The Doctor Who Real Time Marathon

  THE VISITATION   (Part One)  15/02/2022  It's been about four and a half years since we had a story set entirely in the past and, lo and behold, the new series has only gone and taken us back to the 1600s! It all started off with a family in a rather nice manor house in the rural village of Heathrow finding themselves attacked one evening by aliens and a rather nicely designed robot (well, I say  robot but the Squire claimed it was one of the aliens in armour so he may have been right!). Sadly, it appears the Squire and his son and daughter may be as dead as their servant, Ralph, although we may well meet them tomorrow. It would seem to be a waste of some nice characters if they were. Continuing the links to the Hartnell era, we then got some scenes in the TARDIS with the Doctor admonishing Adric for being a dick in Kinda  by trying to escape in the TSS. Then Tegan told Nyssa (in brief) what had happened to her on Deva Loka as she got ready to leave the T...

KINDA  (Part One)  01/02/2022 Pronounced like German for 'children' and not like the Nine Inch Nails song 'Kinda I Want To'. I must say, I'm really enjoying how off-the-wall this series is so far. It's such a huge contrast to the Tom Baker era (which I think is really rather the point). Season 18 showed some diversion from the usual fair, but so far we've had the fake peaceful society of Castrovalva and a story which felt more like a Hartnell adventure. Now we've got a story which seems to have more in common with Warriors' Gate  or The Mind Robber  than anything else in the last 19 years. Firstly, it's not about Nyssa. She's in the TARDIS with a contraption the Doctor made incorporating the Sonic Screwdriver to help sort her head out - apparently, she's fainted again since last week so is currently sitting this story out. They've landed on S14 - aka Deva Loka - planet of the Kinda, a seemingly-but-not-really primitive Humanoid people...

 FOUR TO DOOMSDAY (Part One) 18/01/2022 That was quite an interesting episode which felt a lot like some of the old Hartnell stories - The Sensorites in particular sprang to mind as the Doctor and his companions investigated a spaceship on which the TARDIS has materialised. Despite the continuity announcer claiming this story was set in the far future it is, in fact, set in the past; specifically, on the day Tegan walked into the TARDIS. She's having a bad day. Even though she knows she's in a Time Machine (I assume) she thinks the Doctor has lost her her job by taking her to the Urbankan ship instead of Heathrow Airport. As such, she got a bit pissy, not helped by Adric also having a bad day and being openly obnoxious and incredibly sexist, especially to Tegan. It's no wonder the Doctor split them up, taking Tegan with him when Monarch (the leader of those on the ship) acceded to the request that the Doctor meet him (realised by some rather nicely realised floating black o...

  CASTROVALVA (Part One)   04/01/22 It's a new start to the series and a wonderful contrast to the shit K9 story we were fed last week! It wasn't without its faults - the opening scenes as Adric, Nyssa and Tegan carried the newly regenerated Doctor away from the Pharos Project had some horribly stilted dialogue and very dodgy direction, but once everyone was in the TARDIS things started to settle down. This (so far) is much better than Chris Bidmead's last pitiful effort and actually got the new Doctor off to an interesting start. Peter Davison did some wonderful impressions of the first two Doctors and namechecked Vicki, Jamie and the Brigadier as well as the Ice Warriors! Nyssa is coming into her own, finally getting to do something (basically run things and figure things out) although it wasn't clear that she knew the TARDIS was a time machine until she actually stated it could travel in time. I mean, why else would she think it inevitable they'd crash into somet...

  K9 & Company: A Girl's Best Friend (28/12/21) Well, that was... novel. Nothing quite says Christmas like a confused investigation into witchcraft in deepest Mummerset! Given K9's popularity, it isn't hugely surprising that, having departed the show a year ago, he's been given his own Special, but teaming him up with a companion who'd never met him was, frankly, the first of a long line of mis-steps. The fact that Sarah Jane Smith hasn't exactly become any more likeable since the Doctor dumped her five years ago didn't help, either. It would have made more sense to have had him travelling the universe with Leela and Andred, or adventuring with Romana and the Tharils. Instead, the Doctor apparently dumped a third version of the metal dog at Sarah's house in Croydon in 1978 and she's ignored it ever since, only unboxing him when her Aunt Lavinia left it out for her to find while she went off galivanting at a science convention in America. On the w...

It's a sort of accepted fact in fandom that the Hinchcliffe/Holmes era of Doctor Who (encompassing the first three seasons of Tom Baker's time on the show) is one of the high points of the programme's entire run. It came following the massively popular Pertwee era when the show once more became a teatime adventure series the whole family could enjoy, and cast an eccentric actor in the role, taking him away from the cosy world of Letts and Dicks' mostly-Earth-based stories and the UNIT family into more strange, alien places riffing on the tropes of popular films from the 40s, 50s and 60s; Forbidden Planet, Frankenstein, Invasion Of The Bodysnatchers, The Curse Of The Mummy's Tomb, and Doctor Jeckyl and Mister Hyde are some of the films which are clear influences on the Hinchcliffe era, each an adaptation of a literary work most of which are also very well known. I can't deny that the production quality of these stories is superb. Hinchcliffe opted for a darker lo...

  Well, it’s happened. I’ve reached the end of the Tom Baker era, and it all felt strangely muted and a little underwhelming. Unlike the drama and excitement of his two predecessors, it just kind of happened. Perhaps it’s because I’ve often felt that Baker should have left sooner (especially in the middle of the Graham Williams era), or perhaps it’s because Tom seemed so tired and bored throughout his final season; I suspect it’s a mixture of both. However, I shouldn’t focus on the negatives. This is an overview of his entire era and, whilst he isn’t my favourite Doctor (of the four to have portrayed the character so far I think I place him fourth), there were nonetheless some good times and some absolutely fantastic stories. Tom’s seven seasons on the show were overseen by three different producers – Philip Hinchcliffe, Graham Williams and John Nathan-Turner. Each brought their own different flavour to the show, ably helped by Script Editors Robert Holmes, Anthony Read, Douglas ...

 Logopolis: Part One (28/02/21) The final story of the season (and Tom's last story!) and it seems we have a new companion (just like in the 60s with Steven and Polly and Ben and Victoria and Zoe). She's an Australian whose Aunt was taking her to start her job as an Air Stewardess, but the battered old sports car they were in got a flat tyre and they pulled into a layby. It just so happens that it's the same layby with a Police Box that the Doctor chose to land the TARDIS over - he's going to measure one so he can give the measurements to some mathematicians on a planet called Logopolis so they can fix the Chameleon Circuit...somehow. It's also the same layby where the Master landed his TARDIS over the Police Box, so the Doctor landed his TARDIS over the Master's TARDIS and created a 'Gravity Bubble'. Somehow, this all seems very contrived. The cliffhanger was a bit rubbish, too. Leaving the Gravity Bubble by the TARDIS's back door (it appeared) the ...