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...

The 7th of November 1987 marks the date that Pete Tyler died. Paul Cornell's 9th Doctor story Father's Day is probably my favourite of Christopher Eccleston's episodes for very selfish reasons - at the time it aired it was only a little over six years since my mother had died - but aside from the purely personal reasons for it being my favourite, it's also a dramatic, tense episode which deals with it's subject matter with the sensitivity and understanding it deserves. Just as The Aztecs illustrated to Barbara Wright that you can't rewrite history, not one line, Father's Day shows Rose Tyler what happens when you take action and succeed. In a way, this follows on from The Long Game in setting up the rules of time travel for a new audience; whilst that episode had shown Adam using his trip to the future for personal gain, and the Doctor's (rather cruel) response, Father's Day puts Rose in a position where she can alter the past and save he...

Selecting a favourite 8th Doctor story is always going to be difficult simply because there is both an unfortunate lack of 8th Doctor stories and, at the same time, more 8th Doctor stories than any other!  On TV, he only officially appeared twice as the lead - first in the 1996 TV Movie and again in the 50th Anniversary short The Night Of The Doctor . Out of those, Night Of The Doctor is by far the better, giving a taste of his character in under ten minutes and leaving you wanting more. The 1996 TV Movie is a great runaround and far from terrible, but has as many things which make you wince as make you love what you're watching. The stunning TARDIS interior, the brilliant direction of Sylv's death scene (including the frankly horrific sudden last gasp after you think he's gone), the 8th Doctor and Grace working out who he is outside her home, McGann's breathless performance as they try to avert the end of the world in the TARDIS and Grace's possession, rel...

I always thought there was something quite ironic about my favourite 7th Doctor story. I view the Colin Baker era as the point where the show really lost its way making mistakes in the longevity of the effects of the 'difficult' regeneration, the personality of the 6th Doctor himself, and his relationship with his companions. There were hints at the warmth needed in one or two stories in Season 22 (mainly The Mark Of The Rani ), but it only actually showed in the high point of Colin's run - The Mysterious Planet . The following instalment of The Trial Of A Time Lord failed to maintain this partly because of the 'interference' by the Valeyard, inserting false sequences showing the Doctor torturing Peri, amongst other things, and the Time Lord at his most bombastic. The next serial suffered from the introduction of a rather grating companion to accompany the rather grating Doctor and the finale was an utter mess, largely due to the unfortunate events taking place b...

The Armageddon Factor: Part One (20/01/19) A very good start with lots going on. The Doctor, Romana and K9 have gone to the planet Atrios in search of the final segment of the Key To Time. The planet is in the middle of a nuclear war with its twin planet Zeos, its ruler - the Marshall - intent on winner no matter the cost. He's opposed by figurehead Princess Astra who is having a covert affair with Surgeon Merak, and colluding with him to try and contact Zeos and come to a peaceful truce. The Marshall is either insane or is being controlled by something (the Black Guardian?) behind a mirror - or both - and has had one of his guards lock Astra in a high radiation zone (then shot the guard to shut him up). The Doctor, Romana and K9 landed near where Astra was imprisoned and found her by using the Locator (I think the segment is Astra's coronet as it fell off just before her unconscious body was dragged into a transmat by a cloaks figure with a fucked up face) and K9 blasted a...

The Power Of Kroll: Part One (23/12/18) Much better this week down to a script by Robert Holmes, although it started to drag in the last five minutes. Lots of location filming - both day and night (unlike 'The Stones Of Blood' which gave us day-for-night footage which isn't as effective) out in East Anglia (lots of fens, marshland, reeds and water). The Doctor and Romana have arrived on a moon of Delta Magna which is populated by green-skinned 'Swampies' who were moved there from the planet a couple of centuries ago by Earth colonists. Now the colonists are starting to exploit the moon by building a methane refinery and, understandably, the 'savage' Swampies are a bit pissed off. Fortunately, they're being aided by a colonial group called The Sons Of Earth who have provided weapons via renowned gun runner Rohm-Dutt (a man with a dodgy Irish-cum-faux-American accent). Unfortunately, they've captured Romana and are sacrificing her to their god, ...