Doctor Who Serial 074 – Planet of the Spiders

April 20, 2019 10:28 am , Leave a Comment ,

Welcome to the final episodes of season 11 and the final episode of the Jon Pertwee era of Doctor Who. “Planet of the Spiders” is not only terrible, it is the ultimate Jon Pertwee era episode. You have a car chase, you have Venusian judo, you have a boat chase, you have terrible spider puppets, you have terrible effects, you have monarchists and you have racism.

Yup, let’s get that part out of the way. There’s the most racist yellow-face I’ve seen. This Brit putting on a Chinese accent wearing terrible prosthetics to make him look Chinese not only insults in this manner, they turn the occult into faux-ancient ways.

Basically this meditation cult is trying to summon an alien spider who takes control of a dude who just wants power. Mike Yates is infiltrating the group and thinks something is wonky, so he lets Sarah know.

Sarah, who’s only met Yates once before… when he tried to kill her and The Doctor, for some odd reason trusts him. She does her own investigations and The Doctor’s investigations meet up together.

They end up on Metabalis where there are two Earth species living. Humans and evolved spiders. The spiders hold the Humans in slavery. The Doctor and Sarah help the Humans rise up against the spiders and fail.

They’re all fighting for a crystal that’s on Earth.

The Doctor must face his greatest fear and take the crystal back to the Great One. He does, his body is destroyed, and he returns to UNIT collapses and becomes…

TOM BAKER!

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Doctor Who Serial 073 – The Monster of Peladon

April 16, 2019 9:53 am , Leave a Comment ,

Welcome back to Peladon, with your favourite guest star Giant Swaying Screeching Eyeball! Last time, Peladon was petitioning for admission to the Federation, this time they’re well established members of the Federation. The king’s daughter is now sitting on the throne.

The miners on Peladon are being haunted by their god who is killing them. Scaring them into abandoning their plans to further mine. The Doctor shows up and is assumed to be the cause of all this.

The Doctor must figure out the mystery of this monster, when political intrigue gets in the way.

Is it good? Meh, it’s alright. Not terrible, but not great. It’s annoying, but I can live with that. Once again Doctor Who is victim of its own classism, sexism and adoration of monarchy.

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Doctor Who Serial 072 – Death To The Daleks

April 8, 2019 10:38 am , Leave a Comment ,

Another episode I’m not fond of. The Doctor finds himself on a planet where the Daleks and a human expedition must team up to strip the natural resources from a planet without the forethought to ask the native inhabitants, the Exxilons.

Obviously the Exxilons don’t like this.

The show is ridiculous, and The Doctor has work his way through a maze and prove his intelligence, with the Daleks close behind. It’s kinda like that episode of Stargate SG-1 where Merlin has some puzzles that Humans must solve to be able to gain access to his knowledge and they’re basic logic puzzles, like the one where you have to put the runes in order, but it’s just basic numerals with their mirror image connected to it.. Well, take that and dumb it down a few hundred times. The Doctor has to do a maze that is included on a kids’ menu at Pizza Hut.

The Daleks are rarely good. Hopefully they soon add Davros to give them a voice.

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Doctor Who Serial 071 – Invasion Of The Dinosaurs

April 5, 2019 1:46 pm , 1 Comment ,

Season 11 seems to have picked up some of the momentum that I hadn’t been feeling during most of Pertwee’s run. This second serial I quite liked, even though it was ridiculous.

Some of the worst puppets are invading London! They look like someone had a fever-dream and tried to make a dinosaur.

They did something slightly clever with the first episode, it was just named “Invasion” as the cliffhanger was the first reveal of the dinosaurs. The Doctor and Sarah Jane return to London and find it abandoned. They are arrested, and eventually freed, and then discover there are dinosaurs in London.

It turns out that someone who works for the British military is working to bring dinosaurs forward in time to abandon London so they can get a few select individuals into an ark-like ship to head to another planet. But the truth is more sinister. Instead they want to use time travel to change the past and send humans to when earth was free of Humans and so they can make their eden without the problems of modern humanity. By introducing humans. It makes no sense, but it’s a fun episode with terrible special effects.

I really think that ’70s Doctor Who writers were on LSD.

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Doctor Who Serial 070 – The Time Warrior

March 25, 2019 3:24 pm , Leave a Comment ,

Wow, this is much better and what Doctor Who should be like. We have fun, we have silly, we have mind control1, we have Sarah Jane Smith, we have English people being so fucking English.

Where should we start. Maybe with Sarah Jane Smith. This episode introduces a new companion for The Doctor, Sarah Smith. She introduces herself, and The Doctor introduces himself to her as John Smith. Yet, later in the episode she calls him just The Doctor. I don’t get it, but who cares.

She’s smart, inquisitive, and funny. She sneaks into the TARDIS and The Doctor departs and heads to the middle ages.

In the middle ages we find a Sontaran (or a star warrior, as this is the first instance of Sontarans, so we need to know that they’re warriors… from the stars). He’s crashed on Earth, he uses the primitive humans to help him get his spaceship working. To get their help, he bribes the local asshole with guns and robots.

That local asshole, Irongron, decides that a man from space who can create guns is obviously an idiot, and uses his Englishness to act superior and ignore the advice of the person giving him his weapons.

What the fuck is wrong with English people? Why is that colonial attitude still going strong in the 1970s?

Next we have a rear vent. On the back of a Sontaran’s neck is a vent which if you hit, it will knock out the alien. Why?

Finally there’s the mind control. I’m getting really tired of mind control and Doctor Who seems to think that all stories must include some mind control.

Stop it.

Otherwise, one of the best Pertwee stories.

  1. We will get back to that later [↩]
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Doctor Who Serial 069 – The Green Death

March 23, 2019 9:54 pm , Leave a Comment ,

Farewell season ten and farewell Jo Grant. In these last six episodes of season 10 we see The Doctor, Jo and UNIT investigating a chemical plant and an abandoned mine in South Wales where a scientist is playing with mushrooms.

Things get trippy maggots attack miners and cause a green death to infiltrate them. In the end, Jo saves the day with the brown cure.

Jo tells The Doctor that she’s not joining him on his next adventure, but instead staying with the scientist who wants to take her with him on his next adventure… and get married? They just met! But everyone seems happy for them, they even sing that they’re “jolly good fellows.” Either they don’t know what a fellow is or they’re very progressive. Hip hip, hooray!

Season 10 has been terrible and painful to watch. I’m glad it’s over. There’s only one more season of Jon Pertwee episodes. I hope they better, fortunately he’s going to get a new companion, Sarah Smith… sometimes referred to as Sarah Jane Smith. She is a much better companion, and I am looking forward to that.

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DOCTOR WHO SERIAL 068 – Planet Of The Daleks

March 18, 2019 9:59 am , Leave a Comment ,

I got tired of Doctor Who and as such, I stopped watching it for a bit between episodes 5 and 6 of “Planet of the Daleks.” It wasn’t a very good episode, and I’m very tired of Jon Pertwee. I never loved him as The Doctor and I’m ready for Tom Baker. Except I still have 32 more episodes of the Pertwee era.

The one thing that should’ve kept me interested in this serial is the fact that The Doctor and his co-conspirators dress up like Sesame Street monsters to hide from the Daleks.

This might sound strange, but here’s the thing. There’s another creature in this story, who ally themselves with the Daleks, they’re off-brand Muppets. These Mooppets are furry and purple. The Doctor and crew skin them (alive?) and hide in their carcass.

Family fun!™

The Daleks are developing a personal cloaking device, and the Thals from the planet Skaro are there trying to stop. If you forgot about the Thals, they were from the first episode about The Daleks.

Stuff happens, they drown an entire fleet of Daleks. The Doctor runs around corridors.

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DOCTOR WHO SERIAL 067 – Frontier In Space

February 2, 2019 5:11 pm , Leave a Comment ,

This six part season 10 serial, starring Jon Pertwee is a lot of fun, but it’s also ridiculous and makes very little sense. The Doctor finds himself in Earth’s future when Earth is one of the superpowers in the known universe. They are colonizing the galaxy, but as are the Draconians1.

The Draconians, as pictured above, are at a precarious peace with Humanity. There are some space raids here and there, but the Draconian empire is xenophobic and ready to attack, as are the Humans.

The Doctor and Jo find themselves on a ship that is being attacked. The Humans think they see Draconians attacking them, but The Doctor sees dollar-store-Klingons.

Something is off, The Doctor knows the dollar-store-Klingons, but knows they’re not capable of this strange hypnotic masking technology. How can they possibly be tricking Humans into thinking that they’re Draconians, and how can they trick the Draconians into thinking they’re Humans. Something must be going on… something hypnotic… something… yeah, it’s The Master, of course it’s The Master. It’s always the fucking Master.

Eventually the Daleks show up… And nothing gets resolved. I dunno, I guess we’re going into the next serial.

  1. or “Dragons” to the racist humans [↩]
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DOCTOR WHO SERIAL 066 – Carnival Of Monsters

January 26, 2019 4:53 pm , Leave a Comment ,

The Doctor and his ever annoying companion, Jo, set their TARDIS down inside a peep show machine. This machine has the capabilities shrink matter, and store an entire ship, it’s crew and passengers. And that’s in only one compartment. The machine is topped with a beautiful CRT television, which allows those on the outside to watch what’s happening on the inside.

A traveling pair of entertainers or swindlers arrives on a planet with their machine in tow. They are penniless and ready to entertain the people of this planet with their machine of wonders.

Unfortunately the people on the planet don’t care. Unfortunately for the writers, nor do I.

It doesn’t seem very good con to get people to watch a CRT screen, but that’s all that these travelers have going for them… well that and their amazing outfits.

The Doctor gets out, and things happen, and everyone leaves happy. Except the audience.

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Doctor Who Serial 065 – The Three Doctors

January 19, 2019 11:23 am , Leave a Comment ,

Happy 10th season! To celebrate the start of Doctor Who‘s 10th anniversary, the producers put together “The Three Doctors,” an adventure featuring Jon Pertwee, Patrick Troughton, and William Hartnell all in the role of The Doctor.

The Time Lords are facing an energy drain. They must get help from The Doctor, but The Doctor is not enough, they cannot spare any other Time Lords, so they get The Doctor to help The Doctor. In comes Patrick Troughton. William Hartnell, however, was too ill as such, his Doctor got caught in a “time eddy” and provided help via the TARDIS’ built-in CRT television.

Brigadier General Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart is an idiot. He refuses to believe anything either of the Doctors tell him. He’s known him for so long now that he should understand.

The Doctors must travel to the anti-mater universe where Omega1, the Time Lord responsible for their species’ ability to travel through time has been trapped for oh so long. Omega wants to return to the matter universe, and have The Doctor(s) stay there in his stead.

After they succeed, the second Doctor disappears and returns to his time, Dr. Tyler proclaims “now I’ve seen it all.” A man disappearing in front of him is more strange than traveling to a universe of anti-matter, meeting three extra-terrestrials, and that the British Armed Forces have a unit called UNIT that is involved in all this.

The episode ends with the third Doctor getting a dematerialization unit from the Time Lords. That means The Doctor is no longer exiled to Earth and ready to take off for some fun in the universe.

  1. Why can’t they pronounce omega right? [↩]
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