Categories
Classic Season 13 Doctor Who

Terror Of The Zygons

Doctor WhoRecalled to Earth by the Brigadier via time-space telegraph, the TARDIS brings the Doctor, Sarah and Harry to the Scottish moors, not far from where offshore oil drilling platforms have been subjected to a series of attacks from the sea – but UNIT can find no traces of attacks from either a boat or a submarine. In the nearest village, the Doctor uncovers evidence that someone there may be behind the attacks, and Harry is shot while trying to help a man washed ashore from the latest attack.

Season 13 Regular Cast: Tom Baker (The Doctor), Elisabeth Sladen (Sarah Jane Smith)

Download this episodewritten by Robert Banks Stewart
directed by Douglas Camfield
music by Geoffrey Burgon

Guest Cast: Nicholas Courtney (Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart), Ian Marter (Harry Sullivan), John Levene (RSM Benton), John Woodnutt (Duke of Forgill / Broton), Hugh Martin (Munro), Tony Sibbald (Huckle), Angus Lennie (Angus McRanald), Robert Russell (The Caber), Bruce Wightman (Radio Operator), Lillias Walker (Sister Lamont), Bernard G. High (Corporal)

Broadcast from August 30 through September 20, 1975

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Classic Season 13 Doctor Who

Planet of Evil

Doctor WhoOn the planet Zeta Minor, an expedition from a neighboring planet is doomed. Their ship is unable to lift off from the surface, and something is stalking and killing the crew one by one. The TARDIS arrives and the Doctor and Sarah offer their help, but they’re also suspected of causing the difficulties. The Doctor discovers that an attempt to bring a sample of antimatter back has attracted the unwelcome, but instinctively protective, attention of Zeta Minor’s native antimatter life forms. Worse yet, Professor Sorenson, hell-bent on keeping the sample aboard, continues his experiments with antimatter, slowly transforming himself into a hybrid matter-antimatter creature with no control over his actions.

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Louis Marks
directed by David Maloney
music by Dudley Simpson

Guest Cast: Terence Brook (Braun), Tony McEwan (Baldwin), Frederick Jaeger (Sorenson), Ewen Solon (Vishinsky), Prentis Hancock (Salamar), Michael Wisher (Morelli / voice of Ranjit), Graham Weston (De Haan), Louis Mahoney (Ponti), Haydn Wood (O’Hara), Melvyn Bedford (Reig), Mike Lee Lane (Monster)

Broadcast from September 27 through October 18, 1975

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Classic Season 13 Doctor Who

Pyramids of Mars

Doctor WhoIn 1910, Egyptologist Marcus Scarman makes his greatest find ever – a crypt said to be the tomb of the god Sutekh. It is also Scarman’s last find. His life as he has known it ends and his body becomes an obedient servant to the still very-much-alive Egyptian god Sutekh, in fact an alien consciousness trapped on Earth.

The TARDIS brings the Doctor and Sarah to Britain that same year, after a close call in the time vortex and the appearance of Sutekh’s face in the console room – a psychic breach of the time machine’s most important defenses. The Doctor follows the source of the interference to Scarman’s mansion, where strange things are afoot – including the shadowy appearance of walking mummies. With Scarman’s brother Lawrence in tow, the Doctor and Sarah stumble upon the force behind the unusual happenings: Sutekh is planning a strike, from Earth, against a mechanism on the surface of Mars which hold him captive on Earth. Even the primitive state of rocketry isn’t holding Sutekh’s effort back: he’s lending Scarman and his robot mummies advanced technology. Sutekh hopes to dominate the Earth with his immense willpower and then take revenge upon his fellow Osirans on Mars – even if it means wiping out the human race to avenge his centuries of captivity.

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Lewis Griefer (a.k.a. Robert Holmes)
directed by Paddy Russell
music by Dudley Simpson

Guest Cast: Bernard Archard (Professor Macrus Scarman), Vik Tabian (Ahmed), Peter Mayock (Namin), Michael Bilton (Collins), Peter Copley (Dr. Warlock), Michael Sheard (Laurence Scarman), George Tovey (Ernie Clements), Gabriel Woolf (Sutekh / voice of Horus), Nick Burnell, Melvyn Bedford, Kevin Selway (Mummies)

Broadcast from October 25 through November 15, 1975

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Classic Season 13 Doctor Who

The Android Invasion

Doctor WhoThe Doctor and Sarah arrive near a village that Sarah recognizes as Devesham,but it’s immediately apparent that something is very wrong. Spacesuited robot guards patrol the countryside, firing guns built into their fingers at any intruders they see (including the time travelers), and they watch helplessly as a UNIT soldier bolts straight toward a cliff, and over the edge to his death. And yet he shows up later at the village pub, alive and well – and zombielike, until the clock strikes a certain hour. The Doctor has theories about the strange behavior, but nothing accounts for all of the variables until he realizes he’s not on Earth. Sarah is captured by androids disguised as UNIT troops, and taken to a ship manned by Kraal invaders, who have copied everyone from the villagers to Harry Sullivan as part of their plan to take over Earth.

Download this episodewritten by Terry Nation
directed by Barry Letts
music by Dudley Simpson

Guest Cast: Ian Marter (Harry Sullivan), John Levene (RSM Benton), Martin Friend (Styggron), Roy Skelton (Chedaki), Max Faulkner (Adams), Peter Welch (Morgan), Milton Johns (Guy Crayford), Stuart Fell (Kraal), Patrick Newell (Faraday), Dave Carter (Grierson), Heather Emmanuel (Tessa), Hugh Lund (Matthews)

Broadcast from November 22 through December 13, 1975

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Classic Season 13 Doctor Who

The Brain of Morbius

Doctor WhoOn the planet Karn, the Doctor and Sarah happen upon a castle, home to a driven scientist named Solon and his disfigured manservant Condo. Though the time travelers are welcomed at first, the visit quickly becomes less cordial when Solon poisons the Doctor and Sarah’s wine; he intends to use the Doctor’s head to house the brain of his latest experiment in life extension. The being Solon is trying to keep alive, however, is Morbius, one of the most feared renegades ever produced by Time Lord society. Even without the interference of Solon, Condo, and the enigmatic Sisterhood of Karn (quietly planning to put an end to Solon’s experiments), the Doctor may be no match for Morbius’ evil power.

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Robin Bland (pseudonym for Terrance Dicks)
directed by Christopher Barry
music by Dudley Simpson

Guest Cast: Philip Madoc (Solon), Colin Fay (Condo), Gilly Brown (Ohica), Cynthia Grenville (Maren), Michael Spice (voice of Morbius), Stuart Fell (Morbius monster), John Scott Martin (Kriz), Sue Bishop, Janie Kells, Gabrielle Mowbray, Veronica Ridge (Sisters)

Broadcast from January 3 through 24, 1976

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Classic Season 13 Doctor Who

The Seeds of Doom

Doctor WhoThe Doctor is called in to help identify a vegetable pod found buried in the Antarctic tundra. But another party has already learned of the pod’s presence – the eccentric botanist Harrison Chase, who sends one of his hired guns and one of his scientists to procure the pod by any means necessary. At the south pole, the Doctor makes two dreadful discoveries: the pod is a Krynoid, an alien species of omnivore plant life which has been known to destroy all animal life on entire planets, and the overeager scientists at the Antarctic base have revived the Krynoid pod with ultraviolet light, causing it to open and take over the mind and body of one of them. Noting that Krynoid pods always arrive in pairs, the Doctor quickly finds another specimen of the deadly plant in the nearby ice just as Chase’s men arrive under false pretenses, taking the second pod and leaving the scientists, the Doctor and Sarah for dead. Help arrives, and the Doctor and Sarah track the pod down to Harrison Chase, who is delighted at the discovery of a breed of meat-devouring plant life – for he prefers plants to the company of humans. Under Chase’s obsessed care, the Krynoid soon grows to enormous proportions, ready to consume all animal life on Earth unless the Doctor can stop it.

Download this episodewritten by Robert Banks Stewart
directed by Douglas Camfield
music by Geoffrey Burgon

Guest Cast: Tony Beckley (Harrison Chase), John Challis (Scorby), John Gleeson (Charles Winlett/Krynoid humanoid), Michael McStay (Derek Moberly), Hubert Rees (John Stevenson), Kenneth Gilbert (Dunbar), Seymour Green (Hargreaves), Michael Barrington (Sir Colin Thackeray), Mark Jones (Arnold Keeler), Ian Fairbairn (Dr. Chester), Alan Chuntz (Chauffeur), Sylvia Coleridge (Amelia Ducat), David Masterman, Harry Fielder, Ian Elliott (Guards), John Achson (Major Beresford), Ray Barron (Sgt. Henderson), Mark Jones (Krynoid’s voice), Keith Ashley (Secretary)

Broadcast from January 31 through March 6, 1976

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green