The Doctor Who Real Time Marathon

The Sun Makers: Part One (26/11/17) An unsurprisingly excellent script from Robert Holmes this week, full of scathing wit and word play. On a colonised Pluto, which has six suns (in orbit), Citizen Cordo, a D-Grade Foundry Worker has just discovered that he can't afford his father's Death Tax. Faced with the possibility of no sleep until the excessive tax has been paid off, he chooses to go out onto the roof of the massive Megropolis and commit suicide. Fortunately, the Doctor and Leela have just arrived and stop him, choosing to help. With no other option left, Cordo goes to the Undercity where a rough bunch of escapees are living in darkness, surviving by thieving from the Megropolis they once called home. Their nasty leader, Mandrel, agrees to take Cordo in if the Doctor goes and takes out 1000 Talmars from a Megropolis cashpoint using a forged Consumcard. He agrees, but the card doesn't work and he's trapped, being gassed in the closed booth, K9 is back after ...

I grew up with Ace as the Doctor’s companion. She was the reason I started watching the series as I had a bit of a crush on Sophie Aldred when she started presenting children’s educational series ‘Corners’ – a programme for kids much younger than I was, but it was on at the same time that I got home from school and, on the cusp of puberty, seeing this attractive young woman who told us about interesting stuff… well… My mate told me to watch that evening’s episode of ‘Doctor Who’ on the 23 rd of November 1987. He didn’t explain why, just told me to watch it. I’d never been too interested in the show. A few weeks earlier I’d caught the scene of the Yellow Kang getting killed in ‘Paradise Towers’ and I remember watching Peri getting gunned down outside the weapons silo the previous year (and assumed for a long time that that was how she died – in fact, for the next few years I was convinced that most companions departed the series in a hail of bullets and that Mel’s sweet farewell h...

Image Of The Fendahl: Part One (29/10/17) A huge improvement this week and appropriately very Horror in style only two days before Hallowe'en! A group of archaeologists and scientists have unearthed a Human skull which appears to be 8 million years older than Mankind. Doctor Fendelman's experiments seem to be affecting it somehow, making it glow, and a hiker has already died of fright in the haunted woods surrounding the mansion up near the village of Fetchborough. It's also had an affect on Chronologist Thea Ransome, but so far she seems okay. Whatever it is they're doing has affected the TARDIS some way, too, and drawn it to Earth. K9 is suffering from corrosion and the Doctor has taken him to pieces - I get the impression they weren't originally intending to have him join the Doctor so he's not in this story. Leela also has a new, pale chamois leather dress (not as nice as her other one) and has put her hair up into a very unflattering bun. It's a...

The Invisible Enemy: Part One (01/10/17) I'm not going to say this week was disappointing, but it wasn't as good as it has been recently. It's a very Sci Fi story and some of the model work and design was very good. However, some of it really wasn't. The story idea is okay so far. It looks like a station relief crew destined for a base on Titan in the year 5000 encountered a cloud containing some form of intelligence which intends to use the base to multiply. They killed the crew they were replacing and went after the base controller, but he set off a Mayday and escaped. The TARDIS materialised nearby and received the Mayday, the Doctor and Leela in the old console room (!), but the TARDIS drifted into the cloud and the Doctor became infected by a Nucleus, although Leela was rejected. He seemed oblivious of it until they reached Titan and the infected crew zapped him with electricity from their eyes and activated the Nucleus. Meanwhile, Leela found the base comm...

Horror Of Fang Rock: Part One (03/09/17) A new series with a new production team, but it all looks very much the same as before - we're still at the turn of the Century and everything is very dark and Gothic. This, obviously, is a good thing. We're on Fang Rock, possibly off the coast of Worthing, and at a lighthouse manned by Ben, the chief electrician (in charge of the new electric generator), Reuben, the old traditionalist who says oil was far better, and young novice Vince who, at the start, noticed a ball of fire shoot out the sky and under the sea. Soon a thick fog is rolling in and the generator fails. Ben goes to fix the generator but Reuben, a weathered keeper, says the fog isn't natural and soon Ben is dead! The Doctor and Leela arrive, off course from a trip to Brighton, and find Ben's electrocuted body. Vince is hospitable enough to the waylaid travellers, but Reuben is justifiably suspicious. There's something on the Rock which stalks Leela while ...

The Talons Of Weng-Chiang: Part One (26/02/17) Just when you think the series can't get any better they pull out a story set in Victorian London with theatres, Tongs and grizzly murders! Funny things are going on at Mr Jago's theatre, not least the disappearance of eight girls in the area which somehow seem to be connected to Magician and Ventriloquist Li H'sen Chang and his creepy puppet Mr Sin (who clearly isn't a puppet as he murdered the husband of one of the missing girls!). Jago is suspicious as he noticed blood on Mr Sin's hand, and stagehand Casey has seen ghosts sub-stage. Meanwhile, the Doctor and Leela have become embroiled in affairs after stumbling across the husband being carried off by some Tongs. Leela apprehended one while the others fled into the sewers, and she and the Tong were arrested. Li H'sen Change turned up at the police station as an interpreter (despite the Doctor trying to get the Tong to chat) and failed to convince that he ha...

The Robots Of Death: Part One (29/01/17) From the beautifully designed forest sets of the last story to the gorgeous sets of a Sandminer with its Art Deco robot crew. Chris Boucher is back with a murder mystery - except that the title sort of gives it away. However, the Human crew in their lavish clothes and weirdly stylish hats aren't aware that Chub, the annoying crew member who took great pleasure in telling Borg about a masseur robot who twisted a client's arm off (while a robot was massaging Borg's shoulder) was strangled by one of their robot servants. The Doctor and Leela, meanwhile, arrived in one of the mining scoops and while they were exploring, the TARDIS was taken away because it was causing an obstruction (great model work). Fortunately, they managed to avoid getting cut to shreds by an oncoming sandstorm when the mining work was aborted after Poul found Chub's body. Oh, this all came after a great scene in the TARDIS where the Doctor had a go at exp...