Patrick Troughton’s final season sounds like a nightmare to make. The War Games‘s ten-episode length is a product of the turmoil: other stories had their episode counts rejigged during filming and editing, back-up stories were hastily put into production and several storylines were rejected outright. One of that latter unlucky […]
Doctor Who
Doctor Who A-Z #49: The Space Pirates (1969)
Reviewing The Space Pirates demands you accept two things about 1960s Doctor Who. The first is that they absolutely churned the show out. There was an ambition, early on, to run it like a soap opera and have it on fifty-two weeks a year; this was wisely rethought before the […]
Doctor Who A-Z #48: The Seeds of Death (1969)
The Seeds of Death is the Patrick Troughton era’s last business-as-usual story, the final one that fits into the “base-under-siege” mould that series guides often reduce it to. It’s not a wholly unfair summary; Troughton’s first ever story fits this mould, and by Season Five it’s become something close to […]
Doctor Who A-Z #47: The Krotons (1968-9)
The Krotons is something like the base material of Doctor Who. The Doctor and his friends roll up on a nameless planet where a group of people in an isolated community are being ruled by stubby robot monsters. Some of the oppressed community want to rebel, others want to submit, […]
Doctor Who A-Z #46: The Invasion (1968)
One of the little-remarked-upon peculiarities of Doctor Who is that, for a science fiction series, it doesn’t do many future Earth stories. It addresses the future of humanity, certainly – as early as the first season, The Sensorites was sketching out a mythology of mankind exploring and colonising space. But anyone looking for news […]
Doctor Who A-Z #45: The Mind Robber (1968)
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 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 […]