Doctor Who: Series 11, Episodes 1-4 – “The Time Warrior” (1973)

*Premise spoilers*

The start of the Third Doctor’s final season and the first story to feature Sarah Jane, not to mention the debut of one of the series’ most well-known aliens. All that is enough to make it stand out, but it also has a really fun story to boot. All in all, a definite win!

The Brigadier calls in the Third Doctor to investigate the disappearance of several prominent scientists. Of course, the Doctor is on the case, along with the ambitious young journalist Sarah Jane. When Sarah Jane pokes her nose in as the Doctor is following a very particular lead, both end up in the Middle Ages, where a stranded Sontaran warrior named Linx has been abducting people out of time in order to find a way back home.

So much to love here. Despite the presence of only one Sontaran in the whole story, our favorite murderous potato-heads already demonstrate a lot of their chief characteristics. This story introduces the basics of the warmongering clone race, including their baton gun things, their use of hypnotic slaves, their probic vent, and their confusion at a species having two genders. Linx himself is a good baddie, both cunning and callous, and pairing him up with the brutish Irongron is a fine narrative move.

An alien from an advanced species stuck in the past and stealing scientists from the future is a great premise that offers up plenty of possibilities in the story. I like how Linx wins over Irongron and his rabble with the promise of superior weapons, and even if it’s kind of crazy that he can manage time-displacement technology on his own but needs scientists from the ‘70s to get his spaceship working, I like that he’s marooned and is forced to rely on humans to get off Earth—the fact that he has so much contempt for us as a species just makes it better.

Sarah Jane is a lot of fun in her first showing. I’m a fan of stowaway-companion beginnings, intentional or otherwise, and here, I especially like that Sarah Jane spends the first part of her time in the Middle Ages separated from the Doctor, without any idea of where or when she is. Given the limited information she has, she makes a pretty reasonable conjecture about her whereabouts, and she later has an amusing undercover operation in which she tries to introduce feminism to a kitchen wench.

The Doctor’s not too shabby either. It’s a little annoying that the show felt the need to make him a little more overtly paternalistic to contrast with Sarah Jane’s feminism (after Three’s regeneration into Four, Harry had to be the one to take that hit,) but it only comes up sparingly, and the rest of the time, he’s up to his usual Doctory stuff. In this story, he’s particularly on fire with the clever plans—I love his scheme to bolster Edward’s forces, and he’s great fun impersonating a robot suit of armor.

Doctor Who: Series 9, Episodes 15-20 – “The Mutants” (1972)

An intriguing serial that, like a number of Third Doctor stories, probably gets a little heavy-handed with the real-world parallels but is still a creative yarn with a worthwhile message.  The show offers up an interesting alien world/culture here that I like exploring.

This is the period of the show where the Third Doctor is still exiled on Earth but the Time Lords remote-fly the TARDIS on occasion to send him and Jo on assignments for them.  In this case, they’re dropped into a diplomatic mission to deliver an important message on the planet Solos, bearing a complicated message-containing device that will only open for the person for whom the message is intended (not that the Time Lords have told our heroes who that is, since they’re logical like that.)  However, upon arrival, the Doctor and Jo find Solos on the brink of rebellion.  A team from the Earth Empire has been subjugating the locals with extreme prejudice, and the Solonians have been beset with a mysterious rash of cellular mutations that may be a result of the humans’ experiments on Solos’s atmosphere.

This is far from the first or last story featuring human colonizers on an alien world, but I really enjoy how this one takes advantage of the creative potential of what that might look like.  Not the power-mad Earth Marshal who views all Solonians as inferior and the mutants as a plague on the planet—that was a given, obviously—but the details of how humans get by trying to form a vastly-different planet to their will.  The surface of Solos is toxic for humans and they require specialized protective gear for long trips away from their underground base, and their ignorant meddling with Solos’s atmosphere is a bullheaded attempt to make the planet more hospitable for humans, the Solonians be damned.

The Solonians themselves, and their planet, also display some inventive storytelling on the show’s part.  I love the idea of a planet with an extraordinarily long orbit resulting in centuries-long seasons (Westeros, eat your heart out,) and the story nicely examines the sort of impact this orbit might have on the indigenous population.  This is one advantage, I think, of having longer serials.  While six- and seven-parters can drag from a narrative perspective, the extra episodes do give the story breathing space to explore more creative possibilities within the worlds and societies the show creates.

Jo is fine if unremarkable here.  Even though it hasn’t been too long since I rewatched this story, not much stands out on her side of things, as either a big win or a major misfire.  Her biggest contribution here is probably the connection she develops with Solonian leader Ky.  While it starts as something of a hostage situation (because of course it does,) she keeps a clear enough head to recognize the complexity of the dynamics here, and her insistence on Ky’s value is an early counteract to the Marshal’s insistence that Ky is nothing but a dangerous insurgent.  The Doctor gets a lot more to do.  From the jump, the human scientific expert sees the Doctor’s incredible knowledge and the Marshal looks to exploit that intelligence to bring his plans to fruition, putting the Doctor in the tricky position of working out scientific saves from inside the belly of the beast.  Bonus points for deciphering the glyphs on some ancient tablets—I always love when the show delves into a planet’s long-forgotten history.

Doctor Who: Series 10, Episodes 21-26 – “The Green Death” (1973)

*End-of-serial spoilers.*

There are several big environmental-themed serials during Three’s tenure, but this is the most overt, I’d say.  It can be decidedly heavy-handed, but it’s also entertaining and fun with some good scares and strong character moments.

In the Welsh mining village of Llanfairfach, a clash has broken out between the miners, the corporation Global Chemicals, and a group of environmental activists.  Nothing unusual or alien about that—until, that is, the body of a dead miner is recovered and it’s glowing bright green.  That gets the attention of UNIT.  The Brigadier heads down with Jo, who’s eager to do her bit to fight corporate polluters, while the Third Doctor is roped in more unwillingly.  However, the glowing body is just the tip of the iceberg, and things get wilder and weirder as they go on.

Good gracious, where to start?  We’ve got an artist/scientist/activist colony, horrifying giant maggots, “the boss,” undercover agents, mind control, disguises, underground adventures, and more.  I really enjoy this story.  Even though the basics of it are very familiar— evil company does something terrible Because Greed, allowing nasty creatures to take a foothold and nearly take over the earth—the execution is well-done.  The side characters are engaging, the monsters are disgusting, and the overall progression of the story just feels tight.

All kinds of good stuff for the Doctor, Jo, and the UNIT crew, both in terms of contributing to the adventure and just generally fun moments.  The whole Metebelis Three thing is a hoot, as is the Brigadier’s ongoing reactions to Professor Jones’s fungus experiments.  We don’t often see Three going the full-on disguise route, but he pulls it off twice in this serial, to great entertainment value both times—not to mention some Venusian akido and stumping a hyperintelligent computer with brain teasers.  Yates is the man throughout much of his time inside Global Chemicals, and I get a kick out of Benton working with the Doctor to save the day at the end.  In many stories, it seems that Jo causes more trouble than solutions, and she does get into some unfortunate scrapes here, but it’s always in aid of trying to do some important, and once she does get in trouble, she manages to keep her head and press on even though she’s scared.

This is Jo’s last serial, and while the opening—with her and the Doctor talking at cross purposes about environmental activism and Metebelis Three respectively, signifying a growing disconnect between them— is way too on-the-nose, I ultimately think they set up her parting fairly well.  This is probably the best of the “companion decides to stay behind to get married” storylines the show has done, because the groundwork for Jo/Professor Jones is nicely laid.  They’ve got a little charged bickering, some bonding, and a near-death experience or two:  the perfect recipe for love, right?  At any rate, the relationship doesn’t feel like it comes out of nowhere, and the goodbye between the Doctor and Jo is lovely, sweet, and sad.  I know not all the classic Who companion exits are winners, but for the most part, I prefer them to the often-overwrought endings we can get in new Who—sometimes, less is definitely more.