Gavin WintersThe character of Benoit is visually distinguished as being French by his fancy cravat, in case you couldn’t tell by his Fronch ucksent. #DoctorWho
As an aside, I’d forgotten how good these early animations were. Very rich and detailed compared to the later ones, which seemed to adopt a flatter, more ‘Captain Pugwash’ style. #DoctorWho
The Macra Terror: or ‘ #DoctorWho Gets A Dose Of The Crabs’ or The One With No Villain At All, because as we all know: THERE ARE NO SUCH THING AS MACRA! MACRA DO NOT EXIST!
A similar theme to The Savages (by the same author), with an idyllic-seeming colony hiding a dark secret.
The Macra are comically rubbish at concealing what’s going on, broadcasting an image of a whacking great claw threatening the supposed leader. Doh!
Still, Polly’s response of screaming about how “They’re in control!!” makes a good cliffhanger. #DoctorWho
There’s an official called Officia. The poor sod must have suffered from Nominative Determinism ever since his parents lumbered him with that. #DoctorWho
The Cold War paranoia of the Sixties led to all sorts of ideas about brainwashing and mind control, cropping up everywhere in TV and film. So now it’s Ben’s turn to have his mind reprogrammed. Pretty easily, as it turns out! #DoctorWho
For a crab, the lead Macra has a very distinguished voice, with good clarity and projection.
If the whole evil plan of parasitically controlling space colonies doesn’t work out, then surely a career in the theatre beckons. #DoctorWho
The Faceless Ones: another abrupt companion departure, as Ben and Polly disappear after a couple of episodes. At least they get to come back for a goodbye at the end.
Ah, Samantha Briggs, with her crazy hat and flirting with Jamie. The great lost potential companion. #DoctorWho
The airport commandant getting increasingly frustrated with the Doctor’s antics reminds me of this guy from Airplane! #DoctorWho
Ben and Polly’s absence means that this is where the Doctor and Jamie’s relationship (with their occasional comic double-act) really starts to develop. Jamie had been a bit lost among the larger cast until now. #DoctorWho
Fairly daft of the Chameleons to leave some of their originals hidden in the car park, where they’re easily found, instead of taking them with them. A bit of a contrivance to help wrap things up at the end. #DoctorWho
Evil Of The Daleks: some very good Sherlockian deduction by the Doctor at the start, following the flimsiest of clues to find Kennedy.
And of course, this day was a huge temporal nexus in #DoctorWho , with War Machines, Chameleons and Daleks all active at the same time!
Troughton almost channeling McCoy with his manipulation of Jamie as part of the plan, risking their friendship in the process. Good on Jamie for angrily standing up for himself. I wonder if viewers at the time thought he was serious about being done with the Doctor? #DoctorWho
The middle section in Maxtible’s house (with all its Scooby-Doo style traps and secret passages) has a fair bit of padding and could do with being trimmed by an episode or two. Things pick up once we eventually reach Skaro and that great final battle. #DoctorWho
The babyish ‘human-factor’ Daleks playing and chanting is still a brilliantly bizarre concept. And slightly terrifying when you realise they’re basically toddlers armed with death-rays! #DoctorWho
Tomb Of The Cybermen: the first ever mention of the Doctor’s age. He’s officially 450 years old. Obviously I now expect this to remain perfectly consistent and accurate as we progress through the seasons. #DoctorWho
Love Troughton’s deviousness in this one. “Accidentally” giving Klieg the key to the mathematical problem, then sneakily pressing the right button to ensure the hatch is opened. #DoctorWho
Klieg is the first in a long line of egotistical dumbasses who think “Oh, but the Cybermen will respect MY intelligence, and share their power with ME! Of course they will!”
Aaaand he ends up dead. Well done genius! Weren’t clever enough to see that coming, were you? #DoctorWho
This is the second story in a row to feature a large, mute (or near-mute) black servant of limited intelligence. Great job on the progressive front there guys. 😬 #DoctorWho
The Cybermen saluting their Controller look like they’re doing the classic “fingers under nose to resemble Hitler’s moustache” gag. #DoctorWho
I like how, in this story, as the cast are bumped off one-by-one, the bodies conveniently tidy themselves away and disappear so as not to appear in subsequent shots. #DoctorWho
The Abominable Snowmen: the Yeti are a very worthy addition to the roster of monsters, but the setting of the story is not the most exciting. Can be a bit slow in parts and might have been better tightened up as a four-parter. #DoctorWho
Khrisong has some interesting character development. Starts off as the usual obstructive git who thinks the Doctor’s responsible for everything, and you assume he’ll remain that antagonistic for the duration of the story, but by the end he’s been won round. #DoctorWho
I like Victoria’s little trick with the “poisoned” water. Makes a change to see her get herself out of trouble for once, rather than needing rescuing. #DoctorWho
The possessed Padmasambhava makes a very sinister and creepy villain, conveyed for the most part through just his raspy disembodied voice.
And it ends with the now familiar trope of ‘Aha! You thought the creatures were all dead? But wait! There’s some signs of life…’ #DoctorWho
The Ice Warriors:
Futuristic base ☑️
Stressed-out Commander (older man) ☑️
More reasonable second-in-command (younger woman) ☑️
Lumbering monsters outside ☑️
Computer with weird modulated voice ☑️
Just needed someone traitorous/possessed to complete the set!
#DoctorWho
Also the debut of a trope that carries on into early Pertwee - the (very silly to modern audiences) idea that computers are TERRIBLE inventions that are ALWAYS wrong and it’s far better for a human to work things out using just their brain and a pencil and paper. #DoctorWho
Victoria spends most of this story in a state of constant panic and hysteria. You’d wonder why she actually wants to travel with the Doctor and Jamie when everything terrifies her.
(And lol at Jamie teasing her about wearing hotpants like the girls in the base 😄) #DoctorWho
“We must use the Ioniser to blow up the Ice Warriors’ ship!”
“We can’t! We might get killed too!”
“We must!”
“We can’t!”
“We must!”
“We can’t!”
“We must!”
“We can’t!”
(…etc, for six episodes)
*eventually uses Ioniser*
“Phew! We didn’t get killed after all! Hooray!”
#DoctorWho
The Enemy Of The World: we’re off to the far-flung space year 2018, where the world’s divided into ‘Zones’, rocket trips from Australia to Europe take two hours, and people still mostly use landline telephones. #DoctorWho
Landing on a beach, Jamie and Victoria are treated to the arresting sight of the Doctor stripping down to his underwear and splashing about in the sea… #DoctorWho
It’s a bit mad that those guys immediately believe he’s Salamander, when only seen through binoculars.
I mean, if you thought you saw Vladimir Putin at your local beach, having a paddle while wearing a pair of longjohns, you’d doubt what you were seeing, surely?! 😳 #DoctorWho
Griff the Chef: funniest one-off character ever? Should have had his own spin-off! 😀 #DoctorWho
The Enemy Of The World really stands out as being a drastically different type of story to all the surrounding monster romps.
Troughton is completely believable in the dual role. You never see him as the Doctor when he’s Salamander and vice-versa.
#DoctorWho
Some clever use of back projection (before green screen takes over in a couple of years). I like the bit where Jame is seen approaching in the background film before appearing in the studio set. #DoctorWho
Look it’s your own fault for believing his story, you gullible prats. I mean, honestly!
(Also… er, *how* exactly are they causing worldwide natural disasters using a few machines in their underground base? The script glosses over that!)
#DoctorWho
The Web Of Fear: like the Daleks before them, for the Yetis second outing they’ve wisely placed them somewhere much more relatable to the viewers, and it works a treat. Tons of atmosphere in the Underground setting. The pinnacle of the ‘base-under-siege’ stories. #DoctorWho
So the *entire* issue of ‘UNIT dating’ stems from Travers claiming the previous Yeti story was “40 years ago” and, in a separate conversation between Victoria and Ann, that it was 1935. When there’s so many ways either statement could be wrong/misremembered/etc… 🤷🏻♂️ #DoctorWho
Lethbridge-Stewart is amazingly more credulous at this point, believing in the idea of the TARDIS without even seeing it, and how it could be a means of escape. A huge contrast to his later attitude in The Three Doctors! #DoctorWho
Fury From The Deep: Bases! Monsters! Choppers! Possession! Traitors! And foam! Endless, endless foam. The ultimate Season 5 story? (Well, maybe with a more traditional lumbering two-legged monster…) #DoctorWho
The sonic! Or rather, the random bit of plastic Troughton used to represent the sonic…
The TARDIS team again comment that they keep landing on Earth. If this was today there’d be furious internet speculation that it’s a deliberate plot point leading up to something. #DoctorWho
The scene of Oak and Quill breathing gas onto Mrs Harris really is one of the strangest and creepiest horror moments in all of #DoctorWho, mainly due to the editing.
Thank you, over-sensitive Australian censors, that we still have it to look at! 😀
The nature and origin of the weed creature is left a bit vague. Apparently it was seen by ancient sailors as a sea-monster, but usually #DoctorWho takes mythical creatures and does the whole “it was real…but aliens!” explanation. Not this time though.
Once again a companion leaves without there being much of a sense of why they’ve chosen *this* particular time and place to stay in. At least it’s not as abrupt as some though, and Victoria gets a nice farewell scene with Jamie. #DoctorWho
Silly addendum: Victoria impersonating Scaroth over a decade early: “I’m sick of being frightened by monsters, Jamie… I WILL CHANGE IT!” #DoctorWho
The Wheel In Space: funny how David Whitaker returns and we get a story in which the TARDIS fluid link runs out of mercury and there’s a food machine dispensing square pieces of flavoured food.
The Doctor falling ill and missing an episode is very Hartnell-like too! #DoctorWho
Jamie comes up with the Doctor’s ‘John Smith’ alias after seeing it on a piece of equipment. The subsequent history of #DoctorWho could have been very different if he’d seen something like ‘Tommy Hilfiger’ on a shirt, or ‘Smeg’ on a fridge…
Completely nuts how that guy sees a Cybermat roaming around and just thinks it’s some cute little ‘space bug’ he can keep in a cupboard! Like, what the hell? 🤷🏻♂️ #DoctorWho
“I’ll put you across my knee and larrup you!” says Jamie to Zoe, not long after he’s met her in The Wheel In Space. Crikey. 😳 #DoctorWho
Victoria may have been more on his wavelength, but that means Jamie’s sparky relationship with the totally contrasting Zoe is much more fun to watch. #DoctorWho
These early Cybermen have all sorts of mind-control and telepathy powers, even the ability to read images from human minds and project them onto a screen, which were all forgotten about in later years. #DoctorWho
Look he definitely says “sectional”, but yeah, I accept it’s far funnier to hear it this way. 😁 #DoctorWho
Ah, why couldn’t it have been a clip from a missing episode that the Doctor mentally projects for Zoe to watch? #DoctorWho
The Dominators: (phew, it was exhausting mentally-projecting a “repeat” of my previous comments about Evil Of The Daleks. Hope you all received them, but anyway…)
Ah, Dulkis. Having “dull” in its name makes it the most accurately named planet since Aridius in season 2. 😐 #DoctorWho
The contrast between the studio scenes, with their photo backdrops of a quarry, and the location filming of a real quarry seems particularly pronounced here. Also very obvious that Troughton wasn’t on location, but his younger skinnier body-double was. #DoctorWho
Odd that Cully’s ship is mostly seen as a model, but when it gets blown up it’s suddenly a full-size replica with a proper, to-scale, explosion. The first time I think we’ve seen anything like that. #DoctorWho
When the fiery young rebel of this planet is actually a balding middle-aged man you know things aren’t great.
Very funny though when lead Dominator Rago angrily bursts into their council chamber to take over and someone suggests “If you could make an appointment…” 😄 #DoctorWho
Rago and Toba throughout this story. #DoctorWho
The Hand of Fear@gavinwinters You may or may not want to familiarise yourself with a Troughton story called The Prison in Space, that very nearly got made, in which precisely that happens. Yeah. Thank goodness it fell through.
Peter Nolan@gavinwinters It's actually a slight retcon to his character that I'm not too fond of. His original great strength as an ally was his ability to simply accept events and concepts, no matter how alien to him, and take appropriate action.
It's only later that they start making him almost foolishly sceptical of everything, even after all he's seen. Mainly, it seems to me, because they thought it was funnier.