The Time Warrior

I think – as unlikely as it seems given the haphazard way I’ve seen Doctor Who’s many and varied canon – I’ve watched all five Sontaran stories in order. I say five because I’m including Shakedown in the list because it follows my theory and five makes the theory sound better than four. Basically, it goes that Sontaran stories get worse as you go on. The first one was undoubtedly the best, Sontaran Experiment was second best, The Invasion of Time was third best, the Two Doctors was fourth best and Shakedown was the worst. I’m not including the recent Sontaran two-parter because I’ve only just seen it and it hasn’t had time to ferment in my brain thing yet.

I remember liking the Time Warrior the first time I saw it. I laughed – actually laughed – at the bit where the professor says “Rubeish” and the Doctor replies “I beg your pardon?” I’d say it doesn’t take much but that is one of the few times I can ever remember the show making me laugh out loud.

His name sounds like "rubbish". Geddit?

Invasion of the Dinosaurs

I was there the day the UK Gold continuity announcer made the famous announcement that before Jurassic Park there was Doctor Who and the Invasion of the Dinosaurs. It actually happened. It isn't a myth, urban or otherwise.

Invasion is a story which improves with repeated viewings. The only things I can remember from my first omnibus were laughing for the second week in a row (this time it was Pertwee’s face when having his mug shot taken) and that this week’s senior military traitor had a much more angular face than usual. Not for Invasion of the Dinosaurs the pleasantly round face of General Carrington – this chap had a weasely face which sloped suspiciously downwards until reaching a point. Even in a story where everyone turned out to be a traitor he stood out as being a worse traitor than the rest because of his nasty inverted triangle of a head. I watched it again before an exam and found it quite soothing. I’ve never even thought the dinosaurs look that bad – the worst part about them is that they shake so much when film and video are mixed crudely. Nothing that can’t be fixed (or at least improved) for the DVD. Dinosaurs in Doctor Who should’ve been vetoed at the pitching stage – no one was going to make better dinosaurs than these so we might as well applaud their courage rather than mock their shortcomings. If they'd been done like the Dishrags - as Uncle Barry has said he would've preferred - they would've looked as bad as... the Dishrags.

"Slideshow of the Dinosaurs" would've been more successful

Death to the Daleks

As strange as it sounds now, I did try to fancy Sarah Jane when she was wearing that swim suit. I did – I watched and thought how marvellous it was to have her in a swimming costume but nothing happened. I felt I ought to fancy her – it was practically my duty – but I never could. I met her once, at a signing event thing in Manchester. I walked alongside her and we chatted one-sidedly about how great she was. Because I liked the character. I just didn’t fancy her. These days I don’t even like the character much.

I feel I've always missed something about Death of the Daleks because I've only ever seen the video omnibus. I've heard that the cliff-hangers are not the greatest of all time. I love bad cliff-hangers. I want bad cliff-hangers. I want Pertwee to walk down a corridor and suddenly stop for no obvious reason. One day, yes one day.

And Daleks with machine guns - great or what? If Terry Nation came up with that then he's not the jaded hack we all assumed he was by this point. We can put Genesis down to the greatness of Robert Holmes but this looks like Nation's idea and it was a great one.

This should do something for me... but it doesn't

The Monster of Peladon

Now Nina Thomas I did quite fancy. I found Monster of Peladon the most appalling slog to go through in one morning but I was a bit partial to the Queen. I went into it knowing it was meant to symbolise the then current miner’s strike. I didn’t quite understand how a story about striking miners could be considered an allegory of a miner’s strike but it was all so dull I didn’t really care.

Since getting the video (in the bundle with The Green Death and Frontier in Space which arrived on Christmas Eve I think) I've started to love it. It's much more fun than Curse of Peladon and I can watch it time and time again and have a whale of a time. Actually, now I think about it, there is only one Pertwee six-parter that I can't just watch over and over again. It comes next.

I'd serve her

Planet of the Spiders

I’ll admit it – I was a little anxious in the days leading up to Planet of the Spiders. I’m more than a little arachnophobic and the prospect of giant spiders battling Doctor Who in a contest of wit and ingenuity wasn’t one I was looking forward to. It didn’t matter that they would be BBC spiders – they were spiders, climbing on people, and that is scary. In the end I didn’t have anything to worry about – the spiders didn’t trigger a skin crawling panic. They were rather sweet actually. It’s the crawling more than anything else which makes me ooky and these spiders couldn’t crawl if their lives depended on it. No, by the end I wasn’t troubled by spiders. I was troubled by my lack of spiders. Somehow – I forget if it was the tape running out, the timer running out or the satellite box cutting out – I missed the last few minutes of the Pertwee era. I was cross. I blamed mother for some reason. Probably due to being her child and therefore blaming her for everything. The video was twenty quid – I wasn’t paying twenty quid for five minutes of Doctor Who. Even if it was the lead up to the blandest regeneration in history. I was vexed.

Some time later UK Gold showed the final episode on its own. It must’ve been part of a celebratory weekend but I can’t work out the chronology. They were showing odd episodes – presumably significant ones – and I was pleased to see that Planet of the Spiders episode VI was amongst them. I finally got to see Jon become Thomas and proved that missing the last few minutes of alleged explanation from the Buddhists wasn’t the cause of my confusion. The old man becomes the young man and realises he didn’t exist to begin with? It isn’t impressing me.

I did eventually get the video during my video catch up period. I imagine I paid about fifteen pounds for it - always less than the RRP but with no DVD on the horizon it was never going to be super cheap. I’ve put it on DVD but I can’t summon up the interest to watch it. It has always felt to me like one of those Greatest Hits albums which isn’t allowed to include the really famous songs so has to make do with the less popular ones and some album tracks you weren’t all that keen on.

Goodbye Uncle Jon, Uncle Terrance and Uncle Barry. My favourite era of Doctor Who has just ended.

Farewell, you ruddy icon you