Serial 84: The Brain of Morbius

Doctor: Tom Baker (4th Doctor)
Companion: Sarah Jane Smith

Written by: Robin Bland (a.k.a Terrance Dicks and Robert Holmes)
Directed by: Christopher Barry

Background & Significance: Season 13 of Doctor Who is perhaps one of the best seasons of television the show ever experienced. After a season of stories coordinated by the previous production team, this new start allowed Holmes to sculpt the show into whatever he wanted it to be. As we've discussed previously, this resulted in a season full of horror pastiches and sendups. Mummies, mutant plants, shapeshifters, body snatchers...

And now? Frankenstein.

"Brain of Morbius" comes at the exact halfway point of their era and represents the pinnacle of the Hinchcliffe/Holmes vision for the show. Originally written by Terrance Dicks (the original version had an aesthetically-challenged robot that cobbled together a body for the wrecked Morbius based on its own warped view of human anatomy), it was eventually almost completely re-written by Robert Holmes, so much so that Dicks asked his name be removed from the writing credit. As such, it's really a Holmesian contribution to Doctor Who and to say otherwise is massive, massive self-deception (as we'll discuss) because... well... it's a Holmes story, isn't it?

So let's get to it!

Serial 50: The War Games (Part 2 of 2)

Doctor: Patrick Troughton (2nd Doctor)
Companion: Jamie McCrimmon, Zoe Heriot

Written by: Malcolm Hulke & Terrance Dicks
Directed by: David Maloney

Background & Significance: As said in part one, much of Patrick Troughton's tenure helped define the show moving forward. Troughton's era established UNIT and he was the first of many many regenerations. It showed many returns of The Cybermen as a seriously badass threat, saw two of the best Dalek stories of all time, and introduced a whole cadre of monsters (Ice Warriors, Yeti, etc.) in exotic alien locales.

And then they pulled a rabbit out of their hat.

Terrance Dicks (most famous for being script editor for the last half season of Troughton and all of Jon Pertwee) decided to send out Patrick Troughton with a bang, co-writing a story that removed some of the mystery surrounding The Doctor. And by that I don't just mean any mystery or a small mysteries like his favourite brand of cat nip.

No. They decided to introduce The Time Lords.

Up until this point, The Doctor had identified himself as non-human (except early on when people weren't so sure) but had never explicitly stated what his race was actually called. Here, we get the introduction of The Time Lords and the ultimate exile of The Doctor to Earth.

Interestingly enough, we already know that this isn't the first time a non-Doctor Time Lord has appeared, but for all intents and purposes that doesn't count. The gag with the Meddling Monk was nothing short of a cheap shot, designed to just heighten the stakes without answering any bloody questions or delivering on the potential of meeting another rival Time Lord.

But this is some crazy. Seriously. You'll see. This is proper Time Lords, being a right threat and a real menace that makes you understand The Doctor and why he left and what his whole deal with leaving is. It gives us a lot of information, it sets up a radical new status quo that Doctor Who won't ever possibly escape from (although they certainly tried), and it delivers an emotional wallop in the final episode as Troughton and co. go out with an amazing bang that's still felt over forty years later.

And it really helps that the story doesn't suck.

So let's get to it!

Serial 50: The War Games (Part 1 of 2)

Doctor: Patrick Troughton (2nd Doctor)
Companion: Jamie McCrimmon, Zoe Heriot

Written by: Malcolm Hulke & Terrance Dicks
Directed by: David Maloney:

Background & Significance: In my humble opinion, I think Patrick Troughton is, in fact, the most important actor to ever play The Doctor. That's not to say he's the best Doctor of all time (he's not, but he's certainly up there), but in terms of sheer importance, Troughton's the one who cast the widest influence on the show, and it would never the same without him.

This is, for many reasons, because he's the Second Doctor. He helped redefine the role with grace and energy that Hartnell, quite frankly, wasn't capable of. And he did that without completely discarding all of Hartnell's interpretation. Without Troughton, it's easy to assume later Doctors would have been too much like Hartnell, but Troughton took the part and made it his own.

And then he left. After just three years.

Rounding out his list of contributions to the fabric of Doctor Who, Troughton established a "it's time to move on" precedent. After three years, Troughton decided to move off the role (although he would later make return appearances in the role several times) and onto different things, fearing type-casting.

While this sentiment wasn't echoed by his immediate successors (Pertwee left after five years for various reasons, citing type-casting as one of them; Tom Baker left the role because it was just that time), Davison (his own interpretation very influenced by Troughton's) departed the role after three years on Troughton's suggestion (despite later claiming he wish he had stayed on longer), and fan-favourite David Tennant (himself a huge Davison fan) left after three seasons just like Davison, just like Troughton.

To celebrate Troughton's ending, he was given a mammoth ten-part story (easily the longest story after "The Daleks' Master Plan"). Because no one wants to see me review a ten part story in 5,000 words or less (and no, I really won't because that wouldn't do it justice) I'll be separating this particular serial into two halves and reviewing the other half later this week. There, we'll talk more about the actual ramifications of the story as they're all relegated to the back half and, most specifically, the last few episodes (and they are total doozies, lemme tell you).

But we'll worry about that later. For now, let's just talk about the first half of what is easily my favourite Doctor Who story so far.

So let's get to it!

Serial 139: The Mark of the Rani

Doctor: Colin Baker (6th Doctor)
Companion: Peri Brown

Written by: Pip and Jane Baker
Directed by: Sarah Hellings

Background & Significance: If you treat The Doctor as a superhero (and he is, in a lot of ways, a superhero), you'd notice that his Rogues Gallery is oddly limited.

His A-List bad guys would be Daleks, Cybermen, and The Master (Batman corollaries: The Joker, Two-Face, The Penguin, etc.). His B-listers would be something along the lines of Silurians, Sontarans, and Autons (Batman corollaries: Mr. Freeze, Poison Ivy, The Scarecrow...), and his C-listers would perhaps be Omega and The Black Guardian (For Batman: Mr Zzazz, Man-Bat, Killer Croc... etc.)

Let's face it, The Doctor's enemies, while compelling, have a very low rate of re-occurrence unless they're A-listers. (The Autons alone have made only three appearances in the show over the course of the series' almost fifty year run, which is a shame because I recently decided that I freaking love the Autons. But we'll talk about them eventually).

"The Mark of the Rani" is an attempt to forge a new recurring villain for The Doctor to face. In essence (spoilers for what you're about to read) she's an evil female Time Lord, bent on her own diabolical and selfish ends. In a way, she's like The Master, but female.

The first I'd heard of The Rani was a Russell T Davies interview about the hand that picks up The Master's ring at the end of the modern series' "Last of the Time Lords", in which he laughed and balked that it was her. That both livened my spirits and depressed me at the same time. Why is he laughing at The Rani? Shouldn't she be a major presence in the show's mythology? A huge deal? I mean I know that it didn't come about at the most opportune time (post Davison, when the show started to decline in term of viewership and popularity in the face of Colin Baker's radical (and awesome) take on The Doctor), but that doesn't mean she's worthy of scorn or dismissal.

So here's what I want you to think about as we go into this.

Why is The Rani such a failure, especially because she's such a good concept? Why was it such a poor execution, and where does said poor execution start?

I'll answer that last bit right now: From minute one.

So let's get to it!

Serial 17: The Time Meddler

Doctor: William Hartnell (1st Doctor)
Companions: Vicki and Steven

Written by: Dennis Spooner
Directed by: Douglas Camfield

Background & Significance: William Hartnell's second season saw a series of Doctor Who firsts. It saw the first return of the Daleks, the first departure of companions, the first arrival of new companions...

And to cap it all off, they rounded out the season with the first appearance of another Time Lord.

While it is kind of a cheat (The Doctor is not revealed to be a "Time Lord" until Patrick Troughton's last episode and Gallifrey is not mentioned by name until Jon Pertwee's final season), the main villain of this story, The Meddling Monk, is revealed to be "a member of The Doctor's race", and an evil one at that.

I think it's safe to say he was created to be a sort of Proto-Master, but he doesn't quite succeed at that. There's a reason he only appears in two stories, this one and "The Dalek Invasion of Earth". He's just not that great of a villain. He's kinda goofy, kind of a waste of time, kind of ridiculous... when you get right down to it, he's just not a formidable foe. The Doctor has much more interesting Rogues in his gallery, from Daleks, to Cybermen, to The Master, to Time Lords themselves... The Monk just isn't the sort of character I'm able to take super seriously.

And that, most likely, is why this story fails.

This story takes place right after "The Chase," at the end of which Barbara and Ian (The Doctor's only two remaining original companions) find a way back home, leaving Vicki (Susan's replacement), and The Doctor alone, recovering from the epic events of The Daleks' great chase through time and space.

So let's get to it!

Serial 123: Arc of Infinity

Doctor: Peter Davison (5th Doctor)
Companions: Nyssa, Tegan Jovanka


Written by: Johnny Byrne
Directed by: Ron Jones

Background & Significance: Peter Davison's second season marked Doctor Who's twentieth anniversary. The season was punctuated by the continuity porn/cluster-frak The Five Doctors. But that's just one thing. This is TWENTY YEARS. The celebration of Doctor Who needed to be a year long and it needed to be epic and noticeable and memorable.

Or, at least, a little bit gimmicky.

The celebration came in the form of returns of old villains as the main foes in each serial. Does this mean Daleks, Cybermen, and The Master? Not.... really? Oh, then you must mean Sontarans and The Monk and stuff, right?

Well... yeah no not at all.

No. Their focus are on what can only be called the important but forgotten villains. Rather seemingly haphazardly selected, "Arc of Infinity" stars the evil villain from the seminal classic story "The Three Doctors". In case you don't remember (or didn't read it or see it, which you should because it was awesome) Omega was a good villain, and one who dated back to the creation of Time Lord society as one of its creators. Crazy memorable, super fun, for many many reasons.

What we end up having is a ridiculous mess of an episode (as we'll soon see) that isn't so much bad as it is textbook "not good". Most of these are story and writing problems, which is none too inspiring for writer Johnny Byrne's other stories: Tom Baker's penultimate "The Keeper of Traken" (starring the return of The Master) and the kick off to Davison's final season "Warriors of the Deep" (featuring the return of the Silurians).

That said? This story is ridiculous fun. So much of it makes absolutely no sense, but they go with it anyways and commit full on, and for that, this serial is amazing. From shooting in Amsterdam (as in the actual place), a trigger-happy Mutant Bird Slave, and some insane Time Lord blood lust, it's a bucket o' fun, and while at the end of it all I'm fully aware that it's not very good, it's still wonderfully awful in the way a lot of old Star Trek is wonderfully awful, and I tend to love these sorts of episodes.

We open after Tegan's departure at the end of the previous season's closer "Time-Flight", and Nyssa of Traken and The Doctor are flying around the universe having a grand old time with Tegan's nowhere to be found.

That's called "Life is good".

Also, because of the disjointed nature of two very different parts of this story, I'm going to split the commentary into "The Omega Storyline" and "The Amsterdam Storyline"

So let's get to it!

Serial 88: The Deadly Assassin

Doctor: Tom Baker (4th Doctor)
Companion: None


Written by: Robert Holmes
Directed by: David Maloney

Background & Significance: The start of Tom Baker's era as The Doctor saw a series of behind-the-scenes shifts that transformed Doctor Who significantly, the most important among these being a new producer in Phillip Hinchcliffe and a new script editor in Robert Holmes.

Together, this... triumvirate, I guess you could call it, was Doctor Who at its most successful. The show became immensely popular. Hinchcliffe and Holmes steered the show into darker territories, focusing more on tonally shifting what had previously been fun wacky science fiction into science fiction with a Gothic horrory bent to it. It was a reflection of the like-minded team of Hinchcliffe and Holmes: their interests were the same, and they worked to tell the stories that they loved to tell. A rare, perfect marriage of producer and script editor. Because of all this, in terms of viewership, in terms of popularity, in terms of sheer quality, Classic Doctor Who peaked here, about halfway through its initial run.

But the awesome only lasted for three seasons.

Each of the the Hinchcliffe/Holmes seasons (12, 13, & 14) got progressively stronger and more fine tuned (re: tonally aligned with the horror etc.) as they developed their show and ideas (Season 14, their final season, being so good that it has been nicknamed "The Gothic Season"), until they were removed from their positions not because they were unsuccessful in terms of ratings or popularity (far from it), but rather because of complaints about adult content. We're talking "scary" and "freak-outty". There's an oft used saying about Doctor Who - quite famous - that says "British children watch Doctor Who from behind the sofa". Yeah.... They'd probably do that for the Hinchcliffe/Holmes.

But enough about Hinchcliffe/Holmes for now (we'll talk about them as we get to more and more of their stories in the future). What about this story in particular?

"The Deadly Assassin" is ridiculously significant. Not only does it come about halfway through Doctor Who's Gothic Season, but it's significant in that it's the only story of the classic series that features absolutely no Companion, and it essentially creates The Time Lords from the ground up.

Prior to this, Time Lord mythology was largely undefined and undeveloped. They had first appeared in Patrick Troughton's final serial "The War Games" and then again in Jon Pertwee's "The Three Doctors", but even then they were only loosely defined and never specifically mythologized.

Here, in "The Deadly Assassin", script editor Robert Holmes (who is the most prolific, popular, and awesome of the writers of the classic series) takes the opportunity to completely re-define the mythology behind Gallifrey and the Time Lords. It's here that we first learn of Rassilon, the workings of Time Lord society (including their garish and ridiculous (but so so awesome) outfits), and the concept of limited regenerations.

And he does all that in four episodes.

So let's get to it!

Serial 129: The Five Doctors

Doctors: Richard Hurndall (1st Doctor), Patrick Troughton (2nd Doctor), Jon Pertwee (3rd Doctor), Tom Baker (4th Doctor), Peter Davison (5th Doctor)
Companions: Tegan Jovanka, Vislor Turlough, Sarah Jane Smith, Susan Foreman, The Brigadier, Romana


Written by: Terrance Dicks
Directed by: Peter Moffatt

Background & Significance: In 1983, Doctor Who turned twenty. You know what that means. Something big. Something epic. Something legendary.

Ten year's previous, they did "The Three Doctors," a multi-Doctor crossover that didn't suck and was kinda awesome (despite the lack of Hartnell, but even then, he had one of the standout lines) and succeeded. In 1983, they decided to re-capture the magic with "The Five Doctors." They gave the script to popular and incredibly prolific Who writer Terrance Dicks. He was given the following rule: to feature The Doctor in his five incarnations and "as many monsters and companions as you could cram in there." The intentions noble, stages was set for the anniversary special to be a celebration of the show's long and varied two decade history.

Spoiler alert: And it fails. Hard.

First off, that's my own opinion, and maybe I'm a victim of my own anticipointments, but I don't think so. And for the sake of some background, here's why...

1) Tom Baker passed on it because it was "too soon". So they used archive footage from an incomplete story that was never aired, meaning he doesn't even really appear in this serial.

2) Hartnell's dead, so they decided to bring in Richard Hurndall, who kinda looks like him, and expected him to pull off Hartnell... But we'll talk more on him a bit later.

3) If you count The Master and not The Fourth Doctor, there are TEN main characters in this ninety minute story. Such character work takes a remarkably skilled writer, and, while Terrance Dicks is good, he's not that good.

4) There was a HUGE mess of scheduling conflicts going on all through this. They couldn't accomadate Frazern Hines (Jamie) to be Troughton's Companion, so everyone got kinda bumped and dumped around leading to some awkward things that don't necessarily make so much sense.

So just know all that as we delve into this. I really wanted to like this, but it ended up being overly ambitious and it ended up failing if you ask me.

One more thing before I start. This story is remarkably bouncy, with each Doctor kinda getting his own storyline, so I'm going to bounce around and just focus (for the most part) on one Doctor at a time.

Or at least, that's the plan, anyways.

But enough blather! 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.