Doctor Who: Series 10, Episodes 5-8 – “Carnival of Monsters” (1973)

This falls into the weird-but-fun category, in my opinion one of the most entertaining stories of the Third Doctor era.  It’s creatively written with amusing visuals and a pretty good showing from our central heroes – quite a bit to like (premise spoilers.)

When the Third Doctor and Jo land on a 1920s-era passenger ship, the Doctor is convinced not all is as it seems.  His spidey senses (timey senses?) soon prove to be right on the money, since it’s only a matter of time before a dinosaur rises out of the ocean, everything goes crazy, and then every passenger except the Doctor and Jo “resets” as if nothing happened.  They’re caught in a repeating cycle with someone above pulling the strings, and team TARDIS sets out to investigate where they really are.

I just enjoy this story so much.  Sure, it has some pretty cheesy elements and the visual effects are very, “Well, they tried,” but there’s also really neat stuff going on.  We’ve got time loops, anachronisms, carnival barkers in space, and quite possibly the tiniest TARDIS ever (not sure if it beats out the miniaturized TARDIS in “Planet of Giants,” but it’s definitely smaller than the one in “Flatline.”)  The serial has a lot of fun playing around with time, space, and size, and it puts its own mark on the perennial “intergalactic sideshow” idea.

I love how vindicated the Doctor is when everything goes all insane and sci-fi.  His unspoken “I told you so!” is so Three, and really, this is a common trait for the Doctor in any incarnation.  You know he’s never really going to be content just hobnobbing on a ship with some toffs.  Save the cocktails and civil chatter; give him a dinosaur at the portside!  The serial gives him good mechanical/science stuff to work with, which is right in his wheelhouse, along with semi-hostile aliens to outwit, puzzles to solve, and ravenous monsters to outrun.

Jo isn’t among my list of top-tier companions, but whenever I rewatch one of her stories, I’m reminded of how much I like her.  Here, she displays some fine nerve and quick thinking in a jam, and I’m so charmed by her relationship with the Doctor.  I love the beginning of the serial, where he’s convinced they’re not really on a ship and she teases him about it.  Even though he of course turns out to be right, you can’t go wrong with Jo making fun of the Doctor for thinking the crated chickens in the cargo hold might be the dominant lifeform on the planet.

The alien carnival barkers themselves are a little over-the-top (and their costumes are so goofy,) especially next to the stick-in-the-mud Minorans.  There’s also an alien coup d’état that feels kind of generic.  I like the general conflict between the barkers and the Minorans, with the formerly-isolationist planet starting to open its borders and some being wary of that, but I don’t really need the attempted uprising part.  Still, since this plot takes place almost entirely separate from the Doctor and Jo, at least it moves along at a decent pace and has characters that hold the attention fairly well.  And besides, there’s enough cool stuff going on elsewhere to keep me entertained throughout.