Doctor Who: Series 6, Episodes 1-5 – “The Dominators” (1968)

Honestly, I love pretty much the whole of series 6. Two, Jamie, and Zoe are one of my favorite TARDIS teams, and the dynamic between them is always great. Even if this serial is slow-moving at times, I enjoy it a lot.

A relaxing holiday never turns out as planned where the TARDIS is concerned, and the Second Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe are dropped into quite the situation on the planet Dulkis. The Dominators have landed there too, on a radioactive island they intend to harness for their own purposes. Given their name, they’re inclined to do this in the most destructive way possible, with no regard for the population of the planet.

This has all the hallmarks of a good Two era serial. Entertaining oneshot characters? Check, particularly in the form of a dodgy tour guide and a university professor who’s brought a couple students to study the decay of the island’s radiation. Creative but laughably cheap baddies that are probably made of cardboard and tin foil? Check, with the worker robots the Dominators call Quarks. Padding out the five-episode story by having various subsets of our heroes take turns getting captured by the bad guys? Check, check, and check! It’s fun, there’s a museum dedicated to “ancient warfare” (i.e. laser weapons) on a now-peaceful planet, and there’s a giant drill burrowing to the planet’s core. What’s not to like?

While I like the overall plot, my favorite part is the interactions between the Doctor and his companions. This is often true when it comes to both classic and new Who—even the most interesting stories and scariest aliens usually comes second to good Doctor/companion stuff. And when you have Two, Jamie, and Zoe, you really can’t go wrong! They’re such a fun, chaotic trio who are endlessly entertaining.

In this story, a lot of that entertainment comes from the revolving door of our heroes getting captured by the Dominators and either escaping or being rescued by the others. I especially like the Dominators testing the Doctor and Jamie to assess their physical and mental abilities (and the Doctor trying to game said testing!) We also have Zoe caught in a grueling forced labor situation with some of the Dulcians, and Jamie getting trapped but moving heaven and earth to make it back to the Doctor and Zoe. Ah, bless them!

Doctor Who: Series 4, Episodes 9-14 – “The Power of the Daleks” (1966)

For whatever reason, it seems like post-regeneration stories are often just okay. I suppose it’s at least something to do with the attention poured into introducing and establishing the new Doctor—with that as the major focus, the plot can be something of an afterthought (especially if new companions are being introduced as well.) I often look back on these episodes favorably, but it’s almost invariably because of the new-Doctor stuff rather than any particular narrative ingenuity. But this serial? The first post-regeneration story ever? This is one that fires on all cylinders.

The First Doctor has just regenerated into his second iteration, and Ben and Polly don’t know what to think or believe. Can they trust this apparent stranger who’s suddenly in the TARDIS, one who looks and acts so different from “their” Doctor? It’s a decision they have to wrestle with on the go, because it’s not the only issue they have to deal with. There’s also the small matter of landing on a sulfurous colony planet, discovering a dead body, the Doctor being mistaken for an examiner from Earth, and a colony scientist who’s made a very deadly discovery. On the latter front, the new Doctor comes face-to-face once more with an old enemy (come on, you’ve seen the title of this post—you know it’s the Daleks.)

Since One-to-Two was the show’s very first regeneration, there was more pressure on the show to get it right than probably any other time in Who history (although debuting Nine to kickstart new Who and the Twelve-to-Thirteen regeneration also carried especially big stakes.) No doubt everyone involved knew that, if they didn’t pull this off, the wild ride of the last three+ seasons was going to be over, and so they went for broke. A solid chunk of the first episode is spent with Ben and Polly—and Two, honestly—grappling with the ramifications of the regeneration, and it’s a recurring subject that they keep coming back to over the course of the story. Ben and Polly serve as our audience stand-ins, just as confused and unsure about this new guy as the kids at home in 1966 no doubt were.

However, we then have the Second Doctor, who I think would be pretty difficult not to love. Even though the episodes themselves are lost and we only have audio tracks synced to animated recreations of the episodes, Two makes the force of his impish personality known quickly. I love the little details of him testing out his new body, he’s just as savvy as he ever was even though his new incarnation is prone to strategically play the fool, and he creates his own pre-screwdriver “sonic.”

Putting him up against the Daleks for his first story is a strong tactical move, one that pays off well. This is an excellent Dalek story, with a lot of creepy atmosphere, good twists and turns, and an important, messy human element that kicks the whole thing up a notch. The plot is filled with great notes of interest, and this story gave us the unnerving image of a Dalek “obediently” serving tea decades before “Victory of the Daleks” did it.

As for Ben and Polly, despite both of them disappearing for an episode (the only way actors got any vacation time during the fast pace of early Who’s shooting schedule,) they’re still used well. Having two of them allows us a chance to see two different perspectives on the regeneration, which brings some nice balance to the story, and whatever reservations they have, they still pull their weight when it counts. They investigate, they sneak around, they get captured, they escape—you know, classic companion moves.

Doctor Who: Series 5, Episodes 29-35 – “Fury from the Deep” (1968)

*End-of-serial spoilers.*

Make no mistake:  this serial is ridiculous.  Absolutely and entirely.  And yet, it kind of works.  Strange as it may sound, I think these episodes may benefit from the fact that they’re missing.  Operating on a late-60s BBC effects budget, there’s no way that “hypnotic killer seaweed” looked anything but ludicrous, and while the idea is still silly in animated reconstruction format, I think not physically seeing it in “action” helps one to get more invested in what the story has to offer.

There’s trouble brewing at a major gas refinery—the equipment is acting up, they’ve lost contact with several of the rigs, and some workers claim they can hear a mysterious heartbeat in the pipes.  The Second Doctor, Jamie, and Victoria investigate the strange goings-on, despite the best efforts of the head honcho who insists that everything is normal.  When people start falling ill and then acting bizarrely out-of-character, however, it’s up to our heroes to convince everyone that more than just the refinery is at stake.

This is Victoria’s last story with the show, and overall, I think it’s a pretty fitting end for her.  Her, shall we say, “healthy set of lungs” brings her down in some fans’ estimations, and “Fury from the Deep” definitely contributes to that impression, but she’s also clever, resourceful, and—yes, despite all the screaming—pretty brave.  I love the repeated demonstrations of her lock-picking skills here, particularly during the scene in which she’s been trapped in a room by a shadowy figure and her chief reaction before getting to work is essentially, “Here we go again.”  I also like that her departure is foreshadowed nicely throughout the serial.  The show maybe loses some points for never bringing up Victoria’s disillusionment with the Doctor’s dangerous way of life in earlier stories, but based on the experiences she’s had as a companion, they feel reasonably well-established.  Deciding that she can’t keep doing this isn’t any sort of indictment against Victoria, and while Jamie rails against the idea of losing her, the Doctor makes it clear that he understands.

This is a big one for Doctor-Jamie team-ups—there are numerous scenes that feature them dashing about in crazy situations.  I especially like their trip down the impeller shaft and, later, the Doctor’s disastrous attempts to pilot a helicopter.  Also, the opening scene has one of the series’ most memorable TARDIS landings, and the sonic screwdriver makes its very first appearance, actually used on screws!  Good fun all around, but with some good emotional scenes at the end.

As for the killer hypnotic seaweed itself…Yes, it’s incredibly silly, but in all honesty, I don’t mind it all that much.  Oak and Quill make a fantastic sinister twosome (I love their recurring musical theme,) and there really are some good creepy moments; the seaweed shows its menace chiefly through the people it’s taken over, and they do some pretty eerie things indeed.  Again, it’s probably good that the only extant visual of the seaweed is on old black-and-white screencaps and the animated recreations of the episodes—as surprisingly well-done as this story is, I’m almost certain there’s no way I could have taken it seriously if I saw the seaweed skittering around in all its low-budget glory.  (Not that I wouldn’t watch it if “Fury from the Deep” was ever recovered.  I’d watch the crap out of it—I’d probably just laugh a lot more!)