7.3: The Ambassadors of Death

• Doctor: Jon Pertwee
• Companion: Liz Shaw
• Creators: David Whitaker (Writer – actually Terrence Dicks & Malcolm Hulke did the work), Michael Ferguson (Director), Barry Letts (Producer)
• Season 7

What’s the rating?

Must See. This one rocks.

What’s interesting about it?

Out of the blue, especially for a Pertwee story, we are barraged with a melange of influences. More than anything this is in the style of 2001: A Space Odyssey, with bland straight-talking astronauts and balletic space docking (with music, of course!). 

The story has also been called the Casino Royale of the series, referring to the James Bond reboot with Daniel Craig and it’s no nonsense, real-world approach to the super spy.

The story starts with matter-of-fact communication between an astronaut and ground control, with us having to pick up what's going on as discussion continues. After some time-travel fun with The Doctor and Liz, we get a very unusual acknowledgment that space is both weightless and in 3D.

We proceed to a violent and stylish stand-off between U.N.I.T. and the bad guys, with no dialogue, just grim shooting and attempts to outflank each other. The secret ingredient here is the Havoc stunt company, who specialized in providing spectacular shoot-outs and such. In the second episode, the Havoc folks really outdid themselves, creating probably the most effective and exciting action scene ever in Doctor Who, which required coordinating a semi-truck, motorcycles, and a helicopter all going at each other.

The main plot is rather creepy, with astronauts who've been missing in space suddenly returning to Earth, then disappearing out of their grounded space capsule right under the nose of U.N.I.T. We don't see their faces, just their ominous suits. They have rather strange reactions to radiation, but that's all we know for quite a while.

Actual suspense and mystery persist throughout the story, with the mystery deepening even as it starts to be explained. It's refreshing not to have Daleks or Cybermen pop up as the perpetrators behind it all; instead we're actually just dealing with the situation at hand and the truly mysterious forces behind it. The plot developments are surprising and satisfying right up to the end.

This story doesn't just rock, it crackles with energy. The writing, directing, and music are all taking it up a notch and reaching to do something more than the usual. Even the opening credits have been tweaked by showing a teaser scene, then jumping to the title screen showing “The Ambassadors” for a moment, and finally popping in “OF DEATH” accompanied by an over-the-top sting in the music. That sting was the start of a tradition in classic Doctor Who, and now it's hard to remember that it didn't always exist.

Sometimes they take an element a bit too far, such as some jarring musical choices, but that's the price we pay to get something really Worth Watching.

It's also worth watching the "Making Of" documentary on the second DVD, which confirms that everyone involved was going all out and having the time of their lives. The results are all over the screen.

What do others think?

• Doctor Who: The Memory Cheats podcast episode 6

7.2: Doctor Who and the Silurians

• Doctor: Jon Pertwee
• Companion: Liz Shaw
• Creators: Malcolm Hulke (Writer), Timothy Combe (Director), Barry Letts (Producer)

What’s the rating?

Worth Watching.

What’s interesting about it?

Pertwee's Doctor gains Bessie, his beloved car.

The car itself is a fine fetish for this incarnation of The Doctor, but I'll never forgive the producers for allowing Bessie to have the license plate “WHO 1”, or for their general cluelessness on how to refer to The Doctor during these years.

For a Doctor Who fan, many things can be forgiven, but treating The Doctor as a person named "Who” is beyond the pale. True fans bear an eternal burning grudge where we can can do naught but shake our fists at the heavens and let out a primal scream emulating the sound of the TARDIS landing.

To the credit of producer Barry Letts, in the “making of” documentary on the DVD he makes clear that had he taken on the reigns earlier, the “WHO 1” fiasco never would have occurred. But he didn't, and it did.

As for the story itself, the director tries some interesting things. Unusual for the series, we have segments not only featuring a monster with no one else around, but also from the monster's point of view, shown through a three-lens effect. With lots of heavy monster breathing.

This is the first appearance of the Silurians, who come to play a role in the modern show.

This story establishes the template of Pertwee's Doctor being in constant opposition to authorities, including U.N.I.T., the organization he allegedly works for. Fans have suggested this is the result of how the Time Lord's treated him, forcing his regeneration and exiling him to Earth, making him particularly sensitive to the idiocies of authority figures.

Geoffrey Palmer, probably best known as the co-star of As Time Goes By, is a typically banal evil bureaucrat here who will play a very different role in a Doctor Who story decades later.

I like that in this story both The Doctor and his companion are true scientists (something lost in the modern incarnation of the show), occasionally stopping to do a series of tests to figure out what's going on.

And what's going on is an Ebola-style breakout, mixed up with ancient aliens who have been living underground since before humanity got going. The story is a bit too long, but still worth watching for the directing and the establishment of the new Doctor's style, not to mention a surprisingly brutal portrayal of the symptoms of the plague. The final episode is particularly strong, emphasizing that The Doctor's interests and those of the military and government (and perhaps humanity) are not always in alignment.

What do others think?

• Hoo on Who #60
• The Memory Cheats podcast #49

7.1: Spearhead from Space

• Doctor: Jon Pertwee
• Companions: Liz Shaw
• Creators: Robert Holmes (Writer), Derek Martinus (Director), Derrick Sherwin (Producer)

What's the rating?

Must See. New Doctor, new recurring monster, how could you not?

What's interesting about it?

Jon Pertwee's first story, in color, on film. On film because various folks at the BBC were on strike, preventing the production crew from using internal sets, thereby forcing them to use mostly outdoor locations, requiring film. This is not the only time strikes would impact the show (it was 70s Britain after all) but this is probably the only time where strikes resulted in something better than we'd have had otherwise. And we still feel the impact today, as being on film allowed the BBC to release this episode on Blu-ray.

So suddenly The Doctor lives in a very colorful world. It's a bit of a shock coming off of years of the show being defined by black and white, and it's not entirely welcome, at least for the first couple of episodes.

Overall things do feel a bit different, a bit “hmm I don't think it's been done that way before”. There seems to be more sudden cuts between people in different locations; we no longer always follow one character until their particular story beat is resolved, instead we might cut between multiple locations, following each thread simultaneously.

Liz Shaw is the delightful new companion, a scientist and smart as a whip, not taking a bit of guff from The Doctor. Alas, in all too short a time the producers will “fix” that.

The new monsters, the Autons, will come to provide a special place in the New Series, as an homage to this episode (though this isn't as good as their next appearance).

The Doctor, based on the events of Patrick Troughton's final story, is now exiled to Earth. Which was really a way for the producers to save money on sets for alien worlds, much to the chagrin of the new story editor, Terrance Dicks, who was saddled with the decision of the outgoing producers. Earth-centeredness meant no TARDIS action and resulted in “Monster of the week” stories. So get ready for an awful lot of stories with an awful lot of scenes of monsters advancing on U.N.I.T. soldiers while they fire endlessly and uselessly.

It's also worth watching both of the documentaries that come with this, one about Jon Pertwee's career and the other about Caroline John.

What are others saying?

• TARDIS Tavern podcast #95

6.6: The War Games

• Doctor: Patrick Troughton 
• Companions: Jamie, Zoe
• Creators: Malcolm Hulke & Terrance Dicks (Writers), David Maloney (Director), Derrick Sherwin (Producer)
• Season 6

What's the rating?

Must See. The best of Doctor Who.

What's interesting about it?

The 10-episode epic exit of Patrick Troughton's doctor, in a manner much more glorious than was ever meant to be. Written by a Thatcherite-conservative (Terrance Dicks) and a socialist (Malcolm Hulke), the politics of the story are intriguing, to say the least.

The first two episodes are a perfect mystery: Our time travelers land in the middle of World War I and events proceed quite quickly and brutally as the military tries to deal with strange civilians appearing out of nowhere. It's a very direct story, with just the occasional hint (memory lapses, strange goings on) that something is not quite right here. The cliffhanger of episode one is quite the nail biter, and the cliffhanger for episode two is one of the more intriguing and better-handled of any in the history of the show.

The mystery doesn't end there. Even five episodes into this 10-episode behemoth we have only the slightest idea of what is going on, but the questions are so intriguing and the story and action move along so smoothly that we are simply carried along.

This is a story that should be experienced without spoilers, so I'm not going to say much other than that you should absolutely watch it.

Contrary to pretty much every other classic Doctor Who fan on the planet, I'm not the biggest fan of Patrick Troughton. For me, with him every moment I see an actor acting, unlike William Hartnell or Tom Baker, both of whom simply became The Doctor. Nonetheless, this story contains the finest of Troughton -- at the end, when he must call in the Time Lords to fix the situation but then does his absolute best to escape from them in a desperate ploy, these are the moments where I believe he is The Doctor, and that he is very scared. If only there had been more such moments in Troughton's run.

This story provides the first portrayal of the Time Lords, and it's perhaps the most interesting approach taken, with subsequent Time Lord stories not being so compelling. Here they are somewhat indifferent gods, dispensing judgment and punishment without breaking a sweat.

This story was on the brink of destruction by the BBC, at the point when they were convinced to stop wiping tapes of the classic stories. We have much to be thankful for that this one survived.

What do others think?

Universally considered a classic.

• The Doctor Who podcast #200 (interviews with both writers!)
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6.5: The Seeds of Death

• Doctor: Patrick Troughton 
• Companions: Jamie, Zoe
• Creators: Bryan Hayles, Michael Ferguson (Director), Innes Lloyd (Producer)
• Season 6

What's the rating?

Worth Watching.

What's interesting about it?

Our travelers take a while to show up, and in the meantime we're treated to several minutes of people arriving for work and bitching at each other in the catty manner of a typical office. Except that the mode of travel is the Trans-mat (or T-Mat), a teleporter, to which everyone is entirely accustomed and finds no more exciting than using a bicycle.

And of course before long something goes wrong when a bad guy shows up, but we don't know who...for the first time I can recall in the series, we get the point of view of the bad guy while being deliberately kept from seeing him or having any idea what kind of creature he is (unless you've looked at the DVD box).

Eventually the T-Mat system gets disabled. The only option for traveling to the moon is an old-fashioned rocket, of which there are none available anymore (why build rockets when you have teleporters?) Except, of course, there is one option...a rocket being built by an old fuddy-duddy who maintains a space museum and romanticizes the past, when space travel was exciting and involved tangible things like rockets.

Here I must be honest. I found myself distracted and not following things too closely, and the story seemed to be a bit boring and pointless, at least as of the end of episode 2. But I had a nagging feeling that it was better than I was giving it credit for, and, unusually, I decided to look up what others had to say before completing the story myself. In the excellent book Running Through Corridors, Rob Shearer points out that the theme here is the 60s-style science fiction romanticization of the future versus the inevitable reality: Eventually everything is going to become commonplace, no matter how exciting it was when we originally dreamed about it.

Remarkably, this story was broadcast before the actual moon landing and yet was already envisioning the how mundane it would quickly become (no one was paying attention to moon trips -- or later, shuttle launches -- after the first couple). Rob's insight injected some juice into the story for me, picking up my interest; especially given that I grew up on classic science fiction and find the nostalgic view of the future the most interesting.

The planet models are surprisingly good, and the director goes out of his way to spice things up with visually intruiging shots and sequences. Some of these are in service of the story, and some seem gratuitous and a bit distracting, but I give him points for working hard to keep things interesting.

The director is audacious enough to attempt to show a quasi-realistic moon landing sequence on the budget of Doctor Who, and does surprisingly well.

The romance of technology and the tension between dreaming the future and actually living it are the background for the main story: Foiling the Ice Warriors' rather dastardly plan to depopulate the Earth with a creative use of foam so they can move in.

This may be the first time Doctor Who uses science fiction to speculate about the near-future in interesting ways that resonate with my childhood reading habits, and for that I ultimately find it Worth Watching.

What do others think?

• The Memory Cheats podcast #137