Putting the Crew Together - The Keeper of Traken

Being that he was hard done by early in this run, I decided to address one of Tom Baker’s big moments. The big moment every Doctor has. His regeneration. From what I understand Baker’s end and Davison’s beginning is actually a trilogy starting with The Keeper of Traken which is a damn good idea. Why should an adventure end with a Doctor’s death, when you have the perfect story telling technique to have the bad guy win, yet the hero come back and right that wrong?

However, The Keeper of Traken also brings into stark relief the problem with my scattered approach to Who. Upon landing on Traken and meeting Tremas, I already know that this man will become the Master somehow.

There's a War Coming - Frontier in Space

I’m not sure what I expected here. I knew the next serial hinged on Frontier in Space. No one recommended it, so I figured a pretty shaky story just to get to some Dalek action. Instead we get a 70’s sci-fi version of 24, by which I mean lots of political intrigue, war brewing and some casual torture thrown around.

It’s utterly brilliant and unexpected.

In The Navy - The Sea Devils

As what is basically the sequel to The Silurians I expected so much more from The Sea Devils instead it's the Master's rather devious return to the show after getting captured at the end of The Daemons. Of course we just read “The Face of the Enemy” so it's a slightly different spin here.

Doctor Who without the Doctor - The Face of the Enemy

Again we divert from the usual audio fare to dive into written Who. Why? Because this is Pertwee-era without Pertwee. The Face of the Enemy is also pretty highly regarded, and since it takes place at the same time as The Curse of Peladon I figured it was the perfect opportunity.

Besides, a look at ancillary characters without the Doctor about and see how they cope in a situation that greatly needs him sounds right up my street.

Back to Earth,One Last Time - Mind of Evil

Finally, after Big Finish eventually managed to get my spirits back up about Doctor Who I dived into what would be me final Pertwee for a while. When I left Hartnell along with Susan I said I would venture up to the previously watched The Daemons before heading back. Now we're there, and I'm not. I'm going to keep jumping forward.

Unlike the previous skip, this one is more out of necessity then choice, and far larger. This time I'm jumping all the way towards the end of Tom Baker's time as the Doctor, to where Romana II debuted. This is because of the other side of Who I'm writing about, the Big Finish audio adventures. Romana's regeneration is slightly earlier than I need to go, but like I used the previous jump to connect disparate viewings of War Games and The Daemons, I'm doing the same here, tying in the brilliant City of Death. I'm also going to watch the Four/Five Regeneration, because they were the main reason I started my second jaunt through Time and Space.

But anyway, The Mind of Evil. Thank God we get to finish on a high.

Gender bends and farewell - Dark Water and Death in Heaven

Well, that wasn't the most explosive finale we've had. Well, apart from the obvious... Sorry. Too soon?

One of the things about New Who has been trying to separate the Cybermen ever further from feeling like discount Daleks they became in later Classic Who. Russell T. Davies did it be introducing the body horror to the show, but Moffat takes that idea and goes even further, with not just body harvesting, but harvesting the dead.

Which is quite a big thing. Has this taken them too far for any future Cyber stories, or was this a one off deal because of the uploads? But anyway, we're getting away from the important stuff. The dark water and the Cybermen was a great concept, fantastically hinted at in vague terms before the reveal. Unfortunately it was completely ruined by promotional material, but that's a rant for another day. My flatmate barely watches any TV or follows stuff on the net, and he got to enjoy the Cybermen reveal in all it's glory, and it worked amazingly on him. I'm sorta jealous.

The Doctor gets his Doctor Doom - Terror of the Autons

We start the second series with Pertwee in the main role with the same bad guy as the first, The Autons. This would strike me as a really odd decision except they've added Master, who sees his debut here and proceeds to be the bad guy for the entire season.

We also meet Jo Grant, the Doctor's new companion after Liz Shaw's one and only series. Liz is not even given a decent goodbye, but is written out between seasons because she went back to Cambridge. But at least the Brigadier gets the decent line of “what you need, Doctor, as Miss Shaw herself so often remarked, is someone to pass you your test tubes, and to tell you how brilliant you are.”

Back to Who: A jaunt through Time and Space

It should come as a surprise to no one who followed this blog in late 2013 that I've dived back into Classic Doctor Who. Not just Enemy of the World I got for Christmas but a whole lot more.

Of course that's where I started. A little bit of time left in 2013 I watched Enemy of the World and got to see Doctor Who does James Bond from a caravan. And honestly, it was kind of brilliant.

Doctor Who turns 50 part 10: Utopia, Sound of Drums and Last of the Time Lords

Tennant is my Doctor. Though I watched all of Eccleston's run he wasn't around long enough. Tennant was. It was his run that got me hooked. Plus it always amuses me that TENnant was the TENTH Doctor. Ahh wordplay.

The act of the Master going to the one point in time Time Lords never go to and using a chameleon arch is fantastic, and Martha pointing it out but realising she should tell the Doctor is also really well done. I think with a lot of the older companions they'd just go “WAHEY! NEW TIMELORD! OPEN IT!” and all hell would break loose. Here it's still the companions fault, but Martha was clever enough to run off to tell the Doctor and not give the game away, unfortunately the damage is already done. It stops that moment of screaming at Ace or Jo to stop being idiotic. Some nice writing.

Doctor Who turns 50 part 8: The TV Movie

First a confession. This was the first Doctor Who I saw in its entirety. I'd caught a couple of Pertwee's, but never a full serial. This was my attempt to see what Doctor Who was all about. I liked it, but not any great amount. Certainly nothing to go out of my way to seek more. To put it into context, it was this exact same attitude I approached New Who. So that shows how much effect this had on me. As a result I've never felt the vitriol for Eighth Doctor's adventure, in fact I almost feel defensive of it.

Now I've watched it again... it could have been a decent enough outing, but the directing is so heavy handed it kills everything. I actually was able to enjoy it right up to the point they left the atomic clock and went back to the Tardis. Then the finale came in, and during what should be a tense battle of wills between the Doctor and the Master, I was immensely bored. The constant cutting between the fight, the New Years party and the Science Institute just wrenched you out of the scene, rather than creating any tension, which was clearly the point.

Doctor Who turns 50 part 6: Mark of the Rani

Remember when I said I was worried about the early Doctors? Apparently that was a premonition of reaching Colin Baker's Sixth Doctor. This guy's a total prick. The Doctor might usually be the smartest guy in the room, but he doesn't tend to shout about it. There's also his attitude towards his companion. I thought the Third Doctor was bad with Jo, but the Sixth takes every single opportunity to put Peri down and scream at her for being an idiot.

Having said that, Peri might just be the most annoying companion I've ever seen, and some of the Doctor screaming is vaguely understandable, she's a fairly useless bint. First hint of danger and she wants to be off running. What sort of Doctor's companion is that?  It seemed that half her lines were "Can't we just go back to the TARDIS?" Except it had been dumped down a mine on the Master's orders. Let's ignore people are trying to kill us while we mount that particular rescue mission, because someone like the Master won't take that opportunity to swoop in.

Doctor Who turns 50 part 5.5: The Five Doctors

The second multi-Doctor serial to celebrate the franchises 20th Anniversary. Obviously it stars all previous incarnations of the Doctor and some of their companions. However, that's a bit of a lie. Tom Baker is at the start and is quickly brushed out the way, and William Hartnell is replaced by another actor, sadly due to the former's death.

Once again, the anniversary concentrates on the Time Lords, this time revealing Rassilon as the man who made the Time Lords who they are today. I like that these anniversary episodes always choose to deal with the big things. However, once again they feel like a totally different version to what we saw in War Games and The Three Doctors. This truncated watching is makes things very odd. That said, between this and War Games there lies the version we've seen in modern day, so clearly there's a point where their portrayal had a solid base for reinterpretation.

Doctor Who turns 50 part 3: The Daemons

Jon Pertwee's entry in my look book. Pertwee is the closest I get to having my own Doctor of the old cast having watched bits of Spearhead from Space and Doctor Who and the Silurians back when I was a kid.

However, watching this – and understanding his exile this time – Three seems like a total dick. He's short with everyone. Certainly my least favourite of the Doctors so far, which is odd, cos I vaguely remember liking him when I watched Spearhead a decade or so ago. I do like the idea that he's just pissed off about being stuck on Earth though.