Category: Classic Season 12

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Classic Season 12 Doctor Who

Robot

Doctor WhoThe Doctor’s regeneration and recovery come at an inopportune time for the Brigadier, who has to try to solve a series of crimes related to the top-secret plans for a disintegrator gun. Sarah, researching a story about the equally top-secret Think Tank organization, is introduced to a gigantic robot which could be the perpetrator of the thefts and killings – despite the scientists’ horrifying demonstration that the robot could not kill Sarah. The Doctor, recovering slowly and aggravating the Brigadier with his unpredictable new personality, discovers that the Think Tank scientists are doing much more than research – they’re planning on taking over the world and culling the human herd of those not up to genius standards.

Season 12 Regular Cast: Tom Baker (The Doctor), Elisabeth Sladen (Sarah Jane Smith), Ian Marter (Harry Sullivan)

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Terrance Dicks
directed by Christopher Barry
music by Dudley Simpson

Guest Cast: Nicholas Courtney (Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart), John Levene (RSM Benton), Edward Burnham (Professor Kettlewell), Alec Linstead (Jellicoe), Patricia Maynard (Miss Winters), Michael Kilgarriff (Robot), John Scott Martin (Guard), Timothy Craven (Short), Walter Goodman (Chambers)

Broadcast from December 28, 1974 through January 18, 1975

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Classic Season 12 Doctor Who

The Ark In Space

Doctor WhoSeveral millennia in the future, heightened solar activity threatened to devastate the Earth, and mankind retreated into hibernation aboard an enormous space station, where the last surviving members of the human race are cryogenically preserved. The Doctor, Harry and Sarah arrive on the station, discovering that humanity has slept in by thousands of years thanks to unearthly saboteurs who intend to claim Earth in the absence of its original inhabitants…who are scheduled to become the main course.

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Robert Holmes
directed by Rodney Bennett
music by Dudley Simpson

Guest Cast: Wendy Williams (Vira), Kenton Moore (Noah), Christopher Masters (Libri), John Gregg (Lycett), Richardson Morgan (Rogin), Stuart Fell (Wirrn), Nick Hobbs (Wirrn), Gladys Spencer (voices), Peter Tuddenham (voices), Brian Jacobs (Dune)

Broadcast from January 25 through February 15, 1975

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Classic Season 12 Doctor Who

The Sontaran Experiment

Doctor WhoThe Doctor, Harry and Sarah beam down to Earth from the space station to check the transmat receiver that will allow the repopulation of the planet. But they quickly find that they are not alone. A team of human colonists who left Earth long ago have come back to investigate a call that apparently came from there, but unfortunately for them, that call was a forgery transmitted by Sontaran soldier Styre, who is conducting experiments on the human being’s resistance to Sontaran military might as a prelude to an invasion of Earth’s solar system.

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Bob Baker & Dave Martin
directed by Rodney Bennett
music by Dudley Simpson

Guest Cast: Kevin Lindsay (Styre/Marshal), Peter Walshe (Erak), Terry Walsh (Zake), Glyn Jones (Krans), Peter Rutherford (Roth), Donald Douglas (Vural), Brian Ellis (Prisoner)

Broadcast from February 22 through March 1, 1975

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Classic Season 12 Doctor Who

Genesis of the Daleks

Doctor WhoThe Doctor, Sarah and Harry are waylaid by a secret arm of the Time Lords en route back to space station Nerva. A Time Lord has diverted them to Skaro, the Daleks’ homeworld, on the eve of their creation, and the Doctor is under orders to prevent the creation of the Daleks in order to avoid future in which they could conquer the entire universe. An atomic war between the Kaleds and the Thals has reduced both of Skaro’s superpowers from the nuclear age to the stone age, with the exception of the radiation-deformed Kaled genius Davros, who not only anticipates the mutation of his people that the war will cause, but embraces it as their future. Davros has devised armored life support systems to encase the shriveled mutants that the Kaleds will become after centuries of atomic bombardment – and he christens these devices Daleks. The Doctor, Harry and Sarah stumble into the Kaled city, and find that Davros has fanatical sympathizers as well as horrified opponents among his own people. And when the moment comes, despite the evil and hatred that Davros is preprogramming into his creations, the Doctor finds that there may be a just reason to allow the Daleks to run their destructive course through history.

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Terry Nation
directed by David Maloney
music by Dudley Simpson

Guest Cast: Michael Wisher (Davros), John Scott Martin, Max Faulkner, Keith Ashley, Cy Town (Daleks), Roy Skelton (Dalek voices), Peter Miles (Nyder), Guy Siner (Ravon), Dennis Chinnery (Gharman), Richard Reeves (Kaled Leader), John Franklyn-Robbins (Time Lord), Stephen Yardley (Sevrin), James Garbutt (Ronson), Drew Wood (Tane), Jeremy Chandler (Gerrill), Pat Gorman, Hilary Minster, John Gleeson (Thal soldiers), Andrew Johns (Kravos), Peter Mantle (Kaled guard), Harriet Philpin (Bettan), Max Faulkner (Thal guard), Michael Lynch (Thal politician), Ivor Roberts (Mogren), Tom Georgeson (Kavell)

Broadcast from March 8 through April 12, 1975

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Classic Season 12 Doctor Who

Revenge Of The Cybermen

Doctor WhoThe Cybermen are out to pulverize the planetoid Voga, a small body rich in gold. As we learn here for the first time, gold is one of the only substances capable of shutting down the Cybermen, and Voga’s wealth of the precious metal was key to the defeat of the Cybermen in the “Cyber Wars” (evidently, the Cybermen are acquainted with Usenet flame-fests too). The Cybermen’s plan to destroy Voga hinges on the elimination of a manned satellite that stands sentinel near the planetoid – a satellite that will later become the Nerva space station that will preserve the human race. But the Cybermen don’t count on the arrival of the Doctor, Sarah and Harry – or on the willpower and ability of the Vogans to defend their homeworld.

Download this episodewritten by Gerry Davis
directed by Michael E. Briant
music by Carey Blyton

Guest Cast: Alec Wallis (Warner), Ronald Leigh-Hunt (Stevenson), Jeremy Wilkin (Kellman), William Marlowe (Lester), David Collings (Vorus/Wilkins), Michael Wisher (Magrik/Colville/Vogan voice), Christopher Robbie (Cyberleader), Melville Jones (Cyberman), Kevin Stoney (Tyrum), Brian Grellis (Sheprah)

Broadcast from April 19 through May 10, 1975

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green