The Doctor Who Real Time Marathon

Nightmare Of Eden: Part One (24/11/79) Another very good episode slightly let down by one or two things. Some of the Direction was a bit lacking in drama, particularly the collision between the two spaceships and the cliffhanger. However, it's a fantastic premise - a space liner coming out of hyperspace has collided with a smaller vessel and the two are meshed together with areas of unstable interface. This all happened because the co-pilot keyed in the wrong materialisation co-ordinates because he was high on drugs. In fact, drug smuggling seems to be the main drive of the plot as someone has taken the co-pilot's stash and the co-pilot has been attacked and killed, possibly by the alien we saw at the cliffhanger. Meanwhile, there's a subplot with a scientist called Tryst and his assistant, Della, who have a machine which contains the flora and fauna of a bunch of planets converted into living crystal recordings. The CET machine is primitive and unstable, though, which ...

The Creature From The Pit: Part One (27/10/19) Well, that was all rather wonderful! We're on an alien planet and, frankly, the jungle sets are amazing! They rival the 'Planet Of Evil' and 'The Face Of Evil' sets and, I think, are superior thanks to some lovely mountainous backcloths. Brought to the planet by a distress signal, the Doctor and Romana discovered a (brilliantly realised) giant, shattered egg made of woven metal! They were caught (in 'The Place Of Death') by Madame Karela and her posse (who we'd earlier seen with Lady Adrasta chucking some poor bloke down the eponymous Pit) who took them to her boss (Lady A.). Romana was kidnapped during an ambush by bandits but managed to talk her way out of the situation with the help of K9 (yes, he's back! Sort of...). At dawn, Lady Adrasta took the Doctor to The Pit ("You have such a way with words") to witness one of her engineers, who she set the task of finding out what the egg was,...

City Of Death: Part One (29/09/19) Fuck me! They're in Paris! And I mean actually in PARIS  - Tom and Lalla gallivanting about outside the Louvre and the Notre Dame, travelling on the Metro, up to the top of the Eiffel Tower and pegging it across busy Parisian streets! They've really upped the ante this series! And what a clever, witty script! Tom and Lalla are having a whale of a time - you can tell from Tom's performance. Some great comic moments, like when Romana commented on the fact that the Mona Lisa has no eyebrows, and numerous humorous coffee shop scenes (the Doctor and Romana were on the red wine to begin with, but swapped to water later - doubles). It all started off with a pretty amazing sequence with a green, one-eyed alien piloting one of the coolest spaceships (on a beautifully sculpted barren planet model set) which then exploded. We then cut to Paris 1979 (Spring - lots of blossom) where the dubious Count Carlos Scarlioni is selling lost artworks (pai...

Destiny Of The Daleks: Episode One (01/09/19) Well, that was quite good, and a lot more entertaining than I expected when I saw Terry Nation's name attached to the credits! First things first, though: Romana's regenerated! And she's chosen Princess Astra's body! There was a silly sequence where she was 'trying on' different bodies, much like in 'Robot' with the Doctor's costumes but not as stupid, but she settled for an Astra in a rather fetching pink and white version of the Doctor's outfit. It was incredibly jarring at first and I'll miss Mary Tamm who, like Caroline John, didn't even get a farewell, but in 25 minutes I've actually started to warm to the new incarnation. Lalla Ward and Tom Baker have great chemistry, and Lalla is playing the character very different to the rather wet Astra. Speaking of Tom, this is his sixth season! He's now been the Doctor longer than Pertwee and, by the end of this series, as long a...