Let’s just take a moment to appreciate Jamie and Zoe, perhaps the best two-companion team this show ever had. It’s not just that Frazer Hines and Wendy Padbury have so much personality, although that’s true. It’s not even that the basic concept of the characters – the plucky Jacobite soldier […]
Doctor Who
Doctor Who A-Z #44: The Dominators (1968)
Why do I love Doctor Who? If you asked me as a child, I’d probably say it’s because it’s very exciting and has scary monsters. But a lot of properties for children have those qualities. What made Doctor Who into a lifelong obsession was its ethics. I was slightly curious about James Bond […]
Doctor Who A-Z #43: The Wheel in Space (1968)
The idea that Doctor Who is primarily a show about monsters has its discontents, but the story of 1960s Doctor Who is, inarguably, the story of the show becoming more monster-obsessed. At its inception, co-creator Sydney Newman insisted that the show should not be about monsters at all; by Season Five it’s about very […]
Doctor Who A-Z #42: Fury From the Deep (1968)
No Doctor saw their work cast aside as brutally by the BBC as Patrick Troughton, who has a mere seven complete serials in the archives. It’s a particular shame because his Doctor is perhaps the hardest to appreciate on audio. Tom Baker or Christopher Eccleston’s performances can command the attention […]
Doctor Who A-Z #41: The Web of Fear (1968)
Asked what the appeal of Doctor Who was, Jon Pertwee said that other science fiction shows will give you monsters on other planets, or on spaceships, but in this show you might find “a Yeti sitting on your loo in Tooting Bec”. When Pertwee was announced as the Doctor, he took part […]
Doctor Who A-Z #40: The Enemy of the World (1967-8)
The Enemy of the World is famously the odd man out in Season Five’s run of monster-driven stories. That’s true, but how unusual is it as part of the Second Doctor’s era in general? Troughton’s second story, after all, was the last of the ‘pure’ historicals, while it’s seldom noted […]
Doctor Who A-Z #39: The Ice Warriors (1967)
There’s a case you could make against the Second Doctor’s era, that it represents a retreat from the wide-open possibilities of the Hartnell years into formula. Previously, the series could and did go from telling a story about a planet inhabited by giant psychic ants to a sober drama about […]
Doctor Who A-Z #38: The Abominable Snowmen (1967)
Back in the William Hartnell days, Doctor Who managed to get around the world on the wings of audience expectations: people in the early 1960s didn’t mind if a television serial used a soundstage with a painted backdrop to represent an Aztec temple. Even by 1967, though, audiences were starting […]
Doctor Who A-Z #37: The Tomb of the Cybermen (1967)
There’s a very slight oddity in The Tomb of the Cybermen which is all but ignored now, and which is hard to appreciate unless you’re watching these stories in order. It has to do with the Cybermats, the weird robot rat-bugs the Cybermen use as henchmen. This is their first […]
Doctor Who A-Z #36: The Evil of the Daleks (1967)
Episode one of The Evil of the Daleks sets up an entertaining and unique adventure. For the first time since the Hartnell years – maybe since The Ark? – we pick up directly from a cliffhanger at the end of the previous story as the Doctor and Jamie chase the […]