The Dominators
This isn’t one of the classics. It’s a strut-a-thon in the
opener, which was such a mess of a piece that they took away an episode and
made it a five-part story. The five episodes basically break down to this: The
titular invaders wander around a quarry – one tries to kill everyone he meets;
the other reprimands him for trying to kill everyone he meets. There are cute
little robots called Quarks that are supposed to be replacements for Daleks,
but look about as threatening as a Rock-‘Em-Sock-‘Em Robot after being punched.
The inhabitants of the planet – committed pacifists – debate endlessly on what
to do, while the Doctor and crew shuttle endlessly between different locations
before the show mercifully comes to a close.
The Mind Robber
This one is just mad – The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe travel
beyond the normal universe into the Land of Fiction. Along the way, they run
into Gulliver; a superhero from a future comic strip (from the far off year…
2000); and a gaggle of riddle-telling story. The tone is light and fantastical
throughout, with Fraiser Hines and especially Patrick Troughton having a ball
throughout. The serial even has one of the oddest episodes ever on the show.
After The Dominators was truncated by an episode, that left the show with an
empty episode to fill with no budget at all. The resulting episode is an
interesting bit. It’s more than filler, but it only includes the three core
members, the Tardis set and lots of white paint. It works, like most of the
shows this season, because of the skills and chemistry among our leads.
The Invasion
Who is invading? Who? Who? We don’t actually get
confirmation until about halfway through this eight-episode adventure, when the
Cybermen start to terrorize London the way the Daleks did a few season’s
earlier in the Dalek Invasion of Earth. Up to that point, it’s been an
adventure through swinging London as the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe team up with
another young lady (Isobel Watkins) and get to meet the United Nations
Intellegence Task Force (good ole UNIT, we’ll see a lot of them in the seasons
to come) for the first time with the new promoted Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart.
The tale is missing two episodes, but those have been recently animated,
allowing auidiences to see the show for the first time (officially, at least)
in many years. It’s one of the stand-outs for the season, which will be heading
downhill very fast.
The Krotons
That would be this turkey, which is the rather inauspicious
debut by Robert Holmes, who would become a key contributor in years to come. Here,
his signature wit and playful storytelling are largely absent. There’s some
potential in the tale – which has some echoes of The Time Machine and its
bifurcated society – in it, but that gets pushed aside by some clunky
storytelling, static staging and absolutely horrible monsters (the titular
Krotons, quickly dubbed “Croutons” by the staff) undercut it all.
The Seeds of Death
Here’s the other highlight from the season, with the Ice
Warriors coming back and Patrick Troughton having plenty of fun running around
in what looks to be a set full of laundry suds. The story makes pretty much
solid sense from beginning to end, and while the action is confined to a pair
of bases (on Earth and the Moon this time) there’s enough variety (and tension,
especially in the moonbase) to keep it going.
The Space Pirates
And know we’re back to the grind, with a largely
uninteresting six-parter that – apart from more touches of Robert Holmes’ wit –
doesn’t have much to recommend it. It’s also almost completely missing from the
archives, so it’s largely been forgotten over the decades.
The War Games
Patrick Troughton goes out in a story that – despite being
stretched well beyond its breaking point to an ungodly 10 episodes – manages to
be largely entertaining and provide a number of landmark changes for the
series. The plot of the aliens – stealing human soldiers from different time
periods and having them fight it out to find perfect soldiers for an invasion –
is pretty silly, but it does provide for enough structure to keep the story
from completely collapsing.
The key here is that the aliens are aided by one of the
Doctor’s own race. This isn’t a congenial trickster like the Meddling Monk.
Instead The War Chief is cold, calculating and willing to murder thousands for
the ends of his clients. And while the Doctor is able to mostly sort out the
troubles, he needs the help of his own people to set things right. Enter, for
the first time, the Time Lords.
Most Time Lord lore would come later on, but the basics are
here: they don’t like to interfere, so the Doctor ran away to see the Universe;
they can “live forever, baring accidents”; and they have dominion over time. In
saving the Earthlings, the Doctor has put himself back in their clutches. After
a short trial, he gets his money-saving sentence: an exile to his favorite
planet, Earth, along with a new regeneration.
In a touching scene, he has to say goodbye to Jamie and Zoe.
Then its down a spinning tunnel and into color.
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