Doctor Who Season Two: The only constant is change

Changes were underway at the start of the second season of Doctor Who – another constant from five decades of the show. By the end of the year, there would a turnover in the Tardis crew and new producers in place of the show’s creators.

Even with this chaos, there was still plenty worth watching through the year. Only a pair of episodes are missing (sadly, from a really good historical adventure set  during the Crusades) so it is an era that is well represented in the archives.

More importantly, these adventures really defined the early Doctor Who. There are Daleks, historical adventures and ones spent in the far future. You get a sense that everyone is stretching their creative muscles throughout, reaching to some pretty wild places for mid 1960s science fiction.

Planet of Giants

Up first, however, is the little-loved three-episode adventure that found the crew shrunk to a few inches high and terrorized by everyday objects and slightly interfering with a murder-of-the-week plot involving a scientist and an overzealous investor. The effects actually aren’t all that bad for low-budget 1964, but the story is pretty slight (and they cut it down from four to three episodes).

Dalek Invasion of Earth

Now we’re talking. While it’s certainly overlong (you can say that about much of the early era of the show) there’s a good energy from beginning to end here – and there are Daleks on location, including a famous Sunday morning shoot of them (well, the three or four of them that they had) terrorizing future and conquered London.

It also marks the first cast change, as Carol Ann Ford – tired of being stuck screaming all the time and not playing the odd space-age teenager from the show’s original brief – left the show. The Doctor stranded his granddaughter on a rebuilding Earth and William Hartnell gave a wonderful little speech that has been used time and time again in retrospectives (and allowed the producers to include the late actor in the 20^th anniversary show, The Five Doctors).

The Rescue

Hey, hi there Vicki (not Victoria, that comes later) rescued by The Doctor, Ian and Barbara from a marooned spaceship of the future. Following Susan – Ford really did a good job with within the limitations of the scripts – was a tough act, and Vicki would be one of a number of interchangeable female companions until the arrival of Victoria (not Vicki) a few years hence.

The Romans

The pure historical shows (with no science fiction content) slowly weakened over the course of the series, before being abandoned after The Highlanders, but this one was a real romp from scriptwriter Dennis Spooner. The Doctor and Vicki get to romp around in Nero’s court, while Barbara and Ian get sold into slavery (it’s pretty clear who got the short end of the stick there). Spooner’s script is a lot of fun and there’s plenty (often pretty grim) of humor to move it along.

The Web Planet

OK, this probably looked like a good idea on paper – a planet inhabited by several races of giant and sentient insects – but the budget didn’t stretch to pull it off. What we get is something that is damn weird as actors in bee and butterfly-like costumes dance around the soundstage. The finale – as our intrepid crew face off against the Animus, a controlling brain-thing – is actually pretty effective, but it takes six long episodes to get to that point.

The Crusade

We go back into history to, well, the Crusades and Richard the Lionhearted. This is the only partially missing serial from the second season, which is a shame. The existing episodes and the audio version show us an intriguing story built on some fine performances from the core crew and the guest cast, including Julian Glover (not wearing aluminum hot pants like he did on Space: 1999) and Jean Marsh.

The Space Museum

The first episode of this is great, as the crew wanders around the titular facility, seeing the sights (including a Dalek) and discovering, at the end, that they are fated to end up as permanent parts of the collection. It falls apart quickly after that, as the two main factions on the planet are inept to the extreme. I don’t know if this was an intentional bit on scriptwriter Glyn Jones or just some half-hearted writing, production and acting.

The Chase

Dalek adventure #3 arrives, and it isn’t that great of a romp. OK, the Beatles show up in the first episode. Well, they did in the original broadcast. Apparently the BBC didn’t want to pay the fee to include “Ticket to Ride” in the DVD version, so that scene is now missing.

Back to the story. The Daleks want to destroy the Doctor and crew and, as you would expect from the title, chase the Tardis through time and space. They stop on the Empire State Building, the Marie Celeste and at some weird robotic horror show before getting to the finale, as the Daleks face off with the Mechanoids… and you know what, I really don’t have the energy to think about the chase more than that. We do get our first glimpse of Peter Purvis, first as a stereotypical American (and southerner at that) in New York City and then, at the end, as Steven, who is brought in to replace Ian and Barbara. The pair uses the Dalek time machine to get back home, and their era ends with a rather nice photo montage of the pair frolicking around London.

The Time Meddler

There are a number of firsts here. It’s the first adventure without any of the original crew apart from the Doctor. It’s the first pseudo-historical, where we go back in time but the adventure actually turns on a science-fiction plot. And it is the first time we meet another member of the Doctor’s race, though not identified as Time Lords as of yet. The Meddling Monk, especially with Peter Butterworth at the helm, is a terrific character who sadly only appeared one more time in the series. More amoral than the evil of the likes of the Master or the Rani, the Monk just wants to have a bit of fun in 1066 Britain.

Next time: William Hartnell's era ends, but not before we have 12 episodes of the Daleks (well, 11 and an odd Christmas-day episode) and the introduction of... the Cybermen.