the UNIT crew to go full baddie mode. Nicholas Courtney shines the best as his evil counterpart, with a scar, an eye-patch, (Because what says "not a good guy" better than an eye-patch?), and a fantastic deterioration into desperation as his home world is reduced to a lava-entrenched wasteland before his eyes. The anti-fascist morality is on the nose, showing that at the end of the day and during an apocalypse of nature, all the strict military enforcement in the world will not stop mankind's destruction by their own hands. There is also some stuff about green ooze turning people into werewolf-like beasts and one of the show's steadfast tropes of an obnoxious dipshit in a suit who refuses to listen to reason and dooms everyone in the process, but the Doctor not being able to save the world for once is a rarity unto itself, proving to have lingering effects on him as he was plagued by such visions in the following season's The Mind of Evil.
(1976)
Season Fourteen
Though not as strong as Katy Manning's farewell from Season Ten's The Green Death if we are to compare, Elisabeth Sladen's full-time departure in The Hand of Fear is still a memorable swansong for arguably the show's most beloved companion. It was apparently on Sladen's insistence that her final story did not revolve around her character leaving, and the script by series regulars Bob Baker and Dave Martin was a replacement for an abandoned idea that Douglas Camfield was commissioned to write that never came to fruition whereas Sarah Jane Smith was to be killed off. Thankfully that did not happen, and Sladen would return twice more in the program's original run as well as decades later, most notably in her own spinoff The Sarah Jane Adventures. Sladen still plays a major role here and is not just Tom Baker's damsel in distress assistant, though their final scene together does poke fun at the trope of her simply handing the Doctor tools while he ignores her. The story itself has two different actors playing what ends up being a megalomaniacal extraterrestrial super-being, (because you got to have one of those), whose severed hand turns up in a quarry and possesses people into putting it into a reactor core so that it can suck in gargantuan amounts of radiation in order to regenerate and reclaim its long-doomed home planet. There is lots of location shooting at the Oldbury Nuclear Power Station, some scenery-chewing performances, excellent design work on both versions of Eldrad and their solar wind-devastated world, and of course Sladen and Baker's touching adieu with each other.
(1976)
Season Thirteen
Next up on the Gothic horror reworking block for the Philip Hinchcliffe and Robert Holmes-run era of Doctor Who was Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The resulting Brain of Morbius takes the basic concept of a mad scientist with a god complex and a dim-witted assistant who creates a creature via a hodgepodge of sewn-together limbs, only for that creature to go berserk and turn on him. Throwing in another mad Time Lord whose brain is meant to reside in said creature, (hence the title), and also introducing a new race of immortals in the form of the Sisterhood of Karn shows that familiar genre material was ideally ripe for transmutation into the program. Terrence Dicks originally penned a much different script than the one that was filmed, with Holmes retooling it to the point where another pseudonym was used in the credits, (Robin Bland, since Dicks thought the end result was "bland" and that he was "robbed", nyuck nyuck). A few plot holes and the usual back-and-forth between only two locations aside, its combination of horror tropes and Who mythos is consistently great, plus we get a mind battle between Time Lords, wonderful dark and stormy atmosphere on a barren planet, and a ridiculous monster with a giant claw and a see-through dome helmet.
(1970)
Season Seven
Along with Castrovalva which served as the first full story for Peter Davison, Spearhead from Space stands as the finest introduction for a new Doctor that the original show ever had. Thus begins his exile on Earth as implemented by the Time Lords in the previous season's closer/Patrick Troughton's farewell The War Games, and much about the show was noticeably different from the onset. Most obviously, BBC finally got with the times and switched things from black and white into color, plus this would be the only story that was shot entirely on film, automatically making it light years better looking than the lot of them. Jon Pertwee's dashing, "man of action" interpretation of the title character would prove to be not only miles apart from the two actors who proceeded him, but it would remain singular throughout the show's entire initial run. When we first meet him though, he has collapsed in a coma and brought to a hospital where Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart gets indoctrinated in the concept that Time Lords can change their physical appearance. Thus the UNIT era of Doctor Who began in earnest, with a formidable and creepy foe in the form of the Autons who memorably escape from their department store window displays as plastic mannequins to wreak havoc on the streets of London.
(1976)
Season Thirteen
For the season thirteen closer The Seeds of Doom, inspiration was taken from another sci-fi horror tale, namely John W. Campbell Jr.'s 1938 short story "Who Goes There?" and its subsequent film The Thing from Another World. A six-parter, it is broken up into two sections, the first of which takes place in the Antarctic where a pair of extraterrestrial pods are discovered, and the later at the mansion of an eccentric vegetation enthusiast who goes full-blown psychotic super villain. Tom Baker drops his aloof alien goofiness here, taking on a stern and aggressive demeanor and even going so far as to jump through windows, engage in fisticuffs with armed guards, and scream at anyone who is not taking the threat seriously. Said killer plant threat is serious indeed, as the poor saps who make physical contact with the initial pods gradually morph into oversized monstrosities with a taste for human meat that can control all of the roots, vines, and branches within immediate proximity. Character actor Tony Beckley made a career out of playing slimy villains, and he outdoes himself here as the aforementioned lunatic Harrison Chase, who purposely puts humans in danger to side with the foliage, his main mercenary John Challis being equally odious. Even if the regular UNIT actors had moved on by now and Sarah Jane just screams, gets tied up, and looks pretty, every other aspect of the production is customarily top-notch.
08. The Caves of Androzani (1984)
Season Twenty-One
A brutal finale for Peter Davison's three year run, The Caves of Androzani sees the triumphant return of the series' best writer Robert Holmes contributing a story that is more unforgiving than possibly any others in the show's original run. Capitalist scumbaggery, political ambition, revenge, life-rejuvenating drugs, undetectable androids, gun-running, a rubber suit monster, and a disease that nearly/kind-of kills both the Doctor and new companion Peri Brown, Holmes packs in dire stakes and well-rounded villains while technically having the title character fail in a significant part of his mission. That would be his own survival, the Doctor's regeneration into Colin Baker seeming to be the byproduct of the deadly virus that ultimately exhausts and gets the better of him. One of the strongest aspects of the serial is Graeme Harper's direction, which utilizes lots of hand-held camerawork to maintain a relentlessly claustrophobic environment where war is breaking out everywhere and the underground walls are collapsing upon themselves. As the main Phantom of the Opera-esque baddie Sharaz Jek, Christopher Gable turns in a stellar performance that manages to morph his diabolical vengeance quest into something sad and sympathetic by the time that he succumbs to multiple bullet wounds. Davison is fantastic here as well, going out on an ideal high note that shows a more melancholic and depleted side to the Doctor's psyche, one that matches the entire grim production to a tee.
07. The Talons of Weng-Chiang (1977)
Season Fourteen
The greatest Doctor Who season fittingly closes with one of its finest six-parters, the Sherlock Holmes-adjacent The Talons of Weng-Chiang. Period set in a Jack the Ripper-era London, Tom Baker purposely dons a Holmes get up, Louise Jameson finally gets some actual clothes on her, and they both find themselves up against an oppressor from the 51st century who travels back in time, poses as an ancient Chinese deity, makes a few giant rats in his mad scientist experiments, and drains the life force out of young women in an ultimately futile attempt to keep his metabolic frame together. Said over-sized rodents look about as terrible and unconvincing as any Doctor Who creation could possibly look, (more like fluffy Easter Bunnies covered in wool blankets than anything threatening), plus the racist depiction of Chinese people and the main oriental bad guy being performed by an Englishman in yellowface are unfortunate components that undermine everything else that is excellent here. This includes one of the many exemplary scripts from Robert Holmes that is a pastiche of historical drama, "fish out of water" comedy, Asian mysticism, The Phantom of the Opera, and the aforementioned detective yarns of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Michael Spice lays on the scenery-chewing as the titular villain and he and every other character is given colorful dialog to work with, Christopher Benjamin and Trevor Baxter portraying two of the most memorable and charismatic one-off blokes in the program's long history.
(1975)
Season Twelve
After the bog-standard UNIT story Robot bridged the gap between the Third and Forth Doctor's eras, The Ark in Space more properly launched what would go down as the show's most consistently excellent run. Producer Barry Letts and script editor Terrence Dicks were still on board for the beginning of Tom Baker's first season, but they both handed the baton over officially here to the dream team of Robert Holmes and Philip Hinchcliffe. These two gentlemen with Baker in the title role elevated the program to heights that it would never reach again, taking things in a more adult friendly manner to broaden and even intellectualize the property. This story is a prime example of this, establishing motifs that would later be picked up, (either intentionally or not), in Ridley Scott's Alien, where the Doctor, Sara Jane Smith, and a at first skeptical-of-time-travel Harry Sullivan arrive thousands of years off course in a seemingly deserted space station that is in fact home to the last remnants of a cryogenically maintained human race, as well as people-sized insect aliens who intend on taking them over. Even this early in the game, Baker's aloof and charismatic mannerisms were in full swing, plus his chemistry with his two companions, (particularly Elisabeth Sladen), is equally as established. The story itself is excellent though, void of either fat or redundancy and proving that the Doctor Who format was ideally suited for more horror-tinged sci-fi.
(1976)
Season Fourteen
A novelty in that it is the only story in the show's original run where the Doctor flew solo without a companion, The Deadly Assassin is also a paramount addition to the Time Lords mythos that briefly reintroduced the Master, first mentions Gallifrey founder Rassilon, and established the continuity of twelve regenerations. Granted, there are several lapses in logic in order for Robert Holmes' still excellent plot to tie up all of its pieces, namely how the Doctor would need to be schooled on the history of Rassilon, how the other serving Time Lord council members would not be able to piece together the significance of the Master going after Rassilon's Sash and Great Key, and how the Master is on his last dying breathes yet still manages to survive plummeting into a chasm. Such silliness aside, this is an outstanding experiment for the program, pitting Tom Baker against a Manchurian Candidate-styled conspiracy where he enters into a computer matrix for nearly half of the story to engage in a surreal wilderness battle with a different, power-hungry Time Lord. The presentation is more violent and nasty than usual, with the Master's putrid and skeletal appearance, some blood and grit, plus Baker getting choked-out under water all showcasing Holmes and producer Philip Hinchcliffe's continual agenda to adult-up the series. Yet when the results are this compelling, full of left turns, and enhance the show's mythology to new and exciting heights, one can hardly complain.
(1977)
Season Fourteen
Doctor Who does Agatha Christie in The Robots of Death, the second story in a row from screenwriter Chris Boucher and one that continues to establish the mentor-pupil dynamic between the Doctor and Leela. Placing our protagonists in an enormous sand-mining vehicle with a minimal human crew who are out to get rich and all seem to have varying degrees of history with each other that the audience is thrust directly into, this presents a futuristic society where people are dependent on "mechanical men" to handle most of the ins-and-outs of daily life. It can be seen as a cautionary tale about relying too much on technology, but it is really just a densely scripted whodunit full of well-rounded characters, loud costume design, memorable robots, a megalomaniacal bad guy of course, and the Doctor coming to brilliant conclusions before vanishing back into the cosmos with a gleefully bewildered Leela in tow. Tom Baker and Louise Jameson lack the kind of warm chemistry of past Doctor/companion duos, but this is actually ideal for their character's situation, with Leela being a savage stowaway in the TARDIS who the Doctor now must begrudgingly keep out of harm's way and educate in the ways of science and logic. It is a wonderful pairing even here in their second trek together, plus every other production aspect is as high if not higher than the already top-notch standards of the era. Using helium to defeat the bad guy = bravo.
(1977)
Season Fourteen
In all incarnations, one of the steadfast traits of the Doctor is that he is a man of science, traveling the universe and coming across more comparatively primitive races who misinterpret "phenomena" that can be explained by mathematical facts and the like. Thus, paring him up with the savage Leela proved to be a pitch-perfect match. Leela was uncivilized and had brutish impulses, but she was also no dummy and about as far from a damsel in distress/just tell the Doctor how brilliant he is companion as the show ever allowed. Her initial story The Face of Evil was authored by Chris Boucher, (his first of three for the series), yet as always, producer Philip Hinchcliffe and script editor Robert Holmes contributed substantial ideas to it. An ingenious story it is though, throwing us from the first frame right smack in the middle of a long-going war between two desperately different tribes. One of them is telepathic and lives inside of dormant spacecraft that can only be reached by climbing through a mountain stature that looks like Tom Baker, (long story), and the others are scantily-clad, tanned warriors who seem to have a lot of astronaut gear lying around that they sometimes treat as religious artifacts. As was the case for the previous season's Planet of Evil, "location" jungle shooting was done at Ealing Studios and is once again excellent. Baker exhibits the ideal balance of silliness and sternness, Louise Jameson instantly establishes herself as the Doctor's best companion, and the wonderful story drops several bombs along the way while always keeping the viewer guessing.
(1975)
Season Thirteen
In the Philip Hinchcliffe, Robert Holmes, and Tom Baker era of Doctor Who-ifying Gothic horror tales, Pyramids of Mars stands out above the also excellent rest. Arriving only six months and four stories after the series' pinnacle Genesis of the Daleks, this was a clear indication that the show was at its peak during the mid-1970s. Here, Holmes reworked a script by his former colleague Lewis Greifer, taking inspiration from Hammer's Mummy films and revisiting a motif that the program had done before of age-old Earth civilizations having extraterrestrial origins. As it pertains to ancient Egypt, this has long been explored in pseudo-science circles where UFOs are believed to have influenced the building of the pyramids and whatnot, and here it is given a sinister tweak concerning the mega-baddie Sutekh the Destroyer. All powerful yet trapped motionless for millennia, the evil deity nearly escapes his confinement until the Doctor and Sarah Jane thwart his plans via a series of trials and errors. Sutekh is both an intimidating foe and one that makes fewer mistakes than most of the Doctor's adversaries, and this is due to the solid writing which maintains a brisk pace with limited if any failed icebox test moments. Killer mummy robots, sinister possession, ominous organ music, top notch production values, and all taking place at a mansion that was then owned by Mick Jagger, this is what peak Doctor Who looks like folks.
01. Genesis of the Daleks (1975)
Season Twelve
Both the ultimate origin story, the ultimate six-parter, and featuring the Doctor's ultimate nemesises, Genesis of the Daleks set a standard that all past and proceeding stories need be held to. Dalek creator Terry Nation was tasked under the former producer/script editor team of Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks to explore the backstory of his most famous villains, with new showrunners Philip Hinchcliffe and Robert Holmes tweaking the results further for the first Tom Baker season. It is no surprise then that the serial ended up being such a benchmark, with all of the best creative personnel getting their mitts on it. Nation expanded upon and/or downright changed aspects of the Dalek's beginnings as they were explained in the show's second William Hartnell story The Daleks, emphasizing the Nazi angle and introducing the single finest antagonist that the show ever had in the form of Davros. Frequent Who actor Michael Wisher delivers a bravado portrayal here under heavy guise, a world-domination-crazed super genius for the ages whose motivations and downfall exemplify the type of delusional and all-consuming evil of warlords that, (in this case), can be brought on by the reckless advancement of science. Baker's "Do I have the right?" speech is rightfully lauded, and even though this bounces between the usual capture/escape/running through corridors/rallying the rebels/defeat the bad guys so society can be rebuilt tropes that Doctor Who frequented, they were never done so compellingly or with better production values and performances.
