Frontier in Space

Frontier in Space is easily my least favorite Third Doctor story so far. It's barely even a story. I've read some reviews that praise this serial for embracing space opera elements, but I think that's horseshit. Frontier in Space is basically a series of holding cells. The Doctor and Jo are imprisoned several times in at least five separate locations across the six episodes. And while I recognize that getting captured is one of the show's most well-worn tropes, this serial just takes it too far. Also, this story is meant to connect to the following story, Planet of the Daleks, but it's set up in an incredibly lazy way. Other than a brief mention that the Master is acting on another party's behalf, the Daleks are only seen in the last ten minutes of the sixth episode. Frontier in Space doesn't even really have a proper ending. The Master shoots the Doctor, the Doctor and Jo escape in the TARDIS and we never find out what happens to the Master, the Doctor's friends or the looming war between Earth and Draconia.

Rating: You're wasting your time%

The Sea Devils

The Third Doctor is often referred to as a "man of action" and The Sea Devils is the perfect showcase for this title. While battling the Sea Devils, an aquatic offshoot of the Silurians, the Doctor engages in fisticuffs, gets into a sword fight, throws himself on barbed wire and pilots several means of transportation. This serial also reintroduces the Master, seemingly under lock and key after the events of The Dæmons. The show's producers managed to get assistance from the Royal Navy, so many of the locations and vehicles used in the show (including a freakin' hovercraft) are authentic. And the script provides several opportunities for some perfectly British bureaucratic pissing contests.

Rating: Oh, you think so?%

Doctor Who and the Silurians

Doctor Who was always a particularly British show, but with the Third Doctor exiled to Earth the British-ness of it all has really ramped up. In Doctor Who and the Silurians, the Brigadier summons the Doctor and Liz to a nuclear power research centre in the countryside. They soon find out that the centre's power is being drained by the Silurians, an ancient race of bipedal reptiles who've only recently been awoken from their eons-long slumber. What makes this serial especially British is that the greatest threat to the Doctor's mission are the power struggles going on between the various parties around the research centre. There are several great toadying bureaucrats all vying for ultimate authority at the centre. There's even a power struggle among the Silurians, with some of the creatures hoping to negotiate a peace between themselves and the humans while others seek to decimate the population and reclaim the planet. And while all of that doesn't sound particularly fun, it's actually a good serial with fast pacing.

Rating: You may ask%