Category: Classic Season 06

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Classic Season 06 Doctor Who

The Dominators

Doctor WhoThe TARDIS brings the Doctor, Zoe and Jamie to the planet Dulkis, which the Doctor knows as a peaceful world that has abandoned war. But the travelers find themselves on an island strewn with the remnants of an ancient war and contaminated with radiation – the legacy of nuclear weapons tests, according to a small number of researchers encountered by the Doctor. What the Time Lord doesn’t realize is that the native Dulcians are not the only people visiting the island. Another Dulcian expedition meets with disaster, its only survivor claiming that his shipmates were killed by well-armed robots. The Doctor and Jamie go to investigate these claims, and find themselves taken prisoner by a group of aggressive aliens who call themselves the Dominators. These would-be invaders, backed up by their powerful Quark robots, intend to mine the radioactive minerals on Dulkis to make their own nuclear weapons…and they also wish to use the pacifist Dulcians as their slaves. The Doctor scrambles to find a way to undermine the Dominators when it becomes obvious that the Dulcians are unwilling to rediscover the aggression necessary to protect themselves.

Season 6 Regular Cast: Patrick Troughton (The Doctor), Frazer Hines (Jamie), Wendy Padbury (Zoe)

written by Mervyn Haisman & Henry Lincoln
directed by Morris Barry
music not credited

Guest Cast: Ronald Allen (Rago), Kenneth Ives (Toba), Arthur Cox (Cully), Philip Voss (Wahed), Malcolm Terris (Etnin), Nicolette Pendrell (Tolata), Feliticy Gibson (Kando), Giles Block (Teel), Johnson Bayly (Balan), Walter Fitzgerald (Senex), Ronald Mansell, John Cross, Malcolm Watson, Aubrey Danvers Walker (Council Members), Alan Gerrard (Bovem), Brian Cant (Tensa), John Hicks, Gary Smith, Freddie Wilson (Quarks), Sheila Grant (Quark voices)

Broadcast from August 10 through September 7, 1968

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Classic Season 06 Doctor Who

The Mind Robber

Doctor WhoThe Doctor is faced with an emergency that forces him to yank the TARDIS out of the dimension of reality. The TARDIS arrives in a seemingly empty space outside of time, but the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe are not alone – someone wants them there and intends to force them to stay if necessary. The empty space is filled by the fiction that comes from human imagination – and the very tired human abductee, whose mind is being constantly tapped to keep the Land of Fiction alive, nominates the Doctor as his replacement for a job that can never be vacated.

Download this episodewritten by Peter Ling and Derrick Sherwin
directed by David Mahoney
music not credited

Guest Cast: Emrys Jones (The Master), John Atterbury, Ralph Carrigan, Bill Weisener, Terry Wright (White Robots), Hamish Wilson (Jamie), Philip Ryan (Redcoat), Bernard Horsfall (Gulliver), Barbara Loft, Sylvestra Le Touzel, Timothy Horton, Martin Langley, Christopher Reynolds, David Reynolds (Children), Paul Alexander, Ian Hines, Richard Ireson (Clockwork Soldiers), Christine Pirie (Rapunzel / Book Narrator), Sue Pulford (Medusa), Richard Ireson (Minotaur), Christopher Robbie (Karkus), David Cannon (Cyrano), John Greenwood (D’Artagnan / Lancelot), Gerry Wain (Blackbeard)

Broadcast from September 14 through October 12, 1968

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Classic Season 06 Doctor Who

The Invasion

Doctor WhoThe TARDIS reforms itself after what appears to be a cataclysmic explosion in space, only to become the target of a missile fired from the dark side of Earth’s moon…in 1968, when there still isn’t a human presence there. The timeship finally materializes in a nondescript field on Earth, but instead of a police box, it’s completely invisible. The Doctor, Zoe and Jamie set off for London on foot to seek Professor Travers’ help with the TARDIS’ visual stabilizer circuit, but soon hitch a ride on a passing truck, whose worried driver informs them that they’re in danger as long as they’re on International Electromatics property. He gets them safely out of IE’s corporate compound, but is then gunned down in cold blood by armed IE guards.

In London, the Doctor and friends discover that Professor Travers has gone to America with his Yeti findings, but his friend Professor Watkins might be able to help. But Watkins has gone missing – he’s never returned from International Electromatics – and his niece is holding down the Fort. The Doctor and Jamie return to IE’s headquarters building, where they cause just enough trouble to get a personal audience with the head of the company, Tobias Vaughn. The Doctor immediately suspects that Vaughn is up to no good, but he and Jamie don’t have time to think about it before they’re intercepted by two cars that have been following their movements. They’re taken to the mobile headquarters of a military organization called UNIT – the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce – whose British branch is headed up by their old friend Lethbridge-Stewart, now promoted to Brigadier. The Brigadier and his troops are monitoring IE closely: many brilliant, prominent scientific minds have entered, but none have left. The Doctor suspects that Tobias Vaughn wants control of more than just the world’s largest maker of electronic devices…but whose help does Vaughn have to pull off such a coup?

Order this story on DVDwritten by Derrick Sherwin
from a story by Kit Pedler
directed by Douglas Camfield
music by Don Harper

Guest Cast: Nicholas Courtney (Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart), John Levene (Corporal Benton), Murray Evans (Lorry Driver), Walter Randall (Patrolman), Sally Faulkner (Isobel Watkins), Geoffrey Chesire (Tracy), Kevin Stoney (Tobias Vaughn), Peter Halliday (Packer), Edward Burnham (Professor Watkins), Ian Fairburn (Gregory), James Thornhill (Sergeant Walters), Robert Sidaway (Captain Turner), Sheila Dunn (Operator), Edward Dentith (Rutlidge), Peter Thompson (Workman), Dominic Allan (Policeman), Stacy Davies (Perkins), Clifford Earl (Branswell), Norman Hartley (Peters), Pat Gorman, Ralph Carrigan, Charles Finch, Richard King, John Spradbury, Peter Thornton (Cybermen), Peter Halliday (Cyber Director voice)

Notes: Parts one and four of this eight-part story (the only story of that length in the show’s history) were lost in a purge of black & white BBC shows after the BBC switched to color. (Ironically, part one of 1974’s Invasion Of The Dinosaurs, a Jon Pertwee story, was simply titled Invasion to avoid giving away that story’s adversaries, and it was mistaken for part of this story and junked, rendering an otherwise intact color story incomplete. A B&W copy of part one of that story was recovered later.) In 1993, BBC Video released The Invasion in incomplete form with Nicholas Courtney narrating encapsulated versions of the missing episodes, while a 2006 DVD release took the unprecedented step of completely reconstructing the missing segments with cartoon-style animation.

Broadcast from November 2 through December 21, 1968

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Classic Season 06 Doctor Who

The Krotons

Doctor WhoMoments after the Doctor, Zoe and Jamie leave the safe confines of the TARDIS to explore a seemingly hospitable planet, a hulking robotic attacker assails the time machine – causing it to disappear on its own! The Doctor reassures his companions that it’s merely the TARDIS’ automatic defense system in operation, and they continue exploring until they find a peaceful people known as the Gonds. At a certain age, young Gonds undergo an intelligence test; those who pass are permitted to serve the Krotons, a crystalline-based species that rules over them – and the same creatures who attacked the TARDIS. On a whim, Zoe takes the test and ranks highly, assuring her of a place among the Krotons, and the Doctor, fearing for her life, takes the same test, naturally scoring off the scale. Once they are taken to the Krotons, the Doctor and Zoe must figure out how to rid the Gonds of their “benevolent” overlords, for not everyone who has passed the intelligence test has lived to tell the tale – keeping the general populace docile, and robbing them of the curiosity that could lead them to defeat the Krotons.

Order this story on DVDwritten by Robert Holmes
directed by David Maloney
music by Brian Hodgson

Guest Cast: James Copeland (Selris), Gilbert Wynne (Thara), Terence Brown (Abu), Madeleine Mills (Vana), Philip Madoc (Eelek), Richard Ireson (Axus), James Cairncross (Beta), Maurice Selwyn (Custodian), Bronson Shaw (Student), Robert La Bassiere, Miles Northover, Robert Grant (Krotons), Roy Skelton, Patrick Tull (Kroton voices)

Broadcast from December 28, 1968 through January 18, 1968

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Classic Season 06 Doctor Who

The Seeds Of Death

Doctor WhoIn the 21st century, mankind has given up rocket-based travel in favor of the T-mat teleportation system – even to the extent of not maintaining any space vehicles in case they’re needed. This almost turns into a fatal mistake when a vital T-mat installation based on the moon loses contact with Earth, after a terrified final message from one of the moonbase crew mentioning a takeover. Even when the T-mat administrators find a barely spaceworthy rocket in the workshop of a sentimental space travel hobbyist, they need one more thing – someone who has the experience necessary to fly the rocket. The Doctor, with Jamie and Zoe in tow, arrives just in time to take on the hazardous mission, discovering that the moonbase is just the first step in another Ice Warrior attempt to colonize Earth by brute force.

Download this episodewritten by Brian Hayles
directed by Michael Ferguson
music by Dudley Simpson

Guest Cast: Alan Bennion (Slaar), Steve Peters, Tony Harwood, Sonny Caldinez (Ice Warriors), Philip Ray (Eldred), Louise Pajo (Gia Kelly), John Witty (Computer voice), Ric Felgate (Brent), Harry Towb (Osgood), Ronald Leigh-Hunt (Radnor), Terry Scully (Fewsham), Christopher Coll (Phipps), Martin Cort (Locke), Derrick Slater (Guard), Graham Leaman (Marshal), Hugh Morton (Sir James Gregson), Peter Whittaker (Weather station operator)

Broadcast from January 25 through March 1, 1969

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Classic Season 06 Doctor Who

The Space Pirates

Doctor WhoWith raids on defenseless cargo beacon stations on the rise in the intergalactic spaceway, the authorities and their minnow ships are placed on high alert. Caven and his motley crew of space pirates have been systematically stealing argonite and escaping aboard their sleek Beta Dart ship. General Hermack, aboard the V-Ship, lays a trap for Caven’s pirates by placing a full team of armed guards on the next cargo station…but to their surprise, their first visitors aren’t pirates, but three odd people who arrive in, of all things, an ancient police box. When the real pirates arrive and the shooting starts, the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe take shelter. Caven’s men slaughter the guards, take the argonie and follow their usual procedure of planting charges to blow the beacon’s wedge-shaped cargo containers apart from each other. Trapped in a different container from the one in which the TARDIS landed, and left with limited oxygen, the Doctor and his friends are rescued by crusty old-time space prospector Milo Clancey – who is unaware that he’s been assigned the rescue mission by Hermack, as a test to see if he is allied to Caven’s pirates.

Order this story on audio CDwritten by Robert Holmes
directed by Michael Hart
music by Dudley Simpson

Guest Cast: Briant Peck (Dervish), Dudley Foster (Caven), Jack May (Hermack), Donald Gee (Warne), George Layton (Penn), Nick Zaran (Sorba), Anthony Donovan (Guard), Gordon Gostelow (Milo Clancey), Lisa Daniely (Madeleine), Steve Peters (Guard), Esmond Knight (Dom Issigri)

Note: With the exception of episode 2, the master tapes of this story were destroyed by the BBC in the early 1970’s.

Broadcast from March 8 through April 12, 1969

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Classic Season 06 Doctor Who

The War Games

Doctor WhoThe TARDIS brings the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe to a World War I battlefield, but upon closer examination they find that the battlegrounds have been recreated on an alien planet. For the next several episodes, the Doctor and company wander through various different simulated wars in Earth history, finally discovering the alien War Lords at the heart of a plot to create an all-powerful army from the most powerful ranks of Earth history’s greatest military forces. Left with the task of stopping the War Lords, as well as returning all of the abducted Earth soldiers to their native times and places, the Doctor reluctantly summons the help of his own people, the Time Lords – and in so doing draws their attention to him as well. After dealing with the War Lords, the Time Lords put the Doctor on trial, the verdict of which will cost him another of his precious lives.

Order this story on DVDwritten by Malcolm Hulke & Terrance Dicks
directed by David Maloney
music by Dudley Simpson

Guest Cast: Jane Sherwin (Lady Buckingham), David Savile (Carstairs), John Livesly, Bernard Davies (German Soldiers), Terence Bayler (Barrington), Brian Forster (Willis), Noel Coleman (General Smythe), Hubert Rees (Captain Ransom), Esmond Webb (Burns), Richard Steele (Gorton), Peter Stanton (Chauffeur), Pat Gorman (Policeman), Tony McEwan (Redcoat), David Valla (Crane), Gregg Palmer (Lucke), David Garfield (Von Weich), Edward Brayshaw (War Chief), Philip Madoc (War Lord), James Bree (Security Chief), Bill Hutchinson (Thompson), Terry Adams (Riley), Leslie Schofield (Leroy), Vernon Dobtcheff (Scientist), Rudolph Walker (Harper), John Atterbury, Charles Pemberton (Aliens), Michael Lynch (Spencer), Graham Weston (Russell), David Troughton (Moor), Peter Craze (Du Pont), Michael Napier-Brown (Villar), Stephen Hubay (Petrov), Bernard Horsfall, Trevor Martin, Clyde Pollitt (Time Lords), Clare Jenkins (Tanya), Freddie Wilson (Quark), John Levene (Yeti), Tony Harwood (Ice Warrior), Roy Pearce (Cyberman), Robert Jewell (Dalek)

Broadcast from April 19 through June 21, 1969

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green