Inferno

Listen to that! It's the sound of this planet screaming out its rage!--the Doctor

Evil Liz and Evil Brigadier

Episode one, 9 May 1970
Episode two, 16 May 1970
Episode three, 23 May 1970
Episode four, 30 May 1970
Episode five, 6 June 1970
Episode six, 13 June 1970
Episode seven, 20 June 1970

Written by Don Houghton
Directed by Douglas Camfield
Script editor: Terrance Dicks
Produced by Barry Letts

Jon Pertwee as the Doctor
Nicholas Courtney as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart
Caroline John as Liz Shaw (last regular appearance)
John Levene as Sergeant Benton

Liz and the Brigadier, not evil

And now, finally, we have our first unambiguously mad-scientist story, making our alien invasion/mad scientist record 3-1-1.  The mad scientist in question this time is Professor Stahlman, who's heading a government project to drill through the Earth's crust.  He theorises that beneath the crust is a substance called Stahlman's gas, and by releasing it, he'll be able to provide Britain with an inexhaustible energy reserve.

Stahlman's not evil; he doesn't want to take over the world, or destroy it.  He's just arrogant: he's convinced of the rightness of his theory regarding the existence of Stahlman's gas, and he's so eager to get to it that he keeps speeding up the rate of drilling, regardless of any concerns for safety.  He refuses to listen to any warnings--from his assistant, Petra Williams (played by Sheila Dunn, wife of the story's director, Douglas Camfield); from the project's administrator, the civil servant Sir Keith Gold; from Greg Sutton, an oil-drilling expert the government has brought in from a drillsite in Kuwait; or from the Doctor, who's hanging around the project because he's hooked up the TARDIS to its nuclear reactor for some experiments he's running in his continuing quest to overcome the exile imposed upon him by the Time Lords.  UNIT are also hanging around, in order to ... well, actually, I'm not sure why UNIT are there, but they're there.

(A casting note: Derek Newark, who plays Greg Sutton, played Za in the Doctor's very first adventure in 1963, while Christopher Benjamin, here making his first entry into the programme, as Sir Keith, most recently appeared in Doctor Who in 2009, opposite David Tennant and Catherine Tate.  So in "Inferno", we've got 46 years of Who history playing opposite each other.)

But there are problems besetting the project.  Something is happening to a few of its technicians, and to a few of the UNIT soldiers: they're turning into hairy green monsters who are burning hot to the touch, and who are horribly strong and manically homicidal.  Unbeknownst to the main characters, this metamorphosis is caused because the unfortunate individuals are coming into contact with a strange green slime that's been oozing up from the drill head deep beneath the Earth's surface--the drilling is unleashing dark forces from the Earth's core.

The story takes a sudden, unexpected swerve when one of the Doctor's experiments with the TARDIS goes awry.  The TARDIS dematerialises, but it takes the Doctor neither forward nor backward in time.  Instead, he rematerialises in the same place and time, but in a parallel reality--an alternate history.  He soon discovers that he's somehow transported himself to a world where Britain abolished the monarchy in 1943 and turned into a brutal, right-wing fascist dictatorship.

Everything is present in the alternate world that was present in the real world, but it's been twisted.  The Stahlman's gas drilling project is still going on, headed by Professor Stahlman, but now the project is at a "scientific labour camp"--meaning slave labour.  The UNIT team are still providing security, but not as UNIT--they're now members of the Republic Security Forces.  They're led by the Brigadier, who has lost his moustache and gained an eyepatch and now goes by the rank of Brigade Leader.  His second in command is the stern, no-nonsense Section Leader Elizabeth Shaw, who's a far cry from being any sort of scientist.

(The "leader" ranks are a nice touch--even Benton is ranked "Platoon Under Leader".  It's an echo of Gestapo ranks, which all ended with -führer, from Reichsführer, the unique rank held by Heinrich Himmler, all the way down to Unterscharführer, or Squad Under Leader, the equivalent to lance-corporal or PFC.)

Of course, the Doctor is quickly apprehended by the dark, brutal counterparts to his friends from UNIT, who conclude that he's a spy for a foreign power.  So he has to avoid getting put in front of a firing squad, but he's also got another concern--figuring out what's going on with the drilling.

The alternate-world drilling project is further along than its real-world counterpart, and the Doctor is present when it penetrates to the Earth's core.  And it might surprise you to learn, but the result isn't the discovery of a new, inexhaustible energy source--it's the end of the world.  Tremors begin all across the country, and spontaneous volcanoes form.  The Doctor realises it's only a matter of a short time until the Earth's entire crust breaks up.

As the situation deteriorates, people's true characters come out.  The Brigade Leader becomes even more militant, more shrill, more megalomaniacal, convinced his vaunted Republic will save everyone.  (Nicholas Courtney is clearly relishing playing a shrill, paranoid villain.)  But Section Leader Shaw is gradually coming around to the Doctor's story of where he comes from, and she's showing a willingness to help the Doctor get back to the real world so he can save our own reality from suffering the same fate as hers.

Which is, of course, what happens.  The Brigade Leader hatches a plan to force the Doctor to take him back with him to our reality at gunpoint, but of course it doesn't work.  The Doctor makes it back alone, and he's able to stop the drill just before it penetrates the Earth's mantle.  One world has died, but the other has survived.

What Lisa thought

She really didn't like it.  She found it slow and turgid, and she's finding the UNIT format really repetitive.  When I told her "Inferno" is one of the most highly regarded Whos of all time, she asked, "... But why?"

She did like Evil Liz's look--she thinks Carolina John looks good as a brunette.

It's a shame, because I, like most of Who fandom, is really neat--the opportunity to see Britain as a fascist state, the opportunity to see UNIT turned to evil, and the opportunity to see Benton metamorphose into a green, hairy monster.

The next story is "Terror of the Autons".

The Invasion

Animated Cyberman!

Episode One, 2 November 1968
Episode Two, 9 November 1968
Episode Three, 16 November 1968
Episode Four, 23 November 1968
Episode Five, 30 November 1968
Episode Six, 7 December 1968
Episode Seven, 14 December 1968
Episode Eight, 21 December 1968

Story by Kit Pedler
Written by Derrick Sherwin
Directed by Douglas Camfield
Script editor: Terrance Dicks
Produced by Peter Bryant

Patrick Troughton as the Doctor
Nicholas Courtney as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart (earliest extant appearance)
Frazer Hines as Jamie McCrimmon
Wendy Padbury as Zoe Heriot
John Levene as Corporal Benton (first appearance)

We can essentially divide "The Invasion" into two halves, though that division is done pretty seamlessly during the actual story.  In the first four episodes, the TARDIS lands in a near-future Britain.  Dialogue places this story five years after "The Web of Fear", which was forty years after "The Abominable Snowmen", which took place in 1935, so that would seem to indicate "The Invasion" takes place in 1980--but such a date would give us problems when we try to reconcile it into the dates for other, later UNIT stories.  (Both "Web" and "Snowmen" are amongst the missing stories.)  So we'll go with "sometime in the 1970s" for the story's setting.

Anyway.  The TARDIS lands in near-future Britain, where it discovers a corporation named AppleInternational Electromatics has become the world's dominant company through the production of copious amounts of personal, portable-sized, affordable consumer electronics.  But all is not as it seems with International Electromatics--the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe soon end up investigating the corporation when they discover that it's holding prisoner Professor Watkins, a brilliant scientist who's also the uncle of their friend Isobel.

(Professor Watkins and Isobel are pretty obvious stand-ins for Professor Travers and his daughter Anne from "The Web of Fear", who have "gone off to America", presumably because their actors were unavailable to reprise their roles in "The Invasion".)

In the process, they fall in with UNIT, the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, a global secret police.  UNIT are headed by Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, a British Army officer who knows the Doctor and Jamie from "The Web of Fear", when the Yeti invaded the London Underground.  (Lethbridge-Stewart was a colonel in "Web"; he's now been promoted to brigadier.)  UNIT are also investigating International Electromatics and its CEO, Tobias Vaughn, though for something far more sinister than the kidnapping of a single professor.

The second four episodes deal with Vaughn putting his nefarious plot into action: he's allied with the Cybermen, and together they stage an attempt to take over the Earth.  Vaughn and his minions sneak a Cyber army into the sewers beneath London, and then the Cybermen transmit a signal through all the International Electromatics products that renders every human on Earth unconscious.  The plan is that the Cybermen will then emerge from the sewers and take control of London long enough to land the full Cyber invasion force from "the dark side of the Moon", and humanity will regain consciousness to find their whole planet under Cyber control.

(The Cybermen marching through the streets of London produces the famous image of a platoon of them marching down the steps with the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral behind them.)

But the Doctor has figured out Vaughn's plan, and he's able to shield himself and UNIT from the hypnotic transmission's effects--leaving UNIT (and Jamie, Zoe, Isobel and Professor Watkins) the only waking human beings on Earth.  A UNIT contingent flies to Moscow, where the Russians were about to launch a manned mission to the Moon; the UNIT troop replace the life pod on the rocket with a nuclear warhead, and are able to destroy the Cyber fleet while it's still in orbit.  Meanwhile, the Doctor leads a separate UNIT contingent in an assault on International Electromatics' tightly controlled corporate countryside compound, defeating those Cybermen who have already reached Earth.  Vaughn is, of course, killed in the process.

There's a whole lot to talk about with "The Invasion".  The most apparent is the way this story functions as a pilot episode for the way Doctor Who is going to get reformatted at the start of next season.  (We still have two more stories before we get there.)  No longer will the Doctor be a carefree wanderer in time and space; instead, he'll be partnered with UNIT on a near-future Earth, investigating, in Malcolm Hulke's immortal phrase, "mad scientists and alien invasions"--James Bond meets Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons.

It's to that end that the Brigadier is brought back from "The Web of Fear", giving the programme what's probably its best-loved character, at least amongst its fandom, and an actor who'd remain actively associated with it for the rest of his life.  (I'm writing this 44 years after the first broadcast of "The Web of Fear", and right now, the most recent episode of Doctor Who ever aired--three or four months ago--contained a wonderful scene dedicated to the Brig, as a commemoration of Nicholas Courtney's death earlier this year.)  The Brigadier will function as Captain Scarlet to the Third Doctor's James Bond--in fact, the Third Doctor is closer in characterisation to Bond or Simon Templar than he is to pretty much any of the other ten Doctors who've headlined the programme throughout its history.

(Given that the parts of the Watkinses were clearly originally written for the Traverses, one has to wonder if the original plan was also to have them on the UNIT staff for season seven, as well.)

The next thing that's so interesting about "The Invasion" is its depiction of near-future Earth--a depiction that's exceptionally prescient, even if it did till longer than 1980 to get here.  Over its eight episodes, we see a number of things that are commonplace today but weren't present in 1968:

1. A computerised, automated telephone-answering system at a corporate headquarters, that specifies to the caller what sort of input it needs and then responds to simple voice commands;

2. A device that looks and acts a whole lot like a cell phone;

3. Microchips! Referred to as "micro monolithic circuitry";

4. Disposable electronic devices (in this case, a transistor radio), like the disposable cameras that have permeated our society;

5. Webcams! Tobias Vaughn maintains a visual surveillance system throughout International Electromatics's headquarters, and this system takes the form of cameras that are small, white spheres about the size of a tennis ball, which can be placed unobtrusively at points in rooms where they won't be noticed, like on cluttered shelves. And they really do look just like webcams.

And the last (and to me, coolest) thing about the story is the fact that we can now watch it in its entirety.  Episodes one and four are missing, but about five years ago, the story was released on DVD with those two episodes reconstructed as Flash animation, set to the original episodes' soundtracks.  The first episode in particular is effective--it has a noirish feel that matches the spooky soundtrack and not-quite-sure-what's-going-on quality of the storyline at that point.

What Lisa thought

She thought the opening four episodes--the Tobias Vaughn and International Electromatics portion of the story--didn't work.  It simply wasn't credible to her, once she knew it was the Cybermen who were Vaughn's unseen allies, that these allies had been willing to put up with him for so long.  Vaughn keeps demanding more control and authority over the invasion than the Cybermen want to give, and the Cybermen keep caving in to his demands, because they need him.  The thing is, though, they don't need him--not once things have reached the stage that they've already positioned their commando force in the London sewers.

Her other reaction was that she thought the two animated episodes were a pretty weird experience--which is fair enough, I suppose, though when I went back and checked my original reaction post to this DVD release back in 2007, she agreed with me that part one was very effective.

The next story in our rewatch is "The Krotons".

Doctor Who: "The Time Meddler"

But that means that the exact minute, the exact second that he does it, every history book, the whole future of every year and every time on Earth will change, and nobody will know that it has?--Steven Taylor

The Viking scouting party land in England

"The Watcher", 3 July 1965
"The Meddling Monk", 10 July 1965
"A Battle of Wits", 17 July 1965
"Checkmate", 24 July 1965

Written by Dennis Spooner
Directed by Douglas Camfield
Script editor: Donald Tosh
Produced by Verity Lambert

William Hartnell as the Doctor
Maureen O'Brien as Vicki (latest extant appearance)
Peter Purves as Steven Taylor

The Doctor and Vicki are in the TARDIS control room, commiserating about how much they miss Ian and Barbara, when they hear a noise from the interior rooms--someone's back there! They take up position on either side of the door, prepared to attack whoever it is when they come out, but it's Steven Taylor who emerges, and as soon as he does, he collapses from exhaustion.

Once he's come to, Steven explains that after escaping from the Mechanoid city, he searched through the forest for our heroes, eventually coming upon the TARDIS and stumbling inside. He's grateful for finally being rescued from his captivity on Mechanus, but he's openly scornful of the Doctor and Vicki's assertions that he's now on board a time machine.

Vicki gets him new clothes and apparently gives him a thorough shave, and by the time that's finished, the TARDIS has landed. The crew head outside and find themselves on the shore of an angry sea, at the foot of imposing English cliffs. The Doctor finds a horned Viking helmet on the beach and shows it to Steven as proof that they've travelled not only through space, but also through time.

"Well, maybe," Steven concedes doubtfully.

"Maybe?" the Doctor says. "What else do you think it could be? A space helmet for a cow?"

Unbeknownst to the team, the TARDIS's arrival has been witnessed: a monk was watching from the clifftop. He hides until our heroes walk off, then inspects the TARDIS. But he can't get in, because it's locked.

The Doctor finds an easy, gentle path up to the top of the cliffs, and in a fit of pique he declares that he will take this route, while Steven and Vicki can take the harder, steeper path and meet him at the top.

But once he gets to the top, it's not his companions that he meets. He finds himself at a mediaeval peasant's cottage. The man of the house is away, but his wife, a friendly woman named Edith (played by Alethea Charlton, who previously played Hur in "An Unearthly Child"), gives him some dinner and a flagon of mead.

In conversation with Edith, the Doctor is able to ascertain just when they've landed. Harold Godwinson is the new King, having succeeded Edward the Confessor at the beginning of the year. This news instantly alerts the Doctor that he's landed in 1066, one of the two most famous years in the history of the English-speaking world.

I'm sure it's alerted you of that, too, but nevertheless, I'm going to insult your education and give a brief recap. Harold Godwinson was the last of the Saxon Kings of England. Shortly after his accession, England was invaded by two different armies. The first of these was led by Harald Hardrada, King of Norway and the last great Viking. (He's only ever referred to as Hardrada in this story, presumably to avoid confusion with Harold Godwinson.)

Godwinson defeated and killed Hardrada at the Battle of Stamford Bridge in Yorkshire, then immediately had to march south to meet a second invasion, from William the Bastard, Duke of Normandy. His exhausted army was defeated by the Normans at the Battle of Hastings in October, heralding the Norman Conquest and ensuring that William the Bastard would be known to history as William the Conqueror.

The Doctor calculates that it's currently midsummer, and Edith informs him that they're in Northumbria. This means that Hardrada's army will be landing soon, not too far south of here, at the Humber.

All the time they're talking, the Doctor and Edith have a soundtrack playing behind them: monks from the nearby monastery, chanting. But as they're listening to them, the Doctor hears an abrupt glitch in the singing, like it's not actually live singing, but rather a recording.

But of course, here in the eleventh century, that's ridiculous.

The Doctor leaves Edith and heads up to the monastery to investigate. He finds it apparently abandoned. He enters, and in a small chamber off the main hall, he finds a twentieth-century phonograph, playing a record of Gregorian chants. But then wooden bars slide down, trapping him inside the chamber. He's been captured by the Monk we saw earlier, who now steps out from hiding, laughing.

We cut to the next morning, when the Monk is preparing breakfast--using an electric toaster and an electric griddle. After serving the Doctor breakfast in his cell, the Monk heads back to the cliffs, where he surveys the sea with a pair of modern binoculars. And soon, he sees what he's evidently looking for: an approaching Viking longship. It's not yet the whole army--just a single scout ship.

Out in the forest, meanwhile, Vicki and Steven have spent the night asleep beneath the trees after failing to meet up with the Doctor. Steven is still sceptical that they've travelled through time--especially when he finds a golden wristwatch that someone has lost in the bushes.

The two of them soon run into some Saxon peasants, who capture them and take them to the village. They think that they must be a pair of Viking scouts and want to execute them, but the village headman--Wulnoth, Edith's husband--chooses to believe their story that they're just travellers and releases them. When they tell they're looking for the Doctor, Edith recognises his description and directs them toward the monastery.

They arrive at the monastery and knock on the door, which is answered by the Monk. He tells them, of course, that the Doctor hasn't visited him. But Steven and Vicki are suspicious, and they decide to come back after dark and have a look around.

Meanwhile, the crew of the Viking scout ship have come ashore. They need provisions, so they raid a cottage they come across in the wood--Wulnoth and Edith's cottage, though only Edith is home. After the Vikings have gone, Wulnoth returns home, to find his house sacked and Edith brutalised (but still alive). He collects the men of the village together, and they go hunting the Vikings.

A battle ensues between the villagers and the Viking party. The villagers win, but two of the Vikings escape. They need a place to hide until the main body of Hardrada's army arrives, so they decide to head to the monastery, planning to take the monks hostage.

Once night falls, Vicki and Steven sneak into the monastery. They come across the Monk's phonograph and toaster, and then find the cell where he's holding the Doctor. But they discover the Doctor is no longer inside--he's left his cloak on top of a mound of blankets on the sleeping pallet, to make it look like he's asleep, and has escaped down a secret passage he must have discovered in a corner of the cell.

Vicki and Steven follow the passage; it disgorges them in the woods, near the clifftop. They return to the TARDIS to see if the Doctor has returned, but he hasn't. In the bushes on the clifftop, though, they discover what looks like a modern grenade launcher mounted on a tripod. Someone (the Monk, obviously) has left it there, pointed out to see.

The Monk, unaware that the Doctor has escaped, has headed to the village, where he asks a favour of Wulnoth and the other villagers--because they believe him a man of God, they're always more than willing to do whatever he asks. He asks them now if they would light beacon fires for him on the clifftop, so that approaching ships will know where to land.

The Monk tells Wulnoth that he needs the beacon fires because he is expecting some building materials to arrive by ship. But what he doesn't know is that, after escaping from his cell, the Doctor returned to Wulnoth and Edith's cottage, where Edith gave him dinner. The Doctor told her that soon a Viking invasion fleet would land at the Humber, but that King Harold would defeat it.

Though he doesn't let on to the Monk, Wulnoth now concludes that the Monk wants beacon fires to lure Hardrada's fleet towards the beach. He's right, of course, but unlike us, he hasn't seen the cannon the Monk has hidden there, so he doesn't know that the Monk is only trying to attract the fleet in order to blow it out of the water. He instead concludes that the Monk is a Viking spy.

Failing to find the Doctor at the cliffs, Vicki and Steven have returned back up the secret tunnel to the monastery, which is now deserted. Looking around more, they find an electrical cable which appears to run directly into a heavy stone sarcophagus. Steven presses the side of the sarcophagus, and finds that it opens just like a door. He and Vicki enter--

--and find themselves in the control room of a TARDIS. The Monk has a TARDIS. He isn't just a time traveller: he's a member of the Doctor's own people.

They explore the interior of the Monk's TARDIS. They discover a whole trove of treasures from all periods of Earth's history, as well as what look like projectile grenades, but Steven is able to identify them as neutron bombs. They're ammunition for the cannon on the clifftop.

"What's he trying to do?" Steven asks. "Sink a ship?"

"He could sink a whole navy with one of these," Vicki responds.

They also find a big sheet of paper labelled PROGRESS CHART, on which the Monk has conveniently detailed his entire eight-step plan, including "Sight atomic cannon", "Light beacon fires", "Destroy Viking fleet", and "Battle of Hastings". The final step is "Meet King Harold", which is our indication that he's definitely planning on changing the course of history, since Harold, of course, was killed at Hastings.

The Monk, still under the impression that Wulnoth will help him, is just returning to the monastery when he's apprehended by the Doctor, who presses a stick into his back to make him think he's carrying a gun. But before the Doctor can get an explanation out of him, there's a knock at the door.

The Doctor can't afford to ignore the knocking, as that would alert whoever was there that something was wrong, so he answers the door--to find the two survivors from the Viking scout party. They storm inside and take the time travellers captive, but they're so certain that a pair of old men pose no threat to them that they let their guard down, allowing the Doctor and the Monk to take them captive.

After the Vikings are tied up, the Doctor gets the Monk to tell him his whole plan. He's going to destroy Hardrada's invasion before it can land; that way, Harold Godwinson won't have to march north. His army will therefore be well-rested at Hastings and will defeat the Normans. With England thus spared a line of Norman kings, she will be able to avoid centuries of entanglement in French conflicts like the Angevin Empire and the Hundred Years War. With the country thus stable, the Monk will be able to accelerate technological progress: "Jet airliners by 1320! Shakespeare will be able to produce Hamlet for television!"

The Doctor is horrified by this, but since it's William Hartnell, that horror doesn't take the form of the moral outrage that later Doctors would give us; instead, it's the exasperated berating of a schoolteacher toward the foolish children under his authority. He demands the Monk show him to his TARDIS, where the two of them encounter Vicki and Steven.

As the four of them are emerging from the Monk's TARDIS, however, they encounter the two Vikings, who have managed to escape. The Monk manages to convince them that he's on their side, and they tie up the Doctor, Vicki and Steven. The Monk tells the Vikings that his neutron bomb missiles are "magical charms" that will help Hardrada's army, and gets them to carry them with him up to the cannon at the clifftop.

As they're leaving the monastery, though, they're attacked by the men of the village, led by Wulnoth. They're chased into the woods. The Vikings are surrounded and killed, though the Monk escapes. Edith frees the Doctor and his companions.

The Doctor goes back into the Monk's TARDIS and ties a long piece of string around a piece of equipment inside the control console. It's evidently a very delicate operation: after it's completed, the Doctor exits the TARDIS, then very carefully pulls the string until he also pulls out the piece of equipment. Pleased with himself, he slips the equipment into his pocket.

With the Monk being hunted by the villagers, the Doctor is confident now that he won't be able to destroy Hardrada's fleet, and that the Battle of Stamford Bridge--and the Battle of Hastings--will go off as history says they should. He, Steven and Vicki return to the TARDIS and depart.

The Monk, meanwhile, eventually eludes his pursuers and returns to the monastery. But a nasty surprise awaits him: when he attempts to enter his TARDIS, he discovers it's no longer bigger on the inside. The Doctor has removed his dimensional control, thereby shrinking the TARDIS's interior so that it now fits into its exterior; the Monk cannot get inside. He's stranded in 1066 England, with the country about to undergo successive invasions and the Harrowing of the North.

The Doctor and the Meddling Monk

What Lisa thought

Lisa's word to describe this one was "okay". She did like that she didn't see coming the revelation that the Monk had a TARDIS and was one of the Doctor's own people.

(The part three cliffhanger, with Steven and Vicki entering the sarcophagus and finding themselves in a TARDIS control room, is probably my favourite 60s cliffhanger.)

"The Time Meddler", put in context, is arguably a very important Doctor Who story. It's the first time we've met one of the Doctor's people besides the Doctor himself and his granddaughter; indeed, at this point, there still hasn't been any comment on whether the Doctor's people are, in fact, human.

But even beyond that, it's the first time a historical has had a science fiction component, besides the presence of the main characters. Such a development is approached with real freshness--even though there's science fiction, there's still no traditional "Doctor Who monster", for instance. And it's done in such a way that the audience learns a whole lot about the time period in which it's set, without ever once feeling like they're having a history lesson. Maybe all those reasons are why I love it so much.

(Well, okay. I also love the "space helmet for a cow" line.)

"The Time Meddler" marks the end of season two, but it also marks the beginning of something else: that period of Doctor Who that has been almost eradicated by the BBC's wiping policy. In the first two seasons, we've missed only two stories ("Marco Polo" and "The Crusades"). But we're about to cover seasons three, four and five in only six stories, two of which will have missing episodes.

The next story after "The Time Meddler" is "Galaxy 4", in which the TARDIS team fight a race of militant, cloned interstellar conquerors who all look like attractive twenty-year-old blonde women. I'm particularly upset that it's missing.

Then is "Mission to the Unknown", a one-part prologue to "The Daleks' Master Plan" that contains none of the regular cast. "Mission to the Unknown" was Verity Lambert's last involvement in the programme, after which she was replaced with producer John Wiles.

Then "The Myth Makers", in which the TARDIS lands in the middle of the Trojan War. Vicki falls in love with Troilus during the story, and at the end she leaves TARDIS to marry him and become the mythological Cressida.

Then there's "The Daleks' Master Plan", a twelve-part epic. The late Nicholas Courtney makes his first appearance in Doctor Who, though he's not yet Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart; instead, he's evil Earth Security Agent Bret Vyon. (A two-minute clip of his performance has been preserved, because during Peter Purves's long period hosting Blue Peter in the 1970s and 80s, it's the clip that would be played of Steven whenever Blue Peter did a Doctor Who segment.) The Meddling Monk also appears in "The Daleks' Master Plan", having allied himself with the Daleks.

And then we come to "The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve", in which, unsurprisingly, the Doctor and Steven get caught up in the events leading to the St Bartholomew's Day Massacre. New companion Dodo Chaplet is introduced at the very end of the story, and we'll pick up our rewatch with her first adventure, "The Ark".

I

Doctor Who: "Planet of Giants"

"Planet of Giants" directed by Mervyn Pinfield, 31 October 1964
"Dangerous Journey" directed by Mervyn Pinfield, 7 November 1964
"Crisis" directed by Douglas Camfield, 14 November 1964

Barbara is menaced by a normal-sized housefly

Written by Louis Marks
Script editor: David Whitaker
Produced by Verity Lambert

William Hartnell as the Doctor
William Russell as Ian Chesterton
Jacqueline Hill as Barbara Wright
Carole Ann Ford as Susan Foreman

As the TARDIS is landing, its doors suddenly open before materialisation has finished. They close again, and whatever the fault was appears to have fixed itself, but the Doctor is nonetheless flustered. Something serious must have gone wrong for the doors to open in mid-flight, and he's worried what sort of further repercussion it might have that hasn't manifested itself yet.

At any rate, the TARDIS has now materialised fully, so the crew head outside. They're at the base of a massive, vertical rock face, but weirdly, the rock sits on a bed of cement as tall as a man. Who could have been so worried about such a massive rock formation being moved that they've wedged it in place with six solid feet of cement?

They split up to explore. The Doctor and Barbara come upon what appears to be a massive earthworm, half a man's height and so long that it stretches out of camera view, but it's dead. Susan and Ian, meanwhile, happen upon a giant ant standing guard over a mound of giant eggs, but the ant, too, is dead. Then they come across a fifteen-foot-high bottle of night scented stock and a mammoth matchbox, lying partially open. Susan has concluded that they've been shrunk to about one inch in height, but Ian scoffs at this, insisting that they must have just materialised in a museum exhibition or something like that.

Evidence seems to fall pretty firmly on Susan's side, though, when the ground quakes at the approaching footsteps of an impossibly huge giant of a man. Susan and Ian both scramble into hiding places, but Ian's chosen hiding place is inside the matchbox. The giant has arrived to collect the matchbox; he closes it, with Ian inside, and carries it away.

The TARDIS has in fact materialised at the bottom of a garden path--in fact, it's a garden path in contemporary England, so the Doctor has in fact succeeded in getting Ian and Barbara back to their own time and place, though not in a form that's useful to them. The giant, whose name is Farrow, heads up to the top of the path, where he sits outside his house, enjoying the warm summer day. Before long, a second man arrives, a businessman named Forester. Forester is developing a new pesticide, named DN6, and Farrow is a government inspector who's been testing DN6 for viability.

Farrow reluctantly informs his visitor that's he going to have to put a stop to development of DN6, as it's too lethal--not only does it kill pests, but it kills everything it comes in contact with, including insects that are necessary to the continued functioning of our ecosystems. And it accumulates, never washing out of the soil, so eventually, people who eat foods that have been treated with DN6 will accumulate enough of it in their bloodstreams that they'll start dying too.

Forester is visibly upset to learn that a project into which he's sunk his entire fortune is about to be killed, but he seems to accept it, and asks Farrow what happens next. The government inspector's answer reveals that he has what is probably the most profound case of genre blindness ever found on British television.

Nothing's going to happen straight away, Farrow says, because his two-week holiday began yesterday. He's already written his report, but he won't be turning it in until after he gets back from a fortnight spent aboard his boat, exploring the coastal waterways of France.

(In other words, he's about to embark on a holiday where he won't be missed for two weeks, and where it's totally reasonable for him to be killed in some sort of accident that will leave no body, just an overturned boat bobbing somewhere in the Bay of Biscay.)

(And considering how upset Forester is at the failure of DN6, why is Farrow boring him with such details of his holiday? I mean, he presumably isn't intentionally pointing out how easy he'd be to murder right now, so why doesn't he just say, "Well, I'm on my holidays for the next fortnight," rather than dangling it in the other man's face how carefree he's going to be for the next two weeks while Forester deals with the fact that his career is over?)

(And, especially considering he's already written his report, isn't "turning in the hugely important report on what could be a revolutionary new tool in feeding the world" the sort of thing one takes care of the day before leaving for two weeks' holiday, rather than the day after returning?)

So, yeah. Forester takes out a gun and shoots Farrow dead.

The Doctor, Susan and Barbara hear the gunshot as a tremendous explosion coming from the top of the path, so they head that way. There they find Ian, unharmed, but along the way they've noted that every piece of wildlife they've come across in the garden is dead.

Forester calls an associate, Smithers, to help him cleaning up Farrow's body. Smithers is the chief scientist behind the development of DN6. Forester tells him that Farrow planned to steal the formula for DN6 and take credit for it himself, that the gun was Farrow's, and that it went off as the two men struggled with each other. Smithers instantly sees through the story about Farrow being killed accidentally, but he's willing to accept the broader theme--that Farrow was planning on stealing DN6--because he's so excited about the possibilities of DN6 ending world hunger. He agrees to help Forester clean up evidence of the murder and hide the body.

As part of their cleanup, one of them picks up Farrow's briefcase and carries it inside, setting it on a countertop in Farrow's lab. This once again separates the TARDIS team, since Ian and Barbara have for some reason disappeared inside the briefcase. (Get your minds out the gutter.)

When Ian and Barbara emerge from the briefcase, they find themselves next to a small (five feet high, to them) pile of corn, coated in some thick, sticky substance. When Barbara, unbeknownst to Ian, touches this filmy covering, she finds she can't get it off her hands. A few moments later, a giant housefly lands on the corn and dies instantly because the sticky substance is, of course, DN6.

Barbara's reaction to this is just as great a display of unjustified stupidity as Farrow's was in episode one--in fact, it's probably a greater display, since Barbara sustains her stupidity for almost two full episodes: she absolutely refuses to tell anyone that she's come into contact with DN6. Even when it's become certain that she's been contaminated with pesticide. Even when during the repeated instances when the team will be discussing how dangerous the pesticide is, and then someone will say, "Yes, but the immediate problem is how to get ourselves back to the TARDIS and returned to normal size," and Barbara will respond with shrill hysteria at the change of subject. Even as Barbara grows sicker and weaker and nearer to death. She refuses to give her friends the most important piece of information they need to help her, and she apparently does so for no other reason than to build dramatic suspense.

Anyway.

The Doctor and Susan gain entry to the lab by climbing up a drainpipe into the sink, and there our four heroes are reunited. As they explore the lab, the Doctor finds Farrow's notes, on which are written the formula for DN6, and he deduces that they've stumbled into the testing stages of an extremely lethal pesticide.

They decide they need to do something about the danger the pesticide poses, so they lift a phone off its receiver by wedging a pair of corks underneath it. This connects them to the village switchboard operator, but they're unable to make themselves understood to her because their shrunken vocal cords mean their voices are pitched too high for normal-sized humans to understand. So instead they turn on a Bunsen burner and position an aerosol can in front of it, hoping that it will explode and set the lab on fire.

Meanwhile, Smithers has come across Farrow's notes in the lab, and he realises the real reason Forester murdered Farrow. Seeing his plan unravel, Forester draws his gun on Smithers, but before he can take action, the aerosol can explodes, blinding him. It's at that moment that the village constable arrives--the village switchboard is also the village constabulary, and when strange calls from Farrow's house arranged the switchboard operator's suspicions, she sent the village constable (her husband) round to check up on Mr. Farrow. The constable arrests both men.

(If the idea of the village switchboard and the village constabulary being in the same room seems too trite and cliche, bear in mind that in the village where my dad grew up, the village post office was my grandparents' living room.)

By now, the team have escaped back down the garden to the TARDIS, though Barbara is near death and finally explains what her problem is. But as soon as they're back inside and dematerialised, the Doctor is able to restore everyone to their normal size. This reduces the contamination in Barbara's bloodstream to a minimal amount, and she recovers instantly.

What Lisa thought: We both really liked this one. The Farrow-Forester-Smithers plot had a very period feel to it--it was more distinctively 1960s than any other black and white Who I can think of; the fact that the guest characters had no interaction with the regular cast gave it a feel like a 60s anthology show--The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits. The fact that the guest plot had absolutely no science fiction elements was also a good choice; the whole thing was a very atmospheric change of pace.

The next story is "The Dalek Invasion of Earth"

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