The Five Doctors

Using forbidden technology, previous incarnations of the Doctor (along with some of their favorite companions) are kidnapped and dropped off in the Death Zone on Gallifrey. At the center of the Death Zone stands a dark tower containing the Tomb of Rassilon, the final resting place of one of the most powerful Time Lords to have ever lived. The path to the dark tower would be treacherous on a good day, but the same technology used to transport the Doctors has also brought some of their most dangerous enemies to the Death Zone. The Five Doctors was a feature length special commemorating the twentieth anniversary of Doctor Who, much like how the The Three Doctors celebrated the show’s tenth anniversary. Though William Hartnell is seen in an archival clip at the beginning of the special, the role of the First Doctor was played in the rest of the special by Richard Hurndall. Hartnell had passed away a couple of years after appearing in The Three Doctors. Also of note is the fact that Tom Baker declined to participate in the special, though he and Romana are still seen via footage from the at-the-time unreleased and incomplete story Shada. The returning Doctors are all paired up with some of their more notable companions including the Doctor’s granddaughter Susan, the Brigadier and Sarah Jane Smith. There are even cameos from K-9, Mike Yates, Liz Shaw, Jamie McCrimmon and Zoe. The Five Doctors is fairly well made and entertaining. It’s clearly motivated by nostalgia and fan service but it’s never cloying or obsequious.

Rating: A man is the sum of his memories%

Earthshock

Deep underground, two deadly androids protect a small metal hatch. Behind the hatch is a remote controlled bomb, capable of causing serious planet-wide devastation. After disarming the bomb, the Doctor traces the source of the signal controlling the bomb to a large freighter headed for Earth. Once upon the freighter, the Doctor comes face to face with one of his oldest and deadliest enemies, the Cybermen. Earthshock is a fairly memorable story on two fronts. On the one hand, it was the first appearance of the Cybermen in almost seven years. Not having been the program since Revenge of the Cybermen during the Fourth Doctor's first season. And, probably most famously or infamously, the story ends with the death of Adric. While Adric might not have been a popular or beloved companion, think of him as the Wesley Crusher of Doctor Who, his death must have come as a surprise to the show's viewers. Even though many companions had received less than stellar send-offs over the years, no companions had actually died since Katarina and Sara Kingdom were killed during The Daleks' Master Plan. Overall, Earthshock is a good story despite a few minor flaws. 

Rating: For some people, small, beautiful events is what life is all about%

Logopolis

At the beginning of this story, the Doctor is in a bit of a pensive mood. Even though he’s been trying to get back to Gallifrey since his time on Tigella, the Doctor decides that it’s time he made some long overdue repairs to the TARDIS. After making a stop on Earth to do some research, the Doctor accidentally picks up two passengers: an airline stewardess named Tegan Jovanka and the Master. After leaving Earth, the Doctor heads to Logopolis to meet with the Monitor, who’s prowess in block-transfer computations will help the Doctor make the necessary repairs to the TARDIS. Once on Logopolis, the Doctor and Adric are reunited with Nyssa, who claims she was brought there by a friend of the Doctor. Having kept his presence hidden up to that point, the Master begins to search for the secret behind the Logopolitans’ powerful mathematics. The Master’s plot winds up putting the fate of the entire universe at risk. The situation gets bad enough that the Doctor is forced to team up with the Master. And while their short-lived partnership ultimately saves most of the universe, it ends up costing the Doctor one of his lives. The final story of the Fourth Doctor era is, honestly, a bit of a disappointment. All the timey-wimey mumbo jumbo about block-transfer computations and all-powerful mathematics is pretty boring. And the Master’s brief face turn towards the end of the story feels like it was lifted directly from Terror of the Autons.

Rating: Back in two shakes%

Revenge of the Cybermen

Using a time ring, the Doctor and his companions leave the war-torn planet Skaro and return to the Space Station Nerva, where they've left the TARDIS. They arrive thousands of years too early, only to find the station's crew almost completely wiped out by a mysterious plague. After Sarah is attacked by a Cybermat, the Doctor discovers that someone on the station is in cahoots with the Cybermen. Might it have something to do with the drifting planetoid that the station is orbiting? Find out in Revenge of the Cybermen. Coming soon to a Blu-ray player or streaming service near you. No, but seriously folks, Revenge of the Cybermen isn't a bad serial, it's just a bit of a dud. Putting it back-to-back with Genesis of the Daleks doesn't help it either. The Cybermen need to be menacing to be an effective adversary, here they're just chatty robots with a new plot-based weakness. It's not all bad though, the Doctor has some great dialogue, the serial is well paced and the use of multiple locations keeps it from being just another "base under siege" story.

Rating: Everything's of interest to me%

Carnival of Monsters

A pair of colorful traveling entertainers arrive on the planet Inter Minor. They're reluctantly greeted by a tribunal of gray skinned bureaucrats. And then, the TARDIS materializes inside the cargo hold of a boat. You may be asking  yourself, is it some kind of alien boat? Nope. It's a boat that appears to be on Earth, somewhere in the Indian Ocean in the 1920s. Confused? Did I mention that everyone on the boat seems to be stuck in a time loop? Because that's also happening. And there are dinosaurs and giant snake monsters and, if you look close enough, there's even a Cyberman roaming around. That's the beauty of Carnival of Monsters. Robert Holmes' script is jam packed with characters, locations and monsters. Thankfully, the serial is well paced and all of the disparate elements are smoothly integrated into the story.

Rating: No, that's impossible%

The Mind of Evil

The Doctor and his UNIT friends have a lot going on in The Mind of Evil. First off, there's a big World Peace conference going on and the Brigadier is overseeing the security. Meanwhile, the Doctor and Jo are visiting a prison to observe some new machine that reportedly removes all of a criminal's negative impulses. On top of that, UNIT is also in the process of moving a super deadly missile. And while all of those may seem like distinct plot threads that would never have any crossover, this is a TV show we're talking about. A TV show that had only recently debuted a new mega adversary for our heroes, in the form of the Master. And through a series of complicated alliances and accomplices, the Master has hatched a plot to steal the super deadly missile so that he might blow up the World Peace conference and plunge the planet into a devastating nuclear war. While it may have been a mistake to have the Master be the main antagonist in every story of season 8 (spoiler alert?), this early into his run we're still getting to see new sides of the character. At one point the Master is driven up to the prison in a fancy car and we see him playing his own ominous entrance music in the backseat on a handheld radio. And it's a little weird that the Master and the Doctor are always so formal and considerate to each other whenever they're face to face.

Rating: It doesn't%

The War Games

Doctor Who almost didn't make it out of the '60s. After Patrick Troughton and his TARDIS companions announced their departures at the end of the show's sixth season, there were some serious discussions about cancelling the show altogether. Ratings were down and production issues were escalating. A number of scripts were cancelled at the last minute, necessitating a couple of longer serials to fill out the gaps. The eight part serial The Invasion was both a means of filling out the space left behind by a cancelled script and an attempt to figure out a way to do the show for even less money. The success of that serial gave the producers a way to continue making the show, but there was still the business of sending the Second Doctor off on his merry way.

At ten parts, The War Games should be a slog and yet it's probably one of the most entertaining stories from the Second Doctor era. It moves with an incredible speed and it's filled to the brim with great character actors and interesting locations. It has the basic structure of a historical serial from the First Doctor era but it also has a lot of great sci-fi elements as well. Our characters never get bogged down in one place for too long. And we're constantly being introduced to new characters, which is great because this serial has a significant death toll. The War Games ends with the Doctor confronting his fellow Time Lords and facing the heat for stealing the TARDIS and starting out on his adventures. Also, the big bad, The War Lord, kinda looks like Steve Jobs. I just thought you should know that.

Rating: I was bored%

The Invasion

By the time The Invasion was conceived, it was already apparent that things needed to change for Doctor Who. Ratings were down and the show was still struggling with a variety of problems behind the scenes. Patrick Troughton had grown tired of the show's grueling production schedule and it had been announced that season six would be his last season as the Doctor. The Invasion was an attempt to establish a new format for Doctor Who. For starters, the serial introduced Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart's UNIT military organization. The Brigadier had previously been seen in The Web of Fear when he was still a Colonel. Now, having "moved up in the world," the Brigadier was the leader of a fancy, high-tech military group tasked with investigating and engaging paranormal and/or extra-terrestrial threats. The show's aim was to provide the Doctor with an Earth-based support system. And having the show film on location in contemporary settings helped stretch its already meager budget. Had The Invasion been a failure, the producers would have probably tried another strategy. Instead, because of the higher audience feedback scores, The Invasion became the template for the Third Doctor's era. Beyond that, the serial is also notable for the iconic image of the Cybermen marching in front of St. Paul's Cathedral and possibly my favorite of the Cybermen's many designs.

Rating: Brigadier, you don't, by any chance, know where I can find a canoe?%

The Wheel in Space

So far, all of the Cybermen stories have been consistent with the Second Doctor era's reliance on the base-under-siege storytelling formula. You could even argue that The Tenth Planet and The Moonbase were practically the same story. And yet, The Wheel in Space was the first Cybermen story that I didn't thoroughly enjoy. For me, it was just too much like The Ice Warriors, a serial that was a Cybermen story in all but name. There wasn't anything in The Wheel in Space that seemed particularly unique, as if all of its pieces could have been taken from other serials. The only real takeaway from this story was the introduction of the newest companion, Zoe, a brilliant young astrophysicist. Already, her relationship with the Doctor and Jamie is much different than the one they had with Victoria. Zoe appears to challenge and exasperate the Doctor and Jamie, where their relationship with Victoria had been much more paternal and doting.

Rating: Logic, my dear Zoe, merely enables one to be wrong with authority%

The Tomb of the Cybermen

Finally, in his eighth adventure as the Doctor, we have a Patrick Troughton serial that has survived completely intact. The fact that it's also a fairly well-liked serial is just an added bonus. Typically, I only ever take notice of the direction and production value on these older serials when I notice the cardboard sets or when the camera literally bumps into something. But this time around I was fairly impressed with some of the directing and I loved the sets, especially the Cybermen's frozen tomb. This serial also features another all-time great speech from the Second Doctor, where he takes a moment to comfort his newest companion. Matt Smith, the Eleventh Doctor, has said that this serial was an influence on his portrayal of the character.

Rating: Well, now I know you're mad. I just wanted to make sure%

(Image from kotwg.blogspot.ca)

The Moonbase

When the Daleks first showed up on Doctor Who, they were a cultural sensation. Without the Daleks, the show probably wouldn't have lasted this long. But the Doctor can't fight the Daleks every week. And, by this time, with a new Doctor in the TARDIS, the show's producers were desperate to find a few more iconic villains. Hence, the return of the Cybermen, only a few months after they first appeared in The Tenth Planet. Here, in The Moonbase, they've received some upgrades. Their costumes have changed, giving them more of a robotic quality. And their bizarre sing-song voices have been modified, courtesy of the Radiophonic Workshop. At times, it can be difficult to understand what they're saying, but typically their dialogue boils down to, "do what we say or we'll kill you." The Cybermen's design would change slightly with each additional appearance, a trend that has continued in the revived series. The Moonbase is also notable for containing one of the first truly iconic moments for the Second Doctor. During a tense moment, the Doctor tells his companions and the occupants of the titular base, "There are some corners of the universe which have bred the most terrible things. Things which act against everything we believe in. They must be fought." The First Doctor would have shouted such a statement to the rafters, though he probably never would have said it in the first place. The Second Doctor delivers these words with a deadly, quiet seriousness. The Second Doctor loves to goof around but when the shit hits the fan, he can be as serious as a heart attack.

Rating: There must have been a reason for that%

(Image from avclub.com)

The Tenth Planet

The Tenth Planet is an important serial for multiple reasons. First and foremost, it's important because it's the final serial in the First Doctor era. Some say that William Hartnell's contract had not been renewed over concerns about his failing health. While some others suggest that Hartnell's clashing with the production staff had finally reached a tipping point. It could easily be an either/or situation or a combination of both factors. Christopher Eccleston (the Ninth Doctor) has suggested in interviews that he left Doctor Who after one series because of his own conflicts with the show's producers. And Hartnell's health and memory problems had been a concern for a while before this point. In either case, it was the concept of regeneration and the choice of the Hartnell's successor that allowed the show to continue on for decades after this serial.

The Tenth Planet is also important because it features the debut of the Cybermen, Doctor Who's most popular reoccurring enemies after the Daleks. This first batch of Cybermen is a bit different from the ones that would pop up later on down the line. Their hands are still human and some of their facial features are still visible behind their masks. Their voices have not become entirely mechanical yet either, giving them a strange speech pattern. They make a great impression in this serial too. Their planet, Mondas, arrives in Earth's solar system, causing all sorts of problems for the Doctor, his companions and the folks at the secret military base at the South Pole. The Cybermen are smart and coldly calculating but not above killing people with their bare hands. And though their features would continually change with each new appearance, it's clear to see why they've resonated with the show's writers and fans.

Rating: Keep warm%

(Image from beyondmediaonline.com)