Gavin WintersThe Invasion Of Time: a very jarring and unusual opening, with the action already underway and the Doctor up to something mysterious. They keep you hanging for two whole episodes, with no quick answers coming as to why the Doctor’s apparently gone mad. #DoctorWho
The Chancellery Guard have never been portrayed as so stupid as they are here, almost getting to Keystone Cops levels of incompetence, with how the Doctor and everyone else run rings round them.
And the Sontarans are almost as bad when they turn up. #DoctorWho
One of the Time Lords in this story is said to be very old and slow, because “I’m on my tenth regeneration, you know!” #DoctorWho
Nice to see lots more TARDIS interior beyond the console room, but hard to buy the location as being part of the same place
And the budget may have been small, but it’s coming to something when the awesome machinery of Gallifrey is represented by…a grotty factory…😕 #DoctorWho
“DIE, SUN LOUNGERS! MORTAL ENEMY OF THE GLORIOUS SONTARAN EMPIRE!”
Leela’s departure is so bizarre and rushed, thankfully the last example of the stupid “marrying someone you’ve known 5 minutes” ending. (Peri’s is at least a bit different)
Between the public favourite of Sarah Jane and the fan-favourite of Romana, Leela was brilliant and criminally-overlooked. #DoctorWho
The Ribos Operation: after the ups and downs in quality of the previous season, things get a bit more consistent from here on.
Bob Holmes delivers the goods again, with great characters and dialogue and his usual effortless worldbuilding. #DoctorWho
The costumes and set design for Ribos are very good. Using bits of historical periods from Earth as the basis for an alien planet helps avoid the usual problem of blank white corridors, shiny “space” outfits and so on. #DoctorWho
I like the Doctor’s initial irritation at being lumbered with Romana(voratrelundar), and her cool psychological analysis of him.
Rodan from the previous story was so similar to Romana I that she must have been an inspiration, surely? #DoctorWho
The Pirate Planet: a fun and imaginative debut from Douglas Adams, with some huge bonkers sci-fi ideas. (and Chibnall cheekily ripped off the whole basic idea of the shrunken planets for Ranskoor Av Kolos, didn’t he? 😜) #DoctorWho
Douglas gets a lot of fun out of Romana upstaging the Doctor when it comes to piloting the TARDIS, charming the locals and later butting in with the technobabble explanations. #DoctorWho
It’s such a great, kid-friendly idea to give K9 a rival to fight in the form of the Captain’s robot parrot. #DoctorWho
I always enjoy a good old-fashioned mad booming villain like the Captain.
Nice twist with the Nurse being the real power behind it all, as she gets subtly more visible and prominent over the course of the four episodes. #DoctorWho
The Stones Of Blood: when the Williams era tries to do gothic horror it’s never with *quite* the same flair as under Hinchcliffe, but this is still very good. Plus it’s earth-based, which automatically makes it look better than many of the space-y stories at this time. #DoctorWho
1970s Britain must have been convinced there were lots of devil-worshipping covens still active in the countryside. We’ve had The Daemons, Image Of The Fendahl, and now this. And just a few years until K9 & Company… #DoctorWho
Tom’s Doctor seems to work well with dotty old ladies, and he’s clearly enjoying Beatrix Lehmann as Amelia Rumford. #DoctorWho
The Androids Of Tara: there’s a definite Star Wars influence starting to creep in around this point, not with space battles or anything (still far beyond #DoctorWho’s budget) but just the general idea of taking old-fashioned stories/characters/settings and giving them a sci-fi upgrade.
And in little details like the electrified swords. They must have been thinking of how to do a low-budget version of lightsabers when they came up with that, surely?
This story only makes the barest acknowledgment of the Key to Time arc, with Romana finding the segment five minutes after landing, and then it’s mostly forgotten about until the end. #DoctorWho
The Archimandrite is really a bit dim not to see through Grendel’s schemes, but then what do you expect from a man who wears the Sixth Doctor’s tea cosy and shower curtain. #DoctorWho
There’s been some entertainingly theatrical villains in this season, but Count Grendel tops the lot. “Next time, I shall not be so lenient!” #DoctorWho
It’s been funny watching this story, with all its royal pomp and coronation sequence, straight after the real one yesterday. But that one didn’t have someone grabbing the sceptre and bashing robot-Camilla’s head in. That’s why #DoctorWho’s version of events is always better. 😄
The Power Of Kroll: hmm, there’s nothing particularly terrible about this one, but nothing hugely exciting either. The least interesting story of the Key To Time season. Bob Holmes must have been having a bit of an off day. #DoctorWho
You have to feel sorry for all those poor extras, painted green and dancing around in loincloths in the middle of the night.
Fair play to John Abineri’s performance as Ranquin though, being totally committed to the part while looking ridiculous. #DoctorWho
I like the knowing-wink-to-the-audience gag of the first “monster” we see turning out to be just a man in a costume. “Perhaps he looked more convincing from the front!” #DoctorWho
Poor old Rohm-Dutt: the moment his role in the story is finished and he’s surplus to requirements he’s *instantly* killed by Kroll, and his death gets barely an “oh well!” from the Doctor and Romana, who just carry on. Ruthless! 😆 #DoctorWho
Yikes - the bit with Tom on the ladder in the rocket silo… 😬
The ladder, the rocket, even the sodding wall behind him ALL wobble, a unique achievement in the annals of wobbly set history! #DoctorWho
The Armageddon Factor: the opening ‘soap opera’ scene, with its cheesy melodrama and bad acting, is both funny in and of itself as well as then being an effective contrast in the pull-back-and-reveal of dying people in a war zone. #DoctorWho
Radiation… two races engaged in a bitter nuclear war…underground bunkers… TARDIS covered in rubble… are we sure Terry Nation didn’t write this??
(And the extreme radiation in the transmat room gets quickly forgotten, with everyone wandering in and out of there) #DoctorWho
After a season of entertaining villains, the Shadow is a bit rubbish. Would’ve been better if it was the Master working for the Black Guardian.
And why is his domain called a ‘planet’, full of underground tunnels… yet seen from outside looks like a space station? #DoctorWho
The budget always gets a bit stretched by the time we get to the last story of the season, so endlessly reusing that time-looped clip of the Marshal yelling “Fire!” probably saved a few quid. #DoctorWho
The final two episodes could have been just a boring runaround in dark tunnels, but the arrival of Drax perks things up. Nice for once to meet another renegade Time Lord who *isn’t* completely mad and evil.
And a Time Lord with a cockney accent! Whatever next… #DoctorWho
The ending is a bit muddled, with the Key getting scattered again without apparently being used.
The novelisation had to clarify that the White Guardian had used it during the time the Doctor had it assembled. Good old Terrance Dicks! #DoctorWho
Destiny Of The Daleks: straight after the previous story we again have a post-nuclear-war planet, with radiation, underground bunkers, the TARDIS covered in rubble… only this time it really is a Terry Nation script, bringing back all his familiar tropes. #DoctorWho
You totally accept Lalla Ward as the new Romana as she slips easily into the role, but it’s fun to imagine the wacky parallel universes where one of the alternative incarnations became the main one…
Um, yes… crikey! 😳 #DoctorWho
There are some poorly-directed extras in the scene where the Doctor orders the slaves freed. One minute they all look bored and don’t react while being exterminated one by one… then they’re all full of huge grins while carrying their dead friends’ corpses away. 🤷🏻♂️#DoctorWho
There’s good parts to this but it’s a bit let down by some shabby production values, like the patched-up Dalek props, or David Gooderson trying his best but struggling with the old Davros mask.
And what’s this crap about the Daleks suddenly being robots?? FFS Terry! #DoctorWho
City Of Death: well, what can you say? Still brilliant. Still stands up as an absolute jewel in the crown of this era, if not #DoctorWho as a whole.
And it’s got Dudley Simpson’s most memorable score. Go on, you’re all humming it now while looking at this image, aren’t you?
The Randomiser’s supposed to make the TARDIS’s flight completely unpredictable, so it could end up anywhere in the universe, untraceable by the Black Guardian…
And since it’s been installed we’ve been to those rarely-seen locations of Skaro and 20th-century Earth…😄 #DoctorWho
I often wonder if the “going to lunch” joke still comes across to modern viewers, as it’s a phrase that’s completely fallen out of usage nowadays. #DoctorWho
A very timely conversation between the Doctor and Romana about the value of art created by humans versus that created by computer.
As an experiment I prompted an AI to create this. You decide! #DoctorWho
Duggan is one of the all time great supporting characters, who kind of makes me wish he’d been a companion for a bit.
Or alternatively, if, say, Harry Sullivan had been written more like this and was constantly thumping people, to the Doctor’s annoyance. #DoctorWho
And of course it’s impossible not to speculate about the exact nature of the Count and Countess’s marriage…
I mean, unless that fake skin went over his entire body and was *very* realistic… 👀 #DoctorWho
Creature From The Pit: it was always going to be a hard act to follow City Of Death, but this is quite decent. It has a bit of a poor reputation due to the depiction of the monster, but everything else is okay. And another jungle set that looks great when shot on film. #DoctorWho
K9’s back after being absent for the last couple of stories, and with a new voice. John Leeson may be the definitive K9, but David Brierley’s slightly more snooty and irritable version is perfectly acceptable. #DoctorWho
They really fully raided the BBC’s wig and beard department for the look of the bandits in this story. #DoctorWho
“Time Lords have 90 lives!”
“How many have you got through so far?”
“Oh, about 130!”
*a young Chris Chibnall furiously scribbles notes* #DoctorWho
Nightmare Of Eden: this is full of great concepts but we’re back to things looking cheap again, with bright overlit spaceship sets revealing too much, especially when it comes to the monster costumes with their zips up the back (!) #DoctorWho
I don’t think there’s been anything as self-consciously camp in #DoctorWho up to this point as the costume design on display here. Everybody’s uniforms have sparkly glitter sewn into them, even the ‘space cops’ who turn up. We’re truly in the era of disco.
It’s such a weird contrast to have the subplot about drug addiction (and the captain’s withdrawal leading to his desperate pleas to Romana) within this wacky story full of lumbering monsters and spandex. But maybe that’s just #DoctorWho for you. 🤷🏻♂️
The Horns Of Nimon: hmm, that’s two low-budget outer space stories in a row. And this one looks particularly cheap. This era would have looked a lot better if they’d mixed things up a bit. A couple more Earthbound stories, maybe even the odd historical setting. #DoctorWho
There’s some funny bits (Teka’s blind faith that Seth will defeat the Nimon) and some unintentionally funny - the co-pilot splitting his trousers as he dies and the poor Nimon actors trying to chase people in their enormous platform boots. #DoctorWho
The silliness gets a *teeny* bit over-indulgent when the TARDIS console goes haywire and suddenly makes all those wacky cartoon noises… 😐 #DoctorWho
At least Romana gets a lot to do during bits when the Doctor is stuck elsewhere - striding about, taking command, brandishing her own sonic screwdriver. And in the process setting the seeds for the idea of a female Doctor. #DoctorWho
Congratulations to Graham Crowden for being the only actor in the seven-year run of the Fourth Doctor who manages to give a performance even more bonkers and over-the-top than Tom himself.
“MY DREEEEEAMS OF CONQUEST…!!” 😄 #DoctorWho
Riley@gavinwinters devouring the scenery is good and cool actually, and that man kills it
@riley Eats the scenery and comes back for seconds.
Shada: possibly not the long-lost all-time classic of legend, but this is still very good, and a natural partner to City Of Death. Such a shame it was never completed, as it would’ve made a great bookend to the Williams/Adams era. #DoctorWho
The punting footage is so familiar from The Five Doctors that it’s impossible to watch it and not expect that the time scoop is about to appear in the sky above Tom. #DoctorWho
Chronotis is such a brilliant creation. Like an older, more befuddled Troughton.
Another for the long list of ‘Bring them back in the modern series!’ He can just have regenerated. #DoctorWho
Why is every renegade Time Lord in #DoctorWho obsessed with reading The Time Machine by H.G. Wells? I’m surprised we didn’t see the War Chief browsing through it in between bouts of bitching at the Security Chief.
It’s one thing to have a character dressed like this striding about on an alien planet or wherever, but it suddenly becomes very funny when they’re walking the streets of contemporary Earth looking camper than Christmas. #DoctorWho
Gaia@gavinwinters it’s either that or #hitchhikersguidetothegalaxy
Metebelis Two PodcastI think Fisk and Costa's uniforms foreshadows Shooty and Bang-Bang's uniforms a few years later in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy tv series. A lot of season 17 seems like Douglas Adams workshopping material that he'd later recycle in his books.
@gavinwinters people absolutely discount so much of the rest of Season 17 when really it's cracking all the way through