The Doctor Who Real Time Marathon

Revenge Of The Cybermen: Part One (19/04/15) After an unreasonably long absence (6 years!!!) the Cybermen are back! Of sorts; they made a brief appearance this week, not speaking aboard their dubiously-shaped space ship. Anyhow, the Time Ring has returned the Doctor, Sarah and Harry to Nerva thousands of years early when it's being used as a beacon to divert space traffic away from a new asteroid, called Voga. Unfortunately, the TARDIS is still travelling backward in time to meet them and it seems a plague has wiped out all but three of the crew and a civilian called Kellman. Or has it? It seems Voga has life hiding inside its wonderfully location-shot, Wookey Hole-like core, albeit a race of alien with dodgy, mask-like faces and  either flowing locks or a receding Teutonic bob. Kellman appears to know them, however, as he got a bit jumpy when the communications officer picked up a radio signal from one of the flowing-locks-Vogans (who was quickly disposed of by two bob-Vogan...

Genesis Of The Daleks: Part One (08/03/15) The improvement in the series continues (again, largely thanks to some excellent location work) despite this being a Dalek story by Terry Nation! An obvious WWII/Nazi allegory from the offset with gas-masked soldiers being cut down in a hail of bullets crossing a barren wasteland. The Time Lords have intercepted the transmat beam and brought the Doctor, Sarah and Harry to Skaro to interfere with the creation of the Daleks during an endless war between the Kaleds and the Thals. They also appear to have stolen Sarah's waterproof trousers (and wellies?) which I'm sure she was wearing at the end of last week's story! After crossing the wasteland (Harry rescuing the Doctor from a nasty landmine accident), they found a Kaled bunker. Thals attacked but were gassed (the Doctor et al. donning masks from some corpses to survive) and the Doctor and Harry were taken inside. Introduced to and interrogated by the young General Raven, the D...

The Sontaran Experiment: Part One (22/02/15) Well, that was just a little bit fantastic! The Doctor, Sarah and Harry have arrived on Earth ten thousand years after it was ravaged by solar flares and it's now a beautiful wilderness! The Doctor set about repairing the transmat and sent Sarah and Harry off to explore. Miraculously, Sarah was actually likable for the first time in an age, which is lucky because after about five minutes the three had been split up. Harry fell down a subsidence which had been hidden as a trap, and the Doctor was captured by a group of Human Colonists (from Galsec, whatever that is; obviously a colony that didn't go to sleep!) who are wonderfully portrayed by a load of South African actors whose accents make the story really stand out. Sarah, meanwhile, encountered another of the colonists, Roth, who's been tortured to the brink of madness by an alien in the rocks (yes, it's obviously a Sontaran given the title, and it's quite cool t...

The Ark In Space: Part One (25/01/15) Well, that was a vast improvement on the last month of tripe! Only the Doctor, Sarah and Harry in the episode this week, thousands of years in the future on an Ark in Space thanks to Harry fiddling with the TARDIS controls.  Sarah wandered off on her own (idiot) and nearly suffocated in an airless room, then got put on a short range matter transmitter (by accident) to recover and got put in cryogenic sleep! Meanwhile, the Doctor and Harry were faced with deactivating a defence system in the next room which the Doctor had accidentally switched on when he repaired some cables that had been bitten through. Then they explored the Ark, narrowly missing some weird, green bug thing that seems to have eaten one of the Humans who are in cryogenic sleep. The Doctor and Harry found the chambers containing the Humans and found sleeping Sarah, then Harry opened a cupboard to search for equipment to revive her and a giant insect came at him! Really t...

Robot: Part One (28/12/14) Well, new series, new Doctor. Must say I wasn't too impressed to begin with, but as the episode progressed I began to warm to Tom Baker. There was a lot of silly playing around, including a daft costume scene, some skipping with the UNIT doctor, and talk of spinning mice! The new Doctor is very laid back, sprawled in the Brigadier's jeep at one point with his feet sticking out the roof. The new UNIT doctor, Harry Sullivan, seems to have taken Mike Yates' place, accompanying the Brigadier and the Doctor to the scenes of a number of thefts by the titular Robot of plans and parts for a disintegrater gun. Meanwhile, Sarah Jane seems to have stumbled across the people responsible when conveniently visiting Think Tank, a group that does scientific research then passes it on to companies and governments to develop. Curious about the departure of a Professor Kettlewell, she visited him but got no answers so returned to Think Tank to be confronted by...

I never liked the Third Doctor. Arrogant, flamboyant, prone to his 'moments of charm' and surrounded by a ridiculously camp military team that couldn't army their way out of a shoe box and, for the most part, a dumb blonde companion who was the epitome of 'The Screamer'. Yes, his first story was a Classic - everybody knew that - but after that first series the show descended into silly childishness with too much CSO, an alien invasion every week and a daft arch-nemesis dressed as Evil 70s Guy who was always the one behind it all. Granted, I only started watching the show in 1987, so my first exposure to the Third Doctor would likely have been the repeat of 'The  Dæmons' following that episode of 'Tomorrow's World' which explained the colourising process. Over the next few years, I'd get to see 'The Sea Devils', 'Planet Of The Daleks' and 'The Green Death', and whilst these are all regarded as some of the very best ...

Planet Of The Spiders: Part One (04/05/14) SO  much better this week! Mike Yates has gone to a meditational retreat in the West Country and stumbled across some fellow residents  up to some funny business with a Mandala in the basement. So he's brought journalist Sarah Jane Smith in to investigate in the hope that she'll be able to bring in the Doctor and UNIT - something he wouldn't be able to do having helped out the bad guys of Operation Golden Age. Meanwhile, the Doctor and Alistair (that's the Brigadier's first name!!!) have been to the theatre and invited the psychic Professor Clegg back to UNIT for some tests. After a quaint telekinetic sequence with some no-bad CSO, Benton turned up with a parcel from Jo (all the way in the Amazon) asking someone at UNIT to look after the Blue Metebilis crystal the Doctor gave her as a wedding present as the natives think it's bad magic! However, whist the Doctor was reading her letter and Professor Clegg was examin...

The Monster Of Peladon: Part One (23/03/14) YAY! We're back on Peladon and there's more shit going down! It's fifty years later and King Peladon's daughter, Thalira, is on the Throne accompanied by her slightly-less-psycho-than-the-last-one High Priest, Ortron, along with Alpha Centauri. The Galactic Federation is at war with Galaxy 5 and have a mining expert (Vega Nexos - a weird bird/satyr creature) and Human Eckersley overseeing mining for Trisilicate (which is basically very rare but essential for everything). Someone obviously doesn't want them doing this, as an image of Aggedor keeps appearing and vaporising people, including Vega Nexos and several Pel miners (who all have badger-Afros for want of a better description). Anyhow, after being caught in the temple of Aggedor, mistaken for spy-assassins, brought before the Queen, acquitted due to Alpha Centauri's intervention and witnessing an unplanned (by the Pel mining leader, at least) uprising by the...