Serial 68: The Planet of the Daleks

Doctor: Jon Pertwee (3rd Doctor)
Companion: Jo Grant

Written by: Terry Nation
Directed by: David Maloney

Background & Significance: Doctor Who's tenth season was a very basic season. It has a wonderful Doctor team-up anniversary story, a very excellent, iconic Robert Holmes story, a quite enjoyable UNIT story that sees the departure of the lovely Jo Grant, and... a very very long story.

As stated previously the last time we talked about Pertwee, "Frontier in Space" was designed to be the first half of Barry Letts's attempt to match "The Daleks' Master Plan" for the crowning champion glory record thing known as "the longest Doctor Who story of all time."

This was probably not the best idea, though. The Pertwee era is notorious for having overly long stories and stories that you can easily squeeze most of the air out of. This, of course, helped with cost (two six part stories is cheaper than three four part stories) but led to a little too much wheel spinning and really hurt the era as a whole, if you ask me. And now Letts wanted to do a twelve part story? (Jesus. How much padding would that take?) To offset the perceived wheel spinning and to alleviate some of the inevitable padding that would come from having that twelve part story, Letts broke the story in half with the first half seeing the return of fan-favourite villain The Master in Roger Delgado's final performance (although it wasn't supposed to be), while the second half saw the return of fan-favourite other villains The Daleks. See? Popular monsters! Tenth anniversary! Everybody wins!

To write it, the Doctor Who team hired creator Terry Nation to come back to script a six part Dalek story to continue the one started in "Frontier in Space". This brought Nation back to Doctor Who for the first time since "Daleks' Master Plan", as he'd been off in America or whatever trying (and failing) to get a Dalek TV show off the ground.

But that also leads to problems with this story. For one thing, after loudly voicing his disapproval of the interim three Dalek stories written in his absence ("Power of the Daleks", "Evil of the Daleks", and "Day of the Daleks") Nation was given the right of first refusal to write the Daleks anytime Doctor Who wanted to do a Dalek story. So in this case, Nation didn't refuse and got to pen yet another Dalek story seeking to come back with a vengeance, wanting to write The Daleks "as they should have been written". Unfortunately, you can just tell that Terry Nation doesn't know anything new or original to do with them (think Steven Moffat using The Silence in "The Wedding of River Song"). Not that he needs to. By creating the Daleks, he's almost allowed to coast on the fumes of their creation at this point because it is the most important/standout thing he ever did and nothing he ever did after creating them would be more important or more iconic, no matter how much he tried.

And no, I don't care that Terry Nation created Blake's 7. Nothing is more famous in Doctor Who than The Daleks. (Okay, maybe Tom Baker's scarf, but you get the idea).

So what we're left with is Terry Nation writing a Daleks story that comes long after the time when he stopped taking his marvelously devilish creations seriously. Really, "Planet of the Daleks" is just an excuse to lazily rehash and repeat things he'd already done with the Daleks back in other stories with them. Granted, this works in 1973, because most of the people watching Doctor Who barely remembered the original Dalek adventure (if they had even seen it at all) and what worked then would surely work now. So rehash and enjoy, Nation said. It was new to some people.

The problem with that is, watching it now, we can totally see the laziness dripping off this script. It's no secret that Terry Nation openly despised the first two Dalek stories that were written without his input (I'll talk about those someday, but there's a REASON "Power of the Daleks" and "Evil of the Daleks" are easily and widely considered two of the best Dalek stories of all time, whereas this or Terry Nation's next "Death to the Daleks" are not), but to hate them because David Whittaker did something new, original, and terrifyingly evil while you can't seem to get your head out of similar tropes? That's just bad. Be HAPPY for your creations being expanded into new territories and into vastly terrifying situations.

But Terry Nation couldn't do that, and what we're left with is this. Six episodes into Letts's supposed twelve part story, hopefully the wheels have stopped spinning (after the first six episodes which seemed like nothing but) and we can just move forward and The Doctor can foil The Dalek plan to take over the galaxy. Hopefully.

So let's get to it!

Serial 67: Frontier in Space

Doctor: Jon Pertwee (3rd Doctor)
Companion: Jo Grant

Written by: Malcolm Hulke
Directed by: Paul Bernard

Background & Significance: "Frontier in Space" was one of the five stories of Doctor Who's tenth seaso; as such, producer Barry Letts wanted to let out all the stops and do some good old fashioned homaging. He already had a Multi-Doctor crossover, but that wasn't enough. He set his sights on "The Daleks' Master Plan", seeking to challenge that story's record for "The Longest Doctor Who Story of all Time".

Okay. Before moving on... Flaw in his logic? Maybe he should have worried himself with  "Best" Doctor Who story of all time, instead of "Longest". "Daleks' Master Plan" was an overpadded session of ADD, in my opinion. Really good, but way too long.

But enough of that. What of this?

Because twelve episodes is a lot to do, Letts decided to split up this epic twelve parter (TWELVE! Anything longer than FOUR generally fails) into two halves, with each half featuring one of the two [at the time] iconic Doctor Who villains. The first half, (this half, the one we're talking about today) "Frontier in Space" would feature The Master. The second half, "Planet of The Daleks" would feature The Daleks and we'll talk about that at some point in the nearish future. (It's our next Pertwee story).

Inspired by The Cold War, this serial sees the creation of a new race of aliens, The Draconians, the return of the previous season's Ogrons (who were ape-like brainless servants of the Daleks... So... The Jem'Hedar?) from "Day of the Daleks" and also an attempt to turn Doctor Who into a space opera.

It also sees the return of Malcolm Hulke in his second to last story for the series. Also present, some Pertwee-era padding, perhaps the most ridiculous amount of capturing of The Doctor and his companion I've ever seen in a Doctor Who story, and a mostly useless use of The Master. A damn shame, if you ask me, especially considering this is Delgado's final Master story and the last Master story until the greatness that is "The Deadly Assassin".

And yet not so much, especially considering the plan they had for The Master, which I personally would have hated. But enough rambling!

So let's get to it!

Serial 66: Carnival of Monsters

Doctor: Jon Pertwee (3rd Doctor)
Companion: Jo Grant

Written by: Robert Holmes
Directed by: Barry Letts

Editor's Note: Hey, guys! Matt here! Just wanted to say it's a huge bummer that I'm not reviewing this one. Because it is awesome. But we can't keep giving Cassandra loads of weak ones, right? RIGHT!? Ah well. Ce'st la. Here she is with some discussion of the awesome Robert Holmes, and stay tuned, cuz the rest of the year is mostly doozyish. Mostly.

Background & Significance: So, the tenth season of anything is a pretty big deal. But especially so for the little sci-fi show called Doctor Who.

As such, since producer Barry Letts wanted to make Season 10 as big a deal as he could on such a tight BBC budget, "Carnival of Monsters" was written with that sort of constraint in mind. Penned by the brilliant Robert Holmes (who, you might have noticed, we kind of fangirl about over here, but with good reason), the action is very distinctly split between two central locations and two guest casts that never meet up, which cuts back on having to pay guest actors for all the days of filming. And he does this without sacrificing story, characterization, or dialogue. Awesome, huh?

This serial is also notable because the Doctor's definitely got his TARDIS back. Free from the constraints and meddling of Time Lords for helping them out in the previous serial "The Three Doctors", he's pretty much got full and complete control again, and can go where he pleases. And it's pretty great.

One can also view this serial in the light of commentary on BBC treatment and perception of the show, through the Vorg/Shirna (classic Holmes duo!) storyline on Inter Minor and the trouble they get up to there. You'll see what I mean as we go.

So let's take a closer look, shall we?

Serial 69: The Green Death

Doctor: Jon Pertwee (3rd Doctor)
Companion: Jo Grant

Written by: Robert Sloman (and Barry Letts)
Directed by: Michael Briant

Background & Significance: After starting off with The Three Doctors, Jon Pertwee ended his fourth season with a story written by one of the major writers during his tenure: a Mr. Robert Sloman.

Sloman's stories (and we'll get to some of them eventually, I'm sure) are widely considered some of the best of Pertwee's Doctor Who, including Jon Pertwee's final story "The Planet of the Spiders" (which, tangent, I want to watch so so badly you don't even know. It's apparently quite good).

This story, "The Green Death" marks another turning point for Pertwee's Doctor. Besides the intense, serious environmental message (so intense, in fact, you can't escape it), the story also marks the departure of Katy Manning as Companion Jo Grant.

Now, I know I've been hardish on Jo in the past, what with her insistence on skinning fine blue furred aliens for her clothing, but, to me, it's impossible to discuss Pertwee's Doctor without mentioning Jo Grant. She was The Third Doctor's companion for three of his five seasons, and it was her departure (along with the death of Roger Delgado (who was the original Master) and the departure of Barry Letts) that incentivized Pertwee into making his next season as The Doctor his final season.

As such, a lot of this story is about The Doctor and Jo separating both physically and emotionally, leading to a terribly beautiful farewell that... well... I can't see how anyone can get out of this serial without caring about Jo in the end, or at least, without caring about the relationship between her and The Doctor. Not with this ending.

So let's get to it!

Serial 65: The Three Doctors

Doctor: William Hartnell (1st Doctor), Patrick Troughton (2nd Doctor), Jon Pertwee (3rd Doctor)
Companion: Jo Grant


Written by: Bob Baker and Dave Martin
Directed by: Lennie Mayne

Background and Significance: In 1973, Doctor Who turned ten years old. There was probably much rejoicing that this little, low budget, sci-fi TV show had hit ten years (and really, what has hit ten years in this day and age? Not only that, ten years of sci-fi. Stargate is the only think I can think of) and, as such, the producers decided to throw a little Doctor Who party in the season's premiere episode by doing something they had never done before:

A Multiple Doctor Team-up.

And oh how joyously glorious that sounds... and oh how joyously glorious it turned out to be, and let's be real. It could have been terrible. How many times has the word "crossover" been met with insane disappointment? Yeah. Not here.

The idea is to take Jon Pertwee and team him up with Patrick Troughton and William Hartnell and have them have an epic adventure of day-saving that requires all three to work together in order to bring down the forces of evil.

But there was a problem.

Towards the end of his run (which ended seven years previously), William Hartnell had fallen into bad health. While it was [really] always an issue (it was because of his health that the producers needed to bring in Troughton), the seven years away hadn't given Hartnell any improvements on his condition, and he was quite the worse for wear.

Originally, the plan was to have all three Doctors share screen time equally, but when it became apparent that Hartnell would not be able to contribute the time or energy required to give the performance the story had in mind, the producers wrote around him, essentially writing him out of the show.

It would be Hartnell's final acting performance.

The story then fell almost entirely upon Jon Pertwee and the newly-returned Patrick Troughton, who upped his performance and slipped back into the role as fantastically as he ever had, and Jon Pertwee came in with a wonderful performance that matched Troughton's in Pertwee's own style.

The Three Doctors is a legendary four episode fangasm with an awesome story that is big, fun, exciting, and incredibly memorable beyond the the fact that it is a Doctor team up. It is a fantastic Doctor Who story, and if you want to check it out before I review it here, I can't say I'd blame you. You'd be in for quite a treat.

So let's get to it.