Doctor Who would have to be the first television show to ever have caught my imagination, and still the only one that holds a real interest for me. I started watching it when I was around eleven, when Tom Baker was playing the role. With the first one I saw being a rather gruesome Dalek story that put me off for a while.
You have to realise that back then, we weren't exposed to a lot of horror sort of scenes on the box, certainly not for children's television (which Doctor Who clearly seemed to be—not just from the show itself, but if you see any cross-promotions, it's on other children's shows, with completely patronising airhead hosts). Doctor Who could easily be described as a horror show for children, with a bit of (psuedo) science fiction thrown in. It may seem tame now, but it was quite different from most other children's shows, depicting a lot of death and destruction, and nightmare elements.
Nowadays, aliens seem rather passe, but back then (the 1980s) I don't recall seeing much of them in the fictional media. I think there's been a lull between the 50s American pulp films, and the more recent space films. It was certainly a show with a difference, though unfortunately with a very low budget which doesn't make it look very good to the critical eye. I think you have to view it like theatre, where you're presented with a variety of things to help you suspend your disbelief, and enjoy being told a story for a couple of hours.
I don't think that kids watching the new series (which I haven't liked as much as the originals, so far, though we're into the first David Tennant series), are in for the treat that Doctor Who was—they're just going to see more of the same that's been done with various different psuedo science-fiction shows over the years. Even in it's final years (before the recent recreation) it was changing too much from what it was famous for, becoming a pantomimey parody, with silly stories, the whole show not taking itself seriously (which ruins the illusion), and terrible, unimaginitive, shrill synthetic music.
Watching Doctor Who was probably my first introduction into alternative music. The original theme was very surreal, it wasn't played on instruments but made up from doctored recordings of real sounds (musique concrète). If you can get to hear it in it's original form, it's got quite a spooky sound to it, but you'll probably need to find a copy on a record to hear it that way. Over time it was put onto the beginning and end of the show in a badly distorted manner, getting muffled, the spooky melody becoming too quiet to hear most of it, much of that melody being edited out for many years to make it shorter, losing the sharp percussive sound of the bassline, becoming just dull, and muddying of the overall sound by adding shoddy reverb to it.
There was a brief attempt to change it during the Jon Pertwee era, with something sounding like a cross between a cheap synthesiser and twanging rubber bands. The tune was the same, as it's always been for the television versions, but it was re-orchestrated (if you can use that word for something that's not played with real insruments). It wasn't liked, and only lasted for part of one story (the Carnival of Monsters, if I recall correctly).
The instrumentation was changed completely at the end of the Tom Baker era, made to sound modern, but losing all that made it unique. It was just another synthesier sound track, now. Unfortunately this version stuck, and lasted until the Colin Baker era, where it became stupider again (yet another silly synthesiser thing). Then it changed again for the Sylvester McCoy era, this time sounding like a synthesised paper comb.
I disliked all of them for a couple of reasons: I don't think they sounded anywhere near as interesting as the original, or significantly different from cheap synthesiser music in pop songs. And I just don't equate fiddling with a synthesiser to have the skill or art of the original manipulation of sounds to make music.
The Peter Cushing film remakes of a couple of William Hartnell Dalek stories used completely different music, so they're hard to compare. I was annoyed at this, although I did rather like the music in the first film, the theme was a bit swingy and jazzy (jazz being something I've really come to like in recent years), and the incidental music being a dramatically ominous; quite suitable for the story line (the near death of a planet due to nuclear war, and the struggle for survival). The music for the second film was completely uninspiring, even though I liked the take they did on Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor (classical music being probably the first music I ever appreciated, and still my favourite) which melds into a slightly jazzy piece, as the theme music at the start of the film, the incidental music was quite unremarkable—just bog standard filler stuff, and none of it Doctor Who-ish.
The Paul McGann film had a rather uninspiring orchestral version of the original theme, with rather unremarkable incidental music during the film. And the recent rebirth of Doctor Who as a television series, again, with Christopher Eccleston is done in a similar vein: The music isn't uniquely Doctor Who music, it's just ordinary incidental music.
Each story used to have its own incidental music (filler music). At times it was just that (nothing more the filler music, so some scenes are less boring), but at other times they really played with coming up with strange mood music, or soundscapes, to add to the drama. In general, the music had no relation to the theme tune—there was no recurring music for certain things throughout the series, although the Master did get a bit of one during the Jon Pertwee era.
There's a few stories which really spring to mind as being as much a montage of sounds as well as images, with everything interwoven together, and the music and sound effects, or soundscapes, really being a vital part of the feel of the entire story. Some of the more memorable ones being Jon Pertwee's The Ambassadors of Death, and The Sea Devils. Tom Baker's Image of the Fendahl (nightmarish), The Leisure Hive, Meglos (the first to use bits of the theme tune), State of Decay and Warriors' Gate (very surreal). Peter Davison's The Five Doctors is probably the last like that, though not in the same league, and the only other television story (that I can remember) to make subtle re-use of the theme tune (a few slowed down portions, mostly of the bassline). I think there's also a moment or two of respect paid to the theme tune in the first Peter Cushing film, The Daleks, with a bit of subdued electric guitar plucking, a bit like the famous bassline, though it's too obscure to be sure (the other ones I've mentioned are extremely obvious).
Over the years, the title role's been played by several different actors. Unlike some shows, where they'll just switch actors for characters they want to keep in the series, Doctor Who incorporated the switch into the story: He's from a race that's able to regenerate their bodies, should the need arise (such as suffering injuries too severe for the normal healing process to be able to repair). The change not only incorporates a change in appearance (obviously), it also involves some change in character. Unfortunately, some characterisations weren't very popular. With Colin Baker being an arrogant grump, hardly what the hero of a show should be, almost being the death-knell for the show. And Sylvester McCoy being too much of a clown, at first; though, thankfully, he changed after a few stories (his more darker, meddling, character being much more interesting), but the damage had been done, and the series fell off the air for over a decade, just as it started to get interesting again.
I first started watching during Tom Baker's reign, and he remains my favourite Doctor. Next I saw the following Doctor, Peter Davison, and was rather disappointed. I think I saw Jon Pertwee repeats, next, and he's my second-favourite. The 1970s was when I grew up, and I do like the era that Jon Pertwee's stories are set in, as well as the stories (of course). After that, my favourite would be William Hartnell's doctor, even though I'd only known most of his stories from reading the novelisations of the series. Much later I'd get to see some of his stories, which unfortunately are very dated, and often badly done, but I still like them, and get a bit of a kick out of the almost live television production style. I don't mind the Patrick Troughton era, but find the stories and characterisations generally too silly and childish. Peter Davison's doctor just isn't quite what I want to see, I despised Colin Baker, and Sylvester McCoy only became bearable towards the end.
Many of the Doctor's opponents, and a few allies, are aliens. These are some of the more interesting ones, roughly in the order that they feature in the series:
The Doctor's most famous foe. They're the ultimate result of ages of warfare causing mutations to one of the races on a planet. Hateful, racist, completely remorseless, creatures encased in a machine that looks like something from a electricity generating power station, designed for their survival and fitted with weapons of death and destruction to ensure their survive by dominating everything else.
They do look quite nasty, and sound very nasty, though the sink plunger arm has always looked rather silly, and is yet another example of an alien with such completely useless appendages that they could never manage to look after themselves, nevermind subjugate other races, and their lack of mobility also making them silly as some sort of master race. But despite those flaws, they're still one of the best looking aliens (no flimsy rubber suits), and their origins are more interesting than how they develop.
First seen in the second Doctor Who story, The Daleks, then The Dalek Invasion of Earth, The Chase, The Dalek's Master Plan, The Power of the Daleks, The Evil of the Daleks, Day of the Daleks, Frontier in Space, Planet of the Daleks, Genesis of the Daleks, Destiny of the Daleks, The Five Doctors, Resurrection of the Daleks, Revelation of the Daleks, Remembrance of the Daleks, & Dalek.
We don't get to see what's inside them until Tom Baker's reign as the Doctor, where we get to see some of the creatures that are being developed to go inside of them (which sort-of ruins the illusion, but not quite). It takes a subsequent Peter Davison story to completely ruin the illusion, and in a very lack lustre moment (after keeping the contents secret for around twenty years, no real fuss is made of revealing the innards). Much of the fascination about them was trying to figure out just what made them tick (were they a robot, did they have something inside, and just what was it).
The end results of robotic replacement of human parts in another human race (from a twin planet to The Earth). Gruesome, poorly implemented cyber augmentations, and dehumanising doctoring of their brains, as a desperate measure to survive. Their original appearance (The Tenth Planet) as an abomination of the human form (a real monster) is more disturbing than their later appearances as more glitzy looking monsters (who are often acted in an amateurish, feeble, manner, ill befitting their supposed nature—feared by all). The rather ineffective looking costume is best appreciated if you view it more like a disaster of badly augmenting the human body. They are a bit zombie like.
They also appeared in: The Moonbase, The Tomb of the Cybermen, The Invasion;, Revenge of the Cybermen, Earthshock, The Five Doctors, Attack of the Cybermen, Silver Nemesis, and a head features as an exhibit in Dalek.
Probably what we'd all end up like if Microsoft ever got into augmenting the human body. It's a prediction about what we might do to ourselves if we keep tampering with nature. To some degree we already do that, with hearing aids, experimenting with curing blindness by inserting electronics into our eyes and brains, drugging of the ill and disabled into semi-lucid submissiveness, and not giving a damn about what happens to the people around you so long as everything suits ourselves.
Another alien more interesting in concept (read the book) than implementation. He's a being from outside of reality, able to do pretty much whatever he wants to, within his own domain. Over the Doctor Who series, these sorts of aliens feature in a few stories, some sort-of omnipotent beings. If you read some of the books (ones based on the series, and others as independent stories), much more is made of them.
Another interesting, but terribly flawed alien. For supposedly fierced and feared warriors, they lumber about, are too susceptible to defeat with the simplest of things (e.g. slight heat), and have two pronged clamps instead of hands (obviously they could never have built weapons, space ships, or survived evolution that way). It's got to be how they look, and their characterisation, that made them popular.
Seen in: The Ice Warriors, The Curse of Peladon, & The Monster of Peladon.
Aliens (the Nestene) that are able to animate plastic and use it as vessel for their own purposes (the Autons). Their first appearance was in Jon Pertwee's first story, Spearhead from Space, which thanks to the nature of the monster, and how the show was produced, looks a bit like a late night B-grade horror film, then a C-grade television show. They next appeared in Terror of the Autons (the Master's first story), then Rose (a quite weak story).
Another of the aliens who've interferred with the development of the human species, this one being the origins of the occult.
Seen only in the story of the same name, The Dæmons.
Another of the beings from outside of our reality, this one's a chronovore (something that eats time itself). Again, it's more the concept than the implementation that's interesting, with aliens that have god-like powers, and god-like indifference to the lesser species (us) that they can do whatever they want to.
Seen only in the story of the same name, The Time Monster.
Squat, powerful, warriors. They're a cloned species, one of the typical charismatic bad guys—they have their appeals, though you still don't want them to win.
First seen in The Time Warrior, then The Sontaran Experiment, The Invasion of Time, & The Two Doctors .
Another alien species that messed with the development of man. This one exploiting the horror genre that makes free with Egyptian history (which is supposedly based upon Osiran culture, due to a bit of subjugation a few thousand years ago). They were an all-powerful race, with powers beyond anyone else's control, that ultimately destroyed itself.
Seen in the Pyramids of Mars.
The classic nightmare monster, it creeps up on you, paralyses you remotely (with pyschotelekinesis), then kills you for food, or turns you into one of itself. And yet another alien that's messed with the development of man, perverting our genetic makeup into something that it could use, when it landed on our planet twelve million years ago.
Seen in Image of the Fendahl.
From time to time, various stories were allegories about aspects of life. They were a bit more obviously moralistic in the earliest stories, making direct comments on comparative details. Later on, it was more up to you to work out that the story had made a harsh criticism on racism, corruption, slavery, oppression, tyranny, detrimental technological progress, deceit, and interference in other's affairs, etc.
I always enjoyed the stories where they twisted some legend (something from human mythology), or even some scientific theories, and incorporated something of their own into it, that does seem to fit in with it, even though in an incredulous manner. It's part of human nature to like tall stories with some basis in reality, even if only slight, and fanciful explanations for reality. We've had the beginning of the universe (Terminus), and it's end (Logopolis), as well as a revelation that it's probably been created many times over (Terminus). The origins and development of man (An Unearthly Child, The Dæmons, Pyramids of Mars, The Hand of Fear, Image of the Fendahl, City of Death, Earthshock). And many more…
Doctor Who was shown in episodic form, with each story lasting a few episodes (i.e. it wasn't an unending soap opera). There was a definite end to each story, and few really required you to have known what went on before. Even when they did build upon established Doctor Who history, you didn't need to know that to understand the current story.
Presented in the order the series ran in, below's a list of the stories with some information about them, from my own point of view (in most cases—there's a few I haven't seen). They usually had quite melodramatic titles, ones that I find much more memorable than the titles used in other television series (e.g. I find that many of the X-Files or Star Trek series titles have no obvious connection to the storyline).
The show started off with something missing from many other science-fiction shows, it incorporated a few people from our world, from our time, to give us a point of reference. They didn't know what was happening around them, they discovered it with us, were amazed and often horrified by what happened around them. I think that's something seriously missing from many other shows, which are often full of violence and destruction—there's nothing to temper it, and people are just too accepting of situations they're dumped into that are completely alien to their way of life (they're not shocked, as they should be). There's nothing to bring it back into a more realistic point of view (that you don't fix things by destroying several building blocks, and carrying on as if you'd done nothing more violent than walk into a room; or portraying that machine-gunning a room full of people is an acceptable solution to ending a situation). Though Doctor Who does frequently take a genocidal answer to some solutions, it doesn't usually portray it gruesomely, and it oftened expressed disgust about it.
The first Doctor's stories were rather weakly done, acted more than just a bit half-heartedly. It was much like a radio play with pictures, though that's not necessarily a bad thing (when done well). It was a low budget show, and television of that era was performed almost as if it were done live, because of the lack of editing ability of the equipment in that era, as well as the substantial extra effort needed.
NB: The following section will give away the plot of many stories.
He played the Doctor as a rather aloof person, who always thought he knew better than everyone around him. But he often did, which kind of justifies his attitude. We never really know much about him, other than he left his people, and he has an interest in exploring the universe. The stories from this era all had individual titles per episode, the following titles are how the BBC has, since, titled each story.
A pupil (Susan Foreman) in an English school acts in such an odd way that two of her teachers, Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright, can't resist finding out more about her. They follow her home, discover she's really an alien time traveller—which they don't believe, despite bursting into a time machine (the TARDIS) that's bigger on the inside than the outside—are told that the Doctor and Susan are cut off from their own world, a world that discovered time and space travel while we were nothing, get kidnapped by her grandfather who's afraid that human society mustn't know that it's possible to time travel, and end up travelling back in time to the dawn of man. Where they're all captured by cavemen, destined to become sacrifices, and must band together to escape. They manage it by making fire, something the cavemen have lost the ability to make, and scaring the savages with flaming skulls.
Eventually escaping the cavemen, the end up on an alien world (Skaro) in the middle of a petrified forest. Briefly exploring, they discover that there's a city there, but the humans insist that they want to return. The Doctor sabotages his TARDIS so that he can explore the city, making them believe that their own chance for escape is to see if they can get something from the city to repair his ship. In the city they discover they've been roaming around a nuclear wasteland that's almost destroyed the entire planet (this sort of thing happening was a major worry during the cold war, now it's just a popular plot device), the Doctor confesses about the fake fault in his ship, but they get captured by the survivors in the city before they can leave. The survivors, the Daleks (destined to be the most famous aliens from Doctor Who) are unseen mutants inside metal shells (powered by static electricity picked up through the metal their city is built from), with an extreme hatred of anything unlike themselves.
Another race still exists on the planet, the other half of the conflict that ended in the destruction of the planet, but this race (the Thals) have become complete pacifists. The Doctor's daughter, Susan, is tricked into inviting them to the city, obstensibly to offer them food, but really to finally wipe them out. The Doctor, and his companions, escape the city, but are marooned on the planet because the Daleks have the part from his ship. They must convince the Thals to fight the Daleks, so that they can leave the planet, as well as so they'll survive (now the Daleks know that the Thals still exist, they're going to wipe them out).
It's a story about the futility of war, egotistical delusions of superiority, the disgusting attrocity of racism, and the ultimate evolution of racism—genocide.
This story was also made into a feature film, starring Peter Cushing.
In a hurry to leave Skaro, and supposedly in an effort to reverse the last journey, the Doctor has an accident operating his TARDIS, subjecting it and them to possible annihilation. The extremeness of the danger causes his ship to physically and mentally affect the travellers, who act in what can only be described as a psychotic manner until they work out what's gone wrong.
This is an extremely wierd story, and wierdness seems to be something that British television excells in (it seems to be their pet subject). I think it becomes clear, by now, that the Doctor is only partially in control of his ship, the ship doesn't work properly, and that he cannot return the humans to their proper time and place.
I've only read the book of this story. It's the second story to occur as a historical piece, albeit with a liberal stretching of the truth.
The TARDIS lands back on the Earth, but at the time that Marco Polo is crossing the Himalayas back to the Kublai Khan. The TARDIS breaks down, and needs some repairs to be done to it, but the Doctor has gambled it away to Marco Polo during a game of chess (thinking he couldn't possibly lose).
The TARDIS lands on an alien planet, and get roped into retrieving some keys scattered across the planet, to restore a machine that controls everybody into being nice and obedient. Of course some others want the machine restored to enslave everybody.
A story about free will, or the lack of it.
Barbara learns, the hard way, that you cannot alter history (or other people—the rather obvious message in this story). She's mortified about how the Aztecs practice human sacrifice, and unsuccessfully tries to put a stop to it when she's mistaken for one of their deities. She's not too pleased that the Doctor's unperturbed by the Aztecs habits, but he knows you can't change history, and an alien is going to have a different point of view about things that have already been done.
(I'm unfamiliar with this story.)
The TARDIS doors spring open mid-flight, which has the unfortunate, but not yet discovered, effect of shrinking the TARDIS to miniscule proportions. This has the crew facing the stereotypical dangers of giant pet cats, etc.
Yet again the TARDIS makes it back to the Earth, but still not at a suitable time to return Ian and Barbara (by now the Doctor is prepared to return them, considering they'll know enough not to mess up established history). It's the future, and the Daleks that they'd wiped out in a prior story have conquered the Earth. The paradox is explained by that being in the future, even though these Daleks are more advanced (a bit lame, and Dalek history changes several times over the Doctor Who series). Susan elects to stay behind on the Earth at the end of the story.
This story was also made into a feature film, starring Peter Cushing.
(Read the novel, have seen bits of it.)
Another of the Doctor's race is meddling around with the history of the Earth, and it's up to the Doctor to make sure that history runs the way that it's supposed to, by thwarting him.
This is the first time we hear anything, albeit not much, about the Doctor's people. At this stage, he's still very much the man of mystery.
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Arriving at an Antartic space mission control base in the middle of a space shot that's not going well, the travellers are suspected of being the cause of the woes. The Doctor finds out the date, and for once, shows some advanced knowledge of human history. We're about to be visited by a twin planet of the Earth, “Mondas”. But that's not all, we're going to get visitors from the planet that are no-longer human. They're “Cybermen” who've been replacing worn our parts of their bodies with cybernetics, with hideous results. Not only have they replaced parts, they've doctored their brains to remove other weaknesses, like emotions, to become purely logical beings only interested in their own survival.
This sort of thing is a common theme in science fiction stories, as well as other stories where authors like to try to make people think of the folly of dehumanising society (being constrained by ever increasing rules, replacing people with machines, etc.). The Cybermen are a hideous abomination of the human form, not quite completely robotic, but only barely still human in form.
At this stage in their history, survival is about all they're interested in, whatever the cost. What they've done to themselves is grotesque and cumbersome, but they have no feelings for the humans, they just don't care (though they do offer to take them back to Mondas, but to become Cybermen like themselves). They don't set out to subjugate the humans, just controlling them enough so that the humans can't stop their own plans. Later on (in future stories) they'll break the completely emotionless character (a bit of a disappointment), and simply become enemies of anything they consider a threat to their existence. But at the moment, it's the notion of what they are that's really disturbing (they're us).
This was the last William Hartnell story, his health was ailing, and he had to let go. So as to not kill off the series, we find out another interesting thing about his race: They can regenerate their bodies, becoming someone new, and we see William Hartnell change into Patrick Troughton.
He played the role more sensitively. A little clownish at times, unfortunately, but would also be a little ominous at the right moment. Not the bull-in-the-chinashop approach of William Hartnell's Doctor.
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(I'm unfamiliar with this story, other than reading a synopsis about—on that note, it's the first story to make a comment about the disappearance of the mythical Atlantis.)
The return of the Cybermen, and this time they're not quite so completely emotionless (a bit a ruin to their more unusual original characteristic as a Doctor Who monster), they've discovered ruthlessness. They're sabotaging a weather control station based on our Moon, in an effort to use the planet for their own needs.
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The TARDIS lands in a war zone, and it becomes apparent that all is not what it seems. There's a mixture of wars from different time zones, and someone is using humans as pet soldiers, putting them through their paces to find which are the most ruthless ones that could be used for their own purposes.
One of the Doctor's race is involved in the evil deed, and it's too much for the Doctor to help out with. He concedes that he'll need to call for help from his own people, and we learn that he escaped from his society, and they'll want him back. This is the story where we find out that the Doctor is a “Time Lord”, a race with immense powers, but an intensely dull existence.
They do nab him, and put him on trial for meddling in the affairs of other races—something that's against the rules (both “meddling” as well as running away). He manages to convince them that it is necessary, at times, so they limit their punishment to exhiling him to the Earth, a planet he's shown great interest in, and forcing a new regeneration on him (which we don't get to see, because they didn't know who would play the role next).
Doctor Who changes from black & white to colour, and starts to develop a bit of a teen cult fanbase. Jon Pertwee played the role with a bit of panache, or as a bit of a dandy (he certainly dressed that way). He was the first to not keep wearing the same clothes in just about every story. A bit more than the first half of his stories has him exiled to the Earth by his people, eventually being forgiven for his interfering ways, and given his freedom back.
We're introduced to another Time Lord on the loose (calling himself the Master), this one a thoroughly corrupt and self-serving person. But he is a charismatic bad guy, with perfect manners, and would hypnotise or charm what he wanted out of people, or just ruthlessly destroy anybody in the way of his outlandish schemes for absolute power. (He makes the various James Bond villians seem lame characters by comparison.) As we learn more about the history of the Master, we find out that he and the Doctor used to be friends, but now their rivals (like Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty).
For his evil deeds in this story, he establishes a link for the Nestenes to, again, try and take over the Earth with their Autons (the plastic monsters that debued in Spearhead from Space).
We find out that some very powerful aliens have visited the Earth in our distant path, influencing our development as part of an experiment. The Master wakens up one of them that's been hibernating in a little English village for thousands of years, in the hopes of being granted fantastic powers. The trouble is that the Dæmon believes the human experiment to be a failure, and feels it should be destroyed.
This is the first story to have a bit of fun with the history of the development of mankind. Suggesting that aliens have bumped things along, a bit, as well as being responsible for some of our superstitions.
Once again, the Master is up to no good. This time wakening up a different bunch of slumbering reptiles who used to dominate the Earth, sea-faring turtle–lizard–like monsters (see Doctor Who and the Silurians). Hoping to goad them into wiping the humans out for him.
This is first Doctor Who story to really go to town with a musical sound track, and from the Radiophonic Workshop (i.e. electronic music). The entire story has extensive themes. Much of the show is shot at sea, making extensive use of the Royal Navy.
To celebrate the tenth anniversary of Doctor Who, a story was written that would bring together the current Doctor with his former selves (the previous actors). The Earth and the Time Lords are under serious threat by an unknown force coming from a black hole, the one that was the source of the Time Lord's incredible power, from which they developed time travel. Unfortunately William Hartnell was very ill, and could only play a few small parts. It's the only story that I've seen Patrick Troughton play the Doctor in a very serious manner (as befitted the story).
Here we have a Doctor for whom silliness seems to be the major part of his character. Though he did do a lot of the stories with the seriousness that was appropriate, there were quite a few that were reall over the top. Having a writer like Douglas Adams (The Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy) involved explains a lot of the reason why.
A story about elitism, and the dangers of artificial intelligence with the power to do as it wishes. A robot is forced to act against it's protective programming not to harm humanity, by a group of fanatics to hold the world to ransom, and goes insane.
Once again Dalek history is re-invented for out entertainment. This time the Doctor has been sent by the Time Lords to a period in their history as they're being developed, in the hope that he might change them into being less malevolent, or learn something useful to control them.
The Daleks are the experiment of Davros (a mutant scientist) to develop something to support what he believes their race (Nazi-like “Kaleds”) will ultimately mutate into, thanks to the terrible war that's raged on their planet for ages. Some of the Kaleds are less than thrilled about the way things are going (such as the dehumanized Daleks), and Davros gives information to the Thals that lets them destroy the Kaleds (the entire race), just to get his own way.
Out of the various Dalek stories with Davros, this has to be the better one. It's quite an epic story. And Michael Wisher excells in playing the evil Davros, much better than subsequent actors to play the role do. Michael Wisher played numerous different roles over many years of Doctor Who, with very different characterisations per role—you didn't immediately pick him as someone else from a story a few weeks ago, sometimes it was quite hard to do so.
Another story making a statement against racism, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.
The Cybermen are back, this time with more threatening voices, and more menacing behaviour. They've been lured into a trap, where they think that they're going to destroy a planet that's full of gold (a deadly substence to them), but the inhabitants (who've been hiding underground for eons to avoid Cybermen trouble) are setting out to destroy them, instead.
Shot mostly in some underground caves, it has what most be the second weakest incidental musical for a Doctor Who story, that I've seen (see Death to the Daleks, for what I consider to be the worst).
Another story dabbling with aliens, human history, and Egyptian mythology. The back-story being the Osiran culture was adopted as Egyptian religion. Their mythology being based on the Osiran culture, with the god of death, Sutekh (aka Set), being imprisioned under an Egyptian pyramid, after being hunted across the galaxy by seven-hundred fellow Osirans for his crimes. It's also a story with another reason for Mars being a dead planet (it didn't survive Sutekh). We get to see mummies (robot servitors for the Osirans) stalking people, like an old horror film, and Sutekh controlling people by mind control.
Landing on Earth in a quarry about to be mined using explosives, the Doctor and Sarah get buried in the rubble. Sarah finds a fossilised hand that's millions of years too old to be human, but it's not completely dead. It takes over her mind, controlling her so that she breaks into a nuclear power plant (partially filmed in a real one), so it can regenerate itself by harnessing the radiation.
The Doctor receives a summons to return to Gallifrey (his home planet—the first time we've heard its name), to witness the succession of the new president. On the way, he receives a vision of his assassination, and sets out to prevent it, becoming the fall guy for the assassination. We find out that the all-powerful Time Lords are mostly old men set in their ways, a society bound up in rituals, quite corrupt and intollerant.
It must be one of the few television shows that didn't really equate old age with senility—they're a race with immense lifespans—Engin, in charge of their computer systems, is a very senior person in both senses of the word, and does the role brilliantly, showing that even while he's battling to stand up again after kneeling down to explain something (the infirmity of old age), there's nothing lacking in the mental department (ably demonstrating his knowledge in highly technical fields, and smartly putting down the Doctor's jibe about the prehistoric equipment he runs).
To escape being executed for assassinating the president, the Doctor declares himself as a candidate for the presidency. Which buys him time to investigate what goes on, and leads to a future Gallifrey story.
It's the Master up to his old tricks again, trying to kill two birds with one stone (his rival, the Doctor; and the Time Lord society that he despises), and prolong his life. We learn that Time Lords can only regenerate thirteen times, and the Master has reached the limit, but figured out a way to cheat death. But it involves stealing the heart of all their power (the “Eye of Harmony”, an object balancing the power of a captured black hole), which'll destroy Gallifrey.
A society utterly dependent on robotic slave labour is about to have its way of life destroyed. Aboard a mineralogical ship, that mines sandstorms, is a madman who believes that the robots need to be freed.
The robots are rather eligantly designed things, certainly one of the more stunning looking robots in a television series, and I think they nicked a bit of the deadpan monotone voice from 2001's HAL. The story certainly borrows from Asimov, with the laws of robotics being a major plot device.
Another story that has fun with the origins of man, this time as a nightmarish horror story: Millions of years ago, on another planet in our solar system (what's now an asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter), a lifeform evolved that destroyed all life, it consumed the energy of the life force, it was death, itself—nothing else could destroy it. It stalked its prey telepathically paralysing it when close to it, before consuming it, or converting it into something that it could use. It was a gestalt creature, made up from thirteen humans converted into huge green slug-like things, and a core made from a golden-glowing human.
Once it'd polished off everything living thing on its own planet, it leaped across space and did the same to Mars. From there, it went to the Earth, but before we'd evolved. What was left of it quietly mutated the development of human life over millions of years until humans developed into something that it could use.
A story taking liberties with the fable about Jason and the Golden Fleece. This time, it's about the Minyans, a race that once regarded the Time Lords as their gods. The Time Lords met the Minyans when the Time Lords were new to their powers, liked the idea that the Minyans were so impressed by them that they thought they were gods, acted as if they were the gods that the Minyans mistook them for, and caused the destruction of their society—leading to the Time Lords developing their policy of not getting involved with others.
What's left of the Minyans are two ships, one lost, and another travelling through space for thousands of years trying to find the lost one. The lost one, the P7E, had their race banks (genetic material for rebuilding their civilisation). The P7E is buried in the middle of a planet on the edge of space, the survivors eeking out an existence under the domination of an insane computer. Naturually it's up to the Doctor to sort things out.
The Doctor heads back to Gallifrey, trapped into a scheme by the Vardans to invade Gallifrey, but actually plotting against them. He becomes the president, seeing how there was no competing candidates at the time he declared himself as one (see The Deadly Assassin), takes over Gallifrey, lets the Vardans in to invade, and defeats them. Then comes the plot twist! The Sontarans were using the Vardans to invade Gallifrey, the Doctor had no idea, they romp in the moment that he gets rid of the Vardans, and hunt him through the maze of his TARDIS (which is disapointingly very non-technical once you get past the control room).
Again we see a different side to the Time Lord society. They're a fawning bunch with no backbone to physical adversity, even though they believe in their absolute supremacy. There are also those that rejected the social structure and fled the city to live as wild savages, and ultimately are the saviours of the Time Lords.
Another story with interesting explanations for the origins and evolution of man: Millions of years ago, a crippled Jagaroth space ship tries to take off from the Earth, and destroys itself, splintering one of it's crew (Scaroth) throughout time. He's helped build the pyramids (though the Osirans had something to do with that too, see Pyramids of Mars), amongst other nudges to advance human technology so his futuremost splintered self might have a chance at time travel (Scaroth wants to go back and prevent the ship destroying itself).
To finance his time experiments, one of his other selves has had Leonardo Da Vinci whip up six more Mona Lisas so Scaroth can sell the one he's stolen from the Louvre, and six more, to seven different art collectors. He ropes Romana into making his time machine work, and travels back in time. The Doctor, Romana, and a thuggish detective (Duggan) whiz back after him, and Duggan decks him into the prehistoric slime that will eventually evolve into life on this planet, once sparked off by the exploding space ship.
This slime has had the Doctor's fingers in it, Duggan's, and the knocked-out Scaroth. So… humans will evolve with Time Lord, Jagaroth and human elements in their makeup?
The untransmitted story. Industrial action in the middle of filming caused it to be abandoned, uncompleted. Years later, what was filmed was strung together with narrations by Tom Baker to fill in the missing bits, and released as video tape (but not broadcast).
The story revolves around an old retired Time Lord living on Earth, who'd like the Doctor to take some things back to Gallifrey that he brought with him, and oughtn't to fall into someone else's hands. Naturally they do, leading a criminal into finding the Time Lord's hidden prison planet, where a criminal Time Lord, Salyadin, who's capable of projecting his mind into others, is supposedly imprisioned.
The first of the last Tom Baker series. Finally a move is made away from silly stories (because of the likes of Douglas Adams), back into science-fiction realm. The stories got better, got presented better, had more atmosphere, but the theme tune got ruined by a cheesy eighties, rocked up, synthesiser replacement.
The story starts with the Doctor and Romana deciding to go on a holiday, but get embroiled in the machinations for a Mafia-like organisation, Foamasi, to buy out a planet. It's a planet that lost a war with the Foamasi, became sterile due to the radiation, then devoted themselves to making aliens experience alien things, and become more understanding about them in the interests of peace.
Meglos (a megalomaniac) is the last surviver of the planet Zolpha-Thura, who wants back his weapon of mass destruction that has ended up on a nearby planet, Tigella, being used as the source of all their power, and worshipped as a god, by two races (or cultures) on the planet. He traps the Doctor in a time loop, impersonates him to get into the Tigellan's city, to reclaim his powerful dodecahedron.
This is the first story that I know of where the incidental music plays a few little tributes to the theme tune, and they started to get a bit more adventurous with using dramatic moving camera shots.
Travelling through space the TARDIS falls through a hole in space (a charged vacuum emboitment, a CVE) into another universe, Exo-Space (E-Space), and get stuck there for the next few stories. This is a set-up piece for the beginning of the end, in Logopolis.
In this story they find people under siege from what seem like savage marsh creatures, but are actually their own ancestors. They're a race with a rapid evolution, but those in charge keep the population ignorant of such things. One of the locals, Adric, stows away on the TARDIS to travel with the Doctor.
The TARDIS encounters another planet with life, and drop in to see if they can find any clues about escaping E-Space, only to find a primitive society dominated by vampires. These people were originally from Earth, but abducted by a Giant Vampire escaping from a war with the Time Lords. It was the last of the Time Lords' wars, one so violent and bloody that it sickened them of violence, forever.
They accidentally find another CVE, managing to get out of E-space, but get trapped into the intersection, a bland white void of space. In there they encounter a race of Tharils who have a natural time-travelling ability, being used as slaves to navigate ships that can cross the time lines.
This is an extremely surreal story, quite trippy.
Back in the normal universe (N-Space), they're asked to help out on the planet of Traken, where some evil has invaded. That evil turns out to be the return of The Master. Unfortunately the story is a bit lame, with more than a little lame acting and silliness in places.
Pseudo-science pokes its head in the story for a bit of fun about the end of the universe. Thanks to entropy, our universe should have destroyed itself eons ago (playing on the opposing open-space/closed-space theories of the universe), but a bunch of mathematicians on Logopolis developed a way to keep closed-space “open” by opening up voids (the CVE the TARDIS slipped through in Full Circle and Warriors' Gate) through to other forms of space (E-Space as in Full Circle and State of Decay).
The Doctor doesn't know about this, though. He's decided that he should fix up his TARDIS so that it changes its outside shape (so it doesn't always look like a Police Box), and Logopolis is the place to help him out. Somehow the Master has anticipated this, and left a trap to sneak into the Doctor's TARDIS to get to Logopolis, and steal whatever secret they have for himself (he doesn't know what they're really doing with their mathematics).
The Master's plan kind-of works out, but brings about the start of the destruction of the universe when he kills off the Logopolitans. Forced into helping the Doctor to halt the destruction, something neither is happy about, he takes advantage of the situation to try and blackmail the universe, and achieves his other life-long ambition of killing the Doctor.
All is not lost, though; the Doctor regenerates into Tristan Farnon (a.k.a. Peter Davison, famous for having his arm inside the back end of a cow in the “All Creatures Great and Small” TV series, and for having out-of-breath manic arguments with Siegfried Farnon). Peter Davison carries the same manic breathless-in-a-panic behaviour into Doctor Who, which suggests that's not just acting, but a personal trait. He plays the character in an often wimpish manner, commonly becoming incapacitated, leaving things for his companions to sort out, and getting irate when they get it all wrong.
Another story with consequences for Earth's history: In the far future, the Cybermen have stowed aboard a ship heading for Earth, in the hope of destroying some conference where some people will join forces to keep the Cybermen at bay. Again they've employed a double agent (a devious trait that they've developed). And again the Doctor and companions foil their plans: They can't stop the ship, but they change its course, so that it ends up travelling back in time and wiping out the dinosaurs instead of the conference. Also wiping out Adric who's trying to stop the ship from crashing, and depositing some humans escaping the doomed ship on prehistoric Earth. So… the human race was started by humans from our own future?
Turlough's attempt at sabotaging the TARDIS, a craven attempt at killing the Doctor, doesn't work out. The TARDIS latches onto a passing space ship, unfortunately one full of people with what seems to be a terminal disease, Lazars disease. The ship is travelling to “Terminus” which might have some cure, or might just be a convenient place to dispose of the diseased.
The interesting thing about Terminus is that it's at the exact centre of the universe. The Doctor and his companions discover that the cure is exposing the sick to the radiation from the damaged engine, an engine that belongs to a massive time travelling ship that's older than the known universe. It's damaged engine was the cause of the “big bang” that created the current universe, and it's about to explode again and destroy the entire universe, unless the Doctor can stop it.
Widely disliked for playing the role as an extremely arrogant, vain, and grumpy old sod. Again, this seems to be a trait of the actor, himself, considering how he plays the character similar to other roles he's performed (including as a captain of the guard in a previous Doctor Who story, ).
His last four stories are collectively known as “Trial of a Timelord”, as they're a running series where he gets put on trial by his own people, again, for interfering in the affairs of other species (which is strongly against their rules). The series was put on hold at the end of his reign (it was doing very badly), and it was quite a while before it resume. There was no real transition between this Doctor and the next, supposedly because Colin Baker refused to return for its filming.
Once again, farcical silliness ruins a good television series. And again, thankfully, it does get ironed out after a while. But, unfortunately, the series gets cancelled just as it's beginning to show some promise.
A really stupid story, with the bad guy (the Candyman) being some insane thing that's a body made up of giant licorice allsorts mix.
The first decent Sylvester McCoy story. It's set in the 1960s, in the era of the William Hartnell stories, and isn't pantomimey. The Doctor has nipped back to Earth, at the same time as when the first Doctor Who story is set (An Unearthly Child), with plenty of tributes paid to that past story. He's got a sneaky plan to destroy the Daleks, showing a darker side to his nature, involving setting the two Dalek factions against each other.
The second Sylvester McCoy show to show a conniving, ominious side to the Doctor. This time he's up to something to ultimately thwart the plans of the Cybermen, with a strange mixture of modern day Nazis and (stupid) magic time travellers from England's path.
Probably the second best Sylvester McCoy story. Again he's got a devious plan to put an end to some evil, but things aren't quite working out in the way he wants them to. Set during the Hitler world war, with an ancient evil exploiting the war, hoping to destroy everything, mixing in viking-era zombies from the church graveyard, and haemovores (vampires, again) from the far future of the Earth (an ultimate evolution of mankind).
Unofficially referred to as “The Enemy Within”.
The Doctor gets asked to take the Masters body back home from Scaro (the Dalek's home planet) after being put on trial for crimes against sentient life (an unlikely place for that to happen). As usual, the Master has cheated death, is hell bent on defeating the Doctor (to take his life), and on causing death and destruction all around. And the lead role, The Doctor, is killed in the first few minutes of the film (how many other films can do that), but there's an answer for that in Doctor Who—regeneration—that's been part of the series since its beginnings.
As is typical with movie versions of television shows, things get altered that should be left alone, and the Americanisation of a British show just makes things worse. It could have been an interesting story, if done better, but it wasn't, and it isn't. Quite disappointing.
After a fifteen year hiatus, Doctor Who returns, but it's really not the same. It starts off bad, gets better, but is really too far removed from its origins. We're subjected to a Paul McGann movie-like semi-orchestral version of the theme tune (sacriledge!), and only an abbreviated version (virtually the same as was used for most of Tom Baker's series). The TARDIS becomes even sillier—it doesn't have the fine architecture that it's had for twenty-odd years of Doctor Who, nor even the gloomy Gothic look of the Paul McGann movie (which was a travesty in itself). It's just a hodge-podge of a mess instead of a console, that you really can't see properly, and a wierd room that looks like a cross between an exploded mushroom with trees inserted everywhere through it. I don't like people who radically change things, then claim that it's more of the same. It's not.
A very silly start to the new series (burp jokes, and other cheap humour—a few of the jokes are amusing, too many are just really silly), re-using the alien species that started the Jon Pertwee era off, the Autons, but really only in a passing manner. They're dealt with far too easily (the new Doctor Who stories being around half the length of the older ones shows its problems), with them being just a small side issue to introduce Rose as a companion.
A silly story where the Doctor takes Rose far into the future where the Earth is going to self destruct, in front of people who've paid for the privilege to watch its final moments.
A silly story where some aliens are using the bodies of the dead for their own nefarious purposes, hoping to, eventually, use them to take over the Earth.
The first of a two-parter, with a lot of juvenile silliness (fart jokes, and salacious nudity remarks). Alien's apparently crash land their space ship into London, crashing through Big Ben before ditching in the Thames.
The second of the two-parter, sequel to Aliens of London. The aliens hope to start off World War Three so that humans will reduce the planet to a radioactive slag heap, that they can sell off as space ship fuel.
The first decent story for this Doctor. The silliness is gone, serious issues are faced, people take responsibility for their actions. But various lame things still disappoint: The Dalek is too slow moving about, for the ultimate killing machine. And it's self destruction at the end is too neat a wrap-up to the story, eliminating interesting possible subsequent stories (future stories won't be able to follow on, someone will have to invent some new implausible reason to bring back the Daleks).
While other things make it good: The Dalek doesn't speak in a slow stil-ted kind-er-gart-en read-ing fash-ion, as they often used to, this one speaks more like Michael Wisher's portrayal of the evil maniac Davros, in Genesis of the Daleks. There's some good psychological playing out, the insane Dalek becomes an emotional wreck, tells the Doctor that he'd have made a good Dalek (after the Doctor tells the Dalek to kill itself). And the Dalek does demonstrate, despite the slowness, how endlessly destructive it is, and how hard it is to destroy.
Rather lame. A media-dominated future, where people are insignificant in comparison. A badly exploited plot which might have had some potential for being interesting. I think short-story-itus is ruining the new Doctor Who series. Plots get rushed through, not properly explored, then solved far too quickly. Though other television series (the original Star Trek, Time Tunnel, etc.) certainly managed to do better jobs of telling stories using similar story lengths.
The second decent story. Rose wants to see her Dad before he dies in a car crash that took him out of her life while she was just a baby. She can't help herself, and causes a catastrophe when she prevents him from being killed.
A bit of a silly story about some wierd alien infecting and taking over people around a crash site in the middle of the World War. Possibly, if this wasn't such a short story, it might have been possible to exploit the plot properly into something more interesting. It's the first half of a two-parter.
Sequel to the prior story, with a very silly name, and a continuation of a story with far too many silly parts to it. Again, it looks like we're watching one of the many parodies made of Doctor Who, for much of the show.
A sequel to World War Three, which just seems like a rushed, cobbled together, story, just to fill in time. It's too short to really develop into anything, even though it had some potential in it (like the Dalek story, it played on the theme of alien antagonist telling the Doctor, “you're not much better than us”).
A sequel to The-Long-Game, starting off where the Doctor gets dropped into a Big Brother television show, where the evicted don't just get evicted, they get exterminated. Now any good Doctor Who fan should know which baddies are behind the sub-plot to this story, but you won't see them until the final act.
Sequel to Bad Wolf
Gone are Doctors with eccentric dress senses (he just wears an ordinary suit), but back is another with strange mannerisms (licking things, being rude, or over-excited about something trivial).
Not a sequel to The Parting of the Ways, but the beginning of the story continues on from the end of the last story, with the Doctor having just regenerated, and is all-shook-up by the process.
A sequel to The End of the World
The first good story for this Doctor. It brings back a couple of old Doctor Who favourites from the 1970s, Sarah Jane Smith and K9, and manages to do so in a good manner, and with plenty of emotion.
The old “parallel universe” ploy is used to re-invent an old enemy, the Cybermen. We have a new explanation for their creation, and they start out without looking as Frankensteinish as their first foray into Doctor Who, more's the pity.
Sequel to Rise of the Cybermen.
An inane story about television sets being used to suck the soul out of people, set in the British 1950s.
Sequel to The Impossible Planet.
An incredibly lame story making a vague attempt at character development (about the lives of other people touched by the Doctor, and obsessed with finding him), and almost completely devoid of the Doctor and his companion.
Another inane story, about a girl who's drawings draw people out of reality. Doctor Who's supposed to be a science-fiction show, but this goes well beyond stretching the definition.
A sequel to Tooth and Claw (introduction of Torchwood) and The Age of Steel (this story's monsters)
Sequel to Army of Ghosts.