The Evil of the Daleks

Previous viewings - many (Episode 2), one (others)

Apart from the excellent Episode 2, my experience of The Evil of the Daleks is limited to the last marathon I did, where the other episodes dragged like nobody's business. I think by that point though I was just tired of missing episodes - after whole season of no complete stories, The Tomb of the Cybermen was just on the horizon. Either that or I just changed my mind, because watching the story this time, it was bloody awesome!

This is the first season finale that actually feels like a season finale. So far the production block nature of the programme and the short break between seasons has meant there has been less inclination from the production team to go for whizz bang conclusions to the year's episodes. For the last time until 1972, the Daleks are the baddies (and I think part of the story's impact could be due to the fact that the Daleks didn't return for so long), and David Whitaker can write the Daleks in his sleep. He's one of the show's best writers, putting extra effort into making his characters seem like real people, who have lives beyond the confines of the story. He never wastes anyone either - every character has a story to tell, they're never just a part of the wallpaper.

Of course nobody's perfect. I'd say a common flaw of David Whitaker's stories is that his plots don't always hold up. The Edge of Destruction was a total mess in that regard, and it wasn't until the plot was out of the way that that story shone (in its last five minutes), while the plot of The Crusade shut down in the last episode rather than being resolved. The Evil of the Daleks at its core is about the Daleks taking stock of their numerous defeats by humans and deciding to destroy them by eliminating the Human Factor in them rather than by simple conquest. I think by this point so much had been done with the Daleks that the writers were having to think hard about new stories to tell with them. Fortunately here they succeed in doing something new with the Daleks here, but not through the Human/Dalek Factor stuff, but by introducing the Emperor Dalek and giving us Daleks in an historical setting. We're at the point in Season 4 where had the pure historicals not been dropped we'd be getting another one, so I'm definitely onboard with the 1866 destination.

The story picks up where The Faceless Ones left off. The TARDIS is being stolen! Like that story, we're eased into a lengthy plot with a lot of padding. I've never understood the complaints about padding though - well written padding is better than badly written essentials. The first episode introduces us to Edward Waterfield, who later turns out to have appropriated the TARDIS under orders from the Daleks, who have sent him to the future from his native 1866 to do so. As ever, the Doctor is able to follow the trail of clues left by the TARDIS's captors. As time wears on, it occurs to me that Waterfield would have been better to be more direct in his luring the Doctor to his antique shop, but it's a good episode regardless; various locations, including a bar, loads of fun Doctor/Jamie dialogue, what more could you ask for?

One thing I thought I'd comment on: what programme other than Doctor Who could given us a 19th-century man in a 20th-century setting, facing an fascist alien mutant in a metal casing?

The first reveal of a Dalek is one of their least effective entrances. It simply appears rather than being unveiled, so it's not very memorable.

Episode 2 is the best until the final episode for several reasons. It's a best of both worlds kind of thing - the first half of it takes place in 1966, with the Doctor and Jamie catching up with the plot at the antique shop, and getting knocked out and taken to 1866 for their troubles. When one door closes, another opens; in 1866 we get properly into the story with the introductions of several characters including the crazy scientist Theodore Maxtible, a terrific character who not only has a brilliantly eccentric look (massive beard) but the way he takes the appearance of the Daleks in his stride, as if it happens every day, is hilarious. There's a great scene where the Doctor finally learns about the presence of the Daleks - Waterfield explains that he has been coerced into his actions by the Daleks as they've kidnapped his daughter, while Maxtible explains how he discovered time travel using static electricity, with the Daleks appearing on cue. It's good because it's the one and only episode we can actually see Patrick Troughton as the Doctor reacting to the Daleks. I like the way the Doctor fears the Daleks, something we never saw from the William Hartnell Doctor, and lets viewers hear the revulsion in his voice as he questions the Dalek. It's not a long scene but Troughton's performance in it operates on a level above what Hartnell usually gave us when he faced the Daleks.

The Doctor is required to have Jamie submit to a Dalek experiment. It's chilling to see the Doctor agree to it on Jamie's behalf and go on to withhold information from him, which Jamie soon notices. Jamie was a bit weird in this story - one argument with the Doctor and he suddenly wants to go it alone. It seems like an attempt to develop Jamie's character by showing another side to him, but although the argument itself is good, I don't buy Jamie going off to rescue Waterfield's daughter by himself just because of that.

Obviously Waterfield's daughter is none other than Victoria Waterfield, the new companion. She's held by the Daleks and taken to Maxtible's house (must be a big house). Introducing her as a damsel in distress, and having her captured for the first four of her episodes was a bad move. Even after she is rescued she hardly does anything for the rest of the story. Considering the length of The Evil of the Daleks, I found this quite odd. The only reason I'm looking forward to seeing more of her is that the idea of a companion from the Victorian era is interesting, as her reactions to time travel and the TARDIS will no doubt be different to someone more modern.

We're in Maxtible's house until Episode 6, allowing money to be saved for the big conclusion on Skaro. Once Jamie goes off to rescue Victoria, the story starts to drag a bit, not least because the Doctor sits around monitoring Jamie's movements and the other characters aren't up to anything interesting either. The Doctor is forced to work with the Daleks to isolated the Human Factor, the qualities that humans have that enable them to defeat the Daleks, so Human Daleks can be made which will improve the Daleks. This doesn't ring true with what we know of the Daleks but I'll go with it, considering we know the Daleks are extra devious when Whitaker's at the typewriter.

The thing about the middle few episodes is that the story has such an awesome conclusion that when you get to the end, all is forgiven. However when I'm actually watching these episodes they are a chore because they're so drawn out. Jamie teams up with the mute Kemel and they make their way past some traps to get to Victoria, while some extra characters are added to pad out the episodes, including the rather boring Ruth Maxtible, the likeable maid Mollie, who gains viewer empathy by the way she accepts her low social position but ends up getting punished for helping Jamie, and the rather pointless Arthur Terrall, who struggles with Dalek orders in his head and his own free will. It's mainly the fact that he ends up contributing nothing to the overall plot other than to show us how the Daleks are affecting people, and that he is only there in these middle episodes, that makes him seem so incidental. Episode 1 might have been good padding, but this is bad padding.

The few plot developments we get from Episodes 3 and 4 pay off in Episode 5. It's a great relief when Jamie and the others are able to get back to the main part of the house quickly, even though Victoria is captured again. The Doctor's findings about the human qualities Jamie showed from rescuing Victoria are instilled into three Daleks, and as he intended, it doesn't make them super Daleks, but rather playful and child-like. The cliffhanger to Episode 5 is one of my favourites - lets face it, you've got to love a cliffhanger that makes you desperate to see how people playing trains is resolved.

The Victorian subplot winds down in Episode 6. The Daleks are recalled to Skaro and blow up Maxtible's house. Everybody ends up captured by the Daleks and left in a cell on Skaro. The destruction of Maxtible's house is another of this story's conclusion-but-not-a-conclusion's - bookending a large portion of the story with something that would have worked as a conclusion had the story ended in 1866. Regardless, action is very welcome at this point.

As I mentioned earlier, the highlight of the story is the finale. A lot of time has passed since The Daleks (the Thals aren't even mentioned so we can assume they've either been killed off or left). Skaro is now the centre of a Dalek Empire rather than a city where the Daleks can be switched off by turning the power off. From the telesnaps, the sets are darker than the ones used before, which is a good way to suggest the passage of time and also make the city look bigger. This is where the season finale aspect comes into it - everything is big; the scope, the sets, the budget. We have a seemingly impossible situation; the Doctor thought he had defeated the Daleks by creating the Human Daleks, but the Daleks announce their plan was isolated the Dalek Factor and spray it into the atmosphere of Earth, thus removing humans as an enemy.

Part of what I like about this finale is that the story has quite wisely disposed of the less important characters in the previous couple of episodes, cutting everything down to the bare essentials - the Doctor, the companions, the Daleks, Waterfield, Maxtible and Kemel. It gives the last episode a lot more focus than for example The Dalek Invasion of Earth has. Maxtible is given the Dalek Factor, and so apparently is the Doctor, but his alien physiology allows him to retain his composure and stay the same. By rejgging the arch which converted Maxtible to instill the Human Factor and not the Dalek Factor, he convinces the Emperor Dalek to weed out the Human Daleks by sending all of the Daleks through the arch, supposedly to convert them back into proper Daleks but really to send the Daleks into chaos by converting them into Human Daleks. It would be hard to measure up to The Daleks' Master Plan's conclusion, but this is a very close second - a quick solution but which is entirely in keeping with what we've learned so far. The only flaw is that the Daleks should have known the Doctor is an alien, but that's very minor.

Spectacular is the word to sum up the last episode. The Emperor Dalek tries to keep the situation under control as the Daleks blast each other and destroy the city in the process. Waterfield sacrifices himself to save the Doctor, and asks him to take care of Victoria, although by this point its so obvious that Victoria is going to become a companion that his death comes across as boringly inevitable. Ditto for Kemel, who should really have been killed earlier or left in 1866.

As the Doctor, Jamie and Victoria leave the Dalek city, the Doctor notes that this is the final end of the Daleks. It really feels like the culmination of all the Dalek stories so far rather than just the conclusion to this story, and that's high praise considering I thought it would be difficult to top The Daleks' Master Plan (and arguably it wouldn't be until Journey's End that the Daleks had an ever bigger plan).

So The Evil of the Daleks rests on a conclusion so brilliant that I can brush over its shortcomings earlier in the story, mainly issues of padding and the plot not making complete sense. David Whitaker has done what he does best - create a believable world inhabited by believable characters, and as usual he makes clear how bleak the situation is through the Doctor's reaction rather than the enemies themselves. I'm not sure whether that's good or bad. Victoria is still uncharted territory as a character, but if she doesn't impress then at least this story isn't to blame.

Horror quotient - I'm not up on Dalek voices but they seem to have got a new guy in for this story, and he really nails it. Scariest Dalek voice ever. There are loads of scary scenes in this story, and I think the Dalek city is much improved upon the one seen in The Daleks (which was also good).
Comedy quotient - I think I've found one thing the story lacked. It manages not to suffer from it though.
Drama quotient - David Whitaker script edited the first season. You always know you're going to get drama when he's writing.

Loses a point for the middle few episodes not being up to the standard I expect from a 10/10, as well as the plot problems. Nvertheless, that makes four out of four season finales so far that I've reappraised, with none of them scoring under 9/10, I wonder if The Wheel in Space will be the same...

9/10

The Faceless Ones

Previous viewings - few (surviving episodes), one (missing episodes)

William Hartnell is my favourite Doctor but I didn't give all of his stories 5/5 just because he was in them. However when a good era is over in hindsight you start looking more favourably on its lesser stories because being part of that golden era gives them a pedigree. This is the case for Season 1. We had three-dimensional companions in Ian and Barbara, whose developing relationship with the Doctor and quest to get home gave the series a sense of forward motion, rather than just a constant crisis/solution cycle. Somewhere in Season 2 the show lost that direction. Individual stories can rate highly, but I like to feel that the series is building to something. When Ben and Polly joined I was surprised that we didn't get that; we too rarely get an insight into them as characters and their origins are merely given lip service from time to time.

Ironically, what I was critical of earlier, the loss of experimentation and more dependence on familiar story ideas, has given Doctor Who its direction back. It's found its niche, and with The Macra Terror I feel the series has once again reached the point where its no longer riding on past successes. The last piece of the puzzle is the departures of the last remaining Hartnell companions, Ben and Polly. Which brings me to The Faceless Ones...

Six episodes. Present-day Earth. Malcolm Hulke. One might think I've watched a Pertwee story by mistake. The TARDISeers can't wait to get into trouble here, as when the TARDIS lands on a runway at Gatwick Airport they decide to have a runaround. When you've got a six-parter on your hands, diversions like these at the start of the story are fun. The weary airport Commandant is bewildered that a police box is obstructing the runway and assumes it's a prank, while the Doctor is caught out not by aliens, but by immigration, for not having a passport. It's hilarious to see the Doctor tripped up by something so normal, especially Patrick Troughton's Doctor, perhaps the most anti-establishment and clueless when it comes to everyday problems of the 1960s.

Ben and Polly can't wait to leave. The moment the story starts Ben runs away from his friends, while Polly witnesses a murder by ray gun in a hangar and tells the Doctor, who insists they return there to inspect the body. Polly has her hair back to its regular length, I prefer it this way as she is prettier. Anyway, the Doctor and Jamie are a bit caught up with the investigation and don't even notice Polly being grabbed behind them. When they see her next, she denies knowing them. Being the forgiving type, it's not because she's mad at them, but because the murdering aliens have affected her. She promptly disappears from the story too.

This is the story where the Doctor/Jamie double-act starts to become something really special. Most of it is because of the chemistry between the actors but you have a classic pairing anyway as the Doctor's experience and vast knowledge contrasts with Jamie's lack of those plus his humility and somewhat childish view of the world. Jamie's extreme loyalty to the Doctor is more that of a son trying to impress his father, and Frazer Hines's entertaining performances make Jamie the most likeable companion yet.

However, The Faceless Ones also rewards viewers by giving us another good character who the Doctor forms a double act with - the airport Commandant, played by Colin Gordon. The Commandant always comes across as a man who has had a long hard day and just wants it to be over, but then the Doctor shows up to tell him about a murder. The body is gone from the hangar, however, so the Doctor has some explaining to do. It's a typical straight man/funny man relationship, and it's funny to see the Commandant reacting to the Doctor's increasingly ludicrous claims. It's a role in the story the Brigadier would later fill, although since the Brig is a military type he tends to be more unflappable.

Strange things are happening with the airline Chameleon Tours. Samantha Briggs arrives at Gatwick to investigate the disappearance of her brother, who was on one of their planes. With Ben and Polly missing, Samantha becomes a pseudo-companion for the rest of the story, and works especially well with Jamie. I'm not sure whether I would have wanted Pauline Collins to continue with the role beyond this story - my instinct says she would have been better than Victoria, but that might be because in this story she is relevant. When it's all over she could turn into a generic screamer with a Scouse accent.

Anyway, Chameleon Tours are up to no good. The oddly smug-looking Captain Blade supervises the transformation of a faceless (yeah, the title) creature into a duplicate of the captured air traffic controller Meadows. He's determined that their flights go ahead, and acts nonchalant when questioned. Several attempts on the Doctor's life early in the story turn out to be unwise as he is pretty terrible at dispatching his enemies and it only gives the Doctor more evidence against him each time, and more co-operation from base personnel. I find it all quite interesting though as it's not clear what Chameleon Tours are up to. Teenagers use their planes and don't seem to arrive at their destinations, despite sending postcards to their families. Not being a direct invasion makes the long investigation process worth taking the number of episodes it does, filling out the six episodes quite nicely. The main problem is that after a while I'm starting to wonder if Ben and Polly are ever going to appear again!

Call me stupid, but I don't think the faceless creatures plot is that predictable. They seem to be spinning a few nefarious schemes: the people in suspended animation, the duplicates, and the missing youngsters. Episodes 3 and 4 show how the three plots are connected. These middle two episodes aren't as good as the first two and last two - they're slower paced - but they have good cliffhangers which take us to the next stage of the story. Yes, the plot twist cliffhangers I love so much, even if the eagle-eyed viewers will have already guessed what they reveal. The first sees Inspector Crossland discover the passengers of a Chameleon Tours flight have disappeared while in the air, and the second has a plane, with Jamie aboard, stop during its flight and move upwards into space, where it meets a bigger spaceship. Jamie had taken Samantha's ticket to protect her and probably to do something other than sit around in the airport as he had largely done so far.

The Doctor gets information from the duplicate of Meadows, who has been left at the airport control. The duplicates wear armbands which if removed will kill them and revive the originals, which gives the Doctor an easy advantage over the Chameleons. The conclusion of the story takes place in the Chameleon spaceship, after the Doctor manages to get aboard the last Chameleon Tours flight by impersonating the duplicate Meadows. The Chameleons have captured enough people are intend to leave Earth, but it turns out to be a poor decision to leave some of the duplicates on Earth as by removing their armbands their counterparts on the Chameleon ship will die. In an unlikely turn of events, Blade sees sense and to save his people he agrees to return the missing youngsters. It's good to see an enemy see they're beaten and try for a solution which can still benefit them rather than going out all guns blazing.

There are a few loose ends to tie up at the story comes to an end. With Pauline Collins not interested in staying on, Samantha gives Jamie a kiss and leaves. It's actually quite surprising how infrequently a companion got a little action during their time in the TARDIS, even if its just a kiss.

In an even more unlikely turn of events, Ben and Polly realise it's the day they originally left London, and decide to stay behind and return to their old lives. Their goodbye is rather hurried but it somehow fits for the type of companions they were; I get the impression they saw their travels in the TARDIS as a bit of fun, with a few friends made, but not something they wanted to continue with. Their presence comes as a shock as I was starting to think they had gone the way of the Dodo.... fortunately we won't have to wait long for another companion to come along who is as hot as Polly (yes, I'm shallow).

The Faceless Ones is proto-Pertwee. I can easily imagine it fitting into Season 8 or 9. What makes it for me is the good characters and decent villains, and Troughton and Hines on fine form. A big flaw is that it's not very scary or interesting visually, at a point where the series was starting to go down that direction (we've got the Emperor Dalek coming up in the next story, and the gorgeous Victorian interiors), but there's too much to love about it to let something so minor drag its score down. Not a classic but a cracking story regardless.

Horror quotient - The body snatcher plot is not played for scares, and it really should be. It might just have given The Faceless Ones the push it needed to enter 'classic' territory.
Comedy quotient - I seem to be saying this a lot, but the Doctor is the clear comedy highlight. He seems to make anyone he interacts with funny, too.
Drama quotient - Lots of procedure, not enough drama. It's interesting to watch but after the laughs are out of the way the Doctor is trusted way too easily.

Not very interesting visually, and not scary enough, but it gets away with it because of an interesting plot and good performances.

8/10

The Macra Terror

Previous viewings - none

I like it when the marathon throws up unexpected delights like this. Weird, because The Macra Terror is very formulaic - a hidden menace behind a perfect society, the Doctor exposing the truth and fighting some memorable monsters, but this has the distinction of being vintage Troughton and the scariest Doctor Who story yet. Ian Stuart Black has already proved himself to be one of the better Doctor Who writers, and this story brings back some memories of The Savages, a story that was played more as a morality tale, with the horrifying truth being slowly unearthed and the Doctor showing his disapproval all the way. Here, the perfect society is brought about by a secret alien invasion.

The fact that everything's not so perfect is a badly kept secret, given the TARDISeers have just got a big look at the Macra on the time scanner, and the first person they meet outside, Medok, is crazed and warning everyone about creatures. We're on an Earth colony in the future (again), a holiday camp this time, and everyone is happy. The Pilot welcomes the Doctor and his companions, and invites them to enjoy the luxuries of the holiday camp. The colony itself looks like a slightly darker version of Vulcan from The Power of the Daleks; this coupled with what we've already means none of the colonists' cheery behaviour rings true. In fact, with the happy music which plays on the speakers, and the voice of the Controller giving orders but always sounding pleasant, comes off as downright creepy given this foreknowledge. Nice scene setting.

There are a few noteworthy tidbits from the funny scene where the TARDISeers get a makeover. Newcomer Jamie is nervous, saying he's scared of the girls (aww), while veterans Ben and Polly lap it up. The Doctor seems to like his disshevelled appearance enough to instantly change back to it when given his makeover. Patrick Troughton seems to be through his transitional period of settling into the role and is now recognisibly the Second Doctor as we know him. It's the way he handles humour; Troughton plays the role straight, but the Doctor's absentmindedness leads to humour at his expense. The best way to describe his performances up until now is... erratic. Always good, but without nailing it the way he would go on to do. Similarly, Jamie is a point of interest by virtue of being awake and getting lines that weren't originally for Ben. Two growing characters against Ben and Polly, the established characters, and it's the newbies who are more interesting and entertaining.

Onto the plot. The Doctor frees Medok from his cell and sees a giant crab for himself, while the companions are subjected to a bit of brainwashing and propaganda as they sleep. Jamie resists and the Doctor wakes Polly up so only Ben is affected. Ben is now a loyal citizen of the colony and reports the Doctor for tampering with the hypnosis equipment. Finally, a Ben storyline! And one that involves some internal conflict, too. Michael Craze makes the most of what he's given, playing bad Ben well but I was hoping he would make the familiar Ben recognisable beneath the mind conditioning, which he didn't really do. At least it splits up the regulars by a way other than one or two of them being captured.

With the audio CD, it's sometimes hard to tell what's going on. It's worse than usual here, with the narration sometimes not giving enough visual description of what's happening (plus I'm not quite sure why they got Colin Baker was to read the narration rather than Frazer or Anneke), and at moments like the various attacks by the Macra and the dark mine scenes I was making an extra effort to combine the audio with the limited visual material either described or shown in the surviving clips to build up a picture of what it all looked like in my head. The Macra stay hidden for most of the story, generally only showing up for cliffhangers, but one of their prominent early moments is the attack on Ben and Polly in Episode 2, and while they look silly, they quite wisely stay in the darkness, thus managing to salvage their credibility and they're even scary when combined with the oddball music. This is behind-the-sofa material of the highest order when you take the more forgiving kids into account.

As Episode 2 finishes, we find out that the Controller is an old man and the Macra are the ones giving the orders. The colonists however are in denial about this and insist on sending the Doctor, Jamie and Polly to the mines with the Danger Gang to extract gases which will kill them. It's a predictable cliffhanger if you know Doctor Who story structure inside out, but is a definite shock moment otherwise. I love plot twist cliffhangers.

The Doctor is assigned to the control room of the mine, where he is very pleased with himself as he works out some sums and writes a formula on the wall, much to the horror of the Pilot who reveals that it's a closely guarded secret. I want to say it's my favourite Troughton scene so far, but already there is a lot of competition, so I'll just say it's a great one... 11/10 I should say .

The gas is lethal to humans but sustains the Macra, who live down in the mines, the Macra having obviously set up a situation where the entire purpose of the holiday camp is to sustain a colony of Macra, with the human lives expendible (which begs the question of how the human population are sustained with such a high mortality rate, but I'll shrug that aside as it only just occurred to me now, two days after finishing the story). Medok is quite gruesomely killed by one of the Macra, while Jamie is saved only because the Macra who menaces him is growing weak from the lack of gas, the Doctor having supplied oxygen to them instead of their gas.

The conclusion is something of a disappointment, coming across on audio as something that is really meant to be seen, and not just because of Jamie's highland fling. The Doctor and Polly show the Pilot the Macra for himself, converting him to their side as he can no longer deny that they exist. Control responds by ordering that the Pilot no longer has any authority and must die along with the TARDISeers. Ben however manages to break through his conditioning, with his subplot merely fizzling out rather than coming to a climax, all so it happens at the key moment so he can reverse the inflow and outflow switches, killing the Macra. It's one of the more frantic conclusions, but as I enjoy it I'm doing so in a more looking through a window sort of way.

The ending is quite New Series-esque. With the Macra dead, the good guys can live their lives as normal, but the TARDISeers don't get away without a crowd of well-wishers telling them they'll remember and honour the visit of the strangers.

The Macra Terror is a sign of things to come. The Doctor and Jamie are now fully the Doctor and Jamie as they will be at their peak in Seasons 5-6. The horror quotient is turned up to maximum, and monsters turn out to be more than meets the eye. With its echoes of 1984, I can imagine it coming out of the Hinchcliffe era. By later standards, it's a typical story, but it deviates enough from the base-under-siege formula to qualify as atypical Troughton and it's enormously atmospheric. Like I said earlier though, a lot of this might be down to my overactive imagination filling in the blanks, and with such a visual story there are a lot of blanks. I'm starting to think the Troughton era doesn't transfer as well to audio as Hartnell's typically more dialogue-heavy era.

Horror quotient - The audio implies a scary story, but implication can be misleading.
Comedy quotient - Some Doctor moments, some Jamie moments, I've already mentioned the best ones.
Drama quotient - A bit, but there could have been more. The Doctor dismisses the threat of the colonists themselves, pitting himself against the Macra who barely show themselves. I was most curious about Polly's reaction to Ben's hypnosis, but she shows the least. Polly is a bit of screamer here, but this time at least she has reason.

Regarded as either a classic or a clunker depending on who you talk to, The Macra Terror's success depends on how scary it is. Even if it's not, there's lots to like here.

9/10

The Moonbase

Previous viewings - few

In the surviving episode wasteland that is Patrick Troughton's first season, even a half-complete story is something to get extra excited about. At times I can almost put the missing episodes aside - we have the conclusion and the middle of the other three episodes, which is a good spread of visual material and better I think than the other two episodes existing in The Crusade. While we did get the best episodes of that serial, it definitely felt less complete.

It's odd that I mention The Crusade - it followed the worst story yet, representative of Doctor Who's occasional tendency to go from one extreme of quality to the other in the space of a week. I wasn't very complimentary towards The Underwater Menace but it doesn't dampen my spirits. Plus, the Cybermen are back! And they're much more how people remember them; creepy robots skulking around in the dark, with strange mechanical voices. For all my praise of the original Cybermen, the design was never going to last - it communicated well the concept of body horror, but they were a tad too silly which would limit their potential to really scare the kids. It makes sense story-wise too, if the Cybermen don't possess time travel, then for them this is nearly a century after The Tenth Planet, and if I was them the first thing I would have got rid of after their first defeat would be the bulky chest units and vulnerable human features. The logical Cybermen would surely agree, and their new refined, more metallic look in The Moonbase does well to make them seem like a threat to Earth and the Doctor.

The plot is nothing new, and when I say nothing new I mean we've had this before... just a few stories ago. In fact, it's most similar to the last story the Cybermen appeared in. An isolated setting, the Moon, holds a base which is key to the welfare of the Earth residents in some way, in this case through control of the Gravitron, and thus the Earth's weather. I suppose the base personnel don't expect any interference or problems because the base seems quite small and is run by a skeleton staff, run by the forceful Hobson, who brings back memories of Cutler from The Tenth Planet in that when the Cybermen aren't around he acts as the main obstacle that prevents the Doctor from achieving his objectives. Fortunately Hobson is nowhere near as irritatingly irrational and in the moments where he stands in the way of the Doctor I can understand his reasons for doing so. He comes across as a guy who has a stressful job and is under a lot of pressure.

The TARDIS has appeared on the lunar surface, and Ben and Polly want to take what will probably be their once in a lifetime opportunity to walk on the moon before they leave. We're still two years before Apollo 11 and at the height of the space race, so a Moon story comes as no surprise. I listened to this episode exclusively on Lost in Time, so I only got the raw audio for Episodes 1 and 3, and Episode 1 seemed to suffer the most because I didn't get to see the spacewalk of the Doctor and the companions, which sounded like a lot of fun. Jamie was particularly entertaining with his fish-out-of-the-water reactions to the Moon, like him wondering if they would meet the man on the Moon. The spacewalk is extra interesting from a marathon standpoint because it's about the only thing this story has but The Tenth Planet doesn't.

As we enter the Moonbase, an injured Jamie is taken to the hospital. An mystery illness has stricken some of the crew and they're comatose, including the base's doctor, so our Doctor agrees to investigate. Patrick Troughton is on form here (though when is he not?), and his persona has settled into the more familiar cosmic hobo/moral crusader combo that will continue for the rest of his tenure. At first I thought Troughton's chemistry with Frazer Hines was the main aspect of his performance missing from his first three stories, but I hadn't considered that the change of actor might have left writers unsure how to write for the new Doctor. The Moonbase is our first taste of typical Troughton, both in story and character's persona, and it's good to see his character stabilise as the episodes wear on.

The concern over the sick crew is a large part of the first episode, and it concludes with a Cyberman looming over a bed-ridden Jamie, who thinks it's the phantom piper (no, I don't know what that is either, so it's not a Scottish thing). Good cliffhanger and good reveal of the Cybermen. In the next episode, Polly interrupts the Cyberman and as she screams in terror it flees before everyone else overhears and comes in, which prompts a search of the base and the crew becoming less tolerant of the Doctor as he tries and fails to find a cure to the sickness and the comatose crew are disappearing. Considering Jamie is out of action, I was expecting Ben to have a lot to do but he's a total spare part. Polly is back to making coffee but here it's a plot point, as it turns out the sugar in the coffee has been poisoned. The Cybermen have been used sparingly, leaving us to contend with the mystery of the illness and lots of the base personnel trying to control the Gravitron, which isn't that interesting. The set design and base personnel are an improvement over their counterparts in The Tenth Planet, but perhaps the biggest problem with this story is that while it may slightly improve on the aforementioned story, everything here has a counterpart there, and I feel like I've seen it all before. Fortunately masses of Cybermen are on their way...

An implausible cliffhanger sees the base personnel discover the Cybermen have been hiding in the hospital room where the Doctor has been working. Implausible, but I really liked it, despite the Cyberman almost accidentally knocking the bed over.

Episode 3 didn't leave much of an impression because it did not surprise me or do much to distinguish itself from The Tenth Planet. Cybermen take over the base, and set in motion their plot against Earth. Polly proves herself useful in coming up with a weapon against the Cybermen using nail varnish remover (of course, she's a girl so has to come up with a girly plan ) and soon enough it's problem solved, at least regarding the initial batch of Cybermen - but more are coming. The improved look of the Cybermen might allow for a scarier story, but when all we're getting is a retread of The Tenth Planet I'm wondering why they bothered redesigning the Cybermen.

Another surviving episode rounds off the story. The Cybermen attack the base from outside using some nifty weapons, and send a rescue ship from Earth spiralling into the Sun. Jamie has recovered and everybody is focused on defeating the Cybermen. It's the most atmospheric episode, largely because of the groovy Cybermen march music, although the Cybermen are defeated quite easily when the Gravitron is turned on the Moon, causing them and their ship to lift off into space in a rather poor model sequence. It's an example of very watchable Who, which most stories are in this era because of Troughton alone, but it's not what I'd consider gripping.

Also similar to The Tenth Planet, the Doctor and his companions hurry away as soon as the Cybermen are defeated, allowing us a glimpse of the Macra via the time scanner, used for the first and only time for one of the most contrived cliffhangers yet.

The Moonbase is a perfectly good Doctor Who story. The redesign of the Cybermen is a good one but for all the isolation of the Moonbase and its crew it's only slightly more atmospheric than The Tenth Planet, with pretty much every plot point from that story carried over to this one. For a series as experimental as Doctor Who in William Hartnell's era, this is disappointing. I can't help feeling the talents of the writers and actors are being wasted by not giving us a story that feeds the imagination and instead relying entirely on a past success (why were the Cybermen brought back so soon anyway? The new costumes must have been expensive), set apart only by the intriguing lunar setting. In the context of the marathon it's even worse; to enjoy it as much as possible I had to forget The Tenth Planet and enjoy it in its own right, but the whole point of a marathon is to put the episodes in context through viewing them in order.

Horror quotient - I have to contragulate Kit Pedler in his plotting; the first two cliffhangers are identical, with both being the reveal of the Cybermen, and they're among the best things about the story. The Cybermen still haven't shaken off that 'silly' vibe, but they're scarier than they used to be.
Comedy quotient - It's the Moon! Some laughs to be had earlier in the story, and whenever the Doctor gets a chance to interact with his companions. They're a funny bunch when they're together, and I can imagine the case being the same off-screen.
Drama quotient - A slightly more interesting base crew than The Tenth Planet, but this story doesn't have the regeneration or the exploration of the Cybermen concept to make it more interesting. It could have been better in this regard.

It's the kind of Doctor Who story that even if you haven't seen it, you've seen it.

6/10

The Underwater Menace

Previous viewings - one (missing episodes), many (Episode 3)

And the award for "most absurd story ever" goes to....

The lesser qualities of The Underwater Menace took my by surprise, but I'm not sure why as I've seen Episode 3 lots of times and thought it was just entertainingly camp. I expect it's because when I watch a single episode I don't care much about the plot because I know I'm not going to see it to its conclusion anyway. Laughing at how bad something is for 25 minutes can be diverting, but for 100 minutes - you're just wasting your time.

The story opens on another beach, volcanic this time so we're not in the UK. Jamie is along for the ride, but is still in his early phase: Frazer Hines hasn't yet developed the chemistry with Patrick Troughton that makes Jamie and the Doctor such a great character, in fact hardly anything at all is done with the character in this story beyond helping out his friends and asking the occasional question. He shows a remarkable ability to adjust to his new lifestyle, I suspect due to his inclusion at short notice than any deliberate characterisation, which is why I'll be kind and not blame the writer for his poorly written first TARDIS scene, where he immediately accepts the dimensional transcendentalism and gets ready for the next adventure.

To say The Underwater Menace's plot doesn't stand up to scrutiny is an understatement. It has more holes than a golf course. At times it's total lack of logic is jaw-dropping, almost making it hard to accept this as a genuine Doctor Who story and not a spoof. It ends up coming off as a sendup of the show, which is odd because it's ranting madman plotting to destroy the world plot is more James Bond-esque than Who (You Only Live Twice, also released in 1967, had an underground volcano lair).

Professor Zaroff intends to raise the lost city of Atlantis from beneath the sea. His plan will destroy Atlantis and in fact the whole planet, but he's insane so he doesn't care. While he finalises his project, the TARDISeers are brought down to Atlantis, where Zaroff saves them from being eaten by sharks as sacrifices to the goddess Amdo because of a false claim by the Doctor to hold crucial information. Glossing over the odd detail that the Doctor knew in advance that he would be able to find Zaroff in this presumably isolated and unknown community, Zaroff's attitude towards the Doctor makes little sense. He asks him to help him with his project because he is a scientist - the Doctor, being the good scientist we know him to be, quickly realises that Zaroff's plan will destroy the world, and sets out to stop him. Run that past me again?

The Atlantisans sure are keen on their sacrifices. Having just escaped being shark food, Polly is taken to be turned into a fish, as the Atlantisans do to strangers, who become fish people and slaves, who are responsible for maintaining the Atlantisans food supplies. Polly escapes and teams up with Ara. In a different story, the threat of Polly being turned into a fish would be a definite WTF moment, but here it barely raises an eyebrow. In the context of the rest of the story, good cliffhanger though.

At this point, Zaroff believes the Doctor will help him. Ben and Jamie have been sent to work in the mines, far too normal a punishment for a story like this. The Doctor finds an ally in Ramo, a priest who opposes Zaroff, but Thous, leader of Atlantis, supports Zaroff and hands the Doctor and Ramo over to him.

What's this - moving images! If there's one good thing about this being the earliest surviving Troughton episode, it's that I have visual evidence to support my opinion that the story is utter tosh. The set design and costuming resembled that of The Aztecs, but The Underwater Menace is nowhere near as well directed and has some rather odd mechanical electronic music permeating it, which in any other story would be got very annoying but somehow it worked here.

Zaroff decides to have the Doctor and Ramo sacrificed, but Ben, Polly, Jamie and some stranded sailors have found a passageway behind an Amdo statue in quite an unlikely turn of events, which provides the Doctor and Ramo with somewhere to hide when everybody else is bowing. Their movements aren't exactly discreet, and ultimately for the Atlantisans to assume their vanishing is a miracle from Amdo only shows them up as morons. If I was taking the story seriously, that would ruin it, but I'm not, so it didn't.

Perhaps that's a great strength of this story. Okay, so it makes no sense, but it's never boring. If you're watching it with someone else, you can make a game of it - see who can count the most plot holes, under the assumption that everything is supposed to make sense and the characters are supposed to have normal motivations and agendas. Episode 3 is rubbish - having met up with his friends, the Doctor decides to kidnap Zaroff, while the others convince the fish people to strike so the Atlantisans food will go bad. The fish people are slaves with total control over the food of those who have enslaved them. See what the problem there is? At least we get a funky underwater fish people sequence, although quite what it's supposed to mean is anyone's guess. The Doctor, meanwhile, makes Zaroff chase him so that he can incapacitate him. Zaroff tells him it's too late to stop his plan, then fakes a heart attack, which everyone believes despite it being very poorly acted. Of course he easily escapes and accelerates his plans.

Until this point, I was willing to overlook many of the story's flaws, because despite the absurdities, including the questionable acting of Joseph Furst, easily the most over-the-top villain Doctor Who villain ever, the poorly realised Atlantisan culture, who seem to live in a series of very small rooms, and the ruining of Polly, who has degenerated into screamer and a wimp, it was still entertaining, and none of this was so bad that I couldn't enjoy it. However the last episode is the worst of the lot. The Doctor floods the lower levels of Atlantis, which includes Zaroff's laboratory. Despite the depth, and presumably pressure, the water kindly takes its time to destroy the city while the surviving inhabitants (all the good guys, none of the bad guys) swim to safety and reach ground level. Zaroff is of course still determined to carry out his plan but is trapped behind a grille and drowns. Back above ground, the Doctor and his companions return to the TARDIS.

If you're in the right mood, The Underwater Menace is loads of fun. Entertainment doesn't have to be 100% realistic. The Underwater Menace takes it to the other extreme. Asking the viewers to accept the science in this story is an insult to their intelligence. Add the other flaws I mentioned and you have one of the poorest stories yet.

Horror quotient - With a story like this, who knows what's supposed to be scary. The fish people are possibility.
Comedy quotient - "Nothing in the world can stop me now!" The line is poor already, but the delivery makes it the most memorable line of the story, for all the wrong reasons.
Drama quotient - Drama? Who needs drama.

There are laughs to be had if you're revelling in how awful it is, but to give it a high score would be a disservice to stories which at least tried to be good, even if they failed in the realisation.

4/10

The Highlanders

Previous viewings - few

Are there any other Scots doing this marathon? The story's setting definitely gets thumbs up, although Inverness is quite some way north of me. It's the last pure historical, and we're in similar territory to The Smugglers at least in regards to theme; a villain has some plot that ensnares the TARDISeers, a plot that can be thwarted as it doesn't involve any real historical people. It's an interesting look at how the Second Doctor can be in an historical, and if this is anything to go it's a shame there weren't any more.

Culloden, 1746. Jacobite rebels are defeated by the English army, after which a surviving Laird and his family seek refuge in a cottage. William Hartnell is forgotten as the Doctor's recent regeneration is no longer a point of concern; Ben and Polly have accepted the new Doctor and from here and it doesn't look like we're expected to dwell on it either, even though his reactions to stepping into history is much changed from what we got before. The old Doctor would be looking for clues to their whereabouts and explaining his thoughts and findings to his companions. The new Doctor is more of a closed book and spends a lot of time goofing around with hats. The narration explains more about the period than the Doctor. Troughton is good at being silly, but this different approach is hard to get used to.

The Doctor and his companions are captured by the surviving Scots. The Scottish accents vary in success; Jamie's is the best, while Kirsty's sounds more like Welsh. I'm surprised Ben survives the episode given he foolishly alerts the English soldiers to the Scots presence and is glad to hear about their approach. The first episode is a typical historical story introduction in that it starts out as a mere exploration of surroundings, but the TARDISeers get dragged into someone else's problem which by the end of the episode is life-threatening. However the pacing is faster than usual as the Doctor, Ben, Jamie and the Laird are about to be hanged long before the episode finishes, only stopped when by nefarious Solicitor Gray who has hatched a scheme to have them contracted as slaves in an illegal operation. The Doctor has adopted the persona of Doctor Von Wer, a German scientist, which sees Patrick Troughton at his comedic best as he hilariously exaggerates the accent and uses his guise to bamboozle people enabling him to turn the tables on them. It's maybe too early in the new Doctor's run to have him not be himself for most of the story, but Troughton's entertaining performance steals every scene.

As the Scots are marched away to a prison in Inverness, while Polly and Kirsty are left on their lonesome. Polly is awesome in this story, for successfully trapping the Lt. Ffinch in an animal trap and robbing him, and being lumbered with the useless Kirsty. In essence she's only being used as she usually is - only caring about getting back to her friends, with no hint about how her experiences affect her emotionally, which by now I've pretty much given up any of hope of seeing. Still, it's better than getting kidnapped, and I'd take Polly the minx, who manages to blackmail Ffinch on a subsequent encounter, over coffee-making Polly any day.

In a hilarious scene, the Doctor as Von Wer locks Gray away and convinces his assistant Perkins that he is having head pains by banging his head against the table and convinces him to rest. It's not clear what the Doctor is thinking or planning, but he disguises himself as a servant woman (the Doctor in drag agenda - see also The Green Death) and fortunately goes unnoticed as he leaves the prison. Ben doesn't get much to do as he and the highlanders are taken to the Annabelle, where Trask will set sail for one of the colonies. Ben convinces the Laird and Jamie not to sign the contracts which will save them from hanging but consign them to a life of slavery. Jamie's role is surprisingly limited given that it was a last-minute decision to have him join the TARDIS crew when he impressed the team. Jamie doesn't quite seem like Jamie yet as he's in his natural environment and doesn't know anything more than his fellow Scots about the Doctor. With what he's given though, Frazer Hines plays a likeable character, the young rookie who nevertheless picks things up quickly.

The Doctor has a chance encounter with Polly and Kirsty and decides that he wants a nap, though Polly is assertive and determined as usual. The fact that she robbed Ffinch works out better than originally thought as he had a lot of money on him, as it allows them to buy weapons. I liked this plot development, it doesn't come out of nowhere like some of the sci-fi conclusions do, although it's equally as convenient it doesn't seem so. Meanwhile, having caused trouble aboard the Annabelle Ben is thrown overboard, but swims to safety (a rather lame but obvious conclusion to a cliffhanger) and has another chance encounter with the Doctor, althoug by this point it's stretching credibility a bit that they wouldn't have to track each other down. Although the Doctor doesn't say so in as many words, he's taking up another cause for moral reasons - stopping Gray, and saving their new friends from prolonged deaths. Again, Ben and Polly go along with it without an argument.

Aboard the Annabelle, Von Wer is back to offer Gray information about the whereabouts of Bonnie Prince Charlie, who he says is Jamie. However, the rebels have been secretly armed with the weapons the Doctor bought, and a battle erupts, although I couldn't see it as I only had the BBC audio (which was fine). Luckily, both Trask and Perkins switch sides when it becomes clear that the Jacobites have won. Another adventure finished, well one with elements of bleakness anyway.

For one of the few times in the series, an issue is made about the journey of getting back to the TARDIS, as the Doctor and his companions aren't sure where it is. Jamie volunteers to come along (and miss the transport to France, which would have saved his life) and they seek out Ffinch, who becomes an ally when he hears about Gray's scheme and arrests him. The action is out of the way early in the last episode, resulting in a rather less eventful finale, but I liked this, because the trip back to the TARDIS should be a journey in itself if it's a long way away. As the TARDISeers set off, Jamie enters the TARDIS for the longest stay of a companion yet.

The Highlanders is the last pure historical (). Yes, it's a genre I'll miss, not just because I like it, but because we also lose the variety. The Power of the Daleks got full marks, but I can't imagine myself giving that score to many base-under-siege stories, which I find less imaginative and they have that hurdle to get over to impress. Between this and The Time Warrior (in Season 11!) the producers and writers seem to lose interest in any historical settings whatsoever, which is just awful. We could be entering the most difficult period of the marathon now...

The story isn't without its flaws. Like The Smugglers, it sometimes feels like it doesn't want to be an historical, just a romp, an adventure. I rate it higher than The Smugglers because though they're similar types of stories I think this on the whole works better.

Horror quotient - There is some violence, and near-hangings. I would need to see it though.
Comedy quotient - Patrick Troughton! He is a totally different kind of funny to William Hartnell, but almost as good, although by Episode 4 I'm a bit tired of his obsession with hats.
Drama quotient - The Doctor doesn't take much seriously, and I think overall Hartnell was better at being funny and dramatic at the same time.

It doesn't quite have the "wow" factor of a classic, but it's very entertaining. Of course the Scottish setting is a huge plus too!

8/10

The Power of the Daleks

Previous viewings - few

A new Doctor! It's not every show that can replace their lead actor to play a same-but-different character and simply carry on as if it's all part of some big masterplan. Until now, there was no such thing as regeneration, it was simply a device to retire William Hartnell from the role, and I doubt anyone imagined it was going to happen again and again as the show ran and ran. Suddenly the show theoretically has no expiration date beyond what the BBC decrees.

It wasn't guaranteed to be a success, and a lot of the credit goes Patrick Troughton and to the writer of his debut story, David Whitaker. The story begins with an extended scene in the TARDIS showing the aftermath of the regeneration. Future writers take note. As will become something of a tradition, the Doctor is slightly unhinged and unforthcoming to his companions who are questioning whether this change of appearance means this isn't the Doctor. The question is left in the background until later. His odd behaviour (referring to the First Doctor as if he's a different person, his dismissive behaviour towards Ben and Polly) is offset by plenty of comedy (playing the recorder), so that even if we're unsure what's happened, at least we're entertained. Best of all, there is a genuine sense of mystery, making this one of the most effective post-regenerative scenes, lacking the self-awareness and more forced manic behaviour of some later versions.

Patrick Troughton impresses straight away. A younger Doctor for the younger companions - somewhat showing up William Hartnell as a relic from an era of the show that had already ended when he left. The scruffier, less refined look goes well with the absentmindedness of Troughton's Doctor, which is at such an extreme in his opening scenes that it's not obvious that behind the buffoonery the Doctor is a very intelligent man. Visually, the most striking difference from Hartnell's Doctor is Troughton's dark hair and haircut, seemingly shedding a generation from his age, leaving the 'grandfather' aspect of the character behind for good. No more walking stick!

If there's one flaw, it's that as newish companions who didn't connect with Hartnell's Doctor, I'm not invested in Ben and Polly as characters much and I would expect them to show more fear at what they have witnessed.

The TARDIS lands in a mercury swamp on the planet Vulcan. The Doctor barely acknowledges his companions and they explore separately. It's a horrid, unwelcoming place, from which we dive into the main plot - a human character enters the scene and is murdered. The Doctor takes the place of this Examiner to investigate his murder as he and his companions are taken to the nearby human colony. The characters we're introduced to here are the stoic head of security Bragen and jovial deputy governor Quinn. The colony on Vulcan is not immediately interesting, being merely a lot of people in dull clothes in dull featureless sets, with little sense that this is a city and not merely a military base - keeping in mind we've just had one of them in The Tenth Planet. However never has the setting for a story been so deceptively uninteresting. By the end of the first episode it's already proved appearances can be deceiving - impersonating the Examiner, the Doctor has free reign of the colony, and as he inspects a mysterious capsule in a science lab, he finds some inactive Daleks inside, and they've been there a while, and something skulking around the floor...

The Power of the Daleks does not appear to have a large budget. Fortunately, for once it's actually fine from the off that there are only three Dalek props. Viewers know the Daleks, Ben and Polly have heard about them, and through his recognition of them, the Doctor convinces viewers that he is the still the same man he was before. The scientist inspecting the capsule, the ever-so-slightly eccentric Lesterson, wants to revive the Daleks, and succeeds, albeit removing their weapons. Gone are the Dalek stories of yesteryear, which each one upping the stakes from the last, because this is smaller in scale. The Daleks don't have their weapons, so they can't simply exterminate everyone (though that is obviously their ultimate goal), and have to use psychological manipulation as their weapons. By offering their services as servants to the humans, their plan is to find a way to make their own power source and reproduce. A race like the Daleks can come across as robots or machines, so when they use intelligence and cunning to survive, distancing themselves from that misconception, I think they're more effective. Automatons chanting "exterminate!" might be the iconic Dalek image, and a good way for the Daleks to make an entrance in a story, but beyond that there has to be something deeper, something that lets viewers know and understand the Daleks a little more. It's chilling that their operation in the story has nothing to do with leaving the planet and rejoining their fellow Daleks but simply exterminating the humans. I would expect nothing less of course, but they gain points for willingly putting themselves at a disadvantage in the meantime.

Of course, the story is not all about the Daleks. A rebellion is flaring up in the colony, which the "Examiner" has been brought to Vulcan to address. Quinn is implicated in damaging the communication equipment, preventing the Doctor from warning Earth about the Daleks. Lesterson's assistant Janley is a rebel and kidnaps Polly, while the Doctor and Ben eavesdrop at a rebel meeting and find out Bragen is the leader of the rebels, and with Governor Hensell on a tour and Quinn in prison, Bragen is serving as relief Governor, a position he intends to be permanent. The two plotlines are cleverly intertwined; ignorant of the Daleks' true nature, the rebels plan to use the Daleks to take control of the colony, assuming they can control the Daleks so that they don't kill rebels. It's desperate situation that makes use of the viewers' knowledge of the evil of the Daleks. We know that as soon as the Daleks can strike, they will do so, and the Doctor knows it, though he is prevented from acting because everyone else is convinced the Daleks can be controlled.

The side characters vary in success; Lesterson is probably the most interesting, starting off as the scientist swept up by the excitement of his discoveries but through working with the Daleks and seeing glimpses of their true selves he gradually turns against them, and goes mad as he realises what he's done. The cliffhanger to Episode 4, where Lesterson enters the secret compartment of the Dalek capsule and sees the production line, is a classic. Robert James plays the different sides to him well, although I didn't feel any sympathy for him when he died - he was in a position to stop the Daleks but ended up useless, simply ranting and raving so that everyone thought he was mad and didn't listen to him. He gets a cracking death scene in Episode 6, offering to serve the Daleks as they served him, but getting exterminated instead.

Polly is missing while she is locked away in Episode 4, and Ben gets the same treatment in Episode 5. It's disappointing but there is so much of Doctor/companion interaction in the story that I can forgive it. Ben isn't convinced that he is really the Doctor until the Dalek recognises him. There are moments when the Doctor seems distant or more interested in being silly, but over time we learn that during these moments he is actually deep in thought. This more playful interpretation of the character seems more intelligent than Hartnell's Doctor, where what we saw was what we got most of the time, something perpetuated by things like getting Ian's name wrong. After getting over the Doctor changing, Ben and Polly are their usual dependable selves; rather two-dimensional but very likeable, enough to liven up any scene they're in.

The Doctor himself is locked away with Quinn in Episode 4, so as a result he doesn't get many scenes with the Daleks. The Daleks have been given more equipment and have made more Daleks, with only a source of static electricity still to finish. Bragen kills Hansell when he doesn't co-operate and the rebels get ready to take control of the colony, just as the Daleks descend on them with weapons at the ready. Episode 6 is a bloodbath, as the Doctor, his companions, Quinn and the one rebel who has seen sense work to destroy the Daleks' power source. As this is the action episode, it didn't transfer as well to audio/static visual as the more dialogue-driven episodes, but I've seen enough Daleks shoot people in featureless corridors to visualise it. Bragen gets his comeuppance and the Doctor blows up the Daleks before they can spread through the whole colony.

With the adventure over, the Doctor, Ben and Polly return to the TARDIS, wishing things had turned out differently. As the TARDIS dematerialises, a 'dead' Dalek looks on.

A story like this is an odd choice to launch the new Doctor. It's gripping and it's tense, things a lot of great Doctor Who stories are, but aside from the Doctor himself it's a little lacking in comedy. There's the possibility that the producer wanted to play down the fact that William Hartnell had been replaced by drawing attention to the popular monsters. Also as a studio-based story it is limited in scope, and as great as it is, doesn't herald a new era as say Spearhead from Space does.

However, I won't judge it by those failings, as they don't consider the story itself, just that fact that it has been chosen to introduce Patrick Troughton, because he is very well introduced. By the end of the story, I'm not thinking I want things back to normal, but that I want to see more of this stranger. He's not quite as we will later know him but still gets to show a lot of sides to him; he's a strong believer that evil must be fought, and we see this when he talks about the Daleks, we see his fear when he reacts to the Daleks, his cleverness when he escapes from the cell, his humour as I mentioned earlier, the only thing missing is the bond he has with his companions, especially Jamie, but that will come later. I'm very much looking forward to seeing more.

Horror quotient - Doctor Who has scarier days to come, but this is no comedy. The Dalek saying "I am your servant" over and over while the Doctor tries to shout over it, warning the humans in vain that the Daleks will destroy them, is on a whole other level than a bog-standard "exterminate!". The Daleks gliding off in their masses, so many of them chanting "Daleks conquer and destroy" that it ends up sounding like white noise, has a similar bond-chilling effect.
Comedy quotient - The Doctor doesn't let a bad situation get him down. Troughton is a natural at comedy, and while Hartnell was too he tended to have "serious stories" and "funny stories".
Drama quotient - Six episodes and not a second of padding. While there isn't any more plot than a typical four-parter, it's written so well that I wouldn't want to lose any of it. I criticised Galaxy 4 for being predictable, and I suppose the same applies to this, but here the predictability is the whole point rather than bad writing. The ignorance of the colonists gets frustrating after a while, but I think that's intentional.

Many Troughton stories will follow a similar formula to this, but The Power of the Daleks sets the bar very high. Can it be beaten?

10/10