116 – Planet of the Spiders

I begin tangentially with a fact: I love regeneration stories. I didn’t fully appreciate the first one I saw (The Caves of Androzani) at the time, but I didn’t grasp the significance of the Doctor renewing himself. Probably though, it was Logopolis that fully converted me to enjoying regeneration stories. I think it is for the simple reason that Tom Baker is my Doctor – to borrow the lovely expression used by Matt Smith: “The first face this face saw.” The whole of that episode is brooding, melancholy and dramatic, building to the climax of the Fourth Doctor falling to his death – to regenerate. Stirring stuff!

117 – Revelation of the Daleks

This serial really confused me when I first saw it. The BBC did repeats of one serial for each Doctor – and I started watching from Genesis of the Daleks. I accepted the change to Peter Davison with confusion but reasonably equally, but was confused when Colin Baker appeared in Revelation of the Daleks, with no explanation to his change. Of course, I very soon figured out that the BBC had not shown the serials in order!

118 – The Awakening

My first experience of The Awakening was when my dad bought it in a VHS double set paired with Frontios. I think it is fair to say that I hated both. Ten years later or so I got my hands on the DVDs. I had bought Frontios and been more than pleasantly surprised – I thoroughly enjoyed it. Whereas The Awakening came in a boxset with Hartnell serial The Gunfighters – a serial widely lampooned in fandom. I had therefore not been in a massive rush to buy the boxset, and slightly dreading what I might discover when I finally settled down to watch.

119 – The Two Doctors

This was a story that severely disappointed me when I got my hands on the DVD. As a youngster I had rather enjoyed the other multi-doctor stories (The Three Doctors and The Five Doctors) – I think mainly for the sheer novelty of having more than one doctor in the story. This story is rather different to the other multi-doctor stories in that the others were written to celebrate the 10th and 20th anniversaries of the show respectively. The Two Doctors was sparked by producer John Nathan Turner’s desire to write a multi-doctor story that was not a celebration story, but genuinely an attempt to ask what happens when two doctors get involved in the adventure. The window of opportunity arose after Patrick Troughton enjoyed his return for The Five Doctors and mentioned he would love another opportunity to return.

120 – Silver Nemesis

Rule number one of plagiarism – don’t make it glaringly obvious where you have stolen the idea from. So when Ace remarks at the end of Silver Nemesis that the Doctor tricked the Cybermen “Just like the Daleks” (in earlier season story Remembrance of the Daleks) the script writers inadvertently drew attention to the fact that both stories are essentially the same – specifically:

121 – Terminus

This story is infamously remembered for the moment when Nyssa decided to take her clothes off for no readily apparent reason. For those wondering how this escaped the watershed, I should perhaps point out that she was still wearing an underlayer that by present standards is moderately modest, but it says a lot about the rest of the serial that this is the talking point most fans take away. (For the record, as Sarah Sutton knew it was her last story and had heard of complaints from fans that she’d been too well covered up, this was her response. Misogyny is sadly timeless)

122 – Time-Flight

We continue our theme of not-terribly-good Fifth Doctor serials with the story that concluded Peter Davison’s first season as the Doctor. This story is similar to Delta and the Bannermen insomuch that it was a serial I partially caught on UK Gold (never whole episodes – only snippets of each) and therefore wanted to see at some point. I was also very intrigued to see the very beginning of the story. As long-term fans of the show know well, the previous serial Earthshock ended with a massive departure for the series – the death of a companion. For a long while I could only imagine how the TARDIS team dealt with this death, and of course the challenge of time-travel that Tegan expresses so passionately: “You have a time machine! You can change the past!”

Missing presumed still missing?

We take a further break from my countdown from least-loved to best-loved Doctor Who serial to revisit what has been my best liked post so far by you the readers – the rumour that many of the 97 missing episodes of Doctor Who have in fact been found.

The rumour took a bit of a battering this week with some quite extraordinary outbursts on Twitter by Phil Morris, the chap who discovered The Enemy of the World and The Web of Fear. Off the back of these comments certain voices highly esteemed in the fanbase (not least Eddie McGuigan from Outpost Skaro) concluded that the omnirumour was dead. As far as I can work out, the reasoning runs along these lines:

1. Phil Morris holds a very dim view of the current Doctor Who production team, and his recent comments reflect an underlying agenda to shape the show to his tastes.
2. The main reason his opinions are getting airtime is that fans are awaiting confirmation or denial that he has found additional episodes.
3. Almost all of the rumours seem to have stemmed from Morris, and therefore must be taken with a pinch of salt in view of the points above.

So the question to us dear readers is this: has Morris been pulling the wool over our eyes? And more directly for my review: how much longer will The Reign of Terror, The Tenth Planet, The Moonbase and The Ice Warriors remain unpurchased?

While unquestionably some of Morris’ remarks have been ill advised, it does not necessarily follow that the Omnirumour itself is completely fabricated. For me, the major unanswered question remains the number of NDAs signed around the release of Enemy and Web last year. My impression (which could well be mistaken) is that the NDAs did not simply refer to the news embargo on which episodes were confirmed for release the next day. That being the case, a number of fans who love the show and the history of the show, had a major motivation to agree to be silent on news that excited them.

So to my mind – that says to me that the omnirumour has neither been proven nor disproven. There is probably more to come – and from the chatter it seems that Marco Polo is a given – but it is now distinctly possibly that the scale of the recovery, at its most extreme in the omnirumour, may well be no more than opportunism on the part of Morris. The rumour might be true … but there’s now a reason to suppose that it might not be.

I make no judgements, and I continue to hope for the best – but the moment The Moonbase hits the £6 mark i’m planning to place an order. And if by that stage the rumour has not been confirmed as true, I suspect the other animated episodes will follow in quick succession.

123 – Warriors of the Deep

Fans of the fifth Doctor please look away – the next three posts all feature your favourite Doctor! Which is strange, because Davison used to be one of my favourite Doctors – quite possibly because of his cricketing persona. I do enjoy many stories of his era and rate them highly, but it has to be said, he also carried his fair share of less enjoyable stories.

124 – The King’s Demons

I promised that the reviews would be less negative very quickly – and behold I keep my promise! When I finally watched the King’s Demons I was very pleasantly surprised by the story, having read dire warnings against it on fan sites. The story is a semi-historical adventure – the Doctor appears to land in the court of King John – only it turns out that the man presenting himself as the King is not even a man, much less the King! He is in fact Kamelion – a shape shifting robot (hence the name – ingenious eh?)

Of course the problem that everyone highlights with the story is that the plot is incredibly silly. Kamelion’s controller is none other than the Master, who indulges his usual penchant for pointless disguises and names by parading as French nobleman Gilles Estram – rather like vampires, the Master seems incapable of donning an alias that doesn’t reference his own name. His aim is to prevent King John signing the Magna Carta and to return England to the Dark Ages … which even allowing for the dubious historiography, is a plot so lamentably lame that even Davison’s Doctor feels compelled to observe: “a bit meagre by your standards surely?”

Let us lay that to one side however and embrace the positive – I genuinely enjoyed the story. I grant you that Tegan and Turlough scarcely get a look in, but Gerald Flood is excellent as King John – not least for the lute playing scene in episode one. As a historical piece it is on a par with some of the scenes shot for The Day of the Doctor or The Time Warrior – it bears up reasonably well. It is a pity in that regard that the story is so silly – as a four parter with a better disguised Master and a threat of genuine peril, I think The Kings Demons could have been quite entertaining.

At this point you may well be wondering why it is rated so far down my list if I enjoyed it? Aside of the obvious point that enjoyment is relative, and referring to how I have rated the stories, there is one important thing to consider. I enjoyed this story mostly because I did not have high expectations of it – I was able to appreciate it basically by disengaging my brain and accepting it at face value. When calmly considered in the light of the full list of episodes, I had to admit “actually, it’s not that great to be honest!” So while I enjoyed the DVD – and in actual fact will probably rewatch it in the near future inspired by this blog – it only just escapes the bottom ten on my list!

You can buy The King’s Demons as part of the Kamelion Tales boxset