Terror of the Autons

Terror of the Autons
by Robert Holmes
Originally Broadcasted: January 2nd-23rd, 1971

An old rival of the Doctor's, the Master, has arrived on Earth, looking to wreak havoc on the population all to better the Doctor. He calls upon the Nestene for another attempt to invade Earth through something very close to everyone's lives, plastic. Will the Doctor be able to not only stop the Nestenes, but also capture the evil Master?

Terror of the Autons is a very important story in the history of Doctor Who, mainly for the introduction of the Master. Behind the Daleks and the Cybermen, the Master is one of Doctor Who's most popular villains. I've got to say, the Master is my favorite villain in the show, because his menace is much more human, while being still being otherworldly. Right from the very start, Roger Delgado charms and terrifies at the same time. His unique suave attitude serves as an interesting counterpart to a sometimes bumbling Doctor, who doesn't always get everything right. You'd think this would mean the Master would always win his battles, but he is prone to thinking too grand and overlooking the little things. Roger Delgado is the definitive Master, whose performance obviously inspired the almost as great Anthony Ainley when he played the villainous Time Lord 10 years later. In addition to the introduction of the Master, this is also the first story for new regulars Jo Grant and Captain Mike Yates. With that, the beloved UNIT family is complete, giving the show a real ensemble feel for one of the few times in its history. They join Jon Pertwee, Nicholas Courtney, John Levene, and even Roger Delgado as the tour de force behind the show in the early 1970s. Terror of the Autons really gives the terror to the Autons! Writer Robert Holmes obviously wanted to push the fear boundaries even further than he did the year before with Spearhead from Space. This time, instead of shop window dummies coming to life, the threat is taken into our homes with a evil troll doll and a man eating plastic sofa. Even the police that rescue the Doctor and Jo at the end of Episode Two end up being Autons in disguise. The masked men walking around in yellow suits is equally creepy, adding a lifeless element. In fact, the makers of the show got into a little bit of trouble over the scary moments in the show, and were forced to dial it back a bit. Robert Holmes brilliantly uses the Autons to terrify us, and having the Master on top of that makes Terror of the Autons my favorite Auton story.

Luke's Rating: 9/10

Arc of Infinity

Arc of Infinity
by Johnny Byrne
Originally Broadcasted: January 3rd-January 12th, 1983

Omega, the creator of time travel, who has forever been banished to the realm of anti-matter, is hatching a scheme to return to this dimension by bonding with the Doctor. The Time Lords have decided the only way to stop this threat, is to bring the Doctor to Gallifrey and have him executed. Will Nyssa be able to prove the Time Lords otherwise so that the Doctor can survive to defeat Omega?

Arc of Infinity was the first serial of the 20th season of Doctor Who, a season where Producer John Nathan-Turner decided to feature a returning baddie in every story. For Arc of Infinity, writer Johnny Byrne looked back to the 10th anniversary special, The Three Doctors, and brought back the demented Omega. Omega is one of the more interesting characters in Who history, because he's not really that bad. It was an accident that caused him to be stuck in the anti-matter dimension, and that drove him to insanity. He desperately wants to return to our dimension, but what makes him a villain is that he'll do whatever it takes to return. The characterization of Omega in the final episode of this story is some really beautiful stuff. Omega finally got his wish. He had returned, in the form of the Doctor, and he's roaming around the streets of Amsterdam, at first just taking everything in. The joy you see in his face from something as simple as a street organ is really touching, even though you know there's actually a terrible person underneath the Doctor's face. That then turns into a wonderful, if slightly long chase around Amsterdam, where the Doctor, Nyssa, and Tegan chase an increasingly unstable Omega. The stuff on Gallifrey is interesting, yet a little less exciting. Of course, everyone remembers Arc of Infinity for the cliffhanger at the end of Part One, where Commander Maxil, played by future Doctor Colin Baker, shoots current Doctor Peter Davison. No one at the time would have known this man would eventually become the Doctor. Tegan returns in this serial, after being left stranded at Heathrow Airport at the end of the previous story, Time-Flight. She has the joy of filling up the almost unnecessary Amsterdam sequences in the first three episodes, that include one of the worst designed monsters in the history of Doctor Who, the Ergon. Also of interest, it is the scene of the Doctor trapped in the Matrix that was used to represent the Fifth Doctor in the spectacular episode from the most recent series of Doctor Who, The Name of the Doctor. Arc of Infinity is overall quite a good story, although it does have quite a few negatives, including some bad monster designs and some bad effects. But it's the 80s, so we can overlook that :P

Luke's Rating: 8/10

The Name of the Doctor

The Name of the Doctor
by Steven Moffat
Originally Broadcasted: May 18th, 2013

The Doctor's friends are being taken out of time by the Great Intelligence, and they've been taken to the one place in time and space the Doctor should never go, his grave on Trenzalore. The Great Intelligence's scheme involves going back in time to wreak havoc on all of the Doctor's incarnations. And Clara is the only one who can save the Doctor...

I don't think I have ever been as excited for an episode of Doctor Who as I was for The Name of the Doctor. The anticipation leading up to this episode was through the roof, with copies of the story accidentally being sent out on DVD early to some fans. So with all this hype, did the episode live up to expectations? For the most part, yes! It certainly started out on the right note, with perhaps the single most exciting pre-title scene ever. The very first thing we see is the First Doctor stealing the TARDIS all those years ago on Gallifrey! And then Clara is falling through time, and we see her running after many past Doctors, through clips from classic episodes. We see the Sixth Doctor walk past Clara in the current TARDIS, the Fourth Doctor on Gallifrey from The Invasion of Time, the Seventh Doctor hanging on for doom in Dragonfire (I find it funny how they used one of the most ridiculous clips from the McCoy era), the Third Doctor driving Bessie in The Five Doctors, the Second Doctor running outside what appears to be the San Diego Comic Con, and the Fifth Doctor trapped in the Matrix in Arc of Infinity. And then the episode kicks off, in routine Doctor Who fashion. Clara, River Song, Madame Vastra, Jenny, and Strax come together to discuss the Trenzalore issue. Clara is the one who tells the Doctor whats happening, and it actually brings him to tears. The idea of visiting his grave was a clever one, and I hadn't expected it up to that point. Yet, it immediately made sense while watching the episode. The Great Intelligence, in the form of Doctor Simeon from The Snowmen (played by the great Richard E. Grant) enters the Doctor's time-stream to destroy his life from within. The only way to save the Doctor from this eternal pain, is for someone to replace Simeon, and that someone is Clara. This finally explains why the Doctor saw Oswin Oswald on the Dalek Asylum, and why Clara was also living in Victorian England. She splintered herself throughout time, all to save the Doctor. But then the Doctor does something even crazier, and enters his own time-stream to save the original, real Clara. He manages to save her, but then we get the second big shock of the episode. A Doctor that Clara hasn't seen before. A Doctor that gave up that title. A Doctor played by John Hurt. Fan communities are running rampant with ideas of just who this could be. My bets is that it's the Valeyard from The Trial of the Time Lord season, but then again, that might be too obvious. Whoever it may be, we'll have to wait until the 50th anniversary special to find out. Boy am I excited for that! It feels like we already got a sort of 50th special with The Name of the Doctor, so imagine how great that is going to be! This episode also pretty much brought an end to the saga of River Song, although I'd say her appearance in this story wasn't entirely necessary. And once again, we had some lovely stuff with Vastra, Jenny, and Strax. The Name of the Doctor fully lived up to my expectations, and created one of the most fan-oriented, and truly great stories of Doctor Who ever!

Luke's Rating: 10/10

Luke's Top 50 Doctor Who Stories: #25-21

See #50-46 HERE
See #45-41 HERE
See #40-36 HERE
See #35-31 HERE
See #30-26 HERE

25. The Lodger

The Lodger gives us something the Doctor hasn't really had before, a recurring mate. For the Doctor is Craig Owen's lodger, in one of the most hilarious Doctor Who stories ever that brings us plenty of heartfelt as well as totally creepy moments. The story even harkens back to seeing the Fifth Doctor play cricket in Black Orchid, by having #11 play football. Now if only they'd actually made Meglos the enemy...

24. The Keeper of Traken

After being mostly absent from the show for 7 years, the Master finally returned to Doctor Who in grand style. Disguised as the truly terrifying Melkur, the Master wrecks havoc throughout Traken in search of a new body. He gets that new body, that of Tremas, father of Nyssa and anagram of Master. Geoffrey Beavers performance as the Master is truly terrific, and it's nice to see the future Master Anthony Ainley in a protagonist role.

23. The Green Death

The "one with the giant maggots" is a fine example of the Jon Pertwee era, which consistently deals with many ethical and political issues. The Green Death expertly tackles the topic of global warming, and very neatly brings an end to Jo Grant's time with the Doctor. The BOSS is a wonderful idea for a villain: a living, thinking, utterly maniacal computer.

22. Let's Kill Hitler

Let's Kill Hitler is my favorite episode from the weakest season of Doctor Who since 2005, Series 6. The scene where Amy and Rory's childhood friend Mels is revealed to be River Song, and then we see that regeneration, left me utterly gobsmacked. It is perhaps for that scene alone that I rank this story so high. Oh, and it's always fun to "put Hitler in the cupboard"

21. The Girl in the Fireplace

Before Steven Moffat wrote the universally loved Blink, he penned Series 2's The Girl in the Fireplace, another fantastic story expertly tackling time travel. The Doctor meets, and falls in love with Madame de Pompadour, yet due to faulty time travel, what for him is seconds, is years for Pompadour. In the end, the Doctor is devastated by her death. One of David Tennant's best performances as the Doctor, and a pretty hot Pompadour helps too :P

Pyramids of Mars

Pyramids of Mars
by Stephen Harris
Originally Broadcasted: October 25th-November 15th, 1975

The Doctor and Sarah Jane land in a Victorian Gothic mansion on the future site of UNIT headquarters, where there are some very strange happenings. Sutekh, the last of the Osirians, is developing a plan to break free of his eternal tomb, to bring his gift of death to all humanity. Will the Doctor be able to defeat the supreme mental power of this Osirian god?

When you think of classic Doctor Who, Pyramids of Mars could quite likely be one of the stories that immediately pops into your mind. It's considered to be one of the greatest stories of all time, written by one of the shows most prolific writers, Robert Holmes. I am one of the few that isn't all that taken with this episode. It's certainly not a bad story, but I don't think it deserves the supreme praise it always receives. There's some truly fantastic stuff with the Doctor pitting his might against Sutekh's supreme power in Part Four. Tom Baker's brilliant acting really shows the severity of the situation. If Sutekh were to succeed in his plan, life would cease to exist. But the first three episodes mainly consist of a lot of running, hiding, and setting up. There's a lot of good atmosphere, but the story seems a trifle lacking to me. And it really pains me to say that, because Robert Holmes is one of my favorite Doctor Who writers of all time. He penned my absolute favorite story, The Caves of Androzani (which also tops many other Doctor Who fans lists). Perhaps it was because this was a re-working of a script that proved unusable, hence why the show credited the writer as Stephen Harris (a pseudonym). The amount of forms of Sutekh confused me a little. You have the black hooded Sutekh, Marcus Scarman as Sutekh, the sitting Egyptian form of Sutekh, and the dog-like god head. Why are so many forms of one villain necessary? Another detriment to this story is some really poor acting. The gentleman that played Marcus Scarman seemed to have been top of his class in overacting, and many of the deaths in this story were so obviously fake. A good actor should be able to make even death seem convincing, not just screaming like a girl and falling to the floor half-assed. Fortunately, most of that is made up for by Gabriel Woolf's brilliant performance as Sutekh, and the always excellent Tom Baker and Elizabeth Sladen. Pyramids of Mars is definitely a good Doctor Who story, but not a great one as it is so often applauded as.

Luke's Rating: 6.5/10

Nightmare in Silver

Nightmare in Silver
by Neil Gaiman
Originally Broadcasted: May 11th, 2013

The Doctor is forced to take Artie and Angie, the kids Clara babysits, on an adventure into time and space. And so he picks Hedgewick's World of Wonders. Only trouble is, the theme park has long been abandoned. Rising from the ashes on the hallowed ground are the Cybermen! They're back to take command of the universe, and the Doctor...

Nightmare in Silver was definitely one of the more hyped up episodes of this season of Doctor Who. Writer Neil Gaiman is thought of as pretty legendary and perfect, and many a Doctor Who fan loved his first episode last year, The Doctor's Wife. I however wasn't too impressed with that story. It was good, but it definitely wasn't the best story of the season. So I had hoped Neil Gaiman would up his game for this one, and it looked like he was going to, but sadly I was wrong. Once again, he provides an OK script. Not great, but not bad. And certainly not up to the hype it got. Now while I was disappointed by the episode overall, there were some pretty awesome elements to it. The Cybermen have been redesigned with a sleeker appearance, and they are now able to move more freely and much quicker than ever before, really adding to the scary factor. Introduced in this story are Cybermites, a really great idea: Little cybernetic creatures that can form to control a human specimen long enough to be upgraded into a Cyberman. It is through this that the Doctor is actually under control of the Cyber Planner, who becomes known as Mr. Clever (a wonderfully silly name I thought). This led to some back and forth between the Doctor and Mr. Clever inside the Doctor's head, which I thought was played out for way too long. It was clever at first, but quickly became boring. Clara got an interesting role in this episode, where she was pretty much put in command of the incompetent battalion of troopers. She relishes in this and shows off her typical Clara charm. I love this girl. And I also loved Warwick Davis' performance in this episode, such an underrated actor. I read many complaints about the supposedly unnecessary inclusion of Artie and Angie, the two kids Clara babysits. But really, why not have them included? It was really creepy seeing them under the control of the  Cybermites, and just added extra severity to the situation. There were also some fun throwbacks to some classic Cybermen stories. One scene shows three rows of marching Cybermen, harking back to Earthshock (my personal all-time favorite Cybermen story), while another scene of Cybermen breaking out of their tombs is a clear tribute to The Tomb of the Cybermen. Nightmare in Silver was, overall, a pretty decent episode of Doctor Who. Sadly though, it just didn't live up to the hype that was built up for it, and so I was sadly a bit underwhelmed...

Luke's Rating: 7/10

Shada

Shada
by Douglas Adams
Originally Broadcasted: Never Aired (Released on VHS in 1992)

The Doctor and Romana are called to Cambridge University by an old Time Lord friend, Professor Chronotis. Trouble is, when they meet, he has no idea why he called them. Meanwhile, would-be conquerer of the universe Skagra has broken out of the Time Lord prison planet Shada, and he is after Professor Chronotis...

Shada, Shada, Shada, as Tom Baker so eloquently puts it in his 1992 video introductions to this serial. Those introductions were necessary of course, as Shada is the legendary half-completed serial of Doctor Who. Hastily written by then current script editor Douglas Adams (who at the same time was receiving fame for his marvelous Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy book, TV show, and radio series), Shada went into production on October 15th, 1979, where all location filming was completed at Cambridge. Following that, the first block of studio recording was completed. When the cast attempted to start the second block of recording, they found the studio blocked off and a crew on strike. Various remounts were attempted, even for the next season by John Nathan-Turner (JNT), but eventually Shada was put to rest. All the recorded footage survived to tease us with what could have been. In 1992, JNT commissioned a VHS release of Shada, with all the missing links filled in a visibly older Tom Baker. This gets us the closest we can to a complete Shada, and it is this version that was just recently released on DVD. The completed filming features some lovely stuff, like the Doctor and Romana punting down the River Cam (later used to fill in for an absent Tom Baker in The Five Doctors), Skagra's sphere chasing the Doctor on a bike, and some wonderful bits with the lovable and forgetful Professor Chronotis. I particularly love the scene where the Doctor rides past the Cambridge cappella group, added to the story after a drunk conversation with the director the night before filming. The later episodes become a bit harder to follow, as there is more Tom Baker talking than actual recorded footage. So you have to really pay attention if you want to follow along with the plot. My only tiff with this story is the incidental music, provided by Keff McCulloch of the Sylvester McCoy era. His music is arguably some of the worst ever presented on Doctor Who, having no real melody to it, just incessant beats all over the place. It feels totally out of place in a Tom Baker serial, and I wish they would have used Dudley Simpson instead. Now the question that always pops up is if Shada were actually completed, would it be thought of as highly as it is being incomplete? Probably not. Shada is a good story, but not a great story. The fact that it is incomplete adds to its legendary status, which is probably a good thing for the story. Now while it is sad that the story never got to air, at least we can see what remains thanks to the wonders of DVDs!

Luke's Rating: 7/10