Possibly one of the most "referenced" stories in the series' history.

Seems like almost every other episode of any story featuring UNIT mentions "that business with the Cybermen". Of course, the "Web of Fear" is mentioned quite frequently too in this context, but somehow I've always been more fascinated with "The Invasion". Probably because it's got the Cybermen in it and they're still my all-time favourite monster. So, imagine my delight when a copy of the story was finally released with episode 1 and 3 missing and some linking narration from good 'ole Nick Courtney (who almost seems wheelchair-bound or something since he never rises from his seat!) thrown in to fill the gaps. 

But, even as I purchased this release, a slight shade of hesitancy passed over me. What if this was another notorious example of JNT's famous addage: "the memory cheats"? What if this story really wasn't all that it was cracked up to be and that all the talk that has revolved around it is really "just talk"?

Turns out my concerns were largely unfounded.

"The Invasion" is a thoroughly enjoyable epic. It's got that really "clunky" moment towards the end with ProfessorWatkins getting rescued and some pretty dodgy-looking model work with the Cyber-fleet. But, otherwise, it's a really enjoyable eight episodes. Well, technically six episodes - which means that maybe there was some awful padding in the two parts that no longer exist but I'll never be the wiser!

I know lots of you folks go on endlessly about how great the "old" Cybermen were. I've seen all the existing footage in "Tenth Planet", "Moonbase" and "Wheel In Space" and the unearthed complete story of "Tomb of the Cybermen" and I honestly think these stories have as many flaws to them as any of the Cybermen stories from the 80s. And, in some cases, I'd even take "Earthshock" or even "Silver Nemesis" over some of these older stories any day. But "The Invasion" is the exception to this rule. This really is a fantastic Cybermen story. Mainly because of the way the plot actually uses them. Their involvement in the adventure is kept a secret for the first four episodes so that when they finally break out of the cocoon, it's one of the best entrances a recurring villain ever makes. Also Tobias Vaughn and the Cyber Planner serve the same purpose Davros did in Dalek stories of the 70s and 80s. They handle the bulk of the expository dialogue, thus leaving the Cybermen to do what they do best: lumber around menacingly whilst being really hard to kill. The sewer sequences are an excellent example of this. And the march in front of St. Paul's Cathedral, for my money, is far more effective than when the Daleks coasted around London way back in the "Dalek Invasion of Earth" (if nothing else, we didn't have to endure that endless drumbeat pounding away over and over!). More superficially, this particular "look" for the Cybermen was also one of the better costumes they ever designed. And, it was nice to finally see Cybermen toting around rifles. Not sure why I like that so much, but it was still cool!

Another great strength to this story is the magnificentportrayal of the evil Tobias Vaughn. Kevin Stoney knows how to play his villains. So well, that it almost makes you wonder what the man is like in real life. And it's impressive to see that Vaughn isn't just a copy of Mavic Chen, but rather, a completely different interpretation. He's far more charming, if anything and considerably more calculating. But, like Chen, Stoney allows himself just enough OTT moments to make the villain fun in places. But he never goes too far with it. And there are definitely some really chilling moments for Stoney to sink his teeth into. Particularly the sequence where Watkins shoots him and we see the smouldering bullets in Vaughn's chest as he smiles evilly. Magnificient stuff. 

I suppose, like many fans, I do find it a bit hard to believe that Vaughn would use somebody like Packer as his second-in-command. He seems a bit too incompetent and panics too easilly. Although, I have found that the complaints about Packer are greatly exaggerated (as is the case with many of the things fans like to "niggle" about in the series). The only time Packer really seems like a boob is during the whole "escape through the lift shaft" sequence with the Doctor and Jamie. Otherwise, he does handle things fairly well, overall, and it's not entirely ridiculous that Vaughn would employ such a blatant sadist. Packer is there to handle Vaughn's dirtywork so that he can look "squeaky clean" in his public profile. This seems a logical set-up and doesn't push plausibility too far. 

And then, of course, there's UNIT. A good first story. Although I do feel that Nick's portrayal of the Brigadier is still a bit rough in places. It's tough though, really. The Brig did become such a well-crafted character that it is a bit difficult to see him still a little unpolished in his early days. Even the first Pertwee story has a bit of this going on in it too. But it is nice to see the Doctor able to get some millitairy might to back him up. And, unlike a lot of later UNIT stories, the back-up is actually somewhat instrumental in resolving the conflict. 

Which leads me neatly into commenting on the effectiveness of the final two episodes. These are the ultimate testament to Douglas Camfield's directorial skills. Aside from the afore-mentioned poor model work, I consider the execution of these last two episodes virtually flawless. Especially when you consider how much of the action had to be handled through just actors standing around in control rooms pretending to react to events being announced on radios. Somehow, we feel as though we are still part of all this action and tension and we can suspend our disbelief adequately as Douglas cuts away to stock footage and bad models. It's all rather impressive, really. 

And when Douglas is able to handle some legitimately visual action, it's truly breathtaking. The Doctor and Vaughn sneaking through the compound and the attack from UNIT on the Cybermen are breathtakingly well-done. Particularly when you consider the budget limitations and the time period in which this was all shot. Camfield really surpasses himself here - and we can see why his status as a director for Who has become a bit legendary.

Finally, we hear a lot about how wonderful Season Five of Who was. But I'm still more impressed with what I've seen of Season Six. This might simply be because I've seen a lot more footage from this season, but I'm more inclined to believe that there is a better variety and quality to the stories of this season. We have the wildly imaginative "Mind Robber", the fun little runarounds in "The Dominators" and "Seeds of Death" and the climactic grand finale of "The War Games". Sitting, quite beautifully, in the middle of all this is fantastic little contemporary epic called "The Invasion". Easily, one of the best Cybermen stories - and an excellent Troughton tale to boot! Even with the conveniently written-in "break" that Frazer Hines gets in the last two episodes!

“The Dominators” is a story which sadly, by today’s standards has aged pretty badly. The Dulcian’s outfits have to be some of the most ridiculous costumes ever seen in Doctor Who, and poor Wendy Padbury spends her first proper story as a companion stuck in one of them! Even the Quarks, which tend to be remembered rather fondly in fan circles (and recently were nostalgically mentioned in the Big Finish audio drama, “Flip-Flop”) are at best amusing – they certainly aren’t any sort of convincing threat. The two Dominators themselves are the best thing about the story; their costumes are almost respectable (which helps) but more importantly they are entertaining villains. I really enjoyed their constant bickering; the subordinate Dominator’s blood lust and his commander’s more rational, focused attitude clash splendidly and make for some good drama, especially in the final episode.

Renowned ‘Yeti’ creators Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln requested that their names be taken off this story after Derrick Sherwin had finished script-editing it. This serial certainly isn’t a patch on “The Abominable Snowmen” or “The Web of Fear”; but a few pacing issues aside, Sherwin can’t be blamed for what is basically a very bland storyline. The plot is good vs evil at its most basic. The Dulcians are pacifists – so annoyingly so that the viewer almost wants the Dominators to win! – and the Dominators are warmongers, plain and simple. They plan to fire rockets down bore holes, causing an eruption of the molten core of Dulkis turning the planet into a radioactive mass - fuel for their space fleet. Admittedly, it’s not quite as bad as it sounds – the utter cruelty of the Dominators combined with some very amusing performances from Patrick Troughton and Frazer Hines give the story a bit a life, but at the end of the day it is hardly classic Doctor Who. The story’s greatest triumph (except maybe the Doctor using the sonic screwdriver as a flamethrower!) is the writers having Jamie save the day, only to be ridiculed by his disbelieving companions!

“Jamie! It’s a brilliant plan! I just can’t see how you could have come up with it!”

After five episodes, “The Dominators” mercifully ends on a surprisingly effective cliff-hanger; a volcanic eruption on the island engulfing the TARDIS, leading directly into a much, much better Doctor Who serial…

“The War Games” is one of those stories that will always be talked about. A ten-part epic that draws to a close not only Patrick Troughton’s reign as the Doctor but the whole monochrome era of the programme, this amazing story is also famous for being the one that finally reveals just where the mysterious Doctor came from…

“Time travellers. I wonder…”

Whilst it’s universally acknowledged amongst fans that “The War Games” is far too long and padded to the hilt, it’s also thought of by most fans as an absolute classic and I would agree wholeheartedly. My initial encounter with Pat Troughton’s swansong was via Malcolm Hulke’s novelisation of the story which I enjoyed immensely, but left me curious as to just how this plot (the novelisation was about 150 pages, if I recall correctly) had stretched across ten twenty-five minute episodes. Years later, I finally got to watch all ten episodes and my question was answered – repetition. Escape, recapture, escape, recapture, escape… The multi-layered plot is peeled away very slowly, one layer at a time. A viewer could be forgiven for thinking that Major Smythe is the villain of the piece from watching the first few episodes, as the War Lord himself doesn’t show up until half way through, and even his introduction is pre-empted by that of the War Chief. Much of the plot (all the ‘resistance’ stuff, for example) could have easily been cut-down to make this story a pacey five or six-parter, but there was a ten episode gap in the schedule and so ten episodes were produced! Even so, “The War Games” remains to this day one of my favourite Doctor Who stories, books and audios included. In one way, the story’s length works to its advantage as it completely sucks the viewer into the story and the characters, in a sense making it more like a novel than a TV show. Ironically, the experience of watching this serial is more like reading a novel than reading the novelisation of it is! I certainly wouldn’t recommend to anyone sitting themselves down and watching all four hours of “The War Games,” but viewing it in either in two-halves (as I tend to watch the story) or even episodically is something every Doctor Who fan should do.

The War Lord’s plan is fantastic material for a great Doctor Who story - take an alien planet, split it into different war zones, gather soldiers from different parts of Earth’s history, brainwash them and then let them kill each other until all you have left is an invincible army of hardened veterans that you can conquer the Galaxy with! It also allows for a wonderful opening to the story – what could be better than the TARDIS materialising in the middle of no-man’s-land on a Great War battlefront in France? It provides so many wonderful opportunities for storytelling (and believe me, in ten episodes Dicks and Hulke exploit them all), and due its predominantly ‘historic’ setting the production value also seems higher than that of contemporary stories. The sets of the trenches and the chateau are beautifully created; were it not for them being shot in black and white there would be nothing to distinguish them from programmes like Blackadder Goes Forth, made almost twenty years later! However, the superb design of “The War Games” isn’t limited to the various historical time zones. Never before have I seen a set that cries out “1960’s” as much as the War Lord’s domain does. Psychedelic doesn’t even begin to describe it… if you’ve ever seen any of the Austin Powers movies, you can imagine the setting. It makes a fantastic change from the grey corridors and flashing lights that Doctor Who so often used to depict ‘futuristic’ settings, though I’m not sure about the weird glasses…

One of the major driving forces behind making “The War Games” so compelling is the brilliance of its characters. Carstairs (David Savile) and Lady Jennifer (Jane Sherwin) are likeable enough to have become successful companions were the circumstances different, and the more nefarious characters like the intimidating General Smythe and the deplorable Security Chief are both interesting enough to have supported their own (shorter!) serials. The War Lord himself is wonderfully brought to life by Philip Madoc. His calm performance imbues the character with a real sense of power – he doesn’t need to throw his weight around too much, he is already as feared and respected as he possibly could be. The War Chief, however, is the most interesting character by far. Episode eight sees the series’ first mention of the Time Lords as, like the Doctor, the War Chief is revealed to be a renegade Time Lord on the run from his people. He wants the Doctor to help him overthrow the War Lord so that they can rule the galaxy together. I found myself quite amused by the War Chief’s dialogue when he speaks to the Doctor; it is uncannily similar to Darth Vader’s in The Empire Strikes Back, a film which was still over a decade away when “The War Games” was written! Like all good villains, the War Chief completely believes his hair-brain scheme for galactic domination is right and just. The Doctor, however, is far from convinced and for the first time since leaving his homeworld, he finds himself in a situation that he cannot resolve… without help. 

Enter the Time Lords.

“You have returned to us, Doctor. Your travels are over.”

Episode nine of “The War Games” ended with the ultimate deus ex machina; answering the Doctor’s telepathic message in a box, the Time Lords’ wave their magic wand and the soldiers are all returned to their customary time and place, the War Lord is in their custody and the War Chief is dead (or is he…?), killed by his former associates. Episode ten is very nearly a different story all together, and arguably contains the biggest reveal in the history of the entire TV series - certainly the biggest reveal overall until Marc Platt’s controversial 1997 novel “Lungbarrow.” The Doctor’s people are introduced to us as a nearly omnipotent race who have not merely gained mastery over time and space but also appear to have god-like powers (which one of them uses to physically punish the War Lord when he refuses to testify in his trial.) Although they have a policy of strict non-intervention, the Doctor’s summons forces them to try the War Lord for his crimes and eventually sentence him to temporal dissolution – he’s not just executed, he’s wiped from history! However, their strict policy of non-intervention is one that the Doctor has constantly flouted, not to mention his ‘borrowing’ of a TARDIS. Like the War Lord before him, the Doctor is tried for his crimes and found guilty, however the Time Lords take into account his good intentions and his role in the battle against evil and therefore decide to punish him by exiling him to 20th century Earth and forcing him to regenerate.

The Doctor’s goodbye to Jamie and Zoe is a real choker, and the blow is made even crueller by the Time Lords’ erasing their memories of their travels with the Doctor. The Troughton Era ends (at least on TV) with the Doctor’ face contorting as he disappears into the ether…

Of course, the novels speculate that “The War Games” wasn’t the end for the loveable second Doctor - Gallifrey’s C.I.A. intercept him en route to Earth and give him limited freedom in exchange for him doing certain missions for them. This is the older second Doctor that we see in “The Five Doctors” and “The Two Doctors” - he even gets Jamie back, memory restored!

In short, “The War Games” is an epic masterpiece. The bulk of the story is hugely entertaining and the introduction of the Time Lords and the Doctor’s (as yet unnamed) homeworld is purely the icing on the cake. It is packed with fantastic cliff-hangers (the Doctor up against a firing squad, for example), superb characters, and some wonderfully memorable scenes like the escaped Doctor strutting into a military prison, shouting his mouth off in outrage about how the person in charge there isn’t giving him enough respect and thus being accepted by him as an authority figure whilst having absolutely no credentials! It is a must-see story, and I’d also strongly recommended its sequel – the New Adventure “Timewyrm: Exodus” by Terrance Dicks, one of the best Doctor Who novels I’ve ever read.

The Pirate Planet gets on my tits. It has a Douglas Adams script that's playing with huge SF ideas and including deliberately crap stuff for ironic effect, which would have worked a lot better had the production team had a clue. Take the Pirate Captain, for instance. In the script, he appears to be another stupid shouty Doctor Who villain until we discover that's just a front and that underneath the bluster he's brilliant. That's a clever idea. It's certainly far too subtle for Bruce Purchase, who latches on to the shouting and never gives us a performance that could even be called one-dimensional. I didn't believe a word of it. That's not a genius. It's not even a Pirate Captain. What assaulted my eyes and ears was blatantly nothing more an annoying so-called actor who's putting nothing into his lines but his lungs. Admittedly the script gives him an awful lot of ranting, but even that sometimes has a kind of poetry. "Why am I encumbered with incompetents?" should have been a lovely line, but on the screen it's nothing.

Admittedly it's nice that he's having fun. I'm pleased for him. I can't even put all the blame on Bruce Purchase, since there's barely a tolerable performance throughout the entire show apart from the regulars. Tom Baker and Mary Tamm got a head start by playing pre-established characters who'd furthermore just been working with fantastic guest stars in The Ribos Operation, but even Mary Tamm isn't completely immune to the general incompetence. (I believe the technical term is "Pennant Roberts", but I'll leave him aside for the moment. He deserves a paragraph of his own, if not an essay.) But that acting... Nobody has a clue. Ouch ouch ouch. It's just embarrassing. It makes the likes of Tegan, Adric and Nyssa look like Lawrence Olivier, by virtue of being capable of actual line delivery. Mr Fibuli gave me cancer of the retina. There's a crowd scene with a "hooray" so lame that you practically need to invent a fan theory to justify it. I didn't mind the cameo guy in part one who gets given jelly babies, but I had some trouble typing that sentence because of a horrid scraping sound on the bottom of my barrel.

Have I bashed the acting enough? Not at all, I've barely started, but it's time to focus on the real villain: Pennant Roberts. The directorial incompetence on display here is breathtaking. That he ever worked again in any capacity beggars the imagination, let alone helmed six Doctor Whos (including both stories to boast Douglas Adams's name as scriptwriter). The Face of Evil, The Sun Makers, The Pirate Planet, Shada, Warriors of the Deep and Timelash. There's a litany of horror if ever I saw one. Admittedly his two JNT stories hardly had the world's best scripts, but Pennant Roberts certainly didn't redeem them... and bad acting is at the rotten heart of everything he's done. I've been bashing Tom Baker's performance in The Face of Evil (not to mention the Tesh) for years without realising that Pennant was the director, while in Warriors of the Deep and Timelash it's as if no one's even trying. I'm having trouble believing that Pennant even cared.

Despite everything he's done, I think The Pirate Planet was Pennant Roberts's nadir. He was working with sow's ears from the start in the 1980s, but here he's butchering a Douglas Adams script. Even before I took the trouble to look up the director's name, I'd described this story in my notes as "Timelash but wittier". The Pirate Planet has better regulars and some nice location filming, but everything else is on a par. Both stories feature lacklustre rebels, laughably lame guards and a vicious but stupid dictator with multiple layers of hidden identity. Both are set on blandly unconvincing alien planets with the same camp aesthetic and the same level of cliche, except that Timelash lacks Douglas Adams's playfulness. Both even have space-time connections with Earth and age their villains to death. In fairness both also have some genuinely clever ideas and time-related SF concepts, although not enough to salvage the overall train wreck.

However despite all that, I'm about to put the case for incompetence. In a story that's deliberately playing with crap Doctor Who cliches, it adds an extra dimension for the production to be as bad as anything we've ever seen. I can't pretend that this justifies it, but it does at least add a little interest. I'm not being entirely frivolous either. Douglas Adams makes so many comments on Doctor Who and its conventions as to make it practically an unbroadcast Hitch-Hikers instalment. Look at the Doctor sympathising with guards: "Must be very wearing on the nerves." Or perhaps his question to the Captain: "What do you want? You don't want to take over the universe, do you? No, you wouldn't know what to do with it. Beyond shout at it."

It goes further than that, though. Like Gareth Roberts at times, Douglas Adams is being deliberately crap... but with irony. That's the difference. If you didn't know that the writer was also in on the joke, this would be unwatchable. The Captain for instance is an assortment of pirate cliches transferred with painstaking literalism, e.g. a hook, an eye patch, a robot parrot etc. Unfortunately this combination of deliberate cliche and an unsympathetic director produces a planet that feels as if it's been cut-and-pasted from BBC stock rather than being a world that exists in its own right. It's bland. I couldn't believe in it. For example it has guards who exist only as parodies of other stories' guards... the whole world only works as a knowing parody of SF rather than an original creation.

"This is a forbidden object."

"That is a forbidden question."

"Strangers are forbidden."

Yes, okay, we get the point. It's a witty scene, but it's not even trying to be believable. However I don't blame Douglas Adams, since I'm sure he understood as well as anyone that this kind of joke works so much better with an edge of reality. The guards are funny, but they'd have been so much funnier if the Doctor's comments had been true, i.e. directed at them and their lives instead of at the general concept of "guards in Doctor Who stories".

The script has good stuff beyond its irony, though. I liked the sinister undertones. Underneath the comedy, there's the question of what's happening to planets? Where's Callufrax? Where's Bandraginus V? I like the unfolding of the SF secrets, with all the scary hints and references. These are huge ideas. Part two's revelations alone would be enough for any other story's climax. There's also the mental wrench of seeing silly people doing horrific things. Earth is nearly destroyed! It's extremely clever, although one problem is that the only way to defeat amazing technobabble is with even more amazing technobabble. Admittedly if you're concentrating then it all makes sense, being better than Timelash's "I'll explain later", but it's still a mish-mash of macrovectoid particle analysers and omni-modular thermocrons.

Interestingly Tom for once definitely lies about the TARDIS's capabilities. He tells the Pirate Captain that its lock requires two people. After all my hypotheses about the TARDIS's unnecessary and possibly spurious abilities in other Tom Baker stories, I was amused to see a concrete example of Tom telling porkies to gain advantage over a foe.

There are things I like about the production. I like the location filming. Power station, mines, caves... it looks great. It's so big! There's a real sense of scale, with a planet that for once feels bigger than a broom closet. I liked the pretty girl, even if she can't act. I also liked the Doctor and Romana, whose relationship has warmed since in The Ribos Operation but is still a rich source of comedy. Tom Baker in particular single-handedly redeems the production, with occasional flashes of seriousness of which we needed more from the other actors.

Overall, this story is the last thing you'd expect: bland. Even as it stands there's plenty of interest, but the incompetence of its production is a greater crime than Warriors of the Deep and Timelash. It's painfully unconvincing. Tom Baker and Douglas Adams are always worth watching, but the Pirate Captain in particular is utter bollocks. In fairness I enjoyed watching it. It's witty, subtle and full of ideas. I wouldn't dream of arguing with anyone who said it was their favourite story. However it also drives me crazy.

Love him or hate him, there’s no denying that Douglas Adams just isn’t like other writers. A manic energy mixes with a dazzling imagination that skirts the edge of believability, carried by its natural verve; you might disagree with that, of course. As his first story, this has more claim to be television history than the average episode, and most of Adams’s later trademarks appear here in embryonic form. Watching The Pirate Planet for the first time is like being kicked in the balls by an insanely beautiful woman; it makes your eyes water at the time, but wait until your friends hear about it!

The opening scene takes no prisoners. Right from the start the viewer is hit with one of the strangest characters ever presented, a half-cybernetic (proto-Cyberman, really) space pirate yelling about devilstorms and sky-demons at the top of his voice, while the fawning Mr Fibuli lopes around like Igor. Can you imagine if Russell T. Davies had written this? I’d rather not. But it somehow works, because Adams’s writing style just floors the accelerator and sticks a massive two fingers up at detractors, and what happens next is up to you: either hold on, or get left behind. I love it, but I can appreciate the opposite view.

Opening TARDIS scenes are rarely very good, as without a plot to be talking about yet dialogue often falls flat. Tom Baker tries his best, but he’s fighting a losing battle with Mary Tamm on screen with him; she’s like a lightning rod that sucks all quality from the scene away and into the ground. However, the Doctor’s brilliant line of “I’m perfectly capable of admitting when I’m wrong, it’s just that this time I’m not” makes it worth watching.

We’re back on the bridge before too long though, and once you get over the shock of the Captain and start to think about him properly he becomes quite spooky; one of the strongest features of this story is the contrast between humour and serious moments that make the jokes funnier and the serious stuff darker. Just one thing though: the Captain is blatantly far more intelligent than Fibuli, so why does he need him at all?

Initially the Mentiads come across as quite atmospheric and distract from the fact the main city of Zanak seems to consist of about twelve people. However, their whole expressive dance routine becomes even sillier when presented alongside David Sibley’s pathetic acting; the guest cast is what really lets this story down, as only David Warwick as Kemas and Bruce Purchase as the Captain really put up a fight. It is a shame though that the characterisation of Kemas treads some very familiar ground as the iconoclast who breaks free of the social order and leads his people to freedom.

“This planet wasn’t here when I tried to land…” Now we’re getting somewhere. One of my favourite aspects of the original series is that the length and slow pace of the stories allows them to build up a sense of mystery, and this makes a good start with a planet not where it is supposed to be, with various precious stones just scattered about. This could be presented better though, as they are strewn rather strategically where the Doctor should have spotted them earlier. The scene where the Doctor is ignored by the locals is fun, but slightly odd when next time they all seem to be utterly terrified of him: the people of Zanak have this strange habit of changing their customs depending on the narrative requirement, although I could watch the scene of the citizen taking four jelly babies again and again.

The film-recorded shots of the Mentiads walking over the hills look great, which is handy since this is about all they do apart from that massive exposition scene in part three. It’s nice to see Baker so energetic too, as he uses the other wooden actors as a springboard to rescue scenes in danger of going under, such as the tedious soap-opera exchanges between Mula and Balaton. 

That Polyphase Avatron, although appropriate to the Captain in tone, is really pushing it but the special effects in the story are actually quite good and the idea of a robotic parrot is handled well, all things considered. The air car also looks quite good, although I do wish Mary Tamm would shut her mouth for once and the cars need a bit more effort to make them look like speedboats with some bits stuck on.

We’re almost halfway through the story now, and there’s been very little narrative progression since the initial mystery of the disappearance of Calufrax. This is what stops the story from being a classic: the plot is poorly paced and is released in short bursts after long gaps, which allows the tension and interest created by each little bit of exposition to dissipate. However, the Doctor’s line of “I save planets mostly, but this time I think I’ve arrived far, far too late” is brilliant.

The realisation that the Captain is the complete bitch of his pretty little nurse is a good moment of characterisation, and the Doctor’s message of advanced technology being vulnerable to a primitive attack makes a straightforward open-the-door problem an interesting scene. Kemas running on the spot looks stupid, although I do like the idea of an inertia-dampening tunnel and the special effect is very good.

That scar on the Doctor’s lip does look much more prominent on film, and the hasty piece of writing to excuse this that he bashes his face on the console doesn’t quite wash – especially since his injury is also clearly visible in the previous story The Ribos Operation. However, the engine room scene is fantastic as it really sets the story down a new path – we realise that the Captain’s blustering and the Doctor’s humour are all acts as the two men circle each other trying to outwit each other; this allows for the sillier moments to be forgiven. There is also a little bit more of plot that comes trickling through, but again the interest is lost since it is followed by a badly-handled generic shoot-out featuring guards that can’t shoot straight; the story’s fairly gentle mortality rate of 33.3% is confined pretty much entirely to the villains.

Once they hit the mines though, the revelation of the true nature of Zanak is outstanding; The Pirate Planet has probably the best core idea of any story that just about compensates for the disappointing way it is handled. The concept of entire worlds being wrecked to feed another planet is breathtaking, although Kemas’s routine of “verily, thou shalt be avenged” adds some unnecessary cheese.

I never really got the weirdness of K9 referring to the Doctor as “the Master” before. Did you?

The Captain’s cry of “with the Mentiaaaads!” puts me in mind of the guy in The Simpsons who screams “yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeessss!” all the time. On this note though the story slows right down for a massive info dump partially designed to refresh viewers’ memories of the previous episode; it probably would have worked better if I watched this story on a week-by-week basis. Baker makes it interesting, but Tamm sounds like a patronising Blue Peter presenter.

The thought of Earth being in danger seems a bit tokenistic since by part three the audience already cares as much as it’s going to and in any case Earth doesn’t really sit well with this episode. It is followed by another exposition scene where the Captain explains what happens to Zanak’s prey – it is saved by a brilliant idea and also the performances of the two actors; the Captain’s line of “I come in here to dream of freedom” adds some good characterisation to boot.

K9 really gets to show off now, and if you don’t like that character (I don’t) then it’s not necessarily a good thing. Adams gets away with a lot, but a robot dog with a laser in its nose is a bad idea at the start and to pit it against a robot parrot with a laser in its, er, tail feathers sees him overdo it. That said, I can’t really fault the effects. Another great plot revelation follows that of Xanxia; since she’s supposed to be in stasis, the scene would work better if she kept still though. The cliffhanger is appalling largely through a lapse in Baker’s acting, although none of the cliffhangers of this story are particularly good.

The plot has really taken a while to come along, but it’s going strong in the final episode when the nurse’s true identity is revealed. The big sabotage scene amounts to little though apart from plugging stuff into other stuff and blowing it up, and there’s little I can think of to say about it apart from that whacking a console with a spanner is a bit simplistic for this story.

The death of Fibuli is poignant due to Purchase’s acting. However, the big technobabble resolution spoils things a bit since Adams really pushes his luck, and his writing does come across at times as rather smug. He does have the consideration to treat us to a good bit of pyrotechnics at the end though.

Really this is an average story, but the strength of its core idea warrants it being bumped up a grade making it the best of the Key to Time season. The Pirate Planet is a very strong story, but it speaks volumes that the best story of the season doesn’t get a maximum rating from me.

Stories written by Robert Holmes that aren't classics tend to provoke one of two reactions: either vitriolic criticism disproportionate to other stories of a similar quality (such as with The Power Of Kroll), or else people come up with an excuse as to why Holmes wasn't on form. The Krotons being his first story, most of its bad points can be excused there and then for many fans – although the fact that they have to be excused in the first place logically means that the story can't be that good. However, when taken on its own terms The Krotons isn't that bad and I don't really think it's fair that it's crushed under the weight of Holmes's later work. Also, as his first story, there's no doubting that for better or worse this is an important story for Doctor Who.

So a hatch gets stuck. Big deal. Why do people complain about this and not the wobbling ladder in Warrior's Gate? Because the goof occurs in the very first shot of the story, that's why not, and so there's no mitigation at this point in the way of quality elsewhere to offset it, so it gets inflated in the mind of the viewer into something more significant than it really is. Normally I try to avoid mentioning things that are criticised into the ground elsewhere, but I believe that the opening shot to this story has come under a lot of unjustified fire. However, the opening scene in general isn't actually that great. Opening scenes are rarely the programme's strongest feature, as the setting and basic core idea must be established without actually giving anything away; with this story (and many more) we get a variation on the portentous "you mustn't go in there – you know what will happen" that you'd expect to find getting a lot of coos from a pantomime audience.

Fortunately the regulars can be relied on to rock and roll, although since this is a Patrick Troughton episode it's debatable whether I needed to point that out. The Gond city is a good model, and the Doctor's comment about architecture being suited to low gravity is the kind of trademark tiny detail that gives Holmes's work so much depth and nuance. Unfortunately Zoe spends this episode being very stupid indeed ("There's a ramp, Doctor. And a door. Is it a wall?"), which is a shame as it lets the side down a bit. However, as I said, there's very little that Troughton can't make work. The death of the student is a nicely dramatic moment that moves the episode on from the opening's characteristic staginess.

The main set of the Gonds' learning hall looks decent as, like with a lot of black and white episodes, heavy contrast in lighting obscures the details and the depth making it look less confined and studioish. Now that the plot has been revealed a little bit more things are really starting to improve, and Philip Madoc puts in a brilliant performance like in all his subsequent appearances on the show.

The rescue of Vana is another dramatic scene, although Zoe's comment of "I think I can hear something!" as a loud buzzing rumbles across the landscape still places her IQ at sea level for the episode. I normally dismiss comments about the original series being sexist, but when companions chiefly characterised as genii are written to be so dim just to give the Doctor some foil I start to think they may have a point. The Doctor complaining about the loss of an umbrella is one of my favourite moments in the story (even at this stage Holmes was a handy man with a one-liner), and his protestation of "I'm not a doctor of medicine" is the first of many contradictions about the Doctor's academic status we see throughout the show; I like to think that the nature of the Doctor's degree is open to change depending on what he finds convenient.

I have to say though that some of the guest acting is over the top and portentous, especially the custodian of the learning hall, when compared against Troughton. Perhaps this is a reason for the story's poor reputation; I'm no statistician, but I note that stories notable for poor acting rarely feature in peoples' top ten lists.

The Doctor's darkly thoughtful assessment of "self-perpetuating slavery" is wonderfully dramatic and shows how well Troughton understood and keyed into the power of understatement as opposed to the manic we're-all-going-to-die acting of the guest stars. The Kroton voices are amazing, made all the better by us not being able to see where they are coming from at this stage. Unfortunately, next episode Patrick Tull's Cockney accent lets them down a bit (come to think of it, seeing them lets them down). Even in the self-consciously progressive 21st Century regional dialects haven't made their way into monsters, and they certainly don't sound very serious in the 1960s. It's unfair, there's no doubting, but can you imagine the reaction if the Empty Child was from Birmingham? It'd get laughed at, that's what would happen, and by the people who complain that the original series is too parochial. Coomin' ta find ya Moomay!

The snake-scanner-weapon-thingy is actually quite creepy, again because of the sense of the unknown (I just can't get enough of that), and it makes for the story's best cliffhanger. With part two coming along a bit more plot can be revealed, and the idea that the Krotons are only teaching the Gonds what they can't use to rebel against their oppressors is very 1984 when you think about it. There is a very well constructed scene at the beginning of the second episode, as Zoe uses the learning machine just as the Doctor discovers what's in the underhalls so that a sense of mystery is set up as the explanation of what's down there has to be broken off partway through.

The Doctor's line of "great jumping gobstoppers" is one that I would imagine gets very different reactions from viewers, either supporting or undermining my earlier comment about Holmes and one-liners depending on how much you want to see an episode written by Enid Blyton. Although I quite like the line it's not helped by the fact that this expression of surprise refers to a piddling little dinner gong – something that the Doctor himself remarks on.

The Doctor's test is one of the story's two main comic-relief scenes; normally for my sins I get a bit sniffy about this sort of thing but it has a witty charm (not to mention great acting) that puts it far ahead of the clever-clever approach adopted in episodes like The End Of The World. The idea that the machines plant emotions in the minds of the users to make them feel valued is a great one. 

Using a chain to protect themselves from the Krotons' force field is a minor contrivance but helped by the brilliant shots of it breaking under the strain; also, the brain-scan sequence has to be one of Doctor Who's trippiest moments and I must confess I can't watch it without wanting to sing 'Tomorrow Never Knows' to myself. The Krotons' first appearance is also great (to the extent where their actual look is even more of a disappointment) with them slowly appearing in their tanks while the Doctor shows genuine concern. As I mentioned though, the Krotons look ridiculous (it's easy to see how the rumour that they were designed by a kid who won Blue Peter competition started – no disrespect to kids, but you know what I mean), and the cliffhanger to the second episode is distinctly average. It's more notable in the third episode than the second, but the Krotons seems to have gone in for some seriously natty '60s dйcor for the Dynatrope, with those black and white spirals on the monitor screens.

Selris's argument with Thara about attacking the Krotons is actually a very well related anti-war sentiment; when a fictional war is used it reduces war to an abstract concept meaning that ideas related to it don't date or become inappropriate with time to the extent that I think they will do in, for example, World War Three. The Krotons obsession with "procedure" makes them sound like Douglas Adams's Vogons, as a Kroton makes its way very slowly across the wasteland to the TARDIS. I have to say that the story has slowed down dramatically (it is an episode three; if I was to say that Holmes is usually quite good at them I'll be violating a point I made in my introduction about not judging the story by his future episodes, so I won't). By this stage, the "should we attack the Krotons / shouldn't we" argument is going on too long.

The HADS are a big contrivance, a bit like the pause control from The Android Invasion, which crops up once to get the TARDIS out of a tight spot and then is never seen again. However, "you can tell that the Captain is not at the helm" is another great line.

The chemistry scene is another comic relief scene although this one is based on slapstick rather than witticisms, but it still has a lot of inoffensive charm. This can be contrasted with Selris's death which seems slightly disturbing given that he's such a hapless character and that the mortality rate in this story is actually fairly low, at 33.3% not including the Krotons themselves. The Doctor and Zoe playing for time is another fun scene, and the shots of the Krotons and the Dynatrope dissolving look great.

All in all, The Krotons is a distinctly average story; average does not mean bad. Possibly the final word has to be that maybe, with far stronger stories like The Power Of The Daleks and The Web Of Fear missing from the archives, there is a certain amount of bitterness over what the BBC decided to keep.