Galaxy 4

Galaxy 4, directed by Derek Martinus and written by William Emms, is a thing of averageness. Its plot is pretty straightforward.

The TARDIS lands on a planet that - it turns out - is dying. On that planet are two crashed ships. Aboard one are the Drahvins, led by Maaga (Stephanie Bidmead), a race of warrior women. On the other are the Rills, accompanied by their cute metallic servants named 'Chumblies' by Vicki. The Drahvins and Rills are at loggerheads. The Drahvins claim that the Rills shot them down and then killed one of them. But, for most of the first two episodes, we only hear the story of what happen from Maaga.

The problem with Galaxy 4 is that Maaga's nastiness becomes a bit too obvious a bit too quickly and as we find out more about the Rills the story falls into a pretty obvious parable about how the beautiful is not necessarily the good and the ugly are not necessarily bad. I suppose the main crime of Galaxy 4 is that it is just all a little obvious.

And that there's a lot of walking backward and forwards. It's a story that longs for corridors for people to wander up and down.

Again though it is hard to fairly judge Galaxy 4 as three of its four episodes are missing from the archive. It was four but episode three aka Airlock was found in December 2011.

Having that one episode did change my opinion of the story compared with my last 're-listen'. It certainly makes Stephanie Bidmead's performance as Maaga more three-dimensional than the audio-only might make you think. She gets a good speech, delivered almost down the barrel of the camera, which twists into something dark and sadistic. It does make me want to see more of the performances and again hammers home how hard it is to get a genuine view on a Doctor Who story when it is either entirely or mostly missing.

I flag this up now as we're heading into the parts of Doctor Who where there is more missing than exists. The re-discovery of The Enemy of the World and The Web of Fear is a case in point. Seeing The Enemy of the World made me love it far more than I ever did hearing it on audio only and not just because Patrick Troughton's performances are a glorious thing to see.

We finally also get to see what a Rill looks like. Sort of. But if we could find Episode 4 too so we can see them in their full glory because what is hinted at is a sort of be-fanged Jabba the Hutt, which is pretty good on a Doctor Who budget.

The Chumblies, on the other hand, are too cute and too slow for their own good. They are, at points, supposed to be threatening but it feels like being threatened by a passive-aggressive marshmallow as opposed to a 'new Dalek', which is what one fears were being aimed for here.

I don't think any of the main cast set the screen on fire at any point. Vicki isn't at her best here, Stephen is forced into the solid and staunch role vacated by Ian. The Doctor gets one or two moments but there's a bit too much aimless standing around for my liking, although I do love the fact that he completely and utterly fails to sabotage the Rill breathing apparatus despite a lot of semi-convincing faffing about.

So I'm going to stop here. There's not much else I can think of to say about this story, which is already evaporating from my memory. In its current state it is neither bad nor good but the existing episode three hints at a bit more depth, at least in performance, than I had previously noted.

Note: As @thejimsmith reminded me on Twitter just now one piece of excellence in Airlock is the flashback as the Rills tell their story of what happened on landing. It's done POV, which is unusual and effective. Particularly as we see Maaga's ruthless dispatching of one of her own soldiers.

The Time Meddler

The Time Meddler is the final story of the second series of Doctor Who. Broadcast between the 3rd and 24th July 1965 it sees the full debut of Steven Taylor (Peter Purves) as a member of the TARDIS crew. It's not quite clear how he made it aboard but somehow, before the TARDIS dematerialized, Steven and Hi-Fi managed to get in, past Vicki and the Doctor.

Steven's a little cynical about the TARDIS, to begin with. Refusing to believe it is a time machine, even whilst confessing it is 'a little unusual'. Hartnell's interaction with Steven is refreshingly sarcastic. The little speech that ends '...that is a chair with a panda on it. Shear poetry dear boy." is a lovely bit of stuff from Hartnell. Hartnell's pretty good throughout this story actually bouncing off the various guest actors well, particularly Peter Butterworth's Monk. Although he blatantly gets a week off as in episode two we only hear the First Doctor but we never see him.

The TARDIS appears to have landed in 10th century Britain, although Steven remains cynical. Particularly when, after the Doctor conveniently arranges splitting up his party, he finds a wrist-watch on the floor. How can you get a wrist-watch in 10th century Britain? And who is the mysterious Monk watching from the clifftop and then lurking about in a comically sinister manner?

This story gets two mightily fine cliffhangers. The first is at the end of episode one when the Doctor reveals the phonograph & gets captured. There are modern appliances here in 11th century Britain. And the Monk seems to be in charge of them.

It becomes clear that the Monk is up to no good over the course of the story and that he is some kind of time traveler, perhaps one known to - or who knows of - The Doctor. It is the cliffhanger to Episode Three that is the best though. When Vicki and Steven enter a sarcophagus and find themselves aboard another TARDIS. Not only is the Monk a time-traveler. He has a TARDIS. This Monk is from the Doctor's home. A home that is still unnamed here. Nor are his race named. But still, that moment when they step aboard another TARDIS opens whole new vistas for the series and - perhaps? - takes the first little chip out of the question mark in Doctor Who?

The Monk is trying to change history. He seems to have a history of minor temporal crimes. Stealing art here. Playing little tricks there. Stirring the pot without trying to destroy the universe. In that sense, The Monk is no prototype for The Master. He's more the Doctor himself let off the leash. His plan in this story, which we shouldn't forget would involve the mass murder of Vikings, sounds like the biggest thing he's ever attempted. The first step in a plan designed to advance Earth's history so that Hamlet can be written by Shakespeare for television, not the stage. Although I think there's more too it than that. The Doctor calls him a Time Meddler, almost as if that is actually the title of a particular type of criminal from his home planet.

Peter Butterworth is excellent as The Monk. He's perfectly cast for mischief rather than nastiness. With The Master/Missy dominating the Doctor Who bad Time Lord list in New Doctor Who you do wonder whether the series could find a place for the (Meddling) Monk now. After all, The Doctor is more like the (Meddling) Monk now than he was in Hartnell's day. Big Finish has bought him back, played by Graeme Garden initially and then Rufus Hound, and I recommend you give them a listen if you get a moment. But alas I suspect the (Meddling) Monk has gone along with The Rani drowned in the Master/Missy shadow. But I digress.

The odd thing about this story is its tone. It is mainly pretty comedic but there's violence here. And then there's the rape of Edith (Aletha Charlton). Yes, the rape doesn't happen on screen. Obviously. But that is what is implied both just before and afterward. It's all a bit Game of Thrones. As if we need to establish that we're in a dark past by showing the horror that lurked there in England's green and pleasant land. It's really strangely out of place in the story, particularly as Aletha Charlton and Michael Miller, playing her husband Wulnoth play it really straight. When we see Edith afterward for the first time she is in genuine shock, although this being Doctor Who she seems to recover from her ordeal pretty quickly. It should be noted though that she is keen to be part of hunting down and killing the Vikings that did this to her.

The Vikings in this story have horned helmets. So I'm saying horned helmets for Viking is historically accurate in the Doctor Who universe modern historical belief be damned. This is Doctor Who. When the legend becomes fact. Show the legend.* Except the two Vikings -Ulf (Norman Hartley) and Sven (Donald Anderson - are a particularly cowardly pair by Viking standards.

Vicki and Steven get stuck together for most of the story and there's some nice material for Maureen O'Brien and Peter Purves to play off. It's a good first story for Purves but I do miss Ian and Barbara.

Hartnell is wonderful in this too. It's one of the best stories of the Hartnell era. You could definitely drop this in for people to watch who aren't fans and they'd probably enjoy it, despite the Edith issue so if you haven't watched it yet give it a go.

*To bend a quote from The Man Who Shot Liberty Vallence

The Chase

I tend to try and be positive when writing my reviews on this blog. Where there is the benefit of the doubt I will find it but I am afraid I find The Chase a tedious mess. For me, it is the worst William Hartnell story of my re-watch so far.

It is not all bad. It really is not. But a lot of it is. Episode 3, for example, is the worst episode of Doctor Who since I began re-watching. I would show a non-Doctor Who fan any episode of The Web Planet rather than the third episode of The Chase, which features awful comedy, terrible direction and comedy Daleks. Terry Nation - and his estate - were (and are) known to frown upon writers who did not take the Daleks seriously but The Chase is a self-penned suicide note to the Daleks as a genuine threat in Doctor Who. From the moment one emerges from the sand - in a nod to the end of The Dalek Invasion of Earth Episode One - making sounds of struggle and effort there's a problem with the Daleks. Add one stumbling and mumbling over its answer to a question and their inability to spot that their First Doctor robot doesn't look anything like the actual Doctor and here we have Daleks as robotic dustbins. One of the Daleks even mysterious throws itself overboard whilst scaring sailors. Whilst another stands and listens to Morton Dill (Peter Purves) rattle on 'amusingly' at the top of the Empire State Building without even apparently considering extermination. Morton Dill wouldn't last five seconds in New Doctor Who.

The plot of The Chase is pretty simple. The clue is in the title. The Daleks have a time-machine. They've tracked down the Doctor on the planet Aridius and try to kill him and the TARDIS crew there but they escape and the rest of the story is the Daleks chasing the TARDIS through time and space. Occasionally the TARDIS lands and tries to shake-off The Daleks before dashing off to the next place. This 'chase' takes in the top of the Empire State Building in 1966, the Mary Celeste, a haunted house in the Festival of Ghana and, finally, the planet Mechanus.

Aridius, which is a classic example of Terry Nation's unsubtle when selecting planet names. It's an arid planet. Therefore it is called Aridius. Except it wasn't arid initially. It was covered with water. Perhaps Aridius means 'Wet Sphere' in Aridian. Who knows. It isn't a big deal but it is one of those Terry Nation habits that just irritates me a wee bit.

The first two episodes are fine. Not the most exciting but reasonable. The third episode, as outlined above, is an utter car crash of awfulness. It's trying to be amusing but isn't. It's just plain stupid. The fourth episode is bizarre. The TARDIS crew themselves never know where they are. They make odd guesses, including the Doctor's really strange suggestion that they are inside the human imagination but it appears to be a castle out of fiction. Frankenstein's Monster is there. Dracula is there. There's a Grey Lady. There are bats. There's thunder. Then the Daleks turn up and start trying to exterminate everything but one of them gets a bit of a battering from the Monster. Whilst it is all a bit...silly...it actually works for me better than Episode Three because the comedy in this episode works. There's a wonderful bit of work from William Hartnell for example when they first come across The Monster and it wakes up.

Then the TARDIS crew dash off and escape. Although they manage to leave Vicki behind. Yes, they leave Vicki behind. It just seems so unlikely, even in the rush and clutter of that fourth episode. Fortunately Vicki - although she's not at her best in this story - is made of stern stuff so she sneaks aboard the Dalek ship as it follows the Doctor. The Daleks are, of course, too stupid to notice. Even as she tries to contact the TARDIS via some kind of communications device.

Episode Four introduces us to the robot First Doctor designed by the Daleks to infiltrate the TARDIS crew and kill them. Alas in a bizarre directorial decision the robot looks nothing like William Hartnell, which isn't surprising as he's played by Edmund Warwick. Then they dub Hartnell's voice over him, before cutting Hartnell in at the beginning of Episode Five. Thereafter they use Hartnell or Warwick pretty arbitrarily. If I'm generous perhaps they thought that the use of Hartnell himself occasionally would make us forget that Edmund Warwick wasn't the real Doctor but fundamentally it doesn't work. At all.

By this time I was losing the will to watch more but fortunately, Episode Six introduces us to the Mechanoids, which are huge unwieldy octagonal golf-balls who have built a huge city, which looks lovely in model form and await human settlers. More importantly, we get introduced to Steven Taylor (Peter Purves) and his mascot Hi-Fi, who is a toy panda. Steven has been trapped on Mechanus for two years but it doesn't take long for everyone to escape, the Doctor to start the process of burning down the city and an epic battle between the Mechanoids and the Daleks. The result the city is totally destroyed and the TARDIS crew escapes losing Steven in the process when he goes back for Hi-Fi.

Then we come to the best moment in the story. Ian and Barbara's departure. Yes, finally they're leaving using the Dalek time machine to go back to London, 1965. The Doctor is genuinely fuming and their argument along with Vicki talking him into letting them go is really well played. The fact that, apparently, Hartnell was genuinely upset at their departure definitely shows. Then we get a lovely bit of stuff as Barbara and Ian find themselves back in London before cutting back to the Doctor watching them. His, 'I shall miss them', seems very heartfelt. And thus it ends.

Thank heavens.

This has been a long blog by my standards. I think that's because I really don't like The Chase except for the fine departure of Ian and Barbara. I think Terry Nation's writing isn't great, the direction is careless and the Doctor robot is rubbish. As is Episode Three.

So I go back to my original thoughts. The worst Hartnell story so far. Alas.

The Space Museum

Like The Web Planet, but for different reasons, The Space Museum is a rather unloved thing. It also suffers from a similar problem to An Unearthly Child, which is that its first episode is unsettling and mysterious and ends with a fantastic cliffhanger. The other three episodes are considered therefore to be something of a letdown.

Rob Shearman does a fine job of defending aspects of The Space Museum in a DVD extra so I'm going to try and avoid making too many similar points to him. Mainly because he'll make those points better than I.

Unusually for a story from the dim and distant, black and white Doctor Who past it actually plays with time travel in a quite Moffatesque way. This is definitely a timey-wimey story and part of the story's glory is that the TARDIS crew are never quite sure if they're doing anything to rescue themselves from the fate that they see at the end of episode one. There are lots of arguments about whether it is better to do nothing or do something. Or if their fate can be avoided at all. And as we head into the conclusion of the final episode it does look like their four separate journeys have come together to ensure their doom. But it hasn't. Their interaction with others means that they come through unscathed. They're saved by others.

The TARDIS crew's arrival at the Space Museum, which is on the planet Xeros, is an accident. Xeros is part of the Morok Empire. Its citizens are slaves. Raised to adulthood and then shipped off to serve the Moroks.

The Moroks are a pretty pathetic bunch if truth be told. The Governor, Lobos (Richard Shaw), is a whinging dullard. Bored with his job Lobos longs to go home. Even though their home is also dull. The Morok Empire may have been great once but now it seems to have slipped into some kind of pre-collapse coma. Its soldiers are idiots and cowards. Its Commanders moan about their jobs and blame their underlings for failing to do what they've not been told to do. Its leader is the very definition of the banality of evil. To be honest he's not even evil. He's only obeying orders. He's another soldier doing his duty.

The Xerons themselves are a gang of black jumper wearing, hands-on-hips art students. Well, not art students obviously because they're about to be sent off to be space slaves for the space Empire of the Moroks. But quite frankly they've got the get-up and go of a bunch of office workers on the last working day before Christmas, but without the comedy jumpers. It takes Vicki, who is clearly bored out of her mind, to give them the kick up the arse they so desperately need.

Vicki is great in this story. She starts a revolution.

Which brings me on to a thing. Thinking about this story I realized that what Vicki also starts is a terrible massacre. Once she's broken into the armory and arms have fallen into Xeron hands they go off and raid the Morok barracks. Now based on their shoot to kill policy towards the Moroks we see them kill I don't think they just tied up the troops at the barracks. Every Morok we see after the revolution begins is murdered. So what hope for the Moroks in the barracks?

Obviously, the Moroks aren't nice. They're Imperialists. They invade planets, destroy everything on them, make the survivors slaves and then whack a ruddy great museum on the wreckage. At least the British Empire bought the loot back to London and built a museum there. Can you imagine if we'd built the British Museum on the smoking remains of Mumbai? So the Moroks are nasty but unusually the Doctor doesn't really do anything to stop the massacre. Or even consider it.

He does raise a question to Tor (Jeremy Bulloch) who, whilst taking a break from standing with his hands on his hips, is emptying the space museum of its exhibits and having them destroyed. He wants only creations of Xeros on Xeros, which sounds like the tiniest seed of fascism. The Doctor, at least, says 'don't abandon science altogether', which gets shrugged off by Tor. Have the TARDIS team helped replace a bunch of imperialists with a fascist anti-technology regime? Will Tor let this power go to his head?

Perhaps I'm taking it all far too seriously.

I think The Space Museum has some great comedy in it. I especially love the murder of Barbara's cardigan and the really rubbish Morok soldier - played by Peter Diamond who we last saw as Delos in The Romans - but there's also a delightful scene when the Doctor is being questioned by Lobos. Lobos is showing off about his machine, which will reveal what the Doctor is thinking by reading his mind. The Doctor proceeds to pop this bubble with a series of images that are clearly NOT what he's already thinking. The images are a bit odd it must be said but it is rather funny.

I wonder how much better this story would have been if a director like Christopher Barry had been allowed to run with it rather than Mervyn Pinfield. It does feel like it was meant to be funnier, despite my points about how murderous it might actually be.

So I rather enjoyed this unloved thing. Its four episodes flew by. I chuckled a few times it is true but I wonder if I was meant to chuckle more.

Hartnell gets some good moments in this story, as does Ian who gets to be an action hero again. Poor Barbara is a bit let down by events and her cardigan seems to be more important to the plot than her at points but Vicki is a joy.

And it ends with a cliffhanger into the next story. Never mind the Moroks. Here's the Daleks.*





*Yes, that is a painful, painful 'joke'. Sorry.

The Crusade

The Crusade is the first story since Marco Polo which presents us with the missing episode problem. Only episodes 1 and 3 exist in the archive. So I went with the audio versions of episodes 2 and 4 that are on the Lost in Time Boxed Set.*

The Crusade is an historical. The TARDIS team arrives in the Holy Land as Richard the Lionheart (Julian Glover) and Saladin (Bernard Kay) are in something of a stalemate. War - or more war if we're accurate - is coming but Richard is tired and is looking for a way out. Into this adventure, the Doctor and friends stumble. Immediately Barbara gets grabbed by the villainous El Akir (Walter Randall). She manages to make an enemy of El Akir by pretending to be Joanna, Richard's sister. El Akir is humiliated before Saladin and wants to make Barbara one of his harem. Basically, El Akir is a horrible creep.

El Akir is pretty much the only genuinely nasty person in the story. He's been horrible before the Doctor turns up and would probably have been horrible if the Doctor hadn't turned up. We find this out when we meet Haroun (George Little) and his daughter Fatima (Viviane Sorel). Haroun's eldest daughter was taken by El Akir for his harem and then killed his wife and son. Before burning his house down.

Everyone else seems to be operating from the best of motives. Even the Earl of Leicester (John Bay) who becomes something of a thorn in the Doctor's side is a man trying to do the right thing for his King. He's a warrior. There is a fantastic scene in Episode 3 where the Doctor and Leicester go head to head over the King's plan to bring a peaceful end to this long, drawn-out war in the Middle-East by marrying Joanna (Jean Marsh) off to Saladin's brother Saphadin (Roger Avon). It's fantastically written, sounding like something from a Shakespeare history play but really well-acted by Hartnell and Bay. You almost find yourself sympathizing with Leicester as the Doctor piles on the insults. Leicester's riposte to the Doctor, pointing out that once the talking stops it is the soldiers that have to go and die. In some respects, it is a bit of a counter-argument to the Doctor's magnificent speech in The Zygon Inversion but I'm probably reaching a bit there.

As you'll have noted a lot of the actors playing Saracens have very English names. And yes, this involves some blacking up, which to modern eyes is uncomfortable but no one - with the possible exception of Ibrahim (Tutte Lemkow) who sounds a bit like he's doing a comedy Middle-Eastern voice but as the episode, he appears in is missing it is perhaps unfair to make that definitive judgment - plays their parts as anything less than sincere. Indeed Bernard Kay's Saladin is brilliantly played. You get a real sense of the great man here. But still, it is still a bit odd for the modern television viewer.

The strength of The Crusade is in David Whitaker's writing, which gives every performer a chance to shine. Julian Glover and Jean Marsh give fantastic performances. It shows that the quality of the writing helps raise the quality of performance. It's also well-directed by Douglas Camfield who manages to make something televisual out of a script a number of directors might have made very theatrical on screen.

Those people who have doubts about Hartnell's performance as the Doctor because they've heard tales of Billy fluffs should watch this story to show what he's capable of when given good dialogue with good actors to playoff. This is also Maureen O'Brien's best story so far too. Even if she is incredibly unconvincing as a boy - a problem that often crops up in cross-dressing Shakespeare plays now actresses play the women's parts as opposed to young boys as was traditional. She also slips in a line in her native Liverpudlian accent, which is very funny. William Russell is staunch and solid, which sounds like damning with faint praise but he's so consistent that you can easily take him for granted. Jacqueline Hill is magnificent as usual. Why she never comes up in the list of favorite companions more often is beyond me. She's strong, brave and moral. If the show has any kind of moral centre at this point it isn't the Doctor it is Barbara.

So to cut a long ramble short this is a rather good story, which I'd love to see in its entirety. A great script. excellently directed and well-acted by almost everyone concerned. Watch it if you get a chance.




*The quality of the print of The Crusade Episode One on the Lost in Time Box Set is very poor btw. There is perhaps an argument that The Crusade deserves a DVD release of its own. Cleaned up. But I suspect the current mob running the BBC's DVD team won't bother, which is a shame. Unless the missing episodes turn up somewhere.

The Web Planet

I'm going to put my cards on the table straight away here. I love The Web Planet. I love it for daring to do something that, even now, Doctor Who would struggle to do convincingly: put the TARDIS crew down on an alien planet populated by giant insects. This is a genuine alien planet. These are aliens. They behave like aliens. They talk like aliens. They have cultures.

Yes, it's too long. But so are a lot of Doctor Who stories. Yes, Richard Martin's direction can be a bit careless but he does a fantastic job of wrangling actors and insects in the main. Yes, with modern eyes it looks ridiculous. I explained this story to my workmate Lucy, who thought it sounded silly. When I showed her a clip she said it was even worse than she guessed. I know The Web Planet isn't the first story I'd reach for if I was trying to convince a non-Doctor Who fan of the glories of 1960s Doctor Who but because of that you miss out on one the best Doctor Who stories ever made.

There. I've said it.

Yes, suspending your disbelief can be difficult but if you do you can wallow in one of the most ambitious Doctor Who stories ever made. It reaches,  from the moment you step onto Vortis, for an atmosphere of genuine alienness. It's not just the impressive set but the strange flaring blurred camera work, which is deliberate. It's not just that everyone except the main TARDIS crew is effectively a giant insect or the weird soundscape. It's not just the movement of the actors, especially those playing the Menoptra, is inhuman or that those aliens that speak don't speak like human beings. They have rhythms of their own or, in the case of the Optera they speak in metaphor. It's all of these things coming together.

It's also a surprisingly dark story too. The end of Part Two as Barbara witnesses the Zarbi take off a Menoptra's wings is genuinely quite horrifying even if we don't see it happening. It's Barbara's horrified reaction - and Jacqueline Hill is brilliant here again - that tells us that what we're seeing is bad. The Zarbi deliberately cripple the Menoptra as punishment.

There's Vrestin's (Roselyn de Winter) conversation with Ian. When Ian asks what happened to the rest of the landing party her reaction both in terms of body language and the sound of real distress she gives off is really quite moving.

Then there's the nasty death of Nemini, the Optera who sacrifices herself to save Ian, Vrestin and other Optera from death by acid. It's a really unpleasant death but I suspect a lot of people find it difficult to take seriously because of the slightly comic nature of the Optera. For me though that made it worse. The Optera are harmless bouncing bugs. They'd be rather cute if it wasn't for their oddly metaphorical way of speaking and their leaders growling tones. And Nemini dies in that terrible way.

The Optera are descendants of the Menoptra who fled underground when the Animus arrived on Vortis. They bounce a lot and I've head-canoned this as their race memory of the moment just before their flying ancestors took off. It's a half-remembered attempt at flight.

The Animus is the story's big bad. It's a sort of tentacled parasite that speaks to people with a creepy voice, which occasionally comes via a large tube. At least when talking to The Doctor. It's not the most impressive effect, which the Doctor himself comments on. He refers to it as a 'hair-dryer thing'. It seems to have landed on Vortis, grown and taken mental control of the Zarbi (who are otherwise harmless and a little stupid) and then sucked the life out of the planet. It has plans to take over the Earth too in the end. It dwells inside something called the Carsinome so I'm assuming the Animus is a kind of cancerous parasite in writer Bill Strutton's mind.

The final sequence as everyone comes together to finally try and destroy the Animus is a bit confusing as people flail around confused by the light, the Animus's mental powers, and its tentacles but Barbara saves the day. I notice William Hartnell's acting at this point, when he is trapped in the Animus's tentacles, could be described as 'minimalist'. If we're being kind. And I am.

A brief sideline here to mention the First Doctor's ring, which seems to be a proto-sonic screwdriver. Capable of doing whatever a writer requires it to do for plot purposes. I suppose if the Doctor can have sonic sunglasses then a sonic ring isn't out of the question.

If you haven't watched this story you've also missed a rather brilliant speech from Jolyon Booth, as Menoptra Prapillus in Episode Five. It's rather beautiful and delivered as if it is a Shakespearean soliloquy. And I think that's also a key to why I love this story. It's that everyone in it is doing their damned best to treat it with all seriousness. They're either dressed up as giant moths, bugs or ants or interacting with giants moths, bugs and ants but no one is treating it as a joke. It's absolutely serious, which gives it weight.

I should also take a moment to applaud the set design, especially the Temple of Light, which looks amazing both inside and out. The Carcinome too, although obviously drapes at some points looks rather good and - again - feels genuine alien.

And in the end that's why The Web Planet is a work of wonder. It's the only Doctor Who story that genuinely portrays an alien world and alien races that feels genuinely like a 'real' alien world. It reaches for the stars. It's as ambitious as any Doctor Who story will ever be. I suspect you'd struggle to re-make it now even with all the technological advances since 1965. There isn't another story in Doctor Who that ever tries as hard.

It should be applauded for its ambition and for its seriousness. It should be admired for the performances of everyone in it who tries hard to make you forget that you're watching men and women in costumes. It has darkness and majesty. Is there another Doctor Who story out there that would have tried to film the Menoptra swooping into the Crater of Needles and the battle that follows.

I love The Web Planet. I love it a little more each time I watch it too. As I notice new things. So yes, warts and all this is a magnificent piece of Doctor Who.

The Romans

The Romans is a lovely story. It has some tonal oddities. It balances (almost) farce with some genuine moments of darkness. It also features probably the first - and only (?) - comic death in Doctor Who. Poor old Tigellinus.

It is also a rare story that begins with the TARDIS crew having a proper holiday. They've been squatting in a wealthy Roman's villa. This is my own headcanon but if Ian and Barbara weren't an item before The Romans they definitely are by the time it begins. This is the episode to watch if you want to start shipping Ian and Barbara.

Because this is Doctor Who, of course, things have to get exciting. The Doctor and Vicki head off to Rome, discover a corpse and The Doctor gets mistaken for lyre-player Maximus Petullian. Petullian is supposed to be heading to Rome to play for Nero (Derek Francis). Meanwhile, Ian and Barbara get kidnapped by slave-traders, separated and then reunited in Rome. All roads, as the episode title has it, lead to Rome.

Poor old Ian gets the worst of the deal. He becomes a slave-rower on a ship that gets wrecked, threatened with the arena and forced to fight his friend Delos (Peter Diamond) and then has to avoid being captured long enough to be reunited with Barbara.

Meanwhile, Barbara is bought by Tavius (Michael Peake), who is Nero's slave buyer and ends up in Nero's palace as a servant to Poppea (Kay Patrick), the Emperor's wife. Nero falls for Barbara.* And she ends up trying to fend him off. There are some magnificent farcical chase scenes up and down corridors. I should stop here and comment on the excellence of Christopher Barry's direction, which makes the most of limited sets and for once the fight sequences look really good too. This is apparently because Peter Diamond, as well as playing Delos, was also a fight arranger and Barry Jackson who played Ascaris was also a stunt performer.

Ascaris and the Doctor have a rather comic fight, which Jackson, does a fine job of making the whole thing look pretty good, even if it is more farcical than martial.

The fight between Ian and Delos and then with the guards is probably the best fight in the series so far. It doesn't look like actors poking stuff at each other in slow motion. It's pretty fast and fluid.

Indeed so is the whole story. The Doctor and Vicki manage to miss Ian and Barbara during their whole time in Rome, even as they are literally feet apart. Farce requires clockwork precision, and within the limits of a BBC studio. Christopher Barry manages to make it work.

Derek Francis as Nero is delightfully over the top. He is mainly played as vain, foolish and decadent but there is one moment - post the Ian and Delos fight - where he shows a genuine cold-hearted nasty streak. It's the first Doctor Who story where the villains are played more for laughs than a genuine threat. Most of the serious threat comes from minor characters like Poppea, the slave-trader Sevcheria (Derek Sydney) or the Galley Master (Gert Klauber).

To cut this short I love The Romans. It's is an out and out comedy with occasional moments of darkness. My only quibble is the Doctor's apparent pleasure at giving Nero the idea for the Great Fire of Rome was a bit...out of character? But at least it gave us a nice gag in The Fires of Pompeii.

I should mention that Hartnell seems to be having the time of his life in this story. He plays comedy so well and writer Dennis Spooner gives him both action and lines to get his teeth into. It's fun watching the Doctor be Doctor-ish : diving in and running rings - mostly - around those who are trying to make his life difficult.

This is Maureen O'Brien's first 'proper' story and she's rather brilliant. She doesn't have to do the granddaughter stuff so she can watch the Doctor with a certain cynicism. She's got a lightness of touch too, which is perfect for the Romans.

I should note it contains Doctor Who's first deliberate double entendre made joyous by the way Jacqueline Hill plays it.

If you're thinking of dipping your toes into the William Hartnell era this wouldn't be a bad place to start because you can see what Hartnell is capable of when given a good script by a good writer overseen by, probably, the best director of early Doctor Who Christopher Barry. It's fun. It's dark. The main TARDIS team gets to be rather good. It feels rather like a New Doctor Who story in many ways.



*Jacqueline Hill is rather stunning here. I know that's a terrible male thing to say. But I've said it.