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Classic Season 05 Doctor Who

Tomb Of The Cybermen

Doctor WhoThe TARDIS brings the Doctor, Jamie and Victoria to the wasteland of the planet Telos, where they spot a human expedition on a journey to unearth the lost tombs of the Cybermen, a threat thought to be long extinct. Despite the Doctor’s vocal misgivings, Professor Parry and his fellow explorers insist on breaching the enormous doors and venturing into the apparently vacant tombs. But when automatic defense systems begin to pick off Parry’s team one by one, the expedition begins to look like a doomed one. When someone in the expedition reveals their true purpose – to reactivate and take control of the Cybermen – the entire galaxy begins to look doomed unless the Doctor can confine the Cybermen once more.

Order this story on DVDDownload this episodewritten by Kit Pedler & Gerry Davis
directed by Morris Barry
music not credited

Guest Cast: Roy Stewart (Toberman), Aubrey Richards (Professor Parry), Cyril Shaps (Viner), Clive Merrison (Callum), Shirley Cookin (Kaftan), George Rubicek (Hopper), George Pastell (Kleig), Alan Johns (Rogers), Bernard Holley (Haydon), Ray Grover (Crewman), Michael Kilgarriff (Cyber Controller), Hans De Vries (Cyberman), Tony Harwood (Cyberman), John Hogan (Cyberman), Richard Kerley (Cyberman), Ronald Lee (Cyberman), Charles Pemberton (Cyberman), Kenneth Seegr (Cyberman), Reg Whitehead (Cyberman), Peter Hawkins (Cybermen voices)

Broadcast from September 2 through 23, 1967

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Classic Season 05 Doctor Who

The Abominable Snowmen

Doctor WhoThe Doctor, Jamie and Victoria discover that the TARDIS has brought them to present-day Tibet, high in the Himalayas, which the Doctor sees as a perfect opportunity to return a holy relic to the Det-Sen Monastery – an item that has been in his possession since the 1600s. He decides to step outside to explore, leaving Jamie and Victoria in the safety of the TARDIS to find the misplaced relic, and discovers a mangled rifle, a dead body, and enormous footprints. The Doctor returns to his timeship to collect the relic and return it to the monks at Det-Sen personally, but tells his companions that he thinks it best that they remain in the TARDIS. After he leaves again, Victoria’s curiosity gets the best of her and she goes outside to look around, and Jamie’s chivalry gets the best of him and he goes along to protect her. They’re exploring a cave when a huge furry beast traps them inside, and they find a collection of silver spheres there. At the monastery, the Doctor doesn’t get the reception he’s been expecting, and the warrior monks who protect their more peaceful brethren accuse him of murder; Professor Travers, who is searching the mountainside for signs of the legendary Yeti, witnesses his partner’s death and thinks the Doctor is responsible, thinking him to be the leader of a rival expedition. It turns out that Yeti are on the move, but not the reclusive creatures of lore – when they appear and attack the monastery, the Doctor discovers that they are robotic in nature, each containing a cavity custom-made for the spheres discovered by Jamie and Victoria. But the Yeti are being controlled by something else, somewhere – and they may be the greatest challenge ever faced by the Det-Sen monks and even the Doctor himself.

written by Mervyn Haisman & Henry Lincoln
directed by Gerald Blake
music from stock music library

Guest Cast: Jack Watling (Professor Travers), Norman Jones (Khrisong), David Spencer (Thonmi), David Grey (Rinchen), Raymond Llewellyn (Sapan), Charles Morgan (Songsten), Wolfe Morris (Padmasambhava), David Baron (Ralpachan), Reg Whitehead, Tony Harwood, Richard Kerley, John Hogan (Yeti)

Notes: Though The Sensorites showed the Doctor and Susan to have mental abilities beyond those of mere humans, The Abominable Snowmen is the first Doctor Who adventure to make it clear beyond the shadow of a doubt that the Doctor’s psi powers are quite formidable, as he holds the Great Intelligence at bay. The Yeti would be seen again in The Web Of Fear, and fleetingly in The Five Doctors; they also appear in the fan-made video production Downtime, which chronicles a third attempt by the Great Intelligence to sieze Earth as its new homeworld. Incidentally, the sound of the Yeti roar is a flushing toilet, slowed down and played backward.

Broadcast from September 30 through November 4, 1967

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Classic Season 05 Doctor Who

The Ice Warriors

Doctor WhoThe TARDIS tumbles into the world’s new ice age, in the third millennium. The Doctor, Jamie and Victoria find themselves surrounded by snow and ice, with a human outpost led by a man named Clent. Clent’s staff are Britain’s last defense against an advancing ice shelf, but some of his men are preoccupied with something else they’ve found in the ice – an enormous armored body, larger than most humans. They bring it into the outpost to thaw it out, and when it does, it turns out that the creature is still alive. The so-called Ice Warrior

written by Brian Hayles
directed by Derek Martinus
music by Dudley Simpson

Guest Cast: Wendy Gifford (Miss Garrett), Peter Barkworth (Clent), George Waring (Arden), Malcolm Taylor (Walters), Peter Diamond (Davis), Angus Lennie (Storr), Peter Sallis (Penley), Bernard Bresslaw (Varga), Roy Skelton (Computer voice), Roger Jones (Zondal), Sonny Caldinez (Turoc), Tony Harwood (Rintan), Michael Attwell (Ishur)

Broadcast from November 11 through December 16, 1967

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Classic Season 05 Doctor Who

Enemy Of The World

Doctor WhoThe TARDIS materializes in the Australian surf in the future, and the Doctor excitedly tries to get Jamie and Victoria to help him build a sand castle or two. When a hovercraft teeming with armed guards appears, though, the time travelers become less relaxed – especially when the hovercraft starts firing at the Doctor in particular. The time travelers are rescued when a helicopter piloted by a woman named Astrid appears, offering them a ride back to her base, but the Doctor and his friends are no safer there. Astrid works for a man named Giles Kent, who says he’s leading a resistance movement against the ruthless dictator known as Salamander – a man who looks exactly like the Doctor. Kent wants the Doctor to impersonate Salamander in an effort to discredit and topple the man’s corrupt regime, but the Doctor is certain he hasn’t been told the whole story. When Kent also hatches a plan that involves Jamie and Victoria going undercover, the stakes are even higher. But can Salamander’s opponents prove that he is the monster that they say he is? And do they even know the whole story?

written by David Whitaker
directed by Barry Letts
music not credited

Guest Cast: Henry Stamper (Anton), Rhys McConnochie (Rod), Simon Cain (Curly), Mary Peach (Astrid), Bill Kerr (Kent), Colin Douglas (Bruce), Milton Johns (Benik), George Pravda (Denes), David Nettheim (Fedorin), Patrick Troughton (Salamander), Carmen Munroe (Fariah), Gordon Faith, Elliott Cairnes (Guard Captains), Bill Lyons (Guard), Reg Lye (Griffin), Andrew Staines (Sergeant), Christopher Burgess Doctor Who(Swann), Adam Verney (Colin), Margaret Hickey (Mary), Dibbs Mather, Bob Anderson, William McGuirk (Guards)

Note: Considered “lost” for decades following a purge of videotape and film stock in the BBC’s archives, all six episodes of Enemy Of The World now exist thanks to the 2013 discovery of 16mm film copies in a broadcast transmitter hut in Nigeria.

Broadcast from December 23, 1967 through January 27, 1968

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Classic Season 05 Doctor Who

The Web Of Fear

Doctor WhoThe Doctor, Jamie and Victoria are nearly sucked out into the time vortex when Salamander takes off with the TARDIS doors open. Salamander is ejected from the TARDIS, and the ship lands safely in the London Underground circa 1968. But all is not well in central London: a deadly mist hovers above ground over the Circle Line, and an even deadlier web is filling the tunnels of the Underground. Yeti patrol the tunnels, trapping a batallion of Army soldiers in the tunnels. The Great Intelligence has trapped the Doctor and his friends in a scheme to take over the Doctor’s mind, using the Time Lord’s immense knowledge for evil. Professor Travers, the scientist who the Doctor saved from the Yeti in 1930s Tibet, is able to vouch for the time travelers’ good intensions, though some of the soldiers aren’t so trusting. The Doctor races against time to wrest control of the robotic Yeti from the Great Intelligence and to find a traitor among the contingent of soldiers in the Underground. And perhaps most importantly of all, the Doctor must gain the trust of an unusually open-minded Army officer, Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart.

written by Mervyn Haisman & Henry Lincoln
directed by Douglas Camfield
music not credited

Guest Cast: Nicholas Courtney (Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart), Jack Watling (Professor Travers), Tina Packer (Anne Travers), Frederick Schrecker (Julius Silverstein), Rod Beacham (Lane), Ralph Watson (Knight), Richardson Morgan (Blake), Jon Rollason (Chorley), Jack Woolgar (Arnold), Stephen Whittaker (Weams), Bernard G. High (Soldier), Joseph O’ Connell (Soldier), John Levene (Yeti), John Lord (Yeti), Gordon Stothard (Yeti), Doctor WhoColin Warman (Yeti), Jeremy King (Yeti), Roger Jacombs (Yeti), Derek Pollitt (Evans)

Note: Considered “lost” for decades following a purge of videotape and film stock in the BBC’s archives, five of the six episodes of The Web Of Fear now exist thanks to the 2013 discovery of 16mm film copies in a broadcast transmitter hut in Nigeria. The third episode – in which the Doctor first meets Colonel Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart – sadly remains missing.

Broadcast from February 3 through March 9, 1968

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Classic Season 05 Doctor Who

Fury From The Deep

Doctor WhoThe TARDIS deposits the Doctor, Victoria and Jamie near a North Sea natural gas refinery, whose pipelines radiate a disturbing, heartbeat-like sound. When refinery personnel find the Doctor trying to diagnose the problem, the head of the refinery operation assumes that the Doctor is trying to sabotage their operation. But once they’re at the refinery itself, the time travelers quickly learn that something is dangerously amiss. Drilling rigs at sea have dropped out of communication, samples of strange seaweed enshrouded in a pulsating foam have been found, and those who have come in contact with the seaweed have never been the same again. The Doctor offers his help, but when it is refused it puts he and his companions in even greater risk. When the Doctor encounters the seaweed, it takes time for him to realize that one of his companions has the best defense against it.

written by Victor Pemberton
directed by Hugh David
music by Dudley Simpson

Guest Cast: Victor Maddern (Robson), Roy Spencer (Harris), Graham Leaman (Price), Peter Ducrom (Guard), June Murphy (Maggie Harris), John Garvin (Carney), Hubert Rees (Chief Engineer), John Abierni (Van Lutyens), Richard Mayes (Baxter), Bill Burridge (Quill), John Gill (Oak), Margaret John (Megan Jones), Brian Cullingford (Perkins)

Note: The master tapes of this episode were destroyed by the BBC in the early 1970’s, and no video copies exist.

Broadcast from March 16 through April 20, 1968

Notes: Writer Victor Pemberton penned another Doctor Who adventure with a menace spawned from the sea, The Pescatons, the first commercially-released audio-only Doctor Who story, starring Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen. This story marked the first-ever appearance of the sonic screwdriver in Doctor Who, and the Doctor prophetically points out that it’ll “work on anything”. This is the final story to feature Deborah Watling as Victoria Waterfield, though the character would return in the fan-made film Downtime in the 1990s.

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Classic Season 05 Doctor Who

The Wheel In Space

Doctor WhoAfter leaving Victoria on Earth, the Doctor and Jamie find themselves aboard a drifting spacecraft. A fault in the TARDIS’ mercury fluid link creates a dangerous malfunction, which the Doctor resorts to drastic measures to stop, removing the timeship’s time vector generator and folding down its internal dimensions until it literally is a police box. The Doctor is knocked out as the spacecraft lurches suddenly, leaving Jamie on his own. When the ship comes dangerously close to space station W3, the station’s commander prepares to blast the ship out of the sky, over his crew’s objections. Jamie manages to signal the space station, which sends astronauts across to retrieve the two time travelers, who find themselves hard-pressed to explain their presence. The ship is millions of miles off course and shouldn’t have been anywhere near W3 at all. When a Cybermat appears, the Doctor realizes that the Cybermen can’t be far behind – and they’ve used the ship to smuggle themselves aboard the wheel. But what is the Cybermen’s real goal?

Order this story on audio CDwritten by David Whitaker
from a story by Kit Pedler
directed by Tristan de Vere Cole
music by Brian Hodgson and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop

Guest Cast: Freddie Foote (Servo-Robot), Eric Flynn (Ryan), Anne Ridler (Dr. Corwyn), Clare Jenkins (Tanya Lernov), Michael Turner (Bennett), Donald Sumpter (Enrico Casali), Kenneth Watson (Duggan), Michael Goldie (Laleham), Derrick Gilbert (Vallance), Kevork Malikyan (Rudkin), Peter Laird (Chang), James Mellor (Flannigan), Jerry Holmes, Gordon Stothard (Cybermen), Peter Hawkins, Roy Skelton (Cybermen voices)

Notes: Portions of this episode were destroyed by the BBC in the early 1970’s; the two surviving episodes appear on the Lost In Time DVD set. This episode marks the first appearance of the Doctor’s nom de plume, “John Smith”, which would be used more frequently in the Pertwee era and would reappear in everything from the 1996 TV movie through David Tennant’s tenure. Jamie coined the name in a bit of a pinch, and perhaps as a payback, the tenth Doctor instead uses the alias “James McCrimmon” during a visit to Scotland in Tooth And Claw. Zoe joins the TARDIS crew in this story, and the end of episode six the Doctor sets up a device to replay a recent adventure with the Daleks to her, which was an inspired way to lead into a rare rerun (in this case, The Evil Of The Daleks). This marked the final appearance of the Moonbase-style Cybermen; in their next appearance, in The Invasion, they would undergo a major redesign.

Broadcast from April 27 through June 1, 1968

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
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

Categories
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

Categories
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

Categories
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

Categories
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

Categories
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

Categories
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

Categories
Classic Season 07 Doctor Who

Spearhead From Space

Doctor WhoDr. Liz Shaw is uprooted from her research at Cambridge to serve as the scientific advisor for the recently formed United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, headed by Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. The Brigadier seeks Liz’s help in the investigation of two mysteriously precise meteor showers which could be signs of alien interference with Earth. But the Brigadier’s luck improves with the arrival of a police box in the midst of the most recent meteor shower, though its sole occupant is a man he’s never seen before. The Doctor, however, does recognize the Brigadier despite recovering from the trauma of his forced regeneration at the hands of the Time Lords, and the two join forces – with a somewhat bewildered Dr. Shaw in tow – to fight an alien menace which can inhabit and control one of the most common substances manufactured on Earth…plastic.

Download this episodewritten by Robert Holmes
directed by Derek Martinus
music by Dudley Simpson

Guest Cast: Hugh Burden (Channing), Neil Wilson (Seeley), John Breslin (Captain Munro), Antony Webb (Dr. Henderson), Helen Dorward (Nurse), Talfryn Thomas (Mullins), George Lee (Corporal Forbes), Iain Smith, Tessa Shaw, Ellis Jones (UNIT personnel), Allan Mitchell (Wagstaffe), Prentis Hancock (Reporter), Derek Smee (Ransome), John Woodnutt (Hibbert), Betty Bowden (Meg Seeley), Hamilton Dyce (Scobie), Henry McCarthy (Dr. Beavis), Clifford Cox (Soldier), Edmund Bailey (Waxworks Attendant)

Broadcast from January 3 through 24, 1970

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green