The Awakening

On a trip to visit Tegan’s grandfather, the Doctor actually manages to get the TARDIS to take everyone to the correct time and place for a change. However, after escaping from a crumbling church, the Doctor and his companions are arrested by some 17th Century soldiers. It turns out there’s a war game going on in the village and everyone is taking it very seriously, a little too seriously perhaps. Has the historical re-enactment brought about some collective madness or is there something far sinister lurking in that decaying church? So far in the Fifth Doctor’s run, two-part stories have been a bit of a mixed bag. Black Orchid largely worked by telling a smaller story, while The King’s Demons suffered from trying to cram ten pounds of crap into a five-pound bag. Even though the plot of The Awakening is far from watertight, so much so that even the Doctor can’t explain why some things happened the way they happened, the pacing is brisk and all of the supporting characters are well defined.

Rating: Now everybody stay perfectly calm and still%

Warriors' Gate

While searching for a way out of E-Space, the Doctor and his companions find themselves in a seemingly empty void. It's not long before they're discovered by the crew of a cargo ship that is also stranded in the void. Instead of trying to help each other, the crew of the cargo ship kidnap Romana and attempt to use her as a replacement for their time sensitive navigator. The crew then discover the location of a mysterious gate inside the void that may reveal the way out of E-Space. Warriors' Gate starts off well enough, setting up the mystery of the void and introducing the cargo ship crew and their Tharil navigator, but it starts to lose steam in the middle of the story. The Tharils are an interesting, yet somewhat underdeveloped, part of the story. They're a race of powerful creatures with the ability to travel through time and space. In appearance, they look like a cross between the Cowardly Lion and David Bowie's character in Labyrinth. At the end of the story, Romana decides to stay behind and help the Tharils. Her exit is abrupt and unceremonious, not to mention almost identical to Leela's exit in The Invasion of Time. 

Rating: You were the noblest Romana of them all%

Shada

The Doctor and Romana are summoned to Cambridge by Professor Chronotis. The Professor, a retired Time Lord, asks the Doctor to return a book he borrowed from the Panopticon Archive on Gallifrey. The book, The Worshipful and Ancient Law of Gallifrey, is actually an important artifact that contains clues to the location of Shada, the secret Time Lord prison planet. But returning the book won't be easy because, 1. the Professor accidentally loaned the book out to a colleague and 2. there are other parties who mean to get the book for themselves. Shada, famously, was never completed. A technician strike halted filming partway through and the BBC decided not to finish filming after the strike ended. Some of the footage from the serial was later used in The Five Doctors, after Tom Baker declined to appear in the special. Fans first got to see the remaining footage in 1992, when a reconstruction of the serial was released on VHS. In 2017, Shada was released on DVD with the missing scenes recreated via animation. And in 2021, the serial was updated again for the Blu-ray release. While it's fantastic that Shada was eventually released, it's not exactly a hidden treasure. Of all the Doctor Who scripts credited to Douglas Adams, Shada might be the worst one. The characters aren't particularly interesting, there aren't many jokes and the plot isn't very compelling.

Rating: You've got a lot to unlearn%

The Horns of Nimon

A transport ship hauling precious cargo to the planet Skonnos gets stuck in a gravity whirlpool. Soon enough, the TARDIS gets drawn into the same whirlpool. When the Doctor and Romana board the vessel, hoping to free everyone, they find out that the ship is carrying radioactive materials and human sacrifices to be given to a creature called the Nimon. But what is the Nimon and what is it up to on Skonnos? I wish I could tell you that it was something cool or interesting but that is not the case. The Horns of Nimon is a pretty weak serial overall. The acting isn't very good. In the Nightmare of Eden review, I praised Lewis Fiander for going big with the Professor Tryst character but in The Horns of Nimon Graham Crowden, who plays Soldeed, goes way too big. He even mugs to the camera a couple of times. Some of the background actors look bored and seem to be waiting for their scenes to end. The look of the Nimon isn't very good either. The combination of platform shoes and a large head must have made it very difficult for the actor, spoiler alert: actors, playing the Nimon to walk because everytime the Nimon moves it's in big, swaying, unbalanced steps. All of that, along with a fairly boring storyline, make The Horns of Nimon pretty forgettable.

Rating: We're up a gum tree without a paddle%

The Armageddon Factor

The quest for the final segment of the Key to Time brings the Doctor and his companions to Atrios. They soon discover that Atrios and its twin planet Zeos are in the midst of a nuclear war. On Atrios, the war is lead by the fanatical Marshal while, behind the scenes, Princess Astra attempts to find a peaceful resolution to the conflict. Meanwhile, on a mysterious third planet, the Shadow conspires to prolong the war and steal the Key to Time. The Armageddon Factor is a decent story overall but it runs out of steam in the final episode. The conclusion to the Key to Time arc is pretty lackluster and feels a little rushed. The Armageddon Factor has plenty of interesting characters throughout though, including a Time Lord named Drax who shows up out of nowhere in the fifth episode.

Rating: Peace%

The Pirate Planet

The Doctor and Romana trace the second segment of the Key to Time to the cold, uninhabited planet Calufrax. Only, when they arrive, they find that the TARDIS has actually materialized on the planet Zanak. Zanak, a populated world teeming with advanced technology and an overabundance of precious gems, appears to be lorded over by the tyrannical and partially mechanical Captain. But Zanak also holds a dark secret and only by teaming up with the Mentiads, a mysterious group with psychic powers, will the Doctor and his companions be able to uncover the mystery of Zanak and find the next piece of the Key to Time. The Pirate Planet is probably most famous for being the first contribution to Doctor Who by Douglas Adams. Adams would go on to write two more stories for Doctor Who as well as being the script supervisor for the show's following season. There is some overlap, both in concepts and characters, between Adams' work on Doctor Who and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which is hardly surprising given that he was working on both around the same time.

Rating: Don't panic%

Underworld

In the seventies, Doctor Who started using a special effects process called colour-separation overlay (CSO), an early form of green screen technology. The results weren't always convincing, but it allowed the budget-conscious show to put actors into any number of exotic locales. When done well, CSO was hardly noticeable. When done poorly, CSO could be very distracting. The Underworld serial is a prime example of bad CSO. A lot of Underworld, fittingly, takes place underground in caves. But instead of filming in actual caves, which had been done well in earlier stories like The Mutants and Revenge of the Cybermen, CSO was used extensively to insert the actors into cave backdrops. The end results were far from seamless. Logistically, I can understand why they did it. Trying to have K9 move around inside an actual cave would have been impossible. But, unfortunately, the CSO winds up tarnishing an already mediocre story. As far as the plot goes, Underworld is very similar to the First Doctor story The Ark. So much so that I can't really be bothered to recap it here. Ultimately, Underworld isn't a terrible serial. At the very least, it's better than The Invisible Enemy, which isn't saying much.

Rating: No hard feelings%

The Invisible Enemy

On the way to their base on Titan, a shuttle crew is infected by a mysterious entity calling itself the Swarm. The infected crew begin preparing a breeding ground for the Swarm, so that it might begin its conquest over all other living things. When the TARDIS passes by, the Doctor is also infected. Only Leela appears to be immune to the Swarm's influence. The Invisible Enemy isn't a great story. It's not particularly original, as it seems to borrow elements of Genesis of the Daleks and The Ambassadors of Death. The serial's production value is a bit of a mixed bag as well. Most of the sets are well made but the costumes and visual effects are all pretty lackluster. The Invisible Enemy is notable, however, for the introduction of K9, a robotic dog companion. It doesn't take long for Leela and K9 to strike up a friendship and the scenes of the Fourth Doctor interacting with K9 as if it were a real, flesh and blood dog are pretty funny.

Rating: Some of my best friends are humans%

The Evil of Frankenstein

The Evil of Frankenstein is a soft reboot of Hammer's Frankenstein series. It rewrites Baron Frankenstein's origins, while totally ignoring the events of The Revenge of Frankenstein. It's essentially the sequel to a movie that never existed. The Evil of Frankenstein opens with the Baron being driven out of town because of his ghoulish experiments. He decides to return to his former home in Karlstaad, hoping to salvage possessions and furniture from his abandoned home that can be used to finance his experiments. It's there, in his ransacked chateau, that the Baron finally tells his assistant of the experiment that lead him to be driven out of Karlstaad. This new origin story, along with the design of the creature, puts The Evil of Frankenstein more in line with Universal's Frankenstein films. The movie becomes a hodgepodge of all of the Frankenstein films that came before it filtered through the bawdy, gothic lens of Hammer in the 1960s. The Baron, though not totally redeemed, is now more of a sympathetic character. A shadow of his former, murderous self. Most of the villainy in the film is carried out by Zoltan, a crooked hypnotist hellbent on revenge. As mentioned, the design of the creature approximates the classic look of Karloff's Frankenstein. Unfortunately, the bulky makeup robs any expressiveness from the creature's performance. And yet, despite all of these criticisms, The Evil of Frankenstein is actually quite entertaining.

Rating: 66%

(Image from Wikipedia)

The Seeds of Doom

Researchers in the Antarctic discover two alien seedpods buried deep in the permafrost. The Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith, on behalf of UNIT and the World Ecology Bureau, are sent to investigate. News of the discovery also reaches eccentric millionaire Harrison Chase, who sends some of his goons to steal the seedpods. Harrison's men get their hands on one of the pods, blow up the research base and kill almost everyone. The Doctor and Sarah survive, naturally. After all that, it's a mad dash to find and stop Harrison from cultivating the seedpod, thereby unleashing a Krynoid, a deadly weed capable of taking over the entire planet. The Seeds of Doom feels like a throwback to serials from the Second and Third Doctor eras. The episodes at the research base are straight out of classic stories like The Ice Warriors and The Moonbase. And the rest of the serial, which unfolds in and around Harrison's estate, feels more like Day of the Daleks and The Green Death. The Fourth Doctor is a lot more prickly than we're used to seeing as well, definitely closer to the temperament we saw in Jon Pertwee's Doctor. Also, when the seedpods infect a researcher at the Antarctic base, I'm pretty sure they use a repainted costume from The Claws of Axos. Overall, The Seeds of Doom is good but it feels a little out of place when compared to the other serials in this season.

Rating: Oh, he died%

Pyramids of Mars

There's a great scene between Sarah Jane Smith and the Doctor at the beginning of Pyramids of Mars. Sarah is excited to be returning home, while the Doctor is in a melancholy mood. "The Earth isn't my home, Sarah. I'm a Time Lord," he tells her. Tom Baker has said in interviews that one of the key aspects of his portrayal of the Doctor was embracing the Doctor's alien side. It gave him a lot of freedom. And by this point in his run on the show, the character has never seemed more alien. The Doctor goes on to complain that he's fed up running "around after the Brigadier." But before Sarah can offer a retort, there's an explosion in the TARDIS. When the smoke clears, Sarah and the Doctor find themselves in a priory that once stood on the grounds where the UNIT HQ would eventually be built. The year is 1911 and a powerful being known as Sutekh is using zombies and robot mummies to build a rocket to free himself from a pyramid on the planet Mars. Sutekh, who looks a bit like Omega from The Three Doctors, isn't in the story very much but definitely makes the most of his limited screen time. The serial moves at a brisk pace and has a fun, gothic tone. Pyramids of Mars is easily one of the best of the early Fourth Doctor stories.

Rating: Time is my business%

Planet of the Spiders

On a tip from Mike Yates, Sarah Jane Smith sets out for the countryside to investigate the goings on at a Tibetan meditation centre. Meanwhile back at UNIT HQ, the Doctor's experiments with ESP and telekinesis take a strange turn after his test subject comes into contact with a blue crystal from Metebelis Three. The serial that follows ends up being an excellent send-off for the Third Doctor. It's practically a highlight reel of his era with gadgets, cars, appearances from UNIT, mentions of past companions, displays of Venusian aikido, and on and on. Planet of the Spiders really brings the Third Doctor era to a nice, tidy conclusion.

Rating: I would appreciate it if you'd shut up for a moment%

The Green Death

The Green Death begins with our happy UNIT family all moving in different directions. Jo is consumed with the environmental work of Professor Jones. The Brigadier is investigating the mysterious deaths of some coal miners in Wales. And the Doctor wants nothing more than to take the TARDIS on an expedition to Metebelis Three. But, this being a television show, it's no surprise that all of their individual pursuits eventually coalesce. The Green Death is a top tier Third Doctor serial, in my opinion. It hits all the marks of the Pertwee era. There's cheesy special effects, fisticuffs, explosions, and some low key silliness. It also has one of the greatest endings of any Doctor Who serial so far, with the Doctor bidding a bittersweet farewell to his companion Jo Grant.

Rating: I'm quite spry for my age, actually%

Day of the Daleks

Doctor Who's producers wanted to do something special for Jon Pertwee's third season. Initially, they planned on bringing the Daleks back at the end of the season in a big six part serial. And then, somewhere along the way, they just decided to cram the Daleks into the season's first serial instead. Much like the Master in the last season, the Daleks are the bad guys behind the bad guys this time around. The bulk of the story is about some time travelling guerrillas who are attempting to change the future by blowing up a politician. Once again it's up to the Doctor and his UNIT friends to stop the baddies and make sure the peace conference goes ahead. It sure seems like there were an awful lot of peace conferences going on in the 70s.

Rating: I remember saying to old Napoleon, Boney, I said...%

The Dæmons

There's something extraordinarily era-appropriate about a Doctor Who serial steeped in black magic and the occult. And while I've never seen The Wicker Man, I have seen Radiohead's music video for "Burn the Witch." It certainly came to mind a few times while watching The Dæmons. This serial, in particular, is a pretty good encapsulation of the Jon Pertwee era so far, with the Doctor and his UNIT friends battling the Master and his unwitting allies for the fate of the world. The story is well paced with lots of action. And even though I'm sure that the plot wouldn't hold up to any real scrutiny the serial is still enjoyable overall.

Rating: Naturally%

Inferno

Doctor Who and the Silurians, The Ambassadors of Death and Inferno are all very similar stories. I'd hesitate to call them "base under siege" stories but they're very much "base under siege" adjacent. In each story, the Doctor finds himself at a government facility where something hinky is going on. There are still monsters to be fought but, often, the biggest fight is with the pompous blowhard bureaucrat who's running the facility. In Inferno, it's a mining facility being run by the arrogant Professor Stahlman. The twist on the story, which certainly helps elevate it, is that the Doctor ends up being transported to a parallel world where he gets to witness what happens when the Professor's project reaches its conclusion. Also, it's a fascist parallel world. And there are hunchback werewolf zombies running around. It's a lot of fun.

Rating: I can see why you grew that moustache%