The Ribos Operation

Chapter The 108th, where the con is on a global scale.

Plot: 
The Doctor and K9 Mark II are hijacked on route to a holiday by the White Guardian, and forced to go on a quest to find the six segments of the Key to Time, scattered throughout the cosmos. Recently qualified Time Lord Academy graduate Romana is assigned to help too. Searching for the first segment leads them to the planet Ribos, and slap bang into the middle of a crime caper. A couple of con artists, Garron and Unstoffe, are attempting to trick a deposed aristocratic tyrant, the Graff Vynda-K, out of a substantial amount of gold in a land sale scam (the land in question being the entire planet Ribos). One prop that the dodgy duo are using as part of this is a lump of a precious mineral, which turns out to be the first segment in disguise.

The Graff gets wind of the scheme, but thinks that the Doctor and Romana are involved too; he and his personal guardsmen pursue the conmen and the TARDIS team into the dangerous catacombs of Ribos, aided by the local wise woman who has a non-scientifically explained psychic ability. (There's also a brief detour made to tell a persecuted scientific heretic that he was right all long; sounds extraneous, but trust me - you wouldn't want to cut it.) The Graff and his troops end up dead, and the Doctor tricks Garron with his hitherto unmentioned pickpocketing skills, lifting the segment from him. Our heroes depart, leaving Garron and Unstoffe with the consolation prize of the Graff's ship full of loot. And the quest continues...

Context:

As the random number generator had landed on two Tom Bakers in succession, which it felt a bit samey to ask the family to join me in watching, and also because it's a favourite of mine, I kept The Ribos Operation all to myself as a treat. I watched it from the Australian DVD (long story - see the First-time round section of The Armageddon Factor post for more details) with a crafty craft ale late one evening. It went down as smoothly as I remembered. It's a hidden gem: well regarded by many enthusiasts (as a quick google of online reviews will confirm) but never appearing too high in any fan popularity list (it was 103rd out of 241 stories in Doctor Who Magazine's most recent poll in 2014 - resolutely mid-table).

First-time round:

April 1995; Britpop bestrode the charts, I had finished Uni the previous Summer and was back at home in Worthing, working in an office while figuring out what to do with my life (it turned out what I was going to do with my life was work in an office, but hey ho). I'd just met the very wonderful person who would later become The Better Half, when something almost as significant happened: BBC Video brought out the Key to Time season on VHS. Two of the season's stories were released every month from April to June until the set was complete. I don't know why they didn't just release 'em all in one go. Box sets were not such a big thing then, I suppose; there had been a few, but never containing as many as six stories in one hit. So, it was just the first two tapes - Ribos and The Pirate Planet - that I bought one lunchtime; I remember queueing to get a burger in Old Nick's Diner (a much missed institution) and perusing the boxes trying to work out what picture would be revealed across the spines when I'd collected them all. Once I'd collected them all, I was still none the wiser.

Reaction

The producer of The Ribos Operation, Graham Williams, took over the year before Ribos with a grand plan to have each of the stories in his first season linked by one over-arching narrative. For whatever reason, it was ultimately decided not to attempt this in his first season in charge, so it happened - as the Key to Time quest - for his second, season 16, which aired in 1978/79. On watching, you can instantly see that the show has stepped up a gear, and is more confidently meeting its maker's requirements. Season 15 was bitty and scrappy, a transitional phase; season 16 works much better, and reaches the best imaginative heights that Williams ever achieved (his third and final season in charge is, alas, bitty and scrappy and something of a transitional phase). That these heights were reached is even more surprising when one considers that the tale that kicks off this epic quest is resolutely small in scale, and character-driven.

Robert Holmes - no longer the script editor of Who by now, having left the role the previous year, but a gun for hire - is still in his imperial phase. He writes two scripts in the Key to Time year, commissioned by his successor, and in both he appears to be having fun trying new things, to see if they will work within the Doctor who structure. Although such a story type hadn't been tried before in Doctor Who, The Ribos Operation only very slightly qualifies as a heist narrative - the con isn't complex, and is dispensed with after the first couple of episodes. What propels the action is a set of marvellous characters, perhaps the best quality group that Holmes ever conjured up in one story. Starting with the regulars: Tom Baker and John Leeson (voicing K9) are firmly in their groove, delivering the witty dialogue with aplomb. The production team are trying to do something a little less sexist with the character of Romana, who is more studious than the Doctor but has fewer street smarts, but it's only a baby step: ice maiden glamour bomb is about as bad as semi-clad savage, or girl-next-door. Mary Tamm is excellent despite this, instantly making her mark.

Over the years, there's been lots of guest characters that have appeared in Doctor Who (often double-acts in Robert Holmes scripts, to be fair) that fans have wanted to see in their own spin-off. But characters like Garron and Unstoffe, or the Graff and Sholakh, are already starring in their own shows - they just happen to have crashed their shows into Doctor Who for a few weeks, that's all. Both pairs come with believable history and relationships, fully formed. Ian Cuthbertson is perfect as a lovable rogue, and gets some of the most memorable lines ("Who wants everything? I'll settle for ninety percent", "If mine's mines, what's yours?", "There's no comfort in dying - I've always said it was the last thing I want to do.", etc.). Nigel Paskitt uses his "honest, open face" to great effect. And would it be pushing things too much to suggest that the Graff Vynda-K, and his second-in-command, played with brio and just the right amount of scenery chewing by Paul Seed and Robert Keegan, are the most complex villains in classic Doctor Who? The world building that the script achieves in just a few sentences convinces you that a very 'large' characterisation is nonetheless real. When the Graff mourns the death of Sholakh, planting a kiss on his dead comrade's lips, you can't help but be mesmerised (and feel a little bit sorry for him).

Even tiny roles shine: Prentis Hancock - normally much higher up the bill when guesting in Who - makes the most of not many lines playing the Guard Captain; Ann Tirard as the Seeker; even the nasty guard that bullies Binro - they all get a magic moment, or several. There's great music, inventive sets and great costumes too. To me, it's almost flawless. The Shrivenzale is rubbish, but who cares? It's not the main point of proceedings. Obviously, not being the main point of proceedings doesn't mean something can't be great too. Case in point: Binro the Heretic. This character would lift out of the script without much effort to rewrite; the subplot about his persecution for heresy doesn't fit with the rest of the narrative at all, but somehow it works, probably as the character is written and performed excellently. The 'Binro was right' scene between him and Unstoffe - two minor characters discussing something unconnected to the story's plot nor the season's arc, lest we forget - is one of the greatest in Doctor Who's history. Simple, but affecting. If you can watch it without being overcome with emotion, then your heart is truly stuck in the Icetime. 

Connectivity: 

Loads of connections this time. The Ribos Operation and The Masque of Mandragora are two Tom Baker four-parters that each kick off their season of Doctor Who; both feature superstitious societies and characters that claim to have supernatural powers as a seer. The societies are both on the brink of new knowledge, with a character in each who has awareness of emerging scientific principles - both stories contain an essentially identical scene where this character shares with another a Copernican revolutionary theory. Both endings hinge upon the Doctor operating in disguise, donning one of the bad guy's outfits.

Deeper Thoughts:
Christmas, but not Special. The Ribos Operation features a lot of snow, and that's sufficient enough reason in my mind for deeper thoughts to turn to Christmas already. I have started the heavy rotation of my Christmas tunes playlist at home, and have had my first cup of mulled wine too, even though it's not even quite December. I love Christmas, you see - always have. It drives the Better Half mad, as she is more on the side of old Ebeneezer when it comes to things festive. I tend to have worn her down with my relentless enthusiasm by about December the 24th, though, and she usually enjoys the big day (but would likely not admit to that). Yes, I am a big kid, but a contented one. From Christmas 2003, after the announcement that Doctor Who was coming back to TV,  I have had enough of a Who-related gift in the promise of a new series to be made every year or so. Getting a Doctor Who special every Christmas from 2005 to 2017 was just a wonderful bonus. I'd have been stupidly, blissfully idiot happy anyway. But - as is sometimes the way with wells and water running dry - now I'm not getting a Doctor Who Christmas special on December 25th 2018, I'm mightily miffed.

After an uninterrupted run of 13 years, the seasonal Doctor Who special appears to be no more. Just as the regular series is no longer the brash young child of Saturday nights but has matured into a sensible Sunday night staple, so this year's extra episode is not a fit for the festive evening schedule, but is airing a week later on New Year's Day 2019. Did the production team jump at the chance to do something different, or were they pushed? There were rumours rumbling even before it aired that the 2017 Christmas special would be the last. But as any long-term Doctor Who fan will tell you, literally everything anyone could conceive about Doctor Who is rumoured at some point somewhere. The law of averages means that one will turn out to be right every so often, as this one has. This is why I can't get too worried about other rumours murmuring away in the background right now. There might be a full series next year, there might be only a few episodes with the rest showing in 2020, or there might be none except the one on January 1st. There's no way to know, until we know.

What seems likely, though, is that Doctor Who won't be on TV on December 25th in 2019, 2020, or any year after that. It's very rare for a series to bounce back into the Christmas day schedule once it's left. I find this a bit disappointing. It feels like a demotion; plus, the extended family doesn't gather round to watch TV on New Year's Day, so that ritual - which happened rarely, but warmed my heart whenever it did - is gone too. What's even more frustrating is that the last story to air on Christmas Day was so rubbish. I still haven't come to terms with Twice Upon A Time, but I thought a lovely hour of Jodie and the Team / Gang / Fam, washed down with lashings of sherry and mince pies, might have finally exorcised that bad memory. Alas, it will have to be a slightly more sober January 1st viewing experience instead.

In Summary:

Ribos is like a good wine: nicely put together, with dramatic and sweet notes, and lots of character.

The Masque of Mandragora

Chapter The 107th, which features lots of masks, but only one masque.

Plot: 
The Doctor accidentally delivers a malevolent energy ball, the Mandragora Helix, to San Martino, Italy in the 15th century where it threatens to divert the renaissance and plunge history into an ever-lasting dark age. Careless of him that, really. The Helix has some affinity with the local court astrologer Hieronymous, who is secretly the leader of the Cult of Demnos, a group of blokes who like to dress in robes and masks like the lot in Eyes Wide Shut, but actually not much like the ones in Eyes Wide Shut, thinking about it. Anyway, the Doctor stops Sarah from being sacrificed, defeats the Helix's servants by draining off their energy with some wire, and has a lot of sword fights. Job done.

Context:

Another one enjoyed by the whole family (me, the Better Half, boys of 12 and 9, girl of 6); this time we watched an episode a night from the DVD stripped across the week. Perhaps because it's not one that anyone's familiar with (because, fairly or unfairly, I always imagine it's a bit dull, so never put it on), everyone loved it. Middle child was playing a game on his tablet instead of watching episode 2, but moaned and moaned when we started on episode 3, insisting that he be allowed to catch up. And every cliffhanger was followed by the traditional chorus of "Next ep, next ep..." which is always a sign that something's going down well. The Better Half very much liked the clobber, including the boots, that Liz Sladen wears as Sarah Jane for most of the running time ("much better than the awful Andy Pandy outfit"); the frock she dons at the end wasn't felt to be too bad either.

First-time round:

I bought the VHS during 1991 in the long Summer holiday between finishing my A-levels and starting at St. Aidan's College, University of Durham. It was an interesting time; I had planned to work through the Summer to earn some money for the new adventure ahead, but soon after finishing at Worthing Sixth Form College, I became very unwell with chicken pox. I'd caught it before when I was a child, but apparently, it is possible - but rare - to get it twice. I was told this in an isolated room at the Doctor's surgery after I'd walked down there from home wrapped up like the Elephant Man because of my crusty visog. I had to go back again a few days later, as it turned out that a secondary infection caused each pock to swell up to something like a bubo. I remember spending the Summer worrying that I wouldn't be well enough to start University, but luckily I made it (just about). It left me nothing much to do for those weeks except watch Doctor Who videos while feeling awful. Mandragora was one of a few videos released in those weeks that took my mind off my ailments. It came out at the same time as The Three Doctors VHS, in a "Bad guy's mask is taken off and there's nothing underneath" box set... or else I've just made that up.

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It's rare for any Doctor Who story of the classic era to be flawless in its visual execution. Production values were just as important to the crew then as they are now, but the method of making the programme (weekly in-studio grind with only brief sections filmed as single-camera set-ups) made achieving a good-looking show more challenging. The budget allocated also could never be enough for a show whose reach had to exceed its grasp. The hackneyed observation is that Doctor Who's sets were always wobbling (usually followed by comments to the effect that this didn't matter, as you just had to use a little imagination to suspend your disbelief). The sets, though, were usually very well made and wobbled no more than any other contemporaneous show. If you want to see a set wobble, look at 'The Builders' episode of Fawlty Towers for some egregious examples; nobody (with the exception of disgruntled Doctor Who fans like what I am) ever makes a fuss when John Cleese does it!

No, usually Doctor Who got those basics right; it's far more likely, to stumble over one particular element where the resources available cannot match the script's ambition, which then mars an otherwise solid production. The Giant Rat in The Talons of Weng-Chiang is a famous example. It's commendable then that The Masque of Mandragora avoids this: every element looks better than average, some reaching unprecedented levels of excellence. The location footage makes very good use of the architectural follies of Portmeirion in Wales; the sets and costumes are rich and authentic seeming; the cast - including sterling work from a young Tim Pigott-Smith - is uniformly competent and directed well. Though a little less convincing, the sci-fi sequences early on where the TARDIS has its encounter with the helix energy in space are still serviceable, and aren't on screen for very long. There's even a jester doing some fire-eating - what more can one ask? Some scares might have been nice - it's not one to send kiddies behind the sofa, with only the brethren's masks being a bit creepy, and the reveal of Hieronymous's "blank look" a nice shock moment. The rest, though it looks great and the plot rarely drags, never really sets the pulse racing.

The sheer quality of the production might just be a sign that they were playing it safe, that the reach never was exceeding the grasp. The BBC at the time had a lot of expertise at depicting this sort of costume drama, with outfits and props available in stock that had likely been used for a Sunday Shakespeare previously. It would be churlish, though, to criticise its makers for boxing clever, and making the strengths of the corporation work for the good of the production. And it did go down very well with a jaded 2018 audience, so it can't be bad. Perhaps the final episode runs out of steam a bit. Two larger-than-life villains have driven the plot of the first three episodes: Count Frederico, played with relish by Jon Laurimore, and Norman Jones more than matching him playing Hieronymous. At the end of part 3, though, the mechanics of the plot have killed off the former and reduced the latter to a voice-only presence. Impetus is therefore lost, with the episode left treading water with the Doctor engineering a trap and everyone else having a dance.

Connectivity: 

Both Mawdryn Undead and The Masque of Mandragora feature no monster, but have instead a human antagonist corrupted by a dark force from beyond time or whatever (one looks like a sparkler, the other has a stuffed bird on his head - the banality of evil?!).

Deeper Thoughts:
Pronunciation let me down, and I'm left here. Thousands and thousands of Doctor Who reference books, articles and reviews have been written over the years, and I don't think I've ever seen any make note of one particular glaring huge Doctor Who fact: everyone in The Masque of Mandragora pronounces Mandragora wrong. It's not man-DRAG-or-a, it's MAN-dra-GOR-a - a couple of trochees. It's not like it's a made up alien name, it's in Shakespeare (Othello to be precise). If it weren't pronounced as above, Iago's line "Not poppy, nor mandragora, nor all the drowsy syrups of the world, can ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep which thou owedst yesterday" would not scan. No, I don't know these things because of any high-falutin' classical education, I know them because the 12-inch mix of Pet Shop Boy's 1991 single Jealousy has this quote spoken over the intro by Neil Tennant. And before recording it, Neil queried the M-word with Ian McKellan who told him how to say it, and he resolutely does not say it like any of the cast of Doctor Who, so there!

It annoys me every time I watch: I see it written down in the credits and hear it in my head the correct way, but then the first time the Doctor says it wrong in episode 1, it always pulls me instantly out of the story. And it's not the only piss-monunciation in Doctor Who. Perhaps inevitably, there's lots of cases where it's a made-up name: callbacks to planets Metebelis and Spiridon in stories many years later get them wrong; Kevin Lindsay, the actor to first play a Sontaran, changed the pronunciation from what was intended by script and director, announcing something along the lines of "It's my bloody planet, mate, I'll say it how I like". But there's just as many instances where the word is a real one that they could have just looked up. For example, clearly neither Jon Pertwee nor the director knew how to pronounce 'chitinous' which the Doctor's scripted to say in 1973 story The Green Death. His incorrect take was broadcast, and this prompted one wag to write in to the producer, starting the letter "The reason I'm writin' is how to say 'chitin'".

Worst culprit of all to my mind is Tom Baker. 'Mandragora' is consistently misspoken, so that was a decision cast and crew must have come to in rehearsal, not down to Tom alone. But in other stories, he seems to be going out of his way to say things wrong, just for the sheer hell of it. In The Horror of Fang Rock, a story that features a shape-shifter, he talks about "the chameleon factor", but pronounces it Shameleon. It's just before a cliffhanger, so gets recapped the next week, doubling the wrong. In The Robots of Death, he describes some "Terran insects", but says it like 'Tehran', as if bees only come from the capital of Iran. Worst of all, as it just boggles the mind, is a discussion with a trickster character at the end of The Ribos Operation where he refers to some fingersmithery as "sleigh of hand". He just misses the 't' off the end of 'sleight' and says a completely different word! This one perplexed me for a long time; I was convinced that my knowledge of the phrase must be faulty, and it must derive from something sleigh-based. Perhaps the quickness of the hand when ringing a sleigh-bell is enough to fool the eye? No, it was just Tom being silly. During the recording of these programmes, had Mister Baker - I hesitate even to suggest it - had a very good lunch, perhaps?! 

Getting too pedantic about this would be no fun, of course, just as it wouldn't be to criticise other people's grammar too harshly. I always loved Kingsley Amis's division of people into two groups: Berks and Wankers, which is instructive enough to be quoted in full: "Berks are careless, coarse, crass, gross and of what anybody would agree is a lower social class than one’s own. They speak in a slipshod way with dropped Hs, intruded glottal stops and many mistakes in grammar. Left to them the English language would die of impurity, like late Latin. Wankers are prissy, fussy, priggish, prim and of what they would probably misrepresent as a higher social class than one’s own. They speak in an over-precise way with much pedantic insistence on letters not generally sounded, especially Hs. Left to them the language would die of purity, like medieval Latin." The best place to be, as ever, is the middle ground, accepting that language changes and evolves through usage. The trouble is, that feels a little bit too much like leaving things to the 'will of the people', something that certain people in the UK, like me, think we've had quite enough of lately!

In Summary:
Solid, entertaining and very well made, but - despite the depiction of the Mandragora Helix early on - this story is lacking a bit of sparkle.

Mawdryn Undead

Chapter The 106th, you wait ages for the return of the Brigadier and then two come along at once...

Plot: 
1983. In a minor English public school, a mysterious pupil called Turlough (who's really an alien) does a deal with a man with a stuffed bird on his head in a whirly dreamscape. In return for safe passage away from the Earth, he has to kill some fellow called The Doctor. One of Turlough's teachers is TV's The Brigadier. The Brig's somehow forgotten all about the Doctor since a nervous breakdown he suffered in 1977 (so, sometime around Terror of the Autons - Inconsistent dating of UNIT stories Ed.) The Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa meanwhile land on the Starship Technobabble, which is travelling in perpetuity through a warp ellipse, or something, and is seemingly deserted. Through a complicated set of coincidences, which are being influenced by vengeful Mister Stuffed Bird on Head, AKA the Black Guardian, Tegan and Nyssa end up meeting the Brig back on Earth in 1977, and the Doctor ends up meeting him in 1983. Both parties end up back on the ship, with Turlough tagging along with the Doctor and Brig '83, and half-heartedly trying to kill the Doctor every so often.

On the ship are a handful of scientists led by a brainy chap called Mawdyn; they have experimented on themselves with Time Lord technology, and now cannot die, enduring in a state of continuous torment. They want the Doctor to euthanise them using his Time Lord energy (somehow). But this will mean he ceases to be a Time Lord and can't regenerate anymore. For some reason - his moral compass being a little bit scrambled by the warp ellipse maybe - the Doctor is very reluctant to do this selfless and heroic act; you'd think it would be right up his alley. Just as he's finally persuaded to do so, though, the two Brigadiers - who've been kept apart up to now with French farce style near misses, going in one door just as the other's coming in the opposite door and the like - meet each other, and release lots of plot expediency which allows Mawdryn and the others to kark it, and causes Brig '77's 'nervous breakdown'. Both Brigs are returned to their time zones. Turlough joins the TARDIS team, but nobody asks him about his background as the writers haven't worked it out yet. Everyone is fine with snatching a kid from his school and leaving the Brigadier - someone who had various grudges against the boy, and was the last person to see him alive - to presumably be suspected of his murder forever more.

Context:

The whole family had been very busy with this or that for quite a few weeks; so, we recently decided to have a weekend when we busily did nothing in particular, just hung around the house playing video games, drinking cups of tea and such. Lovely. On the Saturday, the whole lot of us (me, the Better Half, boys of 12 and 9, girl of 6) watched Mawdryn Undead from the DVD in one go. It's rare for nobody to get restless and want a break at some point during 100 continuous minutes, so Mawdryn Undead must be doing something right. The CBBC level (in a good way) dilemma made for good engagement with the kiddos; more than one of them was chanting "don't do it, don't do it" when Turlough was wrestling with selling his soul to the Black Guardian. And all the kids were mortified when he casually lies to deflect attention from himself and get his schoolmate Ibbotson into trouble. What a cad! Companions are not supposed to behave that way. 

First-time round:

The 20th Doctor Who series was the second run that I watched as it went out on BBC1. Unlike Peter Davison's previous year, I did not have to miss every other episode to go to cubs, as I was too old by then. It must have been the autumn of 1982 that I'd had a few taster sessions for sea scouts, one of which involved being chucked out of a boat and having to swim to shore in very cold water. Needless to say, this TV-loving geek did not take up such a punishing pastime on a permanent basis. So, from the start of the series at New Year in 1983, I was free to watch every story, including Mawdryn Undead, without having to get a precis in the playground of the odd numbered episodes. You might think that the sudden doubling of my episodic intake would have made it memorable, but casting my mind back I have only a few strong memories from watching the season, and none to do with this story in particular. A moment that sticks in my memory from watching Mawdryn was from many years later. In the mid-1990s, I was watching the VHS with the Better Half in my family home; my sister walked in, gave the TV screen and Turlough's antics upon it a long, withering look, and said "Why is that 30-year old dressed up as a schoolboy?". That was her one-line review.

Reaction

The stories of 20th century "Classic" Doctor Who were mostly multi-part stories with four or more episodes; in those days, I'll wager it was rare for one's favourite episode of any story to be part 2. Beginnings and ends are often favoured; lots of Doctor Who stories start well, and fewer but still many have a great ending. Robert Holmes, prolific 20th Century Who writer whose praises I was singing last post, said that episode 3 out of a 4-parter had "dog-legs", meaning that the plot would go off in a surprising direction, so there's some memorable episode 3s too; but, stories where episode 2's the best? Only Mawdryn Undead, that I can think of. The whole of that second episode is formally and emotionally rich: writer Peter Grimwade's script provides a solid and surprisingly modern usage of a guest character returning from the series' past. The Brigadier's memories of the Doctor are mysteriously blocked by some past trauma. During the second episode, they are unlocked in a wonderful character moment, and there follows lots of fan pleasing but non-gratuitous old clips. Then, as the Doctor teases the details of the mystery out of his old friend, the actions of his past as he retells the memories in the present are presented as intercut sequences. It works very well.

The original idea - before actor William Russell proved unavailable - was that it would be original 1960s companion Ian Chesterton teaching at Turlough's school. This might have fit better based on the cold hard facts of previous exposition, but Ian's character was solid and dependable; any kind of nervous breakdown would have seemed out of place. The Brig, however, near the end of his first ever story, The Web of Fear, starts to break down after an encounter with the Yeti has wiped out most of his men, and babbles about his formless, shapeless foes. The events of Mawdryn are entirely in keeping with that glimpse. Nicholas Courtney delivers perhaps the best performance from his many years on the show, giving us subtly different versions of Brig the Elder and Brig the Younger, and deftly performing the vulnerability masked by the stiff upper lip of a military man. William Russell would have been great too, I'm sure, but having Ian take a regenerated Doctor in his stride, seeing him without William Hartnell's Doctor and - crucially - without Barbara, would not have been as good as developing the Brigadier's story. All in all then, a happy accident.

The earlier portion of the tale concentrates on Turlough's selling his soul, which is an interesting concept but we don't know him well enough yet for it to resonate as much as the Brigadier's plot. Episodes 3 and 4 concentrate more on Mawdryn and his fellow scientists, who need to escape from the eternal life they've trapped themselves in. Again, this is a more distinctive motivation and richer emotional arc than usual, but the characters involved are not drawn in any detail, and are anyway a slightly immoral lot, not necessarily deserving of audience sympathy. It's a satisfying closure when they achieve their final rest, though. Think on this for a moment: for all its prototype Steven Moffat-esque timey-wimey structure, Mawdryn Undead contains three plots, all of which are propelled by understandable human emotions. It's admirable, and definitely not the norm for this era.

It's not perfect. There's a major misstep at the end where the Doctor's threatened fate is not to die, giving up his life for others; instead, he is just going to cease being a Time Lord. It's a more abstract concept, and one that requires awareness of obscure series continuity. And it's unnecessary: why not just have him risk death, it would be a simpler and more immediate threat that anyone could understand. Other minor negatives: despite the efforts of the script to sell it, nobody would have thought for a second that the charred Mawdryn was a regenerated Doctor (he wasn't wearing a loin cloth when last they saw them, was he?!); whatever his identity, dragging a burns victim along the floor and then wrapping him in blankets to "keep him warm" probably does not qualify as good nursing. Also, all the stories of this era have the same issue when watched in a random order: they always have an intrusive early TARDIS scene talking about the previous story - here it's the aftermath of Snakedance. It would be much better to forget about all that and get stuck into the new adventure. All in all, though, it was a very nicely constructed and performed piece, with plausible enough explanations for the huge coincidences at play. I was pleasantly surprised.

Connectivity: 

The Space Pirates and Mawdryn Undead both contain a space-faring object upon which the series regulars get stuck, which is subsequently blown apart. In both stories, being gullible is taken to an extreme (it's clear to the audience but not the characters who's behind the piracy, and that the bloke in the transmat capsule is clearly not the Doctor).

Deeper Thoughts:
A musical exercise. Shortly into Mawdryn Undead, Paddy Kingsland's otherwise excellent incidental music breaks in to a jaunty number to accompany Turlough and Ibbotson's grand theft auto, joyriding in the Brigadier's vintage car. It's a bit like the music that played on a Gameboy during Super Mario Land in the 1990s, both in terms of timbre and character. This cue remains a source of hilarity in our house, long after watching the episode; the Better Half sarcastically hums it occasionally to get my goat (though, I usually just laugh along with her). The odd lapse aside, though, I love most Doctor Who music. But I'm really bringing the subject up not to extol the virtues of the early chilly 60s electronica, nor Dudley Simpson's mid-period chamber incidentals, 1980s radiophonic synth anthems, nor recent romantic orchestral scores; I'm just using it as an excuse to tell you that I've lost two stone of weight.

It's not just a sweeping generalisation, more a sweeping, dusting, vacuuming and scrubbing the kitchen surfaces one: Doctor Who fans are not known for a predilection for exercise. Having been a pallid geek since the age of 9, and having piled on the years since then, I was until recently overweight and unfit. With some prompting from the Better Half, I decided to do something about this. Once we'd returned from our holiday this year (where I'd drunk a lot of wine and ate a lot of nice food), I have been moderating my diet, and doing more exercise. Part of the new regime has been doing Couch to 5K. This is an NHS-approved programme, that gradually takes a beginner over a 9-week period to the point where they can manage a 5K run. There's an app, of course, where a choice of voices can be selected to give you instruction and encouragement as you run. We both use the default voice of Laura, someone who previously did the programme herself (but who doesn't seem to have a surname, or at least not one she wants to make a big deal of online).

Most people have their favourite pop music music playing underneath too, helping to energise them. I'm not most people, though - I am exclusively using Doctor Who music. Three recent releases from Silva Screen records are currently loaded onto my phone, and I've tried running to all of them: the Capaldi series 9 original soundtrack by Murray Gold, Peter Howell's music from The Five Doctors, and Don Harper's music from The Invasion. Though always a favourite listen, the last of these has proved a bit too jazzy and laid-back for accompanying exercise, though there's something nice about starting a run to the original Delia Derbyshire arrangement of the Doctor Who theme, which kicks off The Invasion track-list. The Five Doctors is mostly fitting for fitness, particularly the track where Jon Pertwee is racing Bessie away from a pursuing triangle. I have, though, mostly concentrated on the most recent of the three, and a very specific part of it.

 

One disc of the series 9 CD release is given over to the full score of Heaven Sent, and it's this that has proved the best to accompany my Couch to 5K runs. Something about the metronomic nature of the story's main themes (as the Doctor explores his clockwork prison) helps me keep a steady pace. At the time of writing, we are on week 6 out.of 9, and still going. My main aim, apart from the better cardiovascular fitness and whatnot, is to time it perfectly so that the very wonderful cue 'The Shepherd's Boy', which crescendos as the Doctor slowly but surely punches his way free, is finishing just as I complete the run (and doesn't have Laura talking all over it). Not managed it yet, but a challenge like that keeps me trying, no matter what the weather. I shall report back when I chalk up this significant personal achievement.

 

In Summary:

A clever, and surprisingly emotional story; but, why is that 30-year old dressed up as a schoolboy?

The Space Pirates

Chapter The 105th, a Western in space; but probably not as exciting as that sounds.

Plot: 
In the far future, International Rescue, sorry, the Space Corps, led by Jeff Tracy, sorry General Hermack, investigate the recent destruction of space beacons made of an expensive metal, argonite. The beacons are being broken up, and the pieces space-towed away by pirates to be melted down. The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe land on one of these beacons, just as it is blown up; trapped, with limited oxygen, they sit out the story for approximately two episodes. Meanwhile, General Hermack tracks Milo Clancey - an old-timey prospector type like you get in space - in his battered ship. Milo is trying to find the space pirates, who've been stealing his cargoes too. The General suspects that Milo is really their ringleader. This is implausible and there's no real evidence to suggest it, but General Hermack is an idiot.

Milo rescues the TARDIS team, and they all travel to the nearby planet Ta. This is the base of a mining company run by Madeleine Issigri, daughter of Milo's missing (and presumed dead) old partner Dom. Madeleine's company has loads or argonite, even though the planet's mines were thought to be worked out, and she uses the same model of ships as the pirates, and Ta is in the right part of space to be the pirate's base. General Hermack doesn't suspect a thing. Eventually, the Doctor and friends discover that the pirates - led by a nasty piece of work called Caven - are in league with Madeleine. When she baulks at using lethal violence to frame Milo for their crimes, Caven puts pressure on her through threats to her father, who turns out to be alive and being held captive in the underground mines of Ta. Working together, the good guys escape the clutches of Caven and persuade the Space Corps who's really to blame for the piracy. The TARDIS team have a good old laugh at the prospect of another trip in Milo's rackety ship to locate the section of beacon where they left the TARDIS. Roll credits.

Context:

As everyone reading this will probably know, the archives of Doctor Who's black and white years are somewhat depleted. Several episodes broadcast between the series' start in 1963 and the transmission of The Space Pirates in 1969 are no longer held, and are not known to exist anywhere in the world (though some intrepid folks are still looking). Everything following The Space Pirates is present and more-or-less correct. There were several methods used to keep the stories shown in those days: the BBC would make film copies from the subsequently wiped master tapes, but those would eventually get junked. This was the fate of 5 of the 6 episodes of The Space Pirates, with only episode 2 remaining. The crew would sometimes hire a private contractor to take off-screen photos of the action as it was broadcast, which could then be used as a demonstration of the production. This practice had stopped by the time of this story, though. Finally, early tech-adopter fans would record the audio from their TV set's output. Through this last method, fans today can at least hear every story from the early years, even if they can't see them.

The off-screen photos and audio tracks have been married together for various missing episodes to create unofficial (and a couple of official) reconstructions; but, for cases like The Space Pirates where limited visual material exists, the makers of these have to fudge things so much, it can be distracting for me. So, I listened instead to the official CD release, which has narration by Fraser Hines explaining the action. I did this over several days, usually as an accompaniment to washing up or cleaning in the kitchen. I then listed to the whole thing again, as I enjoyed it and wanted to make sure I'd taken it all in. Finally, I watched episode 2 - which was released on the Lost in Time box set of orphaned episodes -  to get a feel for the visual identity of the story. The quality of restoration on the DVD is remarkably high.

First-time round:

I saw episode 2 for the first time in 1991 when it was released with another couple of episodes on The Troughton Years VHS. The episodes shown on these compilations were given scant context nor plot synopsis; with a story one wasn't familiar with, there was a lot of guesswork required to figure out the action of a middle episode. Such a presentation didn't do The Space Pirates any favours, particularly as the second episode features little of the stars of the show, and is in the slower introductory section of the story. The story as a whole I caught up with in February 2003, when the aforementioned audio CD was released. Finally, in 2004, when the aforementioned Lost in Time set was released, I saw the second episode again in better quality; the set also contained a couple of brief clips from other episodes.

Reaction

Robert Holmes was one of the most prolific and well regarded writers of Doctor Who in the 20th Century. He was the writer chosen to pen Jon Pertwee's launch story - a big deal as it was to a certain extent a reboot, and was the first ever colour story. Thereafter, Holmes contributed a script most years (all of them memorable stories) before taking over as script editor in line with Tom Baker's debut, a role which he held for three and a bit years. During this period, which many fans think of as a golden age, he did a job very similar to the modern showrunners: he commissioned, edited, and rewrote to a greater or lesser degree every story in the series at that time. He also wrote some key stories (all of them memorable) in this period, although this was less by design and usually because other scripts had fallen through. After he left the post, he continued to write stories for the show until his death, and a significant proportion of the stories he was responsible for are high up in fan polls. A lot of people think the first two Doctor Who stories he wrote in the final year of Patrick Troughton's tenure - The Krotons, and particularly The Space Pirates - are shit.

It's an odd phenomenon. It's as if some people think the black-and-white Robert Holmes was a different guy with the same name, or that he regenerated in parallel with the Doctor in 1969. This couldn't help but affect my expectations going in, and probably explained why I enjoyed The Space Pirates so much. It could never be as bad as the reputation that preceded it, and I was pleasantly surprised. There are lots of signs in the script that this is the same Robert Holmes of later, more popular stories. There are larger than life characters of both the comic and nasty types, there's witty dialogue, there's explicit borrowing of another genre to enrich the story. This is an Old West gold rush story transplanted into deep space - with a dollop of Gerry Anderson's Supermarionation, some Scooby Doo, and a pinch of Apollo mission TV coverage too. It's not trying to hide any of this: it's a story proud of its roots.

All in all, I found it a very enjoyable listen, even on the second run-through when any goodwill from lowered expectations should have worn off. It's criticised for not having much input from the regulars, and they are certainly used sparingly in several of the episodes. The final part only features them in pre-shot sequences, as they were all off filming The War Games, and didn't attend that studio session at all.  Patrick Troughton, Fraser Hines and Wendy Padbury are so good, though, and so established as a team by now (in their penultimate story), that a little goes a long way. Holmes has a particular knack for writing the second doctor's childlike wonder - I love the scene where he's using a bag of marbles pulled from his pocket as part of a villain-knobbling wheeze, but retrieves the green one because it's his favourite. The story also cops flack for lots of dull padding. I'm pretty sure it's on record that this started out as a four-parter that had to be extended to six episodes to patch up holes in the schedule from other scripts; but, it didn't ever drag for very long for this listener.

The 'twist' at the end of part four is obvious to anyone with a brain cell, yes, but it looks to me like it was supposed to be. It's a bit panto, but my take is that the audience is supposed to be clued in from the off, screaming 'She's behind you!' at General Hermack as he stubbornly suspects the wrong person. There are some dodgy performances, accents and moustaches, yes, but there's also some touchingly real material about the father-daughter relationship between Dom and Madeleine. There's some cheap-looking costumes and sets, but then there's the excellent model work. There's some terrible dialogue, and there's some great dialogue.  This all balances out to make a decent adventure from an underrated era, and I'd happily enjoy it a third time. But, what do I know? I think The Krotons is pretty good too.

Connectivity: 

Two stories in a row to feature spaceships that have their cargoes stolen by nefarious individuals hungry for profit.

Deeper Thoughts:
Adventures in Missing. It's not just certain Doctor Who stories that can't be seen, of course. Lots of TV from the same era is lost, and almost all TV from a certain point earlier than that is gone forever, simply because it was never recorded at all: it went out live once, and that was that. Cinema is impacted too, with many early silent era movies - when the medium was seen as ephemeral in the same way as was early television - not retained. Things don't have to be that old either. There are more recent movies that never get finished, and TV shows that are sitting on a shelf having never been broadcast, or shown once and never repeated again. Even inveterate collectors such as me know that we don't have a right to see and own everything; it feels unfair, though, when we get tantalising glimpses but can't see the whole thing. While the web and streaming services, and a somewhat cavalier attitude to copyright they created, have made it much easier to track down interesting curios, they've also made it easier to get those tantalising but incomplete glimpses too.

Case in point (but a nice case in point with a happy ending): The Other Side of the Wind, an infamous project filmed over many years with bits and pieces of financing keeping it going during the first half of the 1970s, intended to be director Orson Welles' Hollywood comeback. I'd long been fascinated with the film, after seeing clips in a documentary I saw on the BBC in the 1990s, One Man Band: The Lost Films of Orson Welles. This was a fascinating selection of clips from incomplete Orson opuses, shared from his personal archive by his partner (both romantic and creative) Oja Kodar. See, it's not just Doctor Who fans who are avid enough to consume such compendia; this doco was the Welles equivalent of The Troughton Years, and just as frustrating for the fan. The couple of clips shown from The Other Side of the Wind were entrancing, and provoked many speculations on what kind of plot could possibly join them up. Legal complications arising from all those bits and pieces of financing kept the film in limbo for decades, unseen by all but a select few. I'd given up hope of ever seeing it, but it has just become available of Netflix after Herculean efforts in untangling the issues, and editing together the footage.

Having now watched it, I can attest that it is every bit the work of crazy genius I expected. How did those two clips integrate into the whole? They didn't. They didn't need to. It's that sort of picture: a tapestry of sometimes wonderful, sometimes flawed moments, a time capsule of an era of change in Hollywood, like a chapter of Peter Biskind's Easy Riders Raging Bulls filmed as it was happening. It couldn't, though, live up to what I had imagined before it was shown. Now I've seen it, it's already fading, becoming just another artifact rather than the ball of potential energy it was, a helix of infinite possibilities. Much the same had happened with the Doctor Who stories discovered during my lifetime (like Tomb of the Cybermen or Enemy of the World) as they settled in to reality after exploding any preconceptions I might have had, good or bad. Much the same would no doubt happen with The Space Pirates if it was ever found: I get the feeling it would be reappraised and found much better than anyone thought, if all its visuals were available. It would then rapidly be taken for granted once it was just another file to download or box on a shelf.

The trade off is the same in all cases; the loss of potential is compensated by availability. I can watch The Other Side of the Wind any time I like now, until I'm as familiar with it as any other long ago released film in Welles' oeuvre. Or, at least, I can as long as Netflix keep it available: they own the means of distribution. I was worried, though not surprised, in reading recently the news that John Lewis has stopped selling DVD players after a 40% downturn in sales as customers move more and more to streaming services for their entertainment needs. I've been tracking the slow death of physical media in blog posts passim, but this has still come around a bit quick. I have a lot invested in shiny discs, including hundreds of Doctor Who stories. I saw the same thing happen with video cassettes: I had a bunch of tapes long after I had the means to watch them . How long will it be before they come for Blu-ray players too? If they do, then I've got a very expensive collection of coasters, and the shift of power will be back where it was before home media - the whims of the broadcaster, rather than the viewer, will dictate if and when you can watch something. I just hope that happens long after I finish this blog; it's awful when things are left incomplete.

In Summary:
I'm surprisingly loving these m****r-f***ing pirates on this m****r-f***ing space beacon.

Dinosaurs on a Spaceship

Chapter The 104th, in which there are some dinosaurs. On a Spaceship. Exactly what it says on tin.

Plot: 
The Doctor is called in by the Earth authorities of the future, as a mysterious object is hurtling towards the planet. He has only a few hours to investigate before it is blown up by missiles, so he assembles a team to help him comprising Amy, Rory, Queen Nefertiti, and a big game hunter. Rory's Dad, Brian, is brought along too by accident. They all materialise aboard the object, a huge Silurian spaceship that left Earth millions of years previously. It was designed to contain the escapees from a catastrophe on prehistoric Earth - including the last remaining dinosaurs - in suspended animation; but, while the dinosaurs are now roaming free on the ship, the Silurians are nowhere to be seen. Instead, inside the vast space of the ship's interior, is a second smaller spaceship.

On this second ship is a trader, Solomon, who's been injured after a dino encounter. He threatens the Doctor's friends to compel the Doctor into healing his wounds. Solomon proves to be not very nice at all: he has ejected all the Silurians into space, to steal their expensive Jurassic cargo. He's not able to steer the ship, though, so it has reverted to its point of origin. Solomon loses interest in the dinosaurs, even killing a Triceratops, when he realises Queen Nefertiti is even more valuable. He makes to flee with her in his ship, but Nefertiti escapes, and the Doctor traps Solomon in with a signalling device which draws off the approaching missiles. Solomon's ship gets blown up.  The Doctor settles the dinosaurs on a new planet, Siluria. Rory's Dad, Brian, enlivened by his adventure gets over his reluctance to travel, and goes off to see the world.

Context:

I watched this from the Blu-ray with my three kids (boys of 12 and 9, girl of 6) one evening during half term; it went down well with everyone. The dinosaur effects on screen didn't blow the children's minds, they just took them completely for granted. This is probably an even better response, thinking about it  - they all assumed they were real rather than just realistic. The only comment that the dinosaurs did elicit was a chorus during the engine room scene of "Christmas Pterodactyl!!!" from the two youngest. You'd need to have watched a Christmas episode of a particular comedy show a few too many times to understand that reference. In general, the children are excited about Doctor Who again after a little while, with the massive presence of the ongoing Jodie Whittaker series being the main reason. In the past week, we've passed a Doctor Who billboard, and seen a Doctor Who trailer at the cinema. It's like a mixture of 2005 and 2008 all over again.  Also, one of the pro-am dancing couples on Strictly did a dance to the Doctor Who theme, with one dressed as Thirteen and the other as a Cyberman. Such a thing has never before happened, even back in the days of David Tennant's imperial pomp. As good a fit as the Doctor's new Sunday scheduling is, it was nice to see the TARDIS back on Saturday night TV just for a few minutes.

First-time round:

I've thought about digging out my old journal from 2012 for reference, as there's only so many ways to write "I have no strong memories of watching this one"; but, I've tried that before, and found that I didn't usually write anything down about Doctor Who. Maybe I was living too exciting a life to dwell on the latest episode of my favourite show, but I doubt it. Anyway, I would have seen this first on or very shortly after the Saturday of its debut broadcast on BBC1. I seem to think that my area of the South-East had finally got BBC1 in HD through the Freeview box by the time of this short run of Matt Smith episodes, so I'd have been watching this story in crystal clear high-def. I remember liking the story very much, and thinking the five stories shown that Autumn were something of a renaissance for the show.

Reaction

This story is an absolute joy. It starts at a fair lick, packs in some great jokes as well as exciting moments, then keeps barrelling along, never letting up - with the narrative clock of the impending missile strike ticking all the while - to its conclusion. It's not in any way an intricately plotted construction, nor is it thematically deep, but it isn't aiming to be. It is unashamedly a straight-ahead adventure for children of all ages. So straight-ahead is it, in fact, that it announces its title just before the credits. What you see is what you get, but that's more than enough as the spectacle on offer is superlative: terrible lizards of which Invasion of The Dinosaurs - the last Doctor Who story that attempted to depict such creatures, in 1974 - can only dream.

At the end of the story, I very nearly pressed play to watch it over again. The characters and situations are larger than life, but it works, with almost all of the guest performances shining. Rupert Graves has lots of fun playing the lovable rogue, Riddell: I love his larking about, pretending to lose his balance while creeping through a room full of sleeping dinosaurs. Riann Steele more than matches him playing Nefertiti. David Bradley, in his first of many Doctor Who-related roles, excels as a very nasty villain. It's almost - but not quite - enough to make the Doctor's bloodthirsty dispatching of Solomon seem acceptable. The character of Brian Williams slots nicely into the by now well-established dynamic of the three regulars, disrupting it just a little, but enhancing things overall. Mark Williams is perfect casting too: watching him and Arthur Darvill standing side by side, you really do believe that Brian and Rory are father and son. The presence of a family member instantly makes Rory a more believable and rounded character too. The overriding impression is of a great cast having fun sinking their teeth into an enjoyable script. It's just a shame that Sunetra Sarker is wasted a bit, in a slightly 'meh' part.

Apart from Rory, the other two regulars are also well served. Matt Smith is effortlessly charming throughout - I love the bit where he kisses then slaps Rory - but able to turn on a sixpence into simmering anger when confronting Solomon.  Amy, a character hard to warm to and never previously well used, is found a perfect function: she becomes the secondary back-up Doctor (this was a role that Romana, as played by Lalla Ward, occasionally fell into in the late 1970s / early 80s episodes, and it worked then too). She has grown too far from little Amelia after years of time crack energy, rebooting the universe, giving birth to a time-baby, being turned to goo, etc. The only option is for her to drop any pretence of being an audience identification figure, and step up. The script is explicit about this with the dialogue such as "I will not have flirting companions" and "I need you sober" and the like.

There's a few niggles; the plot contains a couple of major contrivances: before he knows exactly what he's up against, the Doctor has luckily gathered up a big game hunter who can shoot tranquiliser-blasts at dinos, and he just happens to have got himself a father and son who can use the DNA-locked spaceship dual controls. The fey robots are a one-joke concept that are quickly overused. But it's churlish to pick holes, when the story is so enjoyable and light.  

Connectivity: 

Both this story and The Mysterious Planet feature a warrior queen, a rogue trader, two robots and at least one double act.

Deeper Thoughts:
A tale of two Chibnalls. It was casting my mind back to Dinosaurs on a Spaceship that first made me hopeful that its author Chris Chibnall would make a good showrunner when he took over. He made a significant contribution to the 2012 mini-season (the first part of series 7, which continued with a second - and, to my mind, less successful - run in 2013, which Chibnall had no part in). Chibnall wrote two of the five episodes, Dinosaurs on a Spaceship and The Power of Three, plus the series of short online season prequels collectively called Pond Life. Each focused on Rory and Amy, and how their normal lives on Earth in the Doctor's absence were balanced or unblanced with their intermittent otherworldly adventures alongside him.  After having sat through a lot of convoluted timey-wimey bobbins in the couple of years before this, I found much appeal in such a theme; it had a resonance that the sci-fi superheroics could never have, and finally made the Ponds into more rounded characters.

A lot of this was down to Steven Moffat as well, of course - it was on his watch; but, as it covered  stuff he was not usually too interested in for his own scripts (he'd not given Rory any family before this point, and had given Amy only an unrealistic couple of fairy tale characters for parents who cameoed and then were never seen again) it seems likely that Chibnall was the one bringing this to the mix. I was hopeful something similar would be part of the show when he was running it too. Now that the Chibnall era is well underway, and Bradley Walsh is breaking all but the stoniest of hearts with his majestic but understated performance of Graham's grief and loss, it's obvious to see that Chris Chibnall specialises in real grounded characters with a full life beyond their adventures in the TARDIS. It was also interesting to compare and contrast other aspects of Dinosaurs on a Spaceship with the episodes of series 11 that have aired to date.

The obvious similarity is the Doctor operating with a 'gang'. Although Chibnall was probably running with an idea of Moffat's from the previous year (when the story A Good Man Goes to War saw the Doctor calling in favours owed to bring together a team to rescue Amy), the focus is much more on people using realistic skills, more than trying to be The Avengers assembling: Rory's moment where he talks about collecting nursing supplies wherever he goes, is a similar plot function - and character moment - to Graham in the current series using his bus driver knowledge. It's a world away from the same character threatening Cybermen dressed as a Roman centurion, as Rory does in A God Man Goes to War. The Dinosaurs story is a straightforward adventure narrative, of the kind much favoured currently; it contains a villain just as nasty as Tim Shaw with whom the Doctor gets to have a nice confrontation, and display some righteous anger. The story contains strong female and minority ethic characters.

The differences are key too: Dinosaurs on a Spaceship's characters are larger than life, and spout glib one-liners rather than grounded dialogue. This fits in with the style of the time, but now looks a little false when compared to the still enjoyable and memorable but much less shallow dialogue and characterisation on display in the 2018 episodes. Most interesting of all, the backstory of the 2012 story is only fully understandable if you have knowledge of some specific Doctor Who lore: who are the lizard people that built this ship? What is their relationship with the Earth in its prehistoric times? Why would they have needed to escape from the planet at some point in the distant past? None of these points are explained in the narrative. The show assumes you've been watching for a few years; in contrast, everyone feels welcome to 2018 Who: no special knowledge is required.

At the time of writing, there have been four stories broadcast of Jodie Whittaker's debut series - each one of them of a very high quality, and none using any previous element from Doctor Who stories past. If they manage a whole season in the same vein, which Chris Chibnall has stated is the intention, then this will be the first time the show has managed such a feat for 40 years (the Tom Baker Key to Time season, which started broadcasting in Autumn 1978 has no kisses to the past). It's very exciting. If, by the time you read this, it's turned out that was all shameless misdirection and there's a big Dalek story on the air, then that will be exciting too, of course.

In Summary:
I'm still loving these m****r-f***ing dinosuars on this m****r-f***ing spaceship.